Monday, June 4, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
David Brin on Dan Bloom's polar cities pessimism and why it's better to be optimistic!
Of course, not everyone agrees with me on my POLAR CITIES PROJECT ideas, and one of my most perceptive critics, David Brin, whoseDAVID BRIN:
insightiful columns on science often appear on his blog in California , too, is one of them. I respect his good
and positive feedback here: He tells me in a recent email that while he admires the passion that I bring to the issue of human-wrought climate change, and specifically global warming, he is much more optimistic, noting, among other things : [Lightly edited by Dan Bloom]
"I am considerably less pessimistic than you are, Dan Bloom. I do not perceive global climate change rendering Humanity extinct. On the other hand, I consider that your kind of exaggeration as part of your wake up call of the Polar CIties project to be vastly more sane than the opposite reaction, of ostriches who bury their heads in the sand while declaring all of the smartest folk in our civilization to be the fools.''
"The continuing War on Science now has expanded to include every knowledge clade in American life. Journalists, school teachers, skilled labor, economists, civil servants, diplomats, judges, professors. I can name only two centers of intellect in American life that are not under direct attack by a relentless propaganda machine. Indeed, scientists are not being undermined in order to distract from global warming. Rather, climate change is being trumped up as an issue in order to denigrate science.''
''It should not be an issue. Seven percent of all the men and women who understand the equations and have studied the data have recommended that we take prudent - economically sound - measures to mitigate a potentially dangerous situation that could seriously affect the lives and livelihood of our children. These sensible men and women, many of whom I know personally, who have studied climate on twelve planets, know a heckuva lot more about this than we do, yet fanatics are saying 'Ignore expert advice! Go to witch doctors instead!'"
''Let us get this straight. These are the brilliant minds who transformed the weather report from a four-hour joke to a ten-day reliable forecast, saving us billions every year. If you despise them, then stop relying on their forecasts.
''Especially since the recommendations do not amount to 'sitting in the dark and shivering while ruining the economy.' Nobody wants that. Not even hippies. There are prudent measures we could take now, to prevent the worst mass extinction event in 65 million years. ''
''This is political. ''
''I am an optimist,..... unlike Danny Bloom. ...... I believe we can convince our neighbors to nd come back into the light, where adults argue and negotiate honorably, listen to expert advice, and then work together to solve problems. Like grownups.''
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Is that a glacier growing in my backyard? Musings of a global warming skeptic named Craig Medred in Alaska
Craig Medred writes in the Alaska Dispatch earlier this year:
Snow is piled so deep in the valley behind my house in the Chugach Mountain foothills it looks like the coming of a new Ice Age. The hurricane-force winds of December, and those that followed, have swept the Front Range mountains largely bare of snow, but it all ended up in the valleys below. Some places in our valley, the snow is at least 40 feet deep, maybe more.
How do I know this? Because there are gullies hiked in past summers that have disppeared. I remember their depth. I remember length of the climb needed to get out of them, not to mention the sweat involved. And now it is possible to walk across the tops of these very same gullies. This is, quite literally, walking on water, but the water is trapped in the form of snow. It is deep here. It is deeper elsewhere.
The National Weather Service reports 43 feet of snow fell this winter at Main Bay in Prince William Sound. Glaciers start this way. Snow piles so high the pressure exerted by the snow on top becomes great enough to turn snow at the bottom into ice. Viola, a glacier.
I am confident I will not see a glacier forming in Paradise Valley. The snow in the mountains above the house will eventually melt, or at least most of it. There could be remnants still hanging on by the time it starts snowing next fall, but it takes more than one summer of remnant snow to start a glacier. The winter of record snowfall in Alaska's largest city does, however, lead some to wonder about global warming.
A big debate is raging around this subject once again because some former astronauts and administrators for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had the audacity to challenge that federal agency's strong stand on the subject. As is to be expected, the media hyped this a bit -- "49 former NASA scientists go ballistic over agency's bias over climate change,'' headlined the Financial Post, and in a blink the battle between those who wholeheartedly believe the planet is warming because of man's technology and those who remain even a tiny bit skeptical escalated.
The Holy Church of Climate Change doesn't take kindly to heretics. "NASA Climate Change Letter Belongs to Long Tradition of Fake Expertise'' was the headline on a follow-up story by political writer Lucia Graves at the Huffington Post. It quoted various experts peeing all over the 49 who'd dared to express skepticism.
