Rosa Parks

In 1960 – when it just wasn’t done – my older (white) sister married a black man in San Francisco.  And had children.

I didn’t learn until I was 12 (in 1968) that my niece and nephew were black. I wasn’t told, lest “I have prejudiced feelings against them.” Like, a child has that degree of prejudism out of the box? No. That was maternal “eek!” factor in play. Mom – who always had black women friends thoughout my life – didn’t quite know how to cope with something so close to home, so didn’t share anything about it until she absolutely had to.

She was distressed to share this truth with me. I, a child of the ’60s, was delighted to discover this diversity in my family, and later to learn more of the experience from my sister who lived it first-hand.

Also a discontent child of the ’60s, in a later year when I was ready to run away from home I negotiated what was to me the next-best alternative: to live with a school teacher/role model who had become a close friend and surrogate parent. This plan only fell apart after mutual parent/teacher conference on a weekend at said teacher’s home, but with the result that I still consider my former teacher a near parent. It is almost incidental that she is black, but she certainly had a profound impact on my formative teenage years. (I credit her with my becoming a writer, and my first book, Mainline, is in part dedicated to her: Mary Walker McCants Wilton. If you know where I can reach her these days, please do let me know. I love her still, and would love to reconnect with her.)

Formative Ideas About Race

My friendly affection towards black women began early on. When I was 0 to 3 years old I had a nanny, who happened to be a woman of color: Aunt Bea. I loved her dearly, and miss her to this day. So some of my early emotional bonding occured across to-me-invisible race  boundaries (perhaps notable is that these years encompassed 1956-1959. Note that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery, Alabama, bus in December 1955 – a mere 7 months before I was born.)

Rosa Parks booking photo, 1955

That left me ready-primed for seeing loving connections in a way that is rather oblivious to color.  My addendums to race have always been exactly that: a sort of belated, “oh, yeah, and people see that as xxx” (fill in race/ethnicity here).  I can’t say I’m color-blind – I”m aware of racial tones when I see them, and how that works in the larger world – but on a personal scale I see person-of-color and tend to think, “oh! family model. And who might you be?!’  (Which may be why some of my girlfriends have been of various ethnic origins….)

One of my most heart-wrenching close contacts with race and color happened when my then-partner also became pregnant by a black man. My partner was from Germany, and returned there temporarily early in our infant daughter’s life, leaving me to raise Monika by myself until she was 3. (She was the most beautiful baby! Looked like a young Janet Jackson. SO adorable!  ) I lost contact with her after her mother came back from Europe and we parted ways, but I finally managed to reconnect with her as an adult after many years. What to do with such a relationship interruptus circumstance is a whole ‘nother story (won’t be getting into it here).  But for my posting reasons du noir, I just want to observe that my near-daughter  is half black, something that interests me and I wish I had more personal experience of in regards to her lived life.

Now, the third tangent is this: I am not exactly “white” mainstream American. In fact I am Arab American. I am half Lebanese, and since 9/11 have been treated to rants about “towel-heads” and more virulent verbal assaults, some of which I’m happy to say I have challenged face-on (and seen boneheads back down from their rhetoric when they see a face attached to “those people from over there.”)

I share this pseudo-invisibility with other Arab-Americans of ambiguous names and ethnic appearance (and who would ever guess that the Scotch-Irish surname “Christian” hides the “Hakeem” part of the lineage?) Trust me, we compare notes on these disconnects from time to time. This journey across mixed ethnic and racial ground can lead to very weird circumstances.

I have even  (most surprisingly) been completely dissed as a minority with any issues by a Chinese American psychology professor who said, in so many words, “You don’t look foreign. You can’t have a problem.”  (!!!)

Where do I even begin….

Well, let me just get back to the NAACP.  And to get there I will briefly tour through science fiction  by James Cameron (Hey. This IS a sf blog, you know?)

Cameron>Bassett>Parks

One of Cameron’s relatively overlooked works from the 1990s was this little thing called Strange Days. This 1995 movie was about a former vice cop (Joseph Fiennes) peddling illegal cyber-brain recordings (aka “sensie feelies” in other sf tropes) that share a vicarious recorded reality of someone else’s experiences. His friend/romantic interest is Angela Bassett in a totally great role (she definitely made more of it than was written).

Because of this sf romp I got curious about Bassett’s other work.  I’d seen her previously only in the bio of Tina Turner, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, which I found more disturbing (for the content) than entertaining.  The Cameron movie put her on my radar in a whole different way. She was completely compelling. And intense. Stole the show, even.

Hm.

So – next up:  The Rosa Parks Story, which not only stars but was also produced by Bassett.

I grew up hearing about Rosa Parks. SEEING this story fascinated me with Bassett’s acting, and irritated the hell out of me about our collective (and continuing) issues about RACE in this country, and the continuing battle we must even lo these many years later fight, even when a black man is (unbelievably! wow!) actually holding the office of President (and why is it not surprising that death threats against the president are up by 400%, according to the Secret Service).

!!!

