What is the world coming to?

Tumultuous events have been a feature of our world so far in 2011:

• January – Tunisian government falls
• February - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns; 6.3 earthquake - Christchurch, New Zealand
• March - 9.1 earthquake and tsunami - Japan. Over 15,000 killed, 8,000 missing. Emergencies at four nuclear power plants; Libyan uprising, no-fly zone
• April - Royal Wedding (a bit of light relief!)
• May - Volcanic ash from Grímsvötn, an ice cap in Iceland, disrupts air traffic
• June - Syrian uprising brutally repressed; Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu visits the White House

Are these events just part of the normal and mundane run of the mill happenings that have no significance beyond themselves? Or do they form part of a bigger story?

Earthquakes - literal and political!

Large physical earthquakes were a feature of the first six months of the year – New Zealand and Japan being two of the most notable. But there was also the ‘Arab Spring’ - political earthquakes that rocked the governments of various countries to their foundations – including Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Of course earthquakes have always been a feature of our world. But are they getting more frequent, or bigger? The US Geological Survey (USGS) publishes statistics on the number and size of earthquakes every year. These suggest that the frequency of earthquakes is not in fact increasing. Both the sophisticiation of earthquake monitoring methods and the means to communicate earthquake impacts increased hugely during the last century, and doubtless this in part accounts for the perceived increase in the public awareness of earthquakes. It would appear that is not the whole story, however. A recent analysis suggested that while the frequency of earthquakes may not be increasing, the size and impact of earthquakes is (see this article from Testimony magazine). On the evidence of this survey, over the last 30 years it is a clear the number of large earthquakes each year is increasing.