Call me a skeptic
I admit to being a skeptic on climate change. My skepticism, however, is rooted in scientific reality. And the scientific reality is that there is a lot about how climate works that remains unresolved. The National Weather Service has a hard time predicting the climate a few days out, let alone a few months out, and yet we are all to embrace the idea that someone out there can predict what the weather will be decades into the future?
That's a little hard to buy. I'm not going to take that deal from a scientist any more than from a used-car salesman.
On the other hand, there is one key fact that no one can overlook. So let's forget about climate change or global warming and focus on that fact for a minute. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been steadily on the rise for a century or more. This is well documented for the last 50 years in regular samples taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Much of this carbon dioxide can be linked to human technology -- car, planes, trains, power plants, factories.
Aside from dams and nuclear power plants, most devices man has made to produce power yield carbon dioxide as a byproduct. You could probably even include your bicycle. A body is an engine of sorts, and when revved up, it takes in more oxygen for power and pushes out more carbon dioxide as waste. This is the way of all machines, and we are in the machine age.
There are those who take a simplistic view on this: "Don't worry, be happy; the planet will sort it all out.'' This is the Gaia Theory. I sort of like it. Certainly the planet has done a pretty good job of taking care of us so far, but one has to wonder if it is wise to charge blindly ahead counting solely on fate. I don't think so, although I admit I come to this conclusion backwards, having covered two major oil spills, the Exxon Valdez in Alaska and the Deepwater Horizon gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. In both cases, I was exposed to the constant drone of Chicken Littles going on and on ad infinitum about how the environment would never be the same.
This was and is simply wrong. I was trained as a scientist. One of the realities of chemistry truly is that "the solution to pollution is dilution.'' Any pollutant out there will be rendered benign if you dilute it enough, and nature dilutes everything over time. The planet's climate is more powerful than the people who live on the planet. Sun, wind and water -- in all its forms -- tear things down, break things apart, and push the planet always back toward natural states. If anyone out there has their doubts, I'd invite them along on a tour of Alaska's old "Inland Empire'' between the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers in the Interior. There is pretty much nothing there now but nothing.
Dilution solution
The empire is gone. The planet's power of reclamation is astounding, so I worry less about visible pollution than a lot of people I know -- while worrying more about invisible pollution. Invisible pollution is easy to overlook. My concern here goes back to another old scientific cliche: "Johnny was a scientist, but Johnny ain't no more, because what Johnny thought was H20 was H2SO4.''
For those of you without training in chemistry, H2SO4 is the formula for sulfuric acid. It is a clear liquid that looks just like water. If you get it on your skin, it will burn the hell out of you. C02, the formula for carbon dioxide, won't burn the hell out of you. But it shares something in common with sulfuric acid in that it looks like something benign or nearly benign.
Most know that CO2 is a gas that looks like air because it is part of the air we breath. At certain concentrations, it’s vital. Plants need to take in CO2 to survive via photosynthesis, the way plants produce the sugar they need to live. Given that plant are the basis of nearly all life on the planet, most especially human life, a healthy volume of CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing. But too much of a good thing can be as bad as too little.
Which brings us back to that old saying that "the solution to pollution is dilution.'' This also works sort of in reverse. Anything in a great enough concentration can become a pollutant -- even water. There was a big scare related to this a few years back when it was revealed that at least eight deaths in marathon-style running events could be linked to exercise-induced hyponatremia, which is really nothing more than drinking too much water.
Essentially, to oversimplify this, eight people poisoned themselves to death by drinking too much water, which ought to be enough to make any reasonable person wonder about the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Who knows the future?
To hell with global warming or climate change. The scientists who think they can see the future might be right, and they might be wrong. Who knows? Scientists haven't really shown themselves to be all that much better than non-scientists at predicting the future. So maybe they should stop the doomsday nonsense about what's over the horizon and focus on the here and now.
Andrew Revkin, the climate reporter for the New York Times, has blogged on this and offered some interesting thoughts from yet another astronaut, Russell Schweickart. Schweickart makes the case that it's only sensible to try to reduce carbon dioxide while preparing to adapt to a warmer world, because the planet – Alaska this year aside -- to be getting warmer.
