nature adjusts, bounces back

a 'sky is falling' syndrome dominates environmental coverage. also apparently alotta free ad space too.

after the chernobyl disaster, predictions of blinky the three-eyed fish abounded.

while chernobyl still remains unhabitable for humans nearly 20 years later, nature returns (found via lucianne.com)

The zone - an area with a radius of 29 kilometres in modern-day Ukraine - lives on in the popular imagination as a post-apocalyptic wasteland irreparably poisoned with strontium and caesium. It is associated with death and alarming yet nebulous stories of genetic mutation, a post-nuclear badland that shows what happens when mankind gets atomic energy wrong.
The reality, at least on the surface, is starkly different from the mythology, however. The almost complete absence of human activity in large swaths of the zone during the past two decades has given the area's flora and fauna a chance to first recover and then to flourish.

don't worry there are still naysayers

"Our work indicates that the worst is yet to come in the human population. The consequences for generations down the line could be greater than we've seen so far," said Mousseau, a biology professor at the University of South Carolina.

however nature often finds a way