You may remember reading about the Singapore Airlines flight that left London, bound for Singapore, when it ran into "sudden, extreme turbulence." One person died and at least thirty other persons were injured, some of them very seriously. Guess it's best to "Keep Your Seatbelts Fastened," even if there isn't one of those little warning lights to say that specifically.
If you don't remember hearing about this near disaster (and you didn't already click on the link provided in the first paragraph, above), you can click right here for an article published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. That article reports on what happened.
Not mentioned in that article is the idea that what is most often called "climate change" might have been a factor in the "sudden, extreme turbulence" that could well have ended up killing everyone on the flight. The area in which the incident occurred is known for thunderstorms, and in fact is officially known as the "Intertropical Convergence Zone." This designation is a way of saying, without saying it, "airplanes beware!"
When I read the story, which I did, since I subscribe to the hard copy version of The Wall Street Journal, delivered to my doorstep (or close, anyway) every day except Sundays and holidays, I personally wondered if this extreme turbulence event was not, in fact, some new evidence of how global warming is modifying the world - and not to our benefit.
I was, because of these thoughts, not at all surprised to read the story that came with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, May 28, 2024 - one week later. That story, linked right here, was headlined: "Twelve Injured in Turbulence on Qatar Airways Flight to Dublin." That article did, specifically, link the extreme turbulence experienced by these two flights and global warming:
Serious injuries from turbulence are still relatively rare. In the U.S., the National Transportation Safety Board recorded 101 serious injuries in the U.S. between 2013 and 2022. But aviation regulators have been warning in recent years that changing weather conditions linked to climate change could make incidents more common and more severe (emphasis added).
For any of us (all of us, most of the time, I think) who tell ourselves that the impacts of global warming will be endurable, and minor, and just an "inconvenience," these two news stories, coming only one week apart, should serve as a "heads up."
Not that we haven't already had plenty of other "heads up" advisories.
I do think that almost all of us are still expecting that human caused global warming is not, really, going to shake our world to its foundations. But it will. It is already doing that. The shakeup experienced by passengers on that Singapore Airlines flight, and that Qatar Airlines flight, in the most recent incident, would probably tell you that they have personally experienced that "sudden, extreme turbulence" that global warming visited upon them, totally unexpectedly.
Fasten Your Seatbelts?
Well, that is certainly one piece of good advice. But let me suggest that we need to take very seriously the idea that the World of Nature is changing, radically, right before our eyes (thanks to our own, human activity). We had better change what we do, too.
"Fastening our seatbelts" just won't be enough!
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