I am simultaneously amazed by our progress, and appalled by the small dent it has made in the face of entrenched attitudes in certain parts of the country.  I am – I regret to say – doing my writing retreat in a terminally Red State where they are still fighting the Civil War. The attitudes portrayed by certain crackers in the Rosa Parks movie are still alive and well in some places close to where I live, and it makes this San Francisco girl with beloved black family members just want to puke. Or scream. Or go on a Freedom March or something.

And so, tonight, I joined the NAACP.  And I signed up with the local chapter, in case there is something I can do locally that is of significance. Time will tell. At the very least, I am contributing to an organization that has had a huge impact, over time, on civil rights and social status quo in this country. Many people dismiss the NAACP these days as no longer relevant, or a relic from  an older time. But I see it as a civil rights organization with a vibrant history. It is part of my generation and consciousness,  and I am proud, however late my association may be, to now be a part of it.

Huzzah.

Take that, Red State.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

I joined the NAACP tonight.

The Afro-Latinosaurus

I’m looking for some Flash Gordon info and came across a map of the planet Mongo at this most click-worthy site, Strange Maps.

The home page features a flow chart of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and some cartozoological animals (”the discovery and study of animals outlined paradigmatically by street layouts as they appear on maps“). And since this is the Lizard Lair, I would be remiss if I did not also point you to the tyrannasaurus rex that lurks in the continental profiles of South America and Africa.

Here’s a joyous dinosaur roar out to the twisty mind that conceives all of this, for whom I can find no obvious ‘about’ info at the site, but is revealed by the book he’s produced (Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities) based on this site’s contents.  His name is Frank Jacobs, and apparently he’s been banging away at this inspired cartographical conceit since 2006.  Huzzah!

I am a rabid map afficiando, and spend quite a lot of time making them as accompaniment to my role-play gaming and to create/illustrate the landscapes relevant to my books. (I’ll be posting more about that this next month.)  So I’m in hog heaven with this new discovery. I may actually have to start reading and posting over there now and then.

Warning: there is a lot there that will suck you in and squander your work hours. But go ahead and check it out.

You know you want to.

>>Click Here<<

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Strange Maps

HIV virions budding from cultured lymphocyte cell

What is an HIV virus that doesn’t cause HIV?

It might be the key to medical cures based on genetics.

Since we’ve decoded the human genome, a tantalizing prospect has loomed before researchers and the medical community: gene therapy. If we can understand what genes cause an illness or defect, and if we can repair or replace them with a more desirable alternative, then we can correct problems at a cellular level. Gene therapy is non-invasive. The body fundamentally reforms itself, and new cells that grow after treatment follow the new, improved blueprint in the altered DNA.

We grow new cells all the time, not only when we’re healing from an injury. For instance, our constantly regenerating skin gives us entirely new palms every 24 to 48 hours. In fact, our entire bodies rebuild themselves about every 7 years. Why not take advantage of this constant growth and replacement cycle to literally build “a new you”, free of whatever was ailing you?

Scientists have been thinking about this for quite a while.

Two Gene Therapy Obstacles

This approach to medicine and genetics faces two major challenges. One is our as-yet limited knowledge about which particular genes are responsible for a given set of traits, symptoms and syndromes we have identified. Simply mapping the human genome is not enough: this gives us a map, yes, but as they say, the map is not the terrain. Does this bit of genetic code here affect your reaction to stress, or does it control your affinity for alcohol? Deciphering these linkages is an ongoing process. We’re making progress, but so far have only scratched the surface.

The other major hurdle is how to alter genes once we know what section of code is relevant to a problem.  DNA can be segmented – removing a related chunk of code, like pulling a clause out of a sentence – and a new segment spliced in its place.  This process involves specialized enzymes and careful gene mapping to identify the segments being tweaked, and lends itself best to laboratory manipulation.

Yet DNA can be changed in another way, as well: it can be rewritten in place in a human body, physically altered in situ. If we can rewrite the genetic code in place, nothing needs to be removed and reinserted.  Ideally, once initiated, DNA alteration would continue automatically within the subject’s own body.  But this neat solution is significantly more challenging. How do we work on the submicronic level to rewrite a body’s genetic code?

HIV to the Rescue

The answer, surprisingly, may be HIV. Viruses survive by attaching themselves to host cells and rewriting segments of DNA to replicate themselves. HIV is so pernicious in part because it infiltrates the body so thoroughly and does such an aggressive job of reprogramming the host’s genetic code and replicating itself.  Unlike most viruses it can even penetrate stem cells, to reformulate the code of the basic building blocks of the human body.

Now, in a ground-breaking therapy, a team if French scientists have stripped the HIV virus of its deadly components and used it as the vehicle to carry tailored genetic code into two host bodies.

A team led by Dr. Patrick Aubourg of the University of Paris-Descartes has been working on a treatment for ALD (adrenoleukodystrohpy), made famous in the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil.”   In its worst form, the disease destroys the coating of nerve fibers in boys’ brains, causing a breakdown of the neurological system. ALD typically strikes between the ages of 4 and 10, leading to loss of sight, hearing, muscle control, dementia, and then to death within a few years.

An AP report describes their groundbreaking work:

Bone marrow transplants can halt ALD by letting new myelin-forming stem cells take root. But it’s difficult to find a matching marrow donor, and the transplant itself is very risky.

