Regarding extreme weather, I saw a report on the Weather Channel yesterday of a Hurricane that is currently in the Eastern pacific, west of the lower coast of Mexico, and its intensity is the strongest ever recorded in an eastern pacific huricane, this late in the season. Climate Change ( Global Warming ) is bringing increasing average temperatures worldwide, but, it will also be causing a wide range of increasing weather extremes, as the energy of extra climate heat gets transformed into all sorts of wild weather. The weather system you spoke of in your post Mojave, is also bringing lots of tropical origin moisture today up into the New York area and beyond, with temps in the 70's in some places. This kind of system is one of the features I have noticed in the last couple of winter season's, expansive thrust of sub tropical air, going from south to north, moving warmer than normal temps up into the northern US, and into Canada, where a type of pine beetle has gone through about half of the extensive central Canadian forest, and this beetle is on track to kill the rest in little more than a decades time, since these beetles have not been killed off in recent years, because the Canadian winters have been so much warmer. Earth's atmosphere, with its specific chemical composition, is maintained through a complex set of interactions. The massive bloom of humanity in the last 150 years, has been propelled to staggering numbers, by the cheap and abundant energy forms in hydrocarbons. Our massive numbers, and our resultant activities, specifically the immense amounts of " burning " of fuels, which drives our modern economies, is now actually altering the very composition of our atmosphere. The Ozone Hole over Antarctica this year was measured at its largest size ever recorded, another alteration of our atmosphere, directly resulting from our introduction of man made substances into air, which then percolated in this case, upward in our atmosphere. I have seen a wide range of internet reports, listing various sorts of evidence, which imply that our goverment may very well be trying to alter conditions in our atmosphere, on purpose. If this is true, then they are engaged in a very dangerous experiment, playing Russian Roulete with the Lungs of our planet, so to speak. Humans only live within a very small segment of the atmosphere, from essentially close to 16,000 feet in extreme cases, on down to seal level, only a three mile range of realistically liveable conditions for us, above which there is to little oxygen, and increasing life threatening cold. We have been pumping incalculable amounts of crap into this very small 3 mile veneer surrounding our little blue planet. Would you pour poisen into your well, if it was your only source for water, of course not! But that is in essence, exactly the kind of thing where doing to our finite " well "of our air supply. This limited pool of chemicals, we all breath in, should be treated with the utmost reverence and respect, such as the ways the Indians considered the natural world that was around them. Nature for them was something to be highly respected, not something to be conquered, despoiled, and subdued. As Mojave suggested, we humans for the most part, have not learned the lessons of what is truly required to have a sustainable relationship with our life support system, our biosphere, Mother Nature. Vast amounts of our populations will fall by the wayside, as balance is re-established by Gaia's purging of the deleterious pest ( us ) on the host ( earth ), that we have become by our excessive manner, and un-sustainable numbers.