Foster: That Creeping Sensation
Jul. 10th, 2011 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteFoster’s chosen a very different “what if?” than the other authors in this anthology. His starting premise is that increased warmth and atmospheric CO2 have recreated a climate much like that of the Carboniferous period, with temperatures often in the 90s (F) and relative humidity well above 75%. More drastically, atmospheric oxygen contents have risen to more than double current levels—presumably as a result of what’s known as the “CO2 fertilization effect”. Plants take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, and emit oxygen and water as their primary byproduct. If you’ve encountered the tropical vegetation in a hot and humid greenhouse or have visited a tropical rainforest, you can imagine the consequences of these conditions for plant growth, and the more the plants grow, the more oxygen they pump out.
Thus, it’s not at all farfetched to speculate that plant growth would explode, pouring oxygen into the atmosphere. That’s not in any way a good thing, since one result would be catastrophic fires, since combustion is often limited by constraints on the fire’s oxygen supply. (Cylinders of compressed oxygen are often the most dangerous equipment in a modern laboratory for that very reason—they eliminate those constraints.) Another problem is how difficult it would be to breathe in such an environment, requiring the use of what Foster calls “reducers” to cut the oxygen down to manageable levels; apart from gettng “drunk” on the oxygen, high-concentration oxygen is highly corrosive, and damaging to the human body (mostly due to the presence of powerful oxidants such as free radicals). Talk about too much of a good thing!
[Spoilers] The side effect that Foster’s chosen to focus on is the enormous increase in insect sizes that could potentially occur in this context. Insects lack lungs, and breathe passively via oxygen diffusion through their “spiracles”; thus, their size is limited by the oxygen concentration in the air. You won’t see an insect much larger than about an inch in diameter simply because diffusion is so slow that larger insects would die of suffocation. (This is one reason why most insects are so spindly: being thin makes it easier for oxygen to reach all tissues.) But if you double the oxygen concentration, you’ve got the potential for the 3-foot cockroaches and 6-inch bees of the present story. And indeed, it’s the bees that our protagonists, Sargent Lissa-Marie and Corporal Gustafson, military contractors and high-tech exterminators in Atlanta, have come to fight, armed with poison and armored kevlar suits.
The two exterminators take a beating, despite their armor, but their attack on bees swarming a home that they hope to turn into a hive succeeds, with the aid of the 1-foot yellowjackets that are natural predators of other insects, including bees. Defeating a 3-foot scorpion is equally uneventful. But things turn nasty when the partners go to evict a 6-foot centipede from a family’s basement. Modern giant centipedes can kill mice and bring down small birds and bats, so you can imagine how nasty their Godzilla-scale future versions might be. (I don’t even want to think about jumping spiders, which are possibly the feistiest creatures you’re likely to meet despite their diminutive size, typically less than a quarter inch. A six-inch jumping spider would make a pit bull tuck its tail between its legs and run, provided the spider let it escape.) Fortunately for Gustafson, Lissa-Marie has enough experience to be ready when her much younger partner isn’t, and she blows it in two with her gun. Most insects aren’t too bright, and won’t miraculously become brighter as they grow, but it’s worth remembering that social insects such as bees are brighter than the average bug, and if you increase their brain size by more than 600%, there will be consequences for their intelligence (something Gustafson alludes to). But the real threat will come from ants, which are perhaps the most ubiquitous insect on Earth, and a highly effective foe because of how well they cooperate in foraging for food and in colony defence. Six-inch ants would be a major threat to us.
Foster, as one might expect, is unable to resist slipping in some of his familiar humor, such as when an emergency call over the radio turns out to not to be a “42A” (boy stepping on scorpion), but rather a “42B” (scorpion stepping on boy). I’m not sure I want to live in a world where there are (at least) 42 different categories of invertebrate emergency, but it may be a problem our grandchildren may face. Describing the scorpion’s corpse as “chelatinous” (a combination of “gelatinous” and “chel” from “chelicerae”, the fanglike appendages of an arachnid’s mouth) is downright clever, if not likely to be something the protagonists would come up with. Last but not least, there’s a clear tip of the hat to Atari’s venerable video game “Centipede” when the bisected centipede continues attacking even after being blown in two; I was charmed to see that Centipede is still available. Very retro!
The CO2 fertilization effect is a much debated aspect of the greenhouse effect. The basic premise is certainly true, but the extent to which plants will be able to adapt to the combination of rapidly rising temperatures and high CO2 is much less clear. Thus far, the evidence is decidely mixed. For example, rice plants are highly sensitive to heat, which can drastically reduce their yield of rice grains, and elevated CO2 levels increase leaf and stalk growth in some cultivated varieties at the expense of grains. Other crops face similar problems, and fighting these problems is a major focus of scientists and breeders who are striving to ensure that our crops will continue to feed us in a future greenhouse climate. Foster’s right on the money when he notes that other plants are likely to take over, as they did during the Carboniferous, and this is a broadly neglected potential side-effect of greenhouse warming. His take on the effects on insects is equally sound, with side effects including not only increasing conflict with humans, but increasingly severe predation of birds. Whether oxygen levels would really rise this high is something I’m not sure how to calculate; oxygen production is limited by the amount of CO2 available to feed photosynthesis, and too much oxygen can also be toxic to plants. But these are easy quibbles over which to suspend disbelief for the sake of an entertaining and provocative “what if?”