"But,'' Schweickart adds, "(these) are all very modest thoughts compared with the 'religiously' held beliefs of the pro/anti human-caused-climate-change advocates."
Amen to that.
The name calling is getting a little old. So is the righteousness. The absolute truth is that no human can know with certainty what the future holds, and any scientist who makes the claim he or she can shouldn't be a scientist. Tomorrow is Earth’s new experiment. We can look back through climate record and make some guesses, maybe some really good and scientifically enlightened guesses. But they remain guesses.
None of us "know'' what is going happen. Hell, for all we know some crazy folks in North Korea could ignite a global nuclear war in the decades ahead, and the planet’s inhabitants could be facing "nuclear winter'' instead of "global warming.''
.
Worrisome ocean acidification
One thing we do know is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is going up. Not much is being done about it. And the first signs of a problem serious problem -- ocean acidification -- are appearing. Alaskans, loving their salmon as they do, ought to be concerned about this, but they're not. They're like Americans.
Nobody wants to make the sacrifices necessary to cut CO2 emissions. We're sort of wedded to the way we do things now because, well, it all looks so innocent. The nitrogen oxides that used to spew out of our motor vehicles, leading to that ugly smog over American cities, have been pretty much eliminated thanks to technology. The modern motor vehicle emits mainly a clear, odorless gas -- carbon dioxide. Our home furnaces do the same.
Unlike an oil spill, CO2 doesn't look like a problem. So why do anything?
We could better insulate our homes and slow this seep of CO2 into the atmosphere. We could drive less, maybe even, God forbid, utilize mass transit. But we don't because it would be troublesome and difficult and, well, who cares about how much carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere when it's so much more fun to argue over climate change.
And, hey, you can look around right now and easily rationalize. Global warming? C'mon, be real. It's the middle of April, and there's still snow everywhere. Global warming is a lot of bunk.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/glacier-growing-my-backyard-musings-global-warming-skeptic?page=full
comments welcome here PRO and CON:
Snow is piled so deep in the valley behind my house in the Chugach Mountain foothills it looks like the coming of a new Ice Age. The hurricane-force winds of December, and those that followed, have swept the Front Range mountains largely bare of snow, but it all ended up in the valleys below. Some places in our valley, the snow is at least 40 feet deep, maybe more.
How do I know this? Because there are gullies hiked in past summers that have disppeared. I remember their depth. I remember length of the climb needed to get out of them, not to mention the sweat involved. And now it is possible to walk across the tops of these very same gullies. This is, quite literally, walking on water, but the water is trapped in the form of snow. It is deep here. It is deeper elsewhere.
The National Weather Service reports 43 feet of snow fell this winter at Main Bay in Prince William Sound. Glaciers start this way. Snow piles so high the pressure exerted by the snow on top becomes great enough to turn snow at the bottom into ice. Viola, a glacier.
I am confident I will not see a glacier forming in Paradise Valley. The snow in the mountains above the house will eventually melt, or at least most of it. There could be remnants still hanging on by the time it starts snowing next fall, but it takes more than one summer of remnant snow to start a glacier. The winter of record snowfall in Alaska's largest city does, however, lead some to wonder about global warming.
A big debate is raging around this subject once again because some former astronauts and administrators for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had the audacity to challenge that federal agency's strong stand on the subject. As is to be expected, the media hyped this a bit -- "49 former NASA scientists go ballistic over agency's bias over climate change,'' headlined the Financial Post, and in a blink the battle between those who wholeheartedly believe the planet is warming because of man's technology and those who remain even a tiny bit skeptical escalated.
The Holy Church of Climate Change doesn't take kindly to heretics. "NASA Climate Change Letter Belongs to Long Tradition of Fake Expertise'' was the headline on a follow-up story by political writer Lucia Graves at the Huffington Post. It quoted various experts peeing all over the 49 who'd dared to express skepticism.
Call me a skeptic
I admit to being a skeptic on climate change. My skepticism, however, is rooted in scientific reality. And the scientific reality is that there is a lot about how climate works that remains unresolved. The National Weather Service has a hard time predicting the climate a few days out, let alone a few months out, and yet we are all to embrace the idea that someone out there can predict what the weather will be decades into the future?
