According to a piece in the Belfast Telegraph
— …This year has seen a succession of ferocious natural disasters, destroying cities and killing tens of thousands of people
–…Across the planet, the violence of the world’s wind and rain caused unprecedented economic damage, new figures reveal – adding to fears that the disastrous consequences of climate change are beginning to take effect
–….. the rate of natural catastrophes has taken a step change upwards in the 1990s, which is also the decade when rising global temperatures have become clearly apparent. The 10 hottest years in the global temperature record have all now occurred since 1990.

and
Stephen Tindale, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “No one can ignore the relentless increase in extreme weather events and so-called natural disasters, which in reality are no more natural than a plastic Christmas tree.
“The World Health Organisation tells us that already 150,000 people die each year as a result of climate change. Sadly that hasn’t been enough to make world leaders sit up and take notice, but maybe this $100bn bill will. And since it comes with a dollar sign attached, it’s the type of language even George Bush might understand.”
Yet, there are still conservatives-in-denial, who keep insisting that global warming is no big deal and we need to keep capitalist economic issues at the forefront.
And still Bush and his ilk do their patterned praying to keep god on their side, and people like the one during the last horrific tsunami say things like “I’m grateful that God was watching over her and she got to a hospital.” (You mean that the other 59,999 people were not worthy of God watching over them???)
I’ve become more convinced that, if there is any kind of “god” out there, it is irrelevant to us here on Earth. We make our own destiny, our own fate individually; and we affect the destiny and fate of our fellow humans by what we collectively do and don’t do.
Will our Mother Earth smack us even harder in 2005? It’s not nice to screw with Mother Nature.