Silflay Hraka

The Abyss Also Gazes Back

More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists — the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects — and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.

Mom?

You leading a double life?

“I think that women shouldn’t be afraid of their sexuality. It’s a part of who we are. You shouldn’t be embarrassed and ashamed of your body and yourself,” says Missy Suicide, founder of the Suicide Girls pinup Web site, who lives in Los Angeles. But, she says, it shouldn’t be the sole focus.

There’s a new USS North Carolina.

More than 65 years of naval heritage is set to transfer in a simple ceremony next spring.

The flags will be passed to young hands — sailors of the 21st century Navy — who will raise them over the USS North Carolina, America’s latest attack submarine.

As the swallows return to Capistrano with the arrival of spring, so do the “Hurricane could wipe out the Outer Banks” scare stories.

But Riggs and other scientists fear the right hurricane – an especially powerful storm packing a deep surge – could drown the islands with sea water, smash buildings with 25-foot waves and force map makers to redraw the state’s signature coastline.

Riggs said such a storm would break the chain of long, narrow islands into a perforated series of many smaller spots of sand. Instead of Pamlico Sound to the west, sailors would find Pamlico Bay. Where Alligator River now cuts into the mainland, the ocean will take over to create Alligator Sound.

So, at some point in the future we can expect a “chain of long, narrow islands” to be turned into a chain of shorter narrow islands. Shocking news indeed.

Adopt a Sturgeon.

I don’t remember the name of the story, but at some point in my childhood I read a science fiction story where people going about their daily lives would all of a sudden simply….stop, becoming non-responsive and ceasing to interact with the world around them, I don’t think they died, at least not immediately, but it was long enough ago that I may have some of the details wrong. The protagonist investigating the syndrome discovered that human memory had a finite limit, like a card catalog, and that the syndrome was a result of people running up against that limit–thanks to the immense amount of information delivered to them by television, I think.

I recalled those details, such as they are, while trying to answer the question “How can a person spend 30 years going to the beach and not know how to survive a rip current?” I’ve known since I was a pre-teen, at least. Warning signs and notices about them have littered every beach town I’ve ever been to. Can a person be so incurious about the world around them that they never noticed any of the cautions? Wouldn’t that lack of curiosity have had a severe negative impact on their life long beforehand? Or is something else going on?

I’m wondering if there’s a type of natural selection occurring that society has failed to recognize as such. I’m not talking about the gut-level stupidity that characterizes the Darwin awards, but something more subtle.

Let’s presume that the ability to process the information delivered to one by the environment exists at varying levels within the human species. We all know that the rate and quantity of that information delivery is increasing at a clip heretofore unseen in human history. What happens when an individual’s processing capacity is exceeded? At that point, could the brain lose its ability to differentiate between useful and useless information? One could see and read the rip tide warning, but since one’s processing capacity is overwhelmed, even if just temporarily, the brain, rather than retaining that life or death information, discards it and files away something of less value…say the Barney Miller theme song.

If so, how many people did I just kill?