By now, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the last several months have seen some quite extreme weather. First there was Hurricane Katrina, then Hurricane Rita. Then we had torrential rain in the northeast, the worst in a generation. Now we have Hurricane Wilma that has just tied the record for most storms in the Atlantic hurricane season ever.

And these are just in the U.S. Let us not forget about the South Asian tsunami last year, a recent hurricane and flooding in Central America, and of course, the recent devastating earthquake in Kashmir/Pakistan. In the wake of all of these natural disasters, the question more people are asking is, are they the result (or at least influenced by) human actions such as greenhouse gases and global warming?

I’m not a climatologist, but something tells me that the answer is yes, part of these weather patterns (at least in regard to the hurricanes) may be affected by global warming. I don’t think that it’s just a strange coincidence that in the last few years, we’ve seen a disproportionate number of hurricanes and other forms of severe weather, in addition of course, to documented instances in which parts of the Arctic and Antarctica are melting due to global warming.

Alas, what comes around has apparently started to go around -- have humans manipulated the environment so much that we are now witnessing nature’s “backlash?”