Can an increase in natural disasters be clearly demonstrated? Perhaps this perceived rise in catstrophes is more a reflection of the speed of global communication and greater awareness of events on the other side of the world than any sort of dire warning, divine or otherwise.
Recent high profile events like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the devastating Southeast Asian tsunami in late 2004 tend to cloud our judgment about how pervasive natural disasters can be. Fact is, South Asia has always been susceptible to violent storms and devastation caused by typhoons, volcanic activity, and earthquakes and tsunamis (many of these complex phenomena are interrelated, particularly earthquakes and tsunamis). Just ask the citizens of Bangladesh, who have endured untold horrors from violent tropical outbreaks; an 1876 storm centered mostly on modern Bangladesh-the Indian Subcontinent was part of the British Empire at the time-killed an estimated 200,000 people, while a typhoon in 1970 took roughly half a million lives and prompted various recording artists, George Harrison and Bob Dylan among them, to organize the Concert for Bangladesh. Clearly, these types of disasters are not new to the world.
The planet's inhabitants have always been vulnerable to volcanic eruptions, from the incomprehensibly vast explosion of Toba about 74,000 years ago, which may have pushed the human race to the very brink of extinction, to Pompeii in 79AD, to Tambora, 1815 and Krakatoa, 1883, to Mount St. Helen's, 1980, all of which claimed lives and vanquished land and property. Scores of great and well-known earthquakes have also wrought havoc across the planet, from Lisbon, Portugal in 1755, to San Francisco, California in 1906, to Tokyo, Japan in 1923, to Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1964. Other notable natural disasters include the Tri-State Tornado that struck Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana in 1925 and the 1931 Yellow River floods in China, an event that may have taken an astoundingly sobering three million lives.
This brief and incomplete history lesson shows that natural disasters are not new occurrences. There is no definitive evidence that proves a recent increase in their scope or frequency. This is not to suggest we should shrug off such realities, dismiss them as part of the natural cycle of life. We should, we must, aid victims of such horrors, no matter what part of the world they reside in. It is a positive development that we are now more aware of global events than ever before. But this fact may also lead us to infer things are worse now than they were a generation ago, or fifty or one hundred years ago when the truth is news travels faster and more accurately than it ever did in the past.
As to whether these events are the result of God's judgment, it is almost impossible to know one way or the other. For those who believe in God, it would be difficult and presumptuous to claim to know God's intentions. Non-believers, on the other hand, find little relevance or usefulness in pursuing the will of God. In any event, if natural diasters are the will of God and He is exacting judgment on the world for its sins, He does not appear to be doing this much more now than He ever has. Speaking very broadly, each generation of people seems inclined to believe the world is getting progressively worse and this belief leads them to speculate about reasons this might be the case.
Another element of the argument is the suggestion that global warming may sometimes spur or exacerbate catastrophic occurrences. This assertion certainly is possible, but difficult to prove, and again, whether global warming contributes to certain natural disasters, it it not definite that there has been a dramatic rise in such events.
Ultimately, there is no way to know for certain whether nature's fury is the direct result of God's wrath, human folly, neither, or both. What is certain is that earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, tornados, fires, and floods will remain central to the human condition, no matter how advanced our technology or how powerful our faith.