What has really changed it the availability of news around the world and the media's over-dramatization of everything that report on.
Two these, I'm sure of: Nevada has always had big dust storms (I lived there for almost 5 years), and at any time there are thousands of wild fires in the forests of the USA (my roommate in Seattle was a fire jumper). Throughout history, charlatans have made huge profits by over-dramatizing isolated anecdotal incidents. I don't see anything different going on today.
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Who are all these people and what do they know? 
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