Bad sci-fi?

When I turned on the Weather Channel this morning, I was greeted with pictures of the coast of eastern Florida being worn away by the latest tropical storm. There was video of a beach literally being broken down into the sea. It wasn't the picture of a calm stretch of sand fading into the surf, it was land, earth, several feet high breaking away and falling into a roiling sea. I was struck suddenly with the thought of reading a science fiction novel back in the '70s, of an environmental disaster in the near future, thinking of the scene in New Orleans and surrounding areas, coupled with the breakdown of "civilization" into lawlessness, looting, and people shooting guns, and martial law. It's like we're seeing live something that might have been extremist fiction 30 years ago. I had a similar reaction four years ago when we saw endless repeats of the video of the planes smashing into the World Trade Center -- that image seemed (to me) like it had lifted out of an X-Men comic book, not real life.