Hell over Hamburg

Yesterday night hell broke out over Hamburg. While I was enjoying my book and wine in perfect peace in the hotel restaurant, the city was tormented by intense thunderstorms. A whirlstorm hit the southern part of the city. Two construction cranes were blown down, killing two people. Flying iron made the highway a place to stay away from. Greenhouses were turned into open fields. 300,000 people were cut off of electricity for the whole night. (See the ravage in the picture.) I slept peacefully. I heard the news while I was dressing up this morning after a relaxed (my legs still hurt from last weekend) run around the Alster lake, in peaceful dawn. An elder man explained that he had seen many storms in his long life, but nothing to compare this. When I left Airbus yesterday evening, the sky was dark already, thunder could be heard and a short but intense hailstorm hit the employees waiting for the ferry to bring them across the Elbe. At that moment I fortunately was shelterd by the small waiting box thing, but its size dit allow everyone to enjoy that privilege. The unlucky ones had to withstand the thick hail, no-one complained. Joggers could still be seen trotting along the Elbe, undisturbed. Apparently, there's nothing to worry about, I thought. Could this be blamed to ourselves? Is this one of these transition shocks of mother earth on her way to a new climatological equilibrium? It's hard to tell. Nevertheless, it's a pitty that it's these doom scenarios that quickly become boring when used to blame the public for burning fuel in cars or airplanes. I hope we'll manage to picture an alternative, a positive future how we 'want' it to be, instead of being lead by 'what we want not'. This doesn't change the fact that the reason why we need to picture a new future is because else we'll run into one we want not...