John Kerry, climate scepticism, and the mystery of Cthulhu

Everybody loves a good scare story, especially around Halloween, right? But what about when the scare story becomes a fixation for some people?

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

US Secretary of State John Kerry has been at it again, warning that, despite the absence of any warming for 18 years, and the utter failure of climate models to show predictive skill, we had better act on the recommendations of alarmists.

According to Kerry, the window for facing the challenge was “closing quickly”. Kerry warned of dire consequences if climate change sceptics were wrong about the future and nothing is done.

Mr Kerry said the window for facing the challenge was “closing quickly” and warned of dire consequences if climate change sceptics were wrong about the future and nothing is done.

“If they’re wrong, catastrophe,” Mr Kerry said in Boston after visiting a wind-technology testing centre with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

But what about the risk Cthulhu will rise from the ocean and destroy the world?

Cthulhu, for those of you who are less geeky than myself, is a fictional monster created by the 1920s horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. In his iconic horror story “The Call of Cthulhu”, Cthulhu rises briefly from the ocean depths, and sends out his ancient call. Across the world, psychically “sensitive” people respond by having horrible nightmares, fabulous visions, or going insane. Thankfully though, for reasons unknown, Cthulhu sinks again beneath the waves.

In the words of Lovecraft,

“Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. He must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming with fright and frenzy. Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come – but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye.”

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm

But is this really fiction? H.P. Lovecraft always denied Cthulhu existed during his lifetime, but you would expect that kind of denial, wouldn’t you, when dealing with eldritch reality threatening horror which could scarcely be contemplated without skirting the fringes of insanity.

Serious scientific effort has been throw at analysing Lovecraft’s descriptions of events, and has discovered disturbing parallels between the prose of the horror writer, and mathematically describable cosmic geometries. http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Rlyeh.pdf

So the question we must ask ourselves – despite the total lack of evidence, can we be sure that our self abuse will not cause Cthulhu to rise once again from the deeps – perhaps disturbed by deep ocean heating and ocean acidification, to wreak his awful reign upon mankind? What if we’re wrong – can we take that chance?