It was like a scene from a disaster movie. On Tuesday night, as storms raged across north-eastern Spain, a shower of pebble-sized hailstones fell on the town of La Bisbal d'Emporda. 

The hail shattered windows, dented cars and injured dozens of people. Then, a tragedy happened. A 20-month old girl was taken to hospital, where she died of her injuries.

Hailstones are balls of ice. They form in clouds when drops of supercooledWater that is below the freezing point of OC but is still liquid. water mets ice. The water freezes. It sinks to the bottom of the cloud. It is then blown back to the top by an updraftAn upward current of air.. The hailstones ping-pong back and forth growing each time, until they become too heavy and fall to the ground.

Giant hailstones are formed in storm clouds with very strong updrafts. They can be as big as a grapefruit. The largest one recovered in the US was 20cm in diameterThe distance from one point on a circle to the other side, crossing the centre.. And they fall fast. A baseball-size stone will fall at about 100 miles per hour. This combination of speed and weight can cause huge damage.

After a global pandemic and summer of extreme heat and drought, it might seem as if nature is fighting back against humans.

In his 2006 book The Revenge of Nature, the environmentalist James Lovelock argued that the Earth was punishing us for using fossil fuelsFuels made from decomposing plants and animals, including coal, natural gas and oil. These fuels release carbon dioxide, causing global warming.. He wrote: "We live on a live planet that can respond to the changes we make, either by canceling the changes or by canceling us."

The English economist Thomas Robert Malthus once claimed that the world would have too many people and not enough food¹. When the planet is too full, drought, famine and disease result - a sort of fight-back.

Others doubt these theories. The problems Malthus saw did not happen. And Lovelock's belief that nature can respond to us has been criticised by many scientists, who claim that it lacks evidence and is bad science. 

Natural disasters and bad weather have been around long before humans. And they will be around long after.

Yes: Nature is a vast, interconnected system that sustains all life, including humans and animals. When you attack an animal, it fights back. Why would the system that sustains them not do the same?

No: Freak weather is not specific to our times. In 1360, a hailstorm in Chartres, France killed an estimated 1,000 English soldiers, long before the Industrial Revolution accelerated climate change.

Or... The idea that nature is fighting back against humans is a distraction. Given the scale of the climate disaster, we should be focused on the solutions, not speculating about unproven symptoms.