As far as the other incidences, I’m one of those who prefer testing instead of guessing. I know, it’s more fun to speculate, but those of us who believe in science will wait for a rational explanation. And those of us who have studied statistics are probably smiling at the most probable explanation, that this is a mere statistical blip. Let’s wait for the facts, though: Just the facts, ma’am, as Sgt. Friday used to say.

On the other hand, I was just thinking, why let a good media frenzy go to waste. Probably somewhere in China, or perhaps Dzerzhinsk, Russia, there is a factory emitting megatons of some chemical, lacking a name, let’s call it flockozine, that is horribly toxic but not that bad by itself. And, of course, we know that over there they don’t care about anyone’s air or health. Now, let’s imagine a factory elsewhere, say in India, emitting, say, megatons of hexavalent chromium or some other reactive metal into the air. Now, let’s speculate that air currents bring the two chemicals together, and, voila, the chromium catalyzes the conversion of flockozine into a supertoxic derivative that causes birds to drop out of the air.
The mere possibility that such a thing might occur might have the beneficial effect of increasing our concern about clean air, so it might be worth spreading that idea as a “some scientists speculate that….”