That's a little hard to buy. I'm not going to take that deal from a scientist any more than from a used-car salesman.
On the other hand, there is one key fact that no one can overlook. So let's forget about climate change or global warming and focus on that fact for a minute. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been steadily on the rise for a century or more. This is well documented for the last 50 years in regular samples taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Much of this carbon dioxide can be linked to human technology -- car, planes, trains, power plants, factories.
Aside from dams and nuclear power plants, most devices man has made to produce power yield carbon dioxide as a byproduct. You could probably even include your bicycle. A body is an engine of sorts, and when revved up, it takes in more oxygen for power and pushes out more carbon dioxide as waste. This is the way of all machines, and we are in the machine age.
There are those who take a simplistic view on this: "Don't worry, be happy; the planet will sort it all out.'' This is the Gaia Theory. I sort of like it. Certainly the planet has done a pretty good job of taking care of us so far, but one has to wonder if it is wise to charge blindly ahead counting solely on fate. I don't think so, although I admit I come to this conclusion backwards, having covered two major oil spills, the Exxon Valdez in Alaska and the Deepwater Horizon gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. In both cases, I was exposed to the constant drone of Chicken Littles going on and on ad infinitum about how the environment would never be the same.
This was and is simply wrong. I was trained as a scientist. One of the realities of chemistry truly is that "the solution to pollution is dilution.'' Any pollutant out there will be rendered benign if you dilute it enough, and nature dilutes everything over time. The planet's climate is more powerful than the people who live on the planet. Sun, wind and water -- in all its forms -- tear things down, break things apart, and push the planet always back toward natural states. If anyone out there has their doubts, I'd invite them along on a tour of Alaska's old "Inland Empire'' between the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers in the Interior. There is pretty much nothing there now but nothing.
Dilution solution
The empire is gone. The planet's power of reclamation is astounding, so I worry less about visible pollution than a lot of people I know -- while worrying more about invisible pollution. Invisible pollution is easy to overlook. My concern here goes back to another old scientific cliche: "Johnny was a scientist, but Johnny ain't no more, because what Johnny thought was H20 was H2SO4.''
For those of you without training in chemistry, H2SO4 is the formula for sulfuric acid. It is a clear liquid that looks just like water. If you get it on your skin, it will burn the hell out of you. C02, the formula for carbon dioxide, won't burn the hell out of you. But it shares something in common with sulfuric acid in that it looks like something benign or nearly benign.
Most know that CO2 is a gas that looks like air because it is part of the air we breath. At certain concentrations, it’s vital. Plants need to take in CO2 to survive via photosynthesis, the way plants produce the sugar they need to live. Given that plant are the basis of nearly all life on the planet, most especially human life, a healthy volume of CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing. But too much of a good thing can be as bad as too little.
Which brings us back to that old saying that "the solution to pollution is dilution.'' This also works sort of in reverse. Anything in a great enough concentration can become a pollutant -- even water. There was a big scare related to this a few years back when it was revealed that at least eight deaths in marathon-style running events could be linked to exercise-induced hyponatremia, which is really nothing more than drinking too much water.
Essentially, to oversimplify this, eight people poisoned themselves to death by drinking too much water, which ought to be enough to make any reasonable person wonder about the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Who knows the future?
To hell with global warming or climate change. The scientists who think they can see the future might be right, and they might be wrong. Who knows? Scientists haven't really shown themselves to be all that much better than non-scientists at predicting the future. So maybe they should stop the doomsday nonsense about what's over the horizon and focus on the here and now.
Andrew Revkin, the climate reporter for the New York Times, has blogged on this and offered some interesting thoughts from yet another astronaut, Russell Schweickart. Schweickart makes the case that it's only sensible to try to reduce carbon dioxide while preparing to adapt to a warmer world, because the planet – Alaska this year aside -- to be getting warmer.
"But,'' Schweickart adds, "(these) are all very modest thoughts compared with the 'religiously' held beliefs of the pro/anti human-caused-climate-change advocates."
Amen to that.
The name calling is getting a little old. So is the righteousness. The absolute truth is that no human can know with certainty what the future holds, and any scientist who makes the claim he or she can shouldn't be a scientist. Tomorrow is Earth’s new experiment. We can look back through climate record and make some guesses, maybe some really good and scientifically enlightened guesses. But they remain guesses.
