Prediction, observation, and location

摘要

I recently started reading a book called Mega Disasters - The Science of Predicting the Next Catastrophe by Florin Diacu. He finished it several years ago, and the book finally reached the top of one of my reading piles. It's not the normal summer page-turner, but I do notice that people avoid sitting next to me on the subway when they see the "MEGA DISASTERS" in big letters across the cover. It has many interesting stories about research into the mechanisms of disasters. Each type of disaster gets its own chapter - tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, climate change, cosmic impacts, financial crashes, and pandemics. I thought this broad examination of disasters would bring me out of my coastal myopia, but instead I found myself realizing that each phenomenon has a coastal component. It is a strong testimony to our attraction to the coast that, despite all the risks, people who already live at the coast want to stay there, joined by people who move to the coast from elsewhere. Since we cannot change the forces leading up to the events (well, perhaps we can control the financial disasters, but I' ve not yet read that chapter), the idea of prediction holds a lot of interest.