So what if stem cells from the boys’ own bone marrow could be genetically corrected, eliminating the ALD mutation? To do that, Aubourg’s team had to overcome a technical hurdle: Gene therapy works when scientists harness deliver a healthy new gene by attaching to a virus that can harmlessly infect cells. But none of today’s so-called gene therapy “vectors” could penetrate enough of the stem cells needed for an ALD treatment to work.

Unlike most viruses, HIV can penetrate stem cells, and it sticks permanently. So Aubourg’s team removed the genetic parts of HIV that make it dangerous, leaving basically a scaffolding to carry the new therapeutic gene.

Then they culled stem cells from two 7-year-old boys in the early stages of ALD, and mixed in the healthy gene. The boys underwent bone marrow-destroying chemotherapy and then had their genetically corrected stem cells reinserted.

Two years later, the boys have shown no sign of worsening brain damage and are functioning well with 15 percent of their blood cells producing the healthy protein, said Aubourg, who plans to test the experimental procedure in more patients.

Let’s think about that for a minute.

Scientists have now established a way to use a virus successfully in gene therapy. They strip HIV down to a delivery platform devoid of its ordinary  effects and load it up with the DNA they want to replicate. The virus infiltrates cells where it delivers its payload of correctly-programmed genetic code into the host’s system.  It is especially good at glomming on to stem cells.

In typical aggressive HIV manner, this virus digs in, rewrites DNA, reproduces, spreads, and repeats its life cycle in every cell it can get a toehold in. Meanwhile, the stem cells grow and differentiate as they are supposed to, following not only the template of whatever cells they are administered with (in a cell therapy regimen), but  also the encoding injected into them by the modified HIV virus.

With cell growth over time, this is a huge hit of Correct DNA, perfectly positioned to reproduce within the host. And voilà:  the hurdle of  ‘how to effectively deliver rewritten DNA’  is leapt.

Now That We’ve Got That Licked…

As we continue to figure out what genes link to what diseases or defects, we will be able to create gene therapies for more and more illnesses. And, potentially, not only illnesses but congenital defects. And then, maybe, unwanted tendencies – male pattern baldness, a slow metabolism that packs on pounds – and of course the obvious easy tweaks in the cosmetic realm, like eye and hair color, or the shape of a nose or jaw line.

At what point might we tackle encoding desireable traits, not just erasing unwanted ones? How about ensuring fast-twitch muscle reflexes for your future Big League Slugger, or a high IQ for the designer baby destined for Harvard?

And here life begins to imitate the art of science fiction.

In Part 2, I’ll take a look at what science fiction fears and foresees in the realm of gene therapy and its kissing cousin, tailored genes.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Gene Therapy Part I: HIV, the New Silver Bullet

In my recent New York Under Water series about the now-unstoppable 2-meter sea rise we can expect to see, that estimate is based on a conservative 2 degree temp rise. Things get a lot uglier the hotter the globe gets. See the Rommes links above for a quick look, and pointer to the UK site. Don’t know about you but I love interactive maps, even if they play with scenarios of global disaster. Maybe especially then.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

UK government’s global warming map

“May You Live in Interesting Times”

What will people do when the sea rises as much as 6″ a year, and in a few years washes away their beachfront homes, and floods the streets of their coastal towns and cities? What will businesses do, when in a relative handful of years, the properties they own and have developed become worthless structures below sea level on a new flood plain? It’s certain they won’t have buyers for those properties, and they can forget flood insurance, once the inevitability of the sea’s encroachment becomes evident to all.

How will society and government respond when the public discourse switches from, “it’s not going to happen anytime soon, if it happens at all,” to, “Oh my God, we’re losing our homes, businesses, and the urban area where our friends, family, and resources are.” It is a scenario that reminds one of Katrina, on a global scale: not as abrupt, but every bit as long-term devastating as the waters that swallowed vital parts of New Orleans.

Maybe the Katrina experience holds some vital lessons for us, some clues about what not to do, and how best to navigate a future where the earth has changed around us. We will certainly need some role models and inspiring visions for the eventuality of dealing with significant sea level changes. Right now real-life examples are few, and it is here, perhaps, that science fiction can be helpful. Stories let us test drive scenarios, explore responses in an imaginary realm before we need to work them out in the material world we live in. What does science fiction have to say about sea level changes?

I think it’s precisely the job of science fiction to ask these “what if” questions, and to help us look at uncomfortable scenarios of this sort from the safe remove of a fictional distance. While some state and urban agencies are already doing contingency planning for a climate-changed future, these issues have barely begun to surface in the public consciousness. Science fiction allows us to think them through in advance, see how they might play out, and gives us a role-playing jumpstart on possible reactions and responses to disaster.

