Presumption of Innocence
From the series “Smoothing the Sea”
The wind blew, the rain fell, rivers burst their banks. Tornadoes, in their spiral motion, rolled along familiar tracks from the oceans onto land, devastating the landscape like a pack of bulldozers. The sun scorched the earth, fires consumed forests, snowstorms snapped branches. Billions of tons of thick ice, spat out every year by rivers, swept everything from their path. Volcanoes covered their grassy slopes with ash. Glaciers pressed thousands of kilometres of ground, retreated and then advanced again. The Earth’s core pulsed with quivering entrails, lazily fanning itself with changes in the magnetic field.
That is how it was from the beginning. That is how it is now. And that is how it will be, because such is the nature of nature.
How different a nature journalists have, especially those from the mass media – as master Ryszard Kapuściński so aptly called them. My sailor’s soul, frightened by the tidings from broadcasters, rages like Father Baltic when the wind lashes him a little too long. What crude simplicity in approaching the subject of weather. Feeding on the most basic instincts. Mindless repetition of agency news. Skimming along the surface of truth.
I turn on the television. The newsreader, eyes as big as spaghetti plates, with a low voice and a grim, serious, anxious expression, torn by inner tragedy, announces from the teleprompter that a gale of unprecedented strength, named “Tadeusz” as a warning, is lurking around the corner of Rozbrat and Fabryczna, ready to pounce on its chosen victims. It particularly likes to attack old ladies and groups of preschoolers on their way to the park to collect chestnuts. It tears their frail bodies apart, crushes and mangles them. With one brutal, well-aimed gust, like a blunt weapon, it strikes and then quietly retreats behind that corner again, wheezing vengefully as it waits for the next beings who know nothing of its presence. What a brute that westerly wind is. What a killer this “Tadeusz” is.
I will not leave the house! Oh no! I know… it is out there waiting for me! Instinctively I defend myself against the threat and my panicked mind offers a saving solution. Greek citizens once solved the problem of a shortage of horses in the state with a single vote, passing a law that from then on donkeys were to be considered horses. Following their example, let us vote through some act banning winds above 30 km/h in areas where television sets are present… Hmm… we will put up little signs and there will be peace.
“A raging hurricane has killed four more victims. Dozens of innocent, orphaned little beings without a roof over their heads are freezing…” It occurs to me that this “Tadeusz” is already a repeat offender.
“Floods have suddenly drowned two people in the Lubusz region. Breakers are attacking the coast… The heat is cooking protein… The ozone hole… The föhn wind is at it again… Lightning has struck a broom… A falling branch…”
Enough! Your Honour, what about the presumption of innocence? If media reports are framed like this, I demand that every time such a crime is announced, the public prosecutor be notified at once. Or perhaps this is already prosecuted ex officio?
To this day, amid the muddy, rainy, fleeting avalanche of ghastly news from broadcasters, reporting on the doings of this so-called weather, I have only once heard a reliable report on hurricane-force winds over Poland. Hurricane-force winds, not a hurricane – because that is a completely different story.
What can we do with the foolishness that builds its palaces on floodplains which, by definition, are destined for inundation – and I am not even speaking of the “brave souls” who put their summer cottages on the other side of the floodbanks, on the river side (sic!). What about the road crews who, as every year, will be “surprised” by winter with salt and sand flung straight into people’s eyes, as if this season never occurred in January in our latitudes.
Sailing is, among other things, relying on secret knowledge read from the clouds. A yachtsman looks up at the sky, wets his finger, holds it up and goes to the pub for a beer, because he knows there is no point going to sea – it is going to blow hard. So let us learn to forecast the weather ourselves. Let us explore how highs, lows and the global circulation of air work. Let us make peace with the fact that in the cloudy script written by our Mother Earth, humans in truth have very little influence. And let us more often use that cunning manoeuvre – “stern to the wind”.
I know very well – and thanks to that I sleep soundly – that violent climate changes will not affect me, nor will they concern my children or my grandchildren. They are measured in tens of thousands of years, not in the broadcasting slots of the evening news.
I suggest that weather reports be given as averages over three consecutive days. That is enough to show how much media panic has been stuffed into the news, and we do not need to quibble that we suddenly ran out of the proverbial dogs biting humans.
I bow my head to editor Andrzej Zalewski, a radio journalist with extraordinary, holistic meteorological competence. He grasps our earthly homeostat realistically, globally, reliably – unlike the television weather bulletins, where trivial rain showers are spiced with fear. Perhaps some herbal tea in the newsrooms, I recommend lemon balm… before anyone rushes on air.
Which weather forecast proves right most often? Tomorrow will be like today. Please check it for yourself when you have a spare moment.