When it becomes unseasonably warm, I remind myself of days like these…

npr: It’s rare in the “modern” world that we can feel forces greater than ourselves.  When we think of grand powers unbound, we call to mind images of nuclear weapons — mushroom clouds rising high on nuclear energies released at our bidding. In this age of petroleum-fueled miracles we seem, most of the time, to have vaulted past natural limitations. Most of the time, our airplanes can lift off even as thunderheads fill the skies. Most of the time, our ships can punch through waves even when they form canyons of storm-driven ocean.  Most of the time, the intricate systems we depend upon for commerce, for travel, for food and for energy manage to function. And they do so in spite of churnings of the planet’s own internal systems of atmosphere, hydrosphere and exosphere.

And then, out of the blue, the planet’s hidden powers are revealed.  We see the scale of its forces and its energies.  There is a particular lesson in that vision for our particular moment in history. 

-Posted by wrightbryan3, from Adam Frank’s “A Metropolis Stilled: Lessons From A Storm.”