So far there is not a large quantity of climate-change related sf on the market. I predict there will be a significant jump in this genre of science fiction over the coming decade, as we see more earth changes that cannot be ignored. Right now, there is what I think of as the “pebbles before the avalanche” of this kind of future exploration. They seem to fall into two camps: one is directly climate change related, the other is catastrophic climate change on the heels of an unimaginable and sudden earth-scale disaster. Some things in this vein that have left an impression on me:

Lucifer’s Hammer. This 1985 classic by Niven and Pournelle takes as its jumping off point the scenario of the earth being impacted by a comet. It causes quakes orders of magnitude off the Richter scale, creates globe-flooding upheaval in the oceans, forces abrupt temperature shifts (in this case, global cooling) and climate change. This is on a scale with events posited in prehistoric times that might account for dinosaur die-offs and so on. The bulk of the story is about survival and rebuilding civilization after such a literally earth-shaking event. The science and the descriptive fiction about the sudden climate change is riveting. Though perhaps not directly relevant to real futures we may face in the coming decades, it touches on global change.  Its speculation on massive public response to disaster is interesting food for thought.

Forty Signs of Rain. This 2005 book by Kim Stanley Robinson deals directly with global warming, and the consequences thereof. It portrays an all-too-realistic scenario of scientists and engaged civil servants battling endless bureaucracy and political in-fighting that stifles any effective response to rising sea levels and altered storm and weather patterns.

If you check out the flood map link and play with it a bit, you’ll see that a 2-meter sea level increase imperils portions of Washington, D.C, and a higher rise overtly floods areas of the city. Even at the modest 2-meter level, during threatening weather a storm surge could make parts of the city unusable and uninhabitable, just as New Orleans succumbed to Katrina. How will our government function if our seat of government is destroyed or incapacitated by natural forces? Without adequate planning and response, the damage done even by something predictable like flooding is out of all proportion to the actual event. Again, witness New Orleans’ unhappy experience. Robinson describes such an event on the heels of rains and a record storm surge, atop already elevated oeans:

Constitution Avenue looked like the Grand Canal in Venice. Beyond it the Mall was like a rainbeaten lake. Water sheeted equally over streets,m sidewalks and lawns. Charlie recalled teh shock he had felt many years before, leaving the Venice train station and seeing the canal right there outside the door. A city floored with water. Here it was quite shallow, of course. But the front steps of all the buildings came down into an expanse of brown water, and the water was all at one level, as with any other lake or sea. Brown-blue, blue-brown, brown-gray, brown, gray, dirty white – drab urban tints all. The rain pocked it into an infinity of rings and bounding droplets, and gusts of wind tore cats’ paws across it. (Forty Signs of Rain, p361)

A.I. – Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg’s provocative and moving science fiction film from 2001, considers a similar scenario. Global warming is a given and its effects are present as part of the backdrop of the movie. Here, the flooded city scenario moves to New York, where the stark image of the drowned Statue of Liberty, only her hand and torch above the waves, tells the sad tale of the submergence of that metropolis. (I consider this one of the top 10 sf movies of all time. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and check it out. It is something of a Pinnochio story, although with a sad, maybe bittersweet ending instead of a happy one.)

Other sf works include global warming as part of the backdrop in notable ways. In Bruce Sterling’s Heavy Weather, the focus is on monster storms and tornados born of a runaway greenhouse environment. In the background of the movie Blade Runner, the constant rain is because of climate change, though I don’t recall how this is treated in Philip K. Dick’s original book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In Kim Stanley Robinson’s excellent trilogy about the colonization of Mars (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars), the people of an overpopulated Earth struggle to adjust to the consequences of global warming run amuk, including sea level rises, elevated temperatures, food shortages, and more. The references to this are brief, but compelling glimpses into a possible future – one I hope we can use our real-world knowledge to mitigate.

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Do you know of other science fiction dealing with the consequences of global warming, or related aspects of climate change? Please share your reading or media suggestions in the comments.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

New York Under Water, pt 3: Global Warming in Science Fiction

If you find stark sea level change and “submerged city” hard to envision, you can see what a 6-foot sea level rise (or more) looks like at this delightful (for some value of “delight”) Google Earth-based flood map.

2 meter sea rise in New York (Click to see full size at the Google Map site)

In this map, south Manhattan Island (northeast corner of map) protrudes into the upper Hudson Bay. Liberty Island (bottom left corner of map) is submerged, although most of the statue still stands above water. Ellis Island is encroached upon, and will eventually sink beneath the waves.

The Colgate Center on the Jersey shore, and the Hudson River Park, just north of the map picture, are now in the river, not flanking it. On this bit of Manhattan, from the Police Museum in the southeast, to the financial district south and west of the World Trade Center memorial, the business heart of New York is under 6 feet or so of water. The south end of Broadway is lapped by waves.

Changes on this scale are radical by any measure, and potentially catastrophic. They will not be limited to New York, but will affect any coastal location of low-enough elevation to be flooded with a 2-meter rise in sea water. It is a virtual certainty that we will see a 1-meter increase by 2100, and highly likely that it will be 2 meters.

Depending on the rate of global warming and ice melt in the coming decades, there is a strong possibility it could exceed even that measure. For instance, if the Antarctic Ice Sheet should melt and detach from the continent, the ocean will rise disproportionately in other regions of the globe, and North America can expect to see a sea rise of 20 feet or more. (Try the 7 meter flood level on the map, and see what that looks like in contrast to 2.) It is not unimaginable that we will see significant sea level change by mid-century. 2050 is only forty years from now: well within most of our lifetimes.

