Stormy times

Dear readers,

As some of you may have noticed, there was yesterday a massive storm over North-West Europe. This caused many trouble, deaths and accidents. It was the worse storm in the last 17 years, according to some, though some argue that the 92 one was bigger. I am not going to argue this, but I will only say that this one has annoyed me much more than the 92 one. In 92, I stayed safely home and nothing bad happened. This year, I was stranded in the cold in a Dutch station for 5 hours and a half (though I took two hours to get some dinner in town). There was simply no train to go back home, only 20 kilometers away. All train traffic was stopped in the whole Netherlands, and I had a nice time communicating with the locals to get some piece of information on what was going on. Needless to say, there was also no alternative mean of transport, as everyone had been advised by the government to stay inside until the worse was gone (that is around 9h30 PM). Of course, the government had just forgotten to inform me...

This said, I wasn't the worse off. Look for instance at what happened to these poor sods on the MSC Napoli (the ex CGM Normandie). They had quite a bad time abandoning ship in the Channel, in gales of strength 9 to 10 and waves of 6 meters and higher, which basically broke their hull near the engine room. However, you wonder who the hell left their ship go sail in such a weather if their hull was that weak... Especially with toxic cargo onboard. But, well, I am not working for a class society, so what do I know about these things?

Otherwise, this other event has got my attention today: China blasted off one of its old weather satellite, to test an anti-sat missile. Let's say that many people are quite pissed off, as this breaks years of tacit demilitarization of space (apart from the usual spy sats used by most advanced countries). But another reason for many (including you and me) to be unhappy about it is that it left about 8000 extra debris in lower orbite, which could be very dangerous, especially for other satellites and space missions. Basically, non content to pollute the rest of the world with carbon emmissions to fuel its gargatuesque growth, China is also polluting the space above our heads just for the thrill of being able to say: "we can do it!"

And to go back to pollution and weather, here is another article, from the BBC, on future climate forecast. This one is based on PC use, like the good old SETI program. As the results are flowing in, it does not look too good for us, but way worse for our kids: more floods, more storms (yes), more heatwaves, desertification and the like... Welcome in a hell that we did create ourselves! I am sure our children will thank us for it.