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Editorial – September 2019 : The price of Armageddon.

Hello everyone

With so much political unrest in the world and the world-wide climate change and global warming, you would think that the less scientific gloom-mongers would at least be screaming, ‘I told you so’ by now. Maybe they’re too busy with their heads down on-line when no one of importance is really listening or putting in money when minds need to be convinced of the danger.

What is weird is why the scientists who can tell the difference between the real and the fake are being ignored so much. Is it a matter of no one believing gloom-mongers no matter their background? It isn’t as though the events aren’t out there already. Come to that, not all humans are eternally optimistic. There is some conditioning to believe we will get through anything even though it’s had to have help from Man himself to sort things out and for other people to follow than any deity intervention. We wouldn’t have sorted out the likes of the Black Death and all sorts of medical aliments otherwise. You do have to ask yourself who do people think is going to rescue them from the current levels of weather catastrophe? It’s hardly like any deity is going to help, more so as the weather and seasons becomes more erratic. They all appear to be on holiday or preoccupied with other worlds in the cosmos and see us as a lost cause. We have to help ourselves. We also have to ensure the people ie scientists who are going to attempt to resolve our current global crisis get our full support. After all, with a possible Armageddon coming, unlike fiction, it’s unlikely that there will be many if any survivors.

In something resembling Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory in his ‘Foundation’ novels, it is possible to understand some elements of population by percentages. As I’ve commented in the past, so much of what we know falls into the Mexican hat statistic curve with extremes at the ends and the average in the middle. The worrying aspect is when things move too much to the extremes. Less rarely explored is this against a time element. We can look into the past and roughly know how long each time era lasts, mostly because we can put the numbers together by carbon dating. What we can’t do is estimate how long our own era will last. With the tangibles of the problems with our weather and pollution, if we don’t resolve them, we could see things fall apart before the next century. Essentially, it’s within, health accepted, the end could be in most of our lifetimes. If that doesn’t give you nightmares, I don’t know what else will.

It’s a strange paradox that as we are getting more technologically proficient we seem to be getting more divorced from what we are doing with our reality. Not all, grant you. It is the people from one extreme having to convince the average people, not helped by the other extreme who fail to see the threat of global warming, despite the weather extremes we are currently going through and are likely to get worse, not better.

Objectively, throughout human history, there have always been dissenters. It’s why we were stuck with some odd beliefs that the Earth was the centre of the universe when in reality we aren’t even a pixel on the cosmos map. We have yet to see any evidence that we are due for great things even. A rather odd contradiction, even to our own Science Fiction, that mankind might move out into the cosmos. I doubt if the universe will notice when we are extinct. If that doesn’t show how insignificant we are, what else will?

One thing Science Fiction is good at is displaying dystopias and the end of the world. Often, with no change in sight. Paradoxically, fiction has also been used as a release for the woes of the world, even if it’s just to show that a fictional character has worse problems than our own. This time, in the not too distant future, we’re going to be in a situation where no fictional character is going to be worse than us. We are likely to be riding towards the end of a precipice and no way to deviate from it. I guess some people would rather go out in a big party than try to stop at the edge. That has to be a big worry.

It does make me wonder at what the last man or woman is likely to think. Top of the list is, ‘We could have stopped this.’ Oddly, this is a dilemma that never pops up in Science Fiction. There is always the last minute rescue or solution and, to some extent, our fiction has conditioned us to think things will happen that way. There are always some problems that can’t be solved at the last moment. I doubt if we’d be lucky enough to have an alien species come along and offer us free passage off our planet. Even if they did, I doubt if they would be able to take all of us. More likely, they’ll see us as failures not worthy to nurture and could just as happily put an end to our misery and come back in a few centuries to see whatever replaces us and why not? Any interstellar travelling species has time on its hands. A sentient species who can’t even colonise its own star system is never going to be seen as anything but primitive and not looking to the future.

The problem with rescue plans of a global scale is that there is not enough time. Had dinosaurs been sentient, I doubt if they could have prevented a meteor crashing to Earth. If anything, we couldn’t stop one neither. Well, not without some preparation and even then without knowing where the debris would fall. It would be unlikely that they would be worried about global warming. After all, as reptiles they would thrive in extremely hot climates. With our global warming, we don’t have a similar luxury. The current extreme weather fluctuations we’re experiencing in the UK and across the rest of the world is going to get longer and more profound. We’re just at the start in the past couple years.

I presume those of you are reading this are in the side or the averages curve that understands the deadliness of global warming. The problem has always been to convince those on the other extreme side that global warming is now an on-going threat to us all and not just a time to enjoy the weather. More so, as at the other extreme, we have stubborn influential people who at most think it’ll just go away. I don’t know which is scarier. I know I do a regular editorial on this subject. In many respects, I wish I didn’t have to do editorials of this nature from time to time but, as a clinical empath, I react to the emotions that’s out there and, like the weather, is getting hot. The emotions are getting hotter than the temperature. It would be dangerous not to say we should over react.

It’s important to convince world leaders to do more and that means co-operation in all manner of things. A better trade deal with Brazil to prevent them burning down their forests would be one solution to spare the forests that give us 20% of the natural oxygen in the world. A different choice in products they might trade might work. It needs more than money being thrown at it so everyone benefits.

Restoring the poles is going to be a lot harder and makes sorting out the plastic situation in the oceans simple in comparison. The oceans will rise and anything below current sea level is likely to be flooded. This also applies to the land next to rivers are and coastal regions are now because they won’t be there for long. Greenland is losing its ice and all a certain world leader is thinking of is mineral rights to be exploited than the reasons it is happened. If this was fiction, you would be hard pushed to believe it would never happen for real.

A few decades back, you would think only one major world event would happen at a time. Now they come in multiples. Some can come under one umbrella such as pollution and global warming. The ecology of the world is at stake and that means us as well. There won’t be any quick cures to something that has been getting progressively bad in the past few decades.

Each time I write this type of editorial, things have gotten progressively worse or I wouldn’t be regularly writing about it. With the weather changes this year, it’s now going up geometrically. Think of that with every hurricane that sweeps across the world and the loss of life it brings each time. With every temperature extreme in countries where it shouldn’t be happening. The world is fighting back and, under the current conditions, we aren’t going to win. We’re in an advanced technological world with all the right toys to change things back and world leaders aren’t doing enough to change things. No wonder people think there is a need to change politicians although I think there is a need to change agendas.

Hopefully, I’m already talking to the converted here. It’s those who aren’t is the biggest worry.

Thank you, take care, good night, although I think the nightmares have already begun. Partying isn’t an option.

Geoff Willmetts

editor: www.SFCrowsnest.info

A Zen thought: People don’t write old books unless they are plagiarising.

What Qualities Does A Geek Have: Observation sees it all.

The Reveal: Good weather is made significant by the days it falls on.

Another Reveal: It’s a good idea to take the weather with a pinch of salt if it’s hot to replace the body salt lost in sweat.

Observation: Have you noticed how belonging to any particular group now depends on belonging to one of the three major social media groups. Hard luck for people like me who prefers not to belong to any of them.

Observation: Without wishing to publicise the company’s advert concerned, how do they think people can watch or pick 1000 movies to watch in a week. At most, you’d be lucky to watch 10, so you’d being entranced by a large number. Diversity to cover tastes is one thing but expectations to have enough choice might not be.

Observation: Maybe I’m missing something here, but with the TV series ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, hasn’t anyone heard of artificial insemination?

 Feeling Stressed: After reading the editorial above, you’re probably not alone.

 

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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