None of us "know'' what is going happen. Hell, for all we know some crazy folks in North Korea could ignite a global nuclear war in the decades ahead, and the planet’s inhabitants could be facing "nuclear winter'' instead of "global warming.''
.
Worrisome ocean acidification
One thing we do know is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is going up. Not much is being done about it. And the first signs of a problem serious problem -- ocean acidification -- are appearing. Alaskans, loving their salmon as they do, ought to be concerned about this, but they're not. They're like Americans.
Nobody wants to make the sacrifices necessary to cut CO2 emissions. We're sort of wedded to the way we do things now because, well, it all looks so innocent. The nitrogen oxides that used to spew out of our motor vehicles, leading to that ugly smog over American cities, have been pretty much eliminated thanks to technology. The modern motor vehicle emits mainly a clear, odorless gas -- carbon dioxide. Our home furnaces do the same.
Unlike an oil spill, CO2 doesn't look like a problem. So why do anything?
We could better insulate our homes and slow this seep of CO2 into the atmosphere. We could drive less, maybe even, God forbid, utilize mass transit. But we don't because it would be troublesome and difficult and, well, who cares about how much carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere when it's so much more fun to argue over climate change.
And, hey, you can look around right now and easily rationalize. Global warming? C'mon, be real. It's the middle of April, and there's still snow everywhere. Global warming is a lot of bunk.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/glacier-growing-my-backyard-musings-global-warming-skeptic?page=full
comments welcome here PRO and CON:
Methane report by Alaska researcher, CO2 ppm level rise, shine spotlight on cli fi novel's themes in 'Polar City Red'
As the planet heats up and global warming becomes more and more a worrisome phenomenon, despite head in the sand tomfoolery from climate denialists and skeptics, Alaska stands at the forefront of the right against climate change and possible climate chaos in the distant future. Not now. Now everything is fine, so drive your SUV as far into the wilderness as you want, there's still time to enjoy the views.Recently, Jim Laughter released a cli fi novel, pure fiction, titled "Polar City Red." It's a warning, a wake up call, an alarm bell in the guise of fiction. The story takes place in the Fairbanks area of Alaska in 2075, and you might call it sci fi if the term cli fi does not suit you. People are living in polar cities then. The future of humankind might, well, there might not be a future for mankind. But the book ends on a happy, positive note, so read it in that light.
Laughter's book is about CO2 emissions in overdrive, methane gas releases in the Arctic and the collapse of the Lower 48 and millions head north to Alaska and Canada and Norway.
About the same time Laughter's book was published, with a tweet by sci fi writer Margaret Atwood calling the novel "cli fi",'
the University of Alaska Fairbanks released a report on how methane
in the Arctic may add to a warmer planet. According to a recently published study by pioneering UAF researcher Katey Walter
Anthony, geologic methane seeps in Alaska may contribute about 250,000
metric tons of the gas into to the atmosphere each year.
According to Katie Medred, writing in The Alaska Dispatch magazine, Walter's study, the first of its kind, found that widespread terrestrial
sources of geologic methane in the Arctic is contributing heavily to
receding glaciers and may endanger what’s known as the “cryospher
cap.”
''Previous research has found that warming permafrost releases methane
as the ground softens and decaying organic matter thaws. Walter
Anthony’s research is the first to confirm the source of geologic
methane emissions," Medred noted. "Methane is escaping through fissures in the Earth’s
crust, adding on to the organic methane production above ground.
According to Walter Anthony's findings underground geologic sources of
the greenhouse gas roughly equal the above-ground organic sources.
It’s not unusual to see methane released in the Arctic, but excessive
leaking is not a good sign. Repeat: not a good sign! In Laughter's novel,
three chapters are devoted to fictional accounts of the dangers of methane releases in the far north.
Is art imitating life? You bet it is!
While CO2 drives 80 percent of the warming caused by greenhouse gases,
methane poses an outsized threat. Some scientists warn that widespread
thawing of Arctic permafrost or warming of frozen hydrates on the
ocean floor could trigger massive methane releases and dramatically
accelerate the rate of climate change.
"Pound for pound, methane is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas
than carbon dioxide, but there's less of it in the atmosphere," according to
NOAA. Ever heard of NOAA's Ark? We might need something like this in the future.