Change

Sea change of this magnitude will have concrete, expensive, and disruptive impact on human life. A large portion of the world’s population lives in coastal areas. Even a 1-meter rise will affect 100 million people worldwide; higher sea level rises will affect even more. A 2- meter rise in seas (much less the higher levels that are, in fact, a strong possibility over the next century and beyond) is enough to submerge huge expanses of commercial and residential real estate, dispossessing people, forcing migrations away from coastal areas, and putting an end to the productive use of developed land along coast lines and flood-susceptible waterways.

Such change is the stuff of science fiction. It is not surprising that ordinary people are not thinking about or discussing what changes on this scale are likely to look like, and what impact they are likely to have. As the scientists at Real Climate observe, “The problem is not that people think that we will get 6 meters of sea level rise this century, it’s that they don’t think there’ll be anything to speak of.”

On the one hand such things seem unimaginable: we have no equivalent to events on this scale within our living memory, and anything approaching it (the Biblical Flood; the sinking of Atlantis) has long since been relegated to the realms of myth and legend. On the other hand, to discuss this scenario that scientists are now calling “unstoppable” is to make it real now, and that is a place a great many people don’t want to go. Parties with vested interests in denying or downplaying climate change have now fogged the field with enough obfuscation and flat-out lies that many uninformed folks can’t, or won’t, figure out what the scientific consensus is on the topic.[1]

Frankly, it is a disconcerting scenario to think about, much less actually deal with. No wonder so many would rather avoid these concepts entirely. Avoidance won’t matter in the end, though. When the Washington Mall is knee deep in water, Congress is flooded, and some of the best industrial/commercial real estate in New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay area is unusable possibly as soon as mid-century, there will be plenty of “dealing with it” then.

Are these scenarios unrealistic? Although it boggles the imagination, weirdly, the answer is “probably not.” These places may not be under water by 2050, but by the end of this century it is entirely likely that they will be. Remember: we are now dealing with an unstoppable rise of the sea. Our best minds and specialists in this field calculate that we are past the tipping point, and we are not capable of halting this process.

Rate of Change

The current best estimate of the rate of change is constructed with a number of unavoidable “unknowns”: what will the effect of broad-scale warming be on the integrity of polar ice sheets? Should they melt faster than expected, or break free of the land mass of the Antarctic, for instance, this changes a slew of variables that will impact ice melt and sea rise calculations. If other transient events occur, from volcanic explosions to significant changes in global weather systems, these, too, can affect the rate of sea rise. Once the “unknowns” become known variables, and hard numbers (or reasonable estimates) are plugged into those formulas, then it is possible that we could be looking at surprisingly large and even rapid sea level change rates.

Climatologists note that the 2-meter rise is a basement for the expected sea change, but the actual rate, as the data collects and events unfold, may well be much higher.

Right now, the latest calculations suggest the globe is warming faster than we expected. In the range of variables, our current temperature trend is closer to the high-end curve of possibilities, threatening a steeply accelerating rate.

Only time will tell how this will play out in fact, but from the models and data right now, things argue only for all the change discussed here, and more.

Next post in this series: Global Warming in Science Fiction

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1. There is an overwhelming body of scientific work on the subject, and the preponderance of evidence is clear. I’m not going to argue the massive body of science that exists on this point. I’ve read a lot of it, read many climate denial arguments and the science responses to them, and am personally satisfied about the science consensus and the technical qualifiers that attach to any predictive claims about climate outcomes. In short, I’ve done my intellectual and scientific due diligence. I encourage anyone who wants to take an informed stance on this subject to do the same, not simply parrot factoids garnered on the interwebs or take them at face value.

My interest in this and other climate change posts I may make is to take the current science consensus as starting point, and use that as springboard to ask, “what if?” In this case: “What if this kind of massive earth change happens? What does it mean for Life on Earth, or at least in coastal areas of America?” I find that a fascinating question, and one very germane to the subjects science fiction deals with.

For readers who wish to become more informed on the science side of the subject, I invite you to take a look at what leading climatologists have to say at RealClimate.org. It is a blog, technical paper resource, and discussion community inhabited by professional climatologists who render climate science into understandable language for the educated layperson. They also take pains to address in detail the many mistaken claims coming out of the climate denial ranks. I also recommend googling around the resources at NOAA, the UN and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the intellectual home of climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf whose sea level rise estimates inspired this series of posts.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

New York Under Water, pt 2: What Does a 2-Meter Sea Rise Look Like?

A rise of at least 2 meters (~6 foot) in the world’s sea levels is now virtually unstoppable.

Sit with that for a moment.

“Unstoppable.”

No matter what we do now to rein in greenhouse gases, the processes that initiate significant sea level change are already underway. A tipping point in the ice melt processes has been reached. The best outcome, said Rahmstorf, would be that after temperatures stabilized, sea levels would only rise at a steady rate “for centuries to come,” and not accelerate. This assumes we can halt global warming after about 1.5 degree C increase.

Realistically speaking, though, given political issues and climate change denial resistance from the various ostriches on the scene – the much more likely scenario is that humans collectively will not be able achieve the 1.5 degree C limit, in which case the rise in sea level will be much more rapid.