On the one hand, “Creeping” is a minor tale, with no major narrative arc or dramatic character transformations. But on the other hand, it’s fascinating because it is (to the best of my knowledge) the first story to explore a previously neglected aspect of greenhouse warming. The only significant flaw is that there’s too much infodump, probably because Foster wasn’t confident his audience would buy into the notion of giant insects without some technical justification; that would probably have been better handled as a brief “afterword”, with only the most important points hinted at and the details left implicit.
Thus, it’s not at all farfetched to speculate that plant growth would explode, pouring oxygen into the atmosphere. That’s not in any way a good thing, since one result would be catastrophic fires, since combustion is often limited by constraints on the fire’s oxygen supply. (Cylinders of compressed oxygen are often the most dangerous equipment in a modern laboratory for that very reason—they eliminate those constraints.) Another problem is how difficult it would be to breathe in such an environment, requiring the use of what Foster calls “reducers” to cut the oxygen down to manageable levels; apart from gettng “drunk” on the oxygen, high-concentration oxygen is highly corrosive, and damaging to the human body (mostly due to the presence of powerful oxidants such as free radicals). Talk about too much of a good thing!
[Spoilers] The side effect that Foster’s chosen to focus on is the enormous increase in insect sizes that could potentially occur in this context. Insects lack lungs, and breathe passively via oxygen diffusion through their “spiracles”; thus, their size is limited by the oxygen concentration in the air. You won’t see an insect much larger than about an inch in diameter simply because diffusion is so slow that larger insects would die of suffocation. (This is one reason why most insects are so spindly: being thin makes it easier for oxygen to reach all tissues.) But if you double the oxygen concentration, you’ve got the potential for the 3-foot cockroaches and 6-inch bees of the present story. And indeed, it’s the bees that our protagonists, Sargent Lissa-Marie and Corporal Gustafson, military contractors and high-tech exterminators in Atlanta, have come to fight, armed with poison and armored kevlar suits.
The two exterminators take a beating, despite their armor, but their attack on bees swarming a home that they hope to turn into a hive succeeds, with the aid of the 1-foot yellowjackets that are natural predators of other insects, including bees. Defeating a 3-foot scorpion is equally uneventful. But things turn nasty when the partners go to evict a 6-foot centipede from a family’s basement. Modern giant centipedes can kill mice and bring down small birds and bats, so you can imagine how nasty their Godzilla-scale future versions might be. (I don’t even want to think about jumping spiders, which are possibly the feistiest creatures you’re likely to meet despite their diminutive size, typically less than a quarter inch. A six-inch jumping spider would make a pit bull tuck its tail between its legs and run, provided the spider let it escape.) Fortunately for Gustafson, Lissa-Marie has enough experience to be ready when her much younger partner isn’t, and she blows it in two with her gun. Most insects aren’t too bright, and won’t miraculously become brighter as they grow, but it’s worth remembering that social insects such as bees are brighter than the average bug, and if you increase their brain size by more than 600%, there will be consequences for their intelligence (something Gustafson alludes to). But the real threat will come from ants, which are perhaps the most ubiquitous insect on Earth, and a highly effective foe because of how well they cooperate in foraging for food and in colony defence. Six-inch ants would be a major threat to us.
Foster, as one might expect, is unable to resist slipping in some of his familiar humor, such as when an emergency call over the radio turns out to not to be a “42A” (boy stepping on scorpion), but rather a “42B” (scorpion stepping on boy). I’m not sure I want to live in a world where there are (at least) 42 different categories of invertebrate emergency, but it may be a problem our grandchildren may face. Describing the scorpion’s corpse as “chelatinous” (a combination of “gelatinous” and “chel” from “chelicerae”, the fanglike appendages of an arachnid’s mouth) is downright clever, if not likely to be something the protagonists would come up with. Last but not least, there’s a clear tip of the hat to Atari’s venerable video game “Centipede” when the bisected centipede continues attacking even after being blown in two; I was charmed to see that Centipede is still available. Very retro!
The CO2 fertilization effect is a much debated aspect of the greenhouse effect. The basic premise is certainly true, but the extent to which plants will be able to adapt to the combination of rapidly rising temperatures and high CO2 is much less clear. Thus far, the evidence is decidely mixed. For example, rice plants are highly sensitive to heat, which can drastically reduce their yield of rice grains, and elevated CO2 levels increase leaf and stalk growth in some cultivated varieties at the expense of grains. Other crops face similar problems, and fighting these problems is a major focus of scientists and breeders who are striving to ensure that our crops will continue to feed us in a future greenhouse climate. Foster’s right on the money when he notes that other plants are likely to take over, as they did during the Carboniferous, and this is a broadly neglected potential side-effect of greenhouse warming. His take on the effects on insects is equally sound, with side effects including not only increasing conflict with humans, but increasingly severe predation of birds. Whether oxygen levels would really rise this high is something I’m not sure how to calculate; oxygen production is limited by the amount of CO2 available to feed photosynthesis, and too much oxygen can also be toxic to plants. But these are easy quibbles over which to suspend disbelief for the sake of an entertaining and provocative “what if?”
On the one hand, “Creeping” is a minor tale, with no major narrative arc or dramatic character transformations. But on the other hand, it’s fascinating because it is (to the best of my knowledge) the first story to explore a previously neglected aspect of greenhouse warming. The only significant flaw is that there’s too much infodump, probably because Foster wasn’t confident his audience would buy into the notion of giant insects without some technical justification; that would probably have been better handled as a brief “afterword”, with only the most important points hinted at and the details left implicit.