Meanwhile, also at the same time that Laughter's book was published in late spring of 2012,
Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press press release agency in Washington rewrote
a government press release for his wire service saying that for the first in human history the
PPM levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have hit the 400 mark. That spells trouble, big trouble,
and nations do not work together to get the PPM levels back down to 350 the human species
may very well be doomed. Doomed! As in "the end of human life on Planet Earth."
Are you ready for that in 500 years? Could it happen sooner? If you want to read a novel about
all this that presents a good old fashioned yarn in a non-threatening way, read Jim Laughter's engrossing
page turner called "Polar City Red". The book might serve as a good dress rehearsal for what's coming
Alaska's way in the next 100 to 200 years.
All I'm saying here is: You've been warned. Don't say you weren't warned.
Okay, everyone, carry on! Back to business as usual. Keep driving your SUVs here and there. Nothing
to worry about now.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
E-book: USA: Hope for the best and prepare for the worst
In Jim Laughter's ‘Polar City Red' humankind teeters on the brink of dystopia after failing to clean up its environmental act and save the planetBy Staff Writer
The Taipei Post Online,
a web blog
Over the past few years Taiwan-based journalist Danny Bloom has become more and more concerned with climate-change issues, notably the prospect of humanity retreating to new cities built in the polar regions to escape rising temperatures elsewhere. So when he strongly urged me to read a new novel, "Polar City Red" by Jim Laughter in Oklahoma, recently published online and as a POD paperback and set in an environmentally devastated future, I felt duty-bound to take a look.
E-books are the modern version of self-publishing. Contrary to what many choose to think, this is an honorable way of issuing works, and one with a long history. William Blake printed and colored his own books, Shelley had pamphlets privately printed and then tried to hand them out to passing citizens, and Ronald Firbank self-published all his novels, now considered by many as classics, in the 1920s.
Even James Joyce’s Ulysses was self-published in a way — brought out by a friend who ran a Paris bookshop rather than by an established publishing house. Laughter stands in this august tradition, writing novels and issuing them online, from crime novels to non-fiction books about social issues as well. This combination of the newest and one of the oldest technologies feels like the true mark of a dedicated indie publisher. "Polar City Red' is set in the future, but not so far away as all this: 2075. And the action takes place mostly in Alaska. northern Alaska. This is essentially a novel of ideas.
All of the major characters is memorable, and the ideas are strong — sometimes ingenious, but more often just humane. There’s some grim humor, too, as Laughter seems to have a good ear for comedy amidst the tragedy of major global warming impact events in the near future. It's not a pretty picture, but the story is rivetting, and a real page turner. You won't come away from this book unscathed, and it will forever change your perspective on what might await future generations if we do not tackle and solve the CO2 emissions issues worldwide now.
Before it's too late and Laughter's imaginary scenario becomes a reality! The government and its efforts are viewed with considerable skepticism. Yet the book ends on a slightly optimistic note, with any final collapse at least temporarily delayed, and the Moores hopeful and optimistic. Are there some sequels in the planning? The book doesn't say but I suspect there will be one or two. The storyline is not finished.
Why are the Moores optimistic? The author doesn’t give many credible grounds for their optimism and you feel that this ending was adopted in preference to a bleak one of total collapse, or an ecological equivalent to Orwell’s ''Room 101''. "Polar City Red: stands in the tradition of dystopian novels like Aldous Huxley’s ''Brave New World'' and George Orwell’s ''1984''. These offered visions of nightmarish futures with the implicit message that this was how things might turn out if we didn’t take action to change our ways.
Huxley warned of eugenics, or tampering with the genes of our descendants, and Orwell of the totalitarianism that was inseparable, as he saw it, from communism. In the place of these fears, "Polar City Red" offers unchecked global warming, the danger almost everyone is now focusing on. The strange thing is that we haven’t been deluged with novels on this theme already. This book reads more like Philip Pullman’s ''His Dark Materials'' trilogy than the science fiction it would have been classified as 10 years ago. Science fiction is supposed to deal with future events that are, from a rational viewpoint, never likely to happen. "Polar City Red", by contrast, feels more like ecological prophecy.
