Re: realistic aliens and the necessities of storytelling

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:00:34 +0100, Jacey Bedford
<lookinsig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> seems to have said:

In message <1hx5hxr.1m10ok31n9e8hiN%green_knight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Catja Pafort <green_knight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
Jacey wrote:

In message <eue3jk$dh3$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, James Nicoll
<jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx> writes

In article <sIOdnUVSN_FejZfbnZ2dnUVZ_s6onZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Rich Weyand <weyand@xxxxxxx> wrote:

4) explosion of the Yosemite mega-volcano.

Interval between eruptions seems to be a hundred thousand
years or so.

Don't the reckon the last Yellowstone eruption was about a hundred
thousand years ago?
:-)


Apparently. However, having now seen the programme on which the hysteria
is based, I am much less worried than I was before - I don't think the
science behind the scaremongering was very good.

Well, I'm not running for the hills...
There's not much we can do to prevent it - whenever it happens.

Yellowstone and other significant natural disasters aside, one thing
that worries me about all this global warming stuff is that given that
global warming is happening and given that even if we all reduce our
carbon footprint immediately (to a carbon tiptoe) we can't turn back the
clock... what are we doing to plan for living with what's ahead?

Disaster movies aside, what's the scenario for the next 100 years and
what should we be doing to minimise the effect of global warming in the
short term whilst balancing our environmental impact in the long term?

Without scaremongering.




There are some people looking at that (I agree, not enough).
Also, many of the "what's actually happening" studies can suggest the
ways we can respond, or can tell us that some of the things we thought
were helpful aren't.

Without scaremongering, we can look at problems to be solved based on
the things we know are happening right now (and Julian, if these are
local and short-range phenomena, they are large enough and long enough
to matter to people and other organisms). My viewpoint is really
biased by living in a coastal region myself. But these are things I'm
thinking about and sometimes I write stories about them.

Sea temperatures are rising. Sea levels are rising. Snow cover is
shrinking in many mountain regions. Permafrost is melting. These
things are documented.

Sea temperatures rising may not result in the stopped currents and
icelocked northern seas that some people worry about. But what if it
does? How do you adjust to it? -- there's a pile of good stories, not
necessarily pessimistic in nature, waiting right there to be written.
But sea temperatures do necessarily _alter_ the seasonal turnover of
nutrients. What does that mean for pelagic and deep-sea life? And
therefore, fisheries? There are problems with fish farming that
weren't anticipated when the fashion in sf wast to predict that we'd
all live on farmed fish by now. How can we solve those problems?

Sea temperatures rising alters rainfall patterns. For my location,
extra Nino years has meant more wet years and longer times between dry
years. Nina years mean dry, dry weather. The changed alternation of
dry and wet can mean more fires, less salt-water intrusion in coastal
farming regions, and what does it mean for the saline content of
coastal waters, and therefore coastal fisheries and the health of the
kelp forest (on which most coastal sea life depends, directly or
indirectly)? And if coastal communities are depending more and more
on desalination for their water supply, and the ocean is already less
salty, doesn't that mean that the desal plants have become a potential
help instead of a liability when they discharge more concentrated
brine into the water? (as long as care is taken to keep the tiny
organisms from getting too roughed up)

Sea levels rising means more salt water intrusion in coastal lands,
which affects agriculture, industry, and residential water supply. It
affects coastal erosion, threatening coastal human activities -- and
beaches, which are economically important in coastal regions. Islands
with real nations exist whose highest point is in single-digit meters
-- where will these people go? (probably Fresno, if I may take a
guess) In delta regions like Louisiana, northern Egypt, Bangladesh,
and Sacramento, it means increased subsidence. What do the people do?
Abandon the cities and farms? Or build sea walls like Amsterdam? Or
canals and deep foundations like Venice? Get genes from pickleweed
into artichokes and brussels sprouts? This isn't necessarily all scary
stuff -- think of the skilled employment created by the building and
maintaining of these structures. Suddenly your blue-collar expert guy
is no longer obsolete. Suddenly, the strong smart guy who hates
school has a chance at the good life. Likewise with building the
desal plants mentioned above. Likewise: in some areas around here,
they are experimenting with recharging the water table with waste
water that has been cleaned to potable levels (well, the water is
still labelled nonpotable, but it's really as clean as the water you
drink, when it's used for this purpose). That means more
infrastructure, and more of what we call decent jobs.

And honestly, in some fisheries, we really ought to have a forty-year
moratorium on all fishing. The fishermen are appalled at this idea,
but I can see where the whole cadre could be employed to study the
fish they've been fishing. And more: hire as many people as you'd
need to count every fish and clam and abalone and nudibranch (we don't
eat those, but they'd be fun to count because they're so cute). It
would keep the fishermen on the water and involved with the fish, and
_they'd_ be the ones who could figure out how to make the ocean
healthy again. There's a study up in Maine and Newfoundland (I think
-- I'm sure about the Maine part), where they're using the old fish
stories to see where thee fish used to be that they can't find now.
The scientists think they can use this information to make smarter
recovery plans for the fish.

Part of the solution is political: part of it is economic (make
manufacturers and distributors pay the true cost of their activities,
instead of making the future world subsidize their profits: that will
immediately lessen harmful activities, and _also_ immediately cause
more people to be employed in mitigation efforts): part of it is
cultural: and part of it is technological. Though by technological I
don't mean just electronic and digital technology. I mean the whole
tool kit. Conservation easements on agricultural property is a
technological strategy, too.

I think it's a very good idea for science fiction writers to look at
these problems and write stories, preferably exciting adventure and
romance stories, that have to do with these. The current landscape is
heavily influenced by the fun-read science fiction of the past -- a
lot of engineers and techies and research scientists at least were
readers of these stories. Those guys got us into space, got us
sattelite communications, and a whole raft of other stuff, including
some nifty medical advances.

Unfortunately, my stories don't tend to the rough-and-tumble,
high-adrenaline type, so I'm not contributing to this as much as I'd
like.

Lucy Kemnitzer
still
.

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