Rahmstorf’s best guess is a one meter rise this century, assuming three degrees warming, and up to five meters over the next 300 years. This and other estimates are also affected by unknown variables such as what will transpire with large sheet ice at the poles, and transient sea rises, which are different from long-term global sea levels. Should the climate heat up more than that, or sheet ice or transient events occur, it is easily possible to see a 2 meter rise this century, and possibly much more. (For considerable discussion on this and related points, see the excellent content at Real Climate: Climate Science from Climate Scientists.)

But the tipping point is already here, and passed. That means global processes are underway with their own inexorable march towards ever more melting ice and rising seas. This will proceed at its own pace, as inevitable and unstoppable as the rising tide.

This is not a distant eventuality, but a sea change (literally) whose effects we will see within our lifetimes. By 2050 certain populated coastal areas will be significantly impacted by this impending change in sea level. It is no exaggeration to say entire cities will be flooded or submerged: a 2-meter sea rise will, for example, obliterate built-up urban areas in the southern San Francisco Bay, including parts of San Jose. It will submerge chunks of the Port of Los Angeles, threaten Washington D.C., and drown portions of the densely built Jersey shore and industrial New York waterfronts. Low-lying coastal islands off the Carolinas, Florida, and along the Gulf Coast will simply vanish.

Most people have not even begun to contemplate (much less plan for) the real-world consequences of such a fantastic change in the world as we have known it.

Part 2 in this series:  What Does a 2-Meter Sea Rise Look Like?

Part 3 in this series:  Global Warming in Science Fiction

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

New York Under Water: Sea Level Change This Century

With that in mind, then, my overarching theme here at the Lizard Lair, from here on out, is going to be three-fold.

One leg of that structure is, to share with readers about my writing, my books, and closely related creative interests like world and game design, and imaginative media that influences, inspires, or entertains me.

The second leg will be rooted in the general category of “what if…?”  That is to say, things that make me pause and ask “what implication does this have for how we live, now or in the future?”  Or, “what would it be like if we could do X?”  This ties in closely with the speculative aspect of the speculative fiction I write. I figure if something catches my attention for this sort of reason, I’d like to explore it here.

The third leg of my Newly Bounded Thematic Interests is what I think of as “currents of change.”  We’re living in a time fraught with change at a rate that continues to accelerate.  Much of what we are experiencing right now presages much greater change to come. I want to examine such things more closely in this blog.

I figure this thematic revamp will be the best way to incorporate some eclectica here in a way that makes sense and hangs together as a whole.

So there you have it.  A troica of ideas.  Or is it a three-legged theme monster? Hence harder to tip over…

Of course I reserve the right to just go off in some random direction if I really feel moved to do so, but from here on out my goal is to stay centered on the things outlined above. I’m parsing out my interests, brain, and writing time right now, so elsewhere I will address things that don’t map well to the new (or better defined) “what if” theme of the Lizard Lair[1].

Alrighty, then. Let the posting mania begin!

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1. See, for instance, my political blog Cogitations, which focuses on the nexus between fear, security, and power in our contemporary society.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

The Lizard Lair as portal to “What If…?”

Wow.

If you are also a Torchwood virgin, spoilers follow, so don’t read on. Instead, do yourself a favor and check out the show here. This site gives free access to the streaming video after you fill out some sponsor offers (you don’t have to pay for anything) that unlocks the content.  Once you’ve seen what I’m talking about, come on back here and join the conversation.

I’ve been in an ignorance bubble about Torchwood since it first appeared: it’s name was on my radar, but only because I’d heard it was “good science fiction.”  I also don’t watch Dr. Who, so I was also ignorant that Torchwood features a popular DW character, Captain Jack Harkness.

In this case, ignorance is not a bad thing. There is something refreshing and magical about viewing something with completely new eyes and zero expectations. I took this show at face value. It truly had to stand on its own two feet for me. I found it captivating and a little mind-boggling at the same time.

Torchwood: the premise

From a science fiction perspective, the exciting thing is Torchwood’s premise of a rift in time and space, and a team that polices that rift, or better said, whatever might come through that rift in the fixed point in time/space that is contemporary Cardiff in Wales. Torchwood is a group of special agents with a mission that ordinary folk can’t begin to imagine.  The stories challenge the viewer with ethical dilemmas and intriguing ‘what if’ scenarios.   It is also novel to have this set in a place that receives so little film and television exposure: I feel like I’ve traveled someplace distinctively different, if not least of all for the reason of “those lovely Welsh vowels”, as Cpt. Jack remarks to policewoman Gwen Cooper in the premier episode.

The first two seasons are episodic stories with adult themes and intriguing character development that shows ever new and interesting glimpses into Torchwood. The third season  is a 5-hour-long miniseries (Children of Earth) that stays intensely focused on one story arc. It raises the disturbing question of how we would interact with an overt first contact with a species much more powerful than us, and how we would deal with them when they have us in an impossible position.  Great science fiction and exploration of ethics.

