Hubris

"Hubris" is a word I learned in relation to Greek and Roman mythology. It means, basically, that someone has got too big for their britches, thinking they run things, they can control everything. Like the IPCC, for example.

Just when the IPCC and like organizations had global warming all figured out, the old earth starts cracking apart with earthquakes and volcanoes for reasons that are still largely unknown to any of us so far, or least unpredictable.

Heard about the earthquake in Japan -- 8.9 on the Richter scale -- earlier tonight. Then had to work. Turn on the TV a couple hours later and watched what seemed at first computer graphics of a huge tsunami in Japan, only to learn it was a video of the real thing.

Good grief. Now the entire Pacific Rim and even Hawaii and the West Coast of the USA, including Alaska, are under a tsunami warning.

I wrote a long time ago that I could not accept the idea of human-caused global warming after seeing the Rocky Mountains, imaging the force that created those. Compared to that, even the A-bomb looks pretty puny and pathetic.

Tell me the human race could set off anything like an 8.9 quake? I don't think so. I think we're more like ants swarming and scurrying, building what turns out to be fairly shoddy and relatively insignificant ant hills on the brittle crust of the planet. And we're just as vulnerable as ants, no matter how we dig and scrape and pump.

Hope the tsunami warnings are sufficient to save lives, but I imagine the damage will be frightful. And not much the human race can do about but try to get to high ground.

We're really not in control here. We've just barely mastered agriculture and mining. All the rest is hubris, and Mother Nature seems very anxious to remind us of that.

Save the Republic.