A Flea In A Furnace
In John Wyndham’s 1953 masterpiece The Kraken Wakes, maverick scientist Prof. Alastair Bocker figures out what’s going on, specifically the impact of polar melting perpetrated by the alien invaders of the deep oceans. Bocker’s opinions are derided and dismissed until far too late. In particular, he struggles to explain the urgency of sea-level rise because the terms he uses don’t give a clear picture to the layperson of cause and effect. An average sea level rise of two and a half inches in Newlyn sounds too trivial to take seriously.
He bent a thoughtful, disapproving look on her. ‘Just what do you mean, young woman, by coming here and telling me I “messed it up”?’
‘The anti-climax. First you sounded as if you were on the point of great revelations, but then that was followed by a rather vague suggestion that somebody or something must be causing the Arctic changes – and without any specific explanation of how it could be done. And then your grand finale was that the tide is two and a half inches higher.’
Bocker continued to regard her. ‘Well, so it is. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Two and a half inches is a colossal amount of water when it’s spread over a hundred and forty-one million square miles. If you reckon it up in tons – ’
‘I never do reckon water in tons – and that’s part of the point. To ordinary people two and a half inches just means a very slightly higher mark on a post. After your build-up it sounded so tiddly that everyone feels annoyed with you for alarming them – those that don’t just laugh, and say: “Ha! ha! These professors!”’
The same, in many respects, is true of the IPCC Report: the information is presented in dry, technically accurate language with charts and graphs, but what it doesn’t do is give clear explanations of what life would be like under the scenarios it describes. With this in mind, I wrote to an institute working in this field asking for some pointers to where a layperson-friendly outline of real-world scenarios might be found. They replied this morning, pointing me back to the IPCC report saying ‘it’s all in there.’
Bocker Lives!
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