We also get hints of Dr. Who along the way. Even for someone ignorant of that series, Captain Jack’s affiliation becomes evident when he vanishes at the end of Season 1, and when he returns in Season 2, says, “I found my Doctor.” There’s only one blip-in, blip-out Doctor in the Brit-related sf universe, so it wasn’t a difficult thing to suss, but it was a delightful surprise since I was previously ignorant of any connection.  Apparently the Martha Jones character, who makes a three-episode appearance as a sympatico doctor figure, is also a regular on DW.  This background is irrelevant to the immediate story but is used as a foil for some insider references.  Once I learned of the broader connections, this contributed to Torchwood feeling like part of something large and well established in the fictional (as well as the real) world.

But here’s the thing that made my head really explode: open homosexuality and bisexuality treated in an unexceptional, matter-of-course way.

Matter-of-Fact Gayness

Of this, I had zero inkling before watching the show. The first intimation came in an early episode where the team’s doctor, Owen, is out cruising with the aid of a rift artifact: a pheromone spray that makes him irresistable to whoever smells it. He attracts a woman with it; when her boyfriend confronts him, he uses the spray on said angry boyfriend who then grabs him, plants a hot passionate kiss on him, and says, “I am so going to have you!”  At which point the three-some heads off into the night.

“We’d never manage this in America,”  I thought. “Our puritanical little brains would melt right down seeing this on prime-time tv.”

Happily, the same-sex themes do not stay in the context of pick-up cruising. It occurs with a lesbian seduction and affair that offers love to a lonely Torchwood agent.  That the seductress turns out to be an alien is a surprise in the story context, but less surprising than how the woman/woman affair is framed and played out in a true-to-life manner.  Jack’s gayness is developed in a poignant ships-passing-in-the-night encounter when he goes back in time and becomes close, briefly, to the original Jack Harkness (whose identity our Torchwood hero has assumed) on the eve of that man’s death in 1941.  It is viscerally established in the love/hate relationship between Jack and a former male lover from his time-patrol days. The physical passion between the two remains evident, but they also banter about years spent togther and who was the wife in the relationship.  In season two Ianto’s pining after Jack has turned into a sexual relationship, but it is not sex alone. Jack has a tender, care-taking attitude towards his younger lover that is evident in their interactions.

Compare this, now, to American tv. This is lightyears beyond the always hopeful yet always sex-free gayness of Will and Grace. It is leaps beyond Brothers and Sisters, where Kevin and Scotty’s singular monogamous relationship, mainstreamed as it is, is nevertheless the only gay relationship on the horizon, and lesbians are, as usual, completely invisible. And Torchwood is an evolved state of being compared to the neurotic, flamboyant stereotypes introduced in ABC’s most recent foray into dysfunctional-families-as-entertainment, Modern Family.

What is remarkable about sexuality in Torchwood from the American point of view is that these alternative ways of being are treated so matter of factly. The encounters and scenes are not “about” gayness.  The gayness, or some degree of bisexuality, is just part of who these people are; it is the dramatic tension in their situations and interactions that drives the story, not their sexuality. At the same time, the sexuality is not invisible or underplayed to “spare viewers’ sensibilities” as it almost always is in American productions.

Why can’t we do this in American media?  Torchwood captures a certain tone that is very true to life and in keeping with my own experience of same-sex relations and broader social interactions. (I’ve certainly known a woman or two whose lover I thought was an alien, or at least from another planet. :p)   It is a trite observation to make, but one worth repeating:  America’s Puritan roots show in our contemporary attitudes towards sex, sexuality, and homosexuality, and any variation thereof.   We collectively have a general unease with these topics that colors how we represent such themes in art and media.  I found Torchwood to be an open-minded and realistic slice of life that is especially refreshing in its portrayal of personal relationships and sexuality.

Barrowman on Torchwood

Belatedly using my Google-fu, I learned after the fact that this show is especially renowned precisely for this reason.  Captain Jack, it turns out, is a well-known and popular bisexual swashbuckling hero, though it is his gay leanings and man-on-man intimacies that are attention grabbing simply because they are so in the minority in televised media.

Media has called Torchwood “Dr. Who for adults.”  John Barrowman, who plays Jack Harkness, calls it an adult drama and one that dares to be more edgy about sexuality and other themes than American tv does. (Be sure to see this excellent interview with Barrowman, in which he has some interesting observations to share about the fearful state of America in 2007, and the chilling effect this has on subjects explored in drama.)

If this is “adult tv” Brit-style, American media could learn much by taking a few pages from this book. And I really wish they would.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Torchwood, Sexuality, and American Media

This remarkable girl is documented in this ABC news story and video. The reporter puts her finger on the flashpoint of this issue in the first few seconds of her introduction: Brooke is “a little girl who could give the world the key to eternal youth.”

The Fountain of Youth by Lucas Cranach the Elder

The facts of her case are baffling. Doctors say that parts of her are maturing at different speeds:  she still has her baby teeth, for instance, while her bones have the density – but not the size – you’d expect to see in a 10 year old.   In terms of mental development, she remains at the stage of a 1 year old, and does not speak. She has not been diagnosed with any genetic abnormalities that would stunt growth. Her case seems to be unique in the world, and her parents appreciate this fact. They have already followed it through to the next step.

