O lazyweb, any thoughts on the biology of my planet?

[amdt57]

I have a sci fi idea I've been playing with, and if I ever actually write it I'd like to not make any actual scientists who read it fall out of their chairs laughing at me. I'll be asking variations of this question in several sections over the next few days. I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts.

So. The planet is a little warmer, and probably a little larger, than Earth. It has almost no land (no individual chunks larger than, say, New Zealand, and the entire land mass smushed together would be smaller than North America). It has severe, essentially constant storms. The storms contain an electrical-based sapience (possibly quantum-entangled particles or something, or maybe just patterns of electrical energy in the storms themselves). But, other than the storms and the lack of land (and possibly other electrical effects in the upper atmosphere), it is entirely suitable for human habitation. That is, it has breathable air, a tolerable range of temperatures, comfortable gravity, and so on.

The storms are the larval stage of a life form that, as adults, live somewhere in the upper atmosphere (probably the lower stratosphere) as a group intelligence. Our Heroine will be a telepath hired to check the planet for sapient life by would-be colonizers (there are Laws about colonizing inhabited planets...). She, along with Our Hero, a professional pilot, (not a romantic interest, btw...) will be flying around in a surface-to-space craft that is probably not entirely unlike the best small plane we could manufacture with today's technology, in terms of handling (think souped-up military jet or something)

So, any thoughts on the probable biology of my planet, and/or the biomechanical explanation of telepathy?

I'm assuming the planet would have little or no land life ("land" is not a very profitable niche when there's so little of it), but likely abundant fish, algae, undersea invertebrates, and so on. A few slightly amphibious critters around the islands, and a little in the way of land plants (though maybe not much more than moss), but I'm not sure if the islands would be more colonized than that or not. I'd imagine the constant storms would mean there would be no tree-equivalents, however, and I don't know if the storms would substantially effect ocean life.

On telepathy, I figured that it was a very subtle inherent human ability boosted by some drug to usable ranges. I figured an un-boosted telepath could just about be able to read your mind when she's touching you, but a boosted telepath has a range up to several miles. But I'd like at least semi-plausible technobabble for how telepathy actually works.

[chay]

In some ways your planet sounds like what Earth used to be, except that your land mass is much smaller than Pangaea.