“What if Brooke holds the secret of aging?” her father asks. “We’d like to find out. We’d like to help people. When people ask you – everybody’s here for a reason. Maybe this is why Brooke is here.”

These news stories do not get into details about what doctors are doing to analyze her “fountain of youth” attributes. One assumes testing is being done, given parents open to exploring this question, and the great scientific anomaly that Brooke’s lack of aging presents to the medical community.  And here is where this human interest tale diverges from anomalous curiosity, and into the realm of science fiction and social issues.

What if We Could Stop Aging?

There is instant fascination with the concept of staying young forever, or at least a good span longer than we ordinarily have.  As the old addage has it, “Youth is wasted on the young.”   What would it be like if you could arrest your aging process at any point you like – say, your early or mid-20s? Then, though you continue to age emotionally and experientially, your body remains youthful along with the health and fitness that generally accompanies youth. A glowing future stretches ahead: you have much more time to do what you please, without having your physical resources and capacity being slowly diminished by the aging process. Better health, more time to be productive in work and play, more time for life.

Who would say no to this golden opportunity? This is the stuff of legend. The Fountain of Youth was mentioned by Herodotus, and the quest for it drove Juan Ponce de Leon to explore Florida in 1513.  Belief in it has faded with time, but interest in the notion has not. Eternal youth – or at least, a substantially increased life span – would be of compelling interest to  elites who aspire to power, influence, and/or financial empires: such things take time to grow to maturity.  Its siren call will also be heard by anyone who hates growing old. Add to this all those caught up in the vanities of western youth culture, and a goodly number of women whose security and love relationships depend upon their being a fertile and ideally nubile lover, and one can hear the clamoring masses already.

Pandora’s Box

But if we could stop or seriously slow the aging process – would we want to? In the personal lifetime, this means decades, conceivably even centuries, of time. If you’ve ever gotten bored with a long vacation or retirement, how bored will you become when you’ve seen it all, done it all, and feel stuck in a rut that stretches endlessly ahead of you? Or, if you do not have that kind of personality and mental outlook, you would still be faced with the challenge of creating meaning in a lifespan that far exceeds anything we have ever been taught to cope with. We have rites of passage, cultural touchstones that mark the progress of the years. We have expectations, habits and institutions subtlely and not so subtlely tied to the process of aging in our various cultures.  Old folks become respected for their wisdom, or are shunted aside as too burdensome for the young to deal with. Increasingly, as the Boomer generation ages, the once-young become caretakers to the elderly. What if such things were suddenly non-issues? The portion of the population that ceases to age – at whatever point in their development this should occur – will be playing a whole new ball game.

The dark shadow of this, of course, is the specter of over-population. Already the globe is burdened with billions difficult to feed and water. What happens when a part of that population, large or small, stops aging entirely?  Say we do not attain  ”eternal youth” per se, but only a substantially extended lifespan.  Still, this pseudo-immortality threatens change on two fronts.

On one, it alters the balance of power among elites, for those who live extended lives are automatically at advantage in the gamesmanship of power.

On the other, people who do not age and die in the normal allotment of time continue to use resources even while breeding and producing offspring over a longer period than the “short”-lived would. Longer span of fertility means population increase. A lowered rate of mortality means population increase. Take those separately or together: in either case, a world with the exceptionally long-lived in it will force fundamental shifts and new challenges in the world we live in.

The Eternal Youth Race

These pitfalls notwithstanding, its a sure bet that someone’s eyes light up at the prospect of not dying. This prospect is of course a greater temptation and imperative to older people facing their own mortality. They are also the people with more resources, who could afford to develop such a treatment and afford to buy it. Fortunes stand to be made, and will be, should the puzzle of Brooke Greenberg’s unaging self be solved.

One can imagine a future where eternal youth is a closely guarded trade secret, available to – and affordable by – only the elite. With this as a tool, the infrastructure of power on the global stage changes. Unless the secret is smuggled out of the lab and made available to the masses, the elite will be able to maintain tighter (and inevitably corrupt) control of the mechanisms of government, finance and power by virtue of their entrenched positions (enabled by their extended lifespans). For just one example: if the average extended lifespan is, say, 200 years, then why should a president in the US (or any elected representative) be limited to 2 terms – merely 8 years – of governance? Would governance not benefit from wisdom and a view to the long haul? Therefore a long-lived official in office for a decade or 20 years – a meager fraction of his own lifespan – makes a perverse kind of political sense.

The variations on this theme are myriad.

If the secret is smuggled out of the lab, and becomes available to the public at large, then the equivalent of drug wars will ensue as an incredibly valuable commodity makes it way into the social network. Eventually, if enough people are affected by the Immortality Drug, the nature of the world’s population, fertility and mortality changes shape, bringing on a whole host of other, very mortal, problems to contend with.

Dark scenarios? Perhaps. But I think it naive to believe that if scientific curiosity unravels the long-sought-after Secret of Eternal Youth, that things will stop in a laboratory’s record books. Where will they head instead?

Well, that might be the stuff of science fiction.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Eternal Youth and the Girl Who Doesn’t Age