This is a coherent, lively and fast-moving attempt to put a widely feared future into imaginative, fictional form. It’s all the more attractive for being available on Kindles and Nooks and as a print on demand paperback with a beautiful cover (designed by Dan Case in Texas) as well. (c) 2012 ''THE TAIPEI POST ONLINE''
Saturday, May 26, 2012
POLAR CITY RED feedback
Mother nature votes last, and her votes trump all of ours put together.James Hansen is a bit of a quack and James Lovelock was indeed correct back then. Earth DOES have the ability to heal itself over time.
So if you convince me of something that's not true, or I convince you of something that is true, either way it won't make any difference. What will happen, will happen, and we might just as well go right on listening to the music and rearranging the deck chairs when they slide too close to the guard rails.
For all the difference that you or I could possible make to the future of the planet, it doesn't matter one iota what we believe.
The gloomsters are doing nothing but making us look like a bunch of 'Chicken Littles'. You ever wonder why the GW deniers have been so successful over the past decade or so? It's not just oil money and constant streams of propaganda. The gloom-and-doom people on OUR side have done a lot of damage as well.
It's time to start ignoring the 'Cascade effects' morons and instead start trying to find other spokesmen who can truly wake us up.
There isn't going to be Hanson-style runaway warming or sudden flips. Both of these are not only plain bullshit but they're scaring away a lot of people who would otherwise be open to the fact that global warming is indeed a serious issue.
Right now, 'doom-and-gloom' theories are the LAST f***ing thing we need.
Dear Jim and Dan, ......''People will only become interested in the problem...Haldane's stages of acceptance of a theory: (paraphrased from memory)
...AFTER the inevitability of doom is so clear that it can no longer be denied, AND after that doom is DAYS or HOURS away (not years; people don't care about things that are years away), and by then it will be too late.
The reason people don't take it seriously is that there are NOT ENOUGH people screaming out the message of doom and gloom. That's why doom will catch them unaware. ''
1. This is nonsense. It can't be true.
2. This is interesting, but not widely accepted.
3. This is true, but the effect is too small to be concerned with.
4. Of course this is true. We've believed it all along.
I think the financial catastrophe will be irrelevant. When the population of the earth is reduced to 1/10th it's present number it will be a whole different world. I could be a toss-up whether that remaining 10% survives or not. But one thing is certain; even if the human race survives, what we call "civilization" will not.
Which is why we need to continue spreading the word. Such POLAR CITY RED.
Complacency will only harm us even further.
Every morning when you get up...
say to yourself "I will not die today."
In your entire life you will only be wrong once.
All 24 chapters of ''POLAR CITY RED'', the novel by Jim Laughter, mirror current daily headlines about climate change and global warming
The PROLOGUE mirrors James Lovelock's ideas about climate change in
huis books and interviews from 2006 to 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
Chapter ONE titled THE TUNDRA: mirrors Andrew Revkin's DOT EARTH blog in the New York Times that first introduced the concept and the term POLAR CITY to the world in 2008
LINK:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/polar-cities-a-haven-in-warming-world/
Chapter ２ titled THE CITY: mirrors the news about a Russian city called UMKA
LINK:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-24/europe/30315581_1_arctic-circle-arctic-oil-and-gas-strong-winds
Chapter ３ titled A NEW HOME: mirrors James Lovelock's 2006 quote that "planning a good retreat
is always the mark of generalship. The retreat will be toward the poles."
LINK:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
Chapter FOUR titled UMKA mirrors recent news about the Russian city of UMKA
LINK:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-24/europe/30315581_1_arctic-circle-arctic-oil-and-gas-strong-winds
Chapter FIVE titled THE CLIMATRON mirrors news about the real Clmatron.
LINK:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatron
Chapter ６ titled THE CLINIC http://www.jimlaughter.blogspot.com/
Chapter SEVEN titled NEW ARRIVAL http://www.jimlaughter.blogspot.com/
Chapter ８ titled ATTACK http://www.jimlaughter.com/
Chapter NINE titled THE [SEX ]LOTTERY http://www.jimlaughter.blogspot.com/
Chapter １０ titled THE RESCUE http://www.jimlaughter.blogspot.com/
Chapter １１ titled NEW CITIZENS http://www.google.com/
Chapter 12 titled WINDMILLS http://www.google.com/
Chapter 13 titled RETURN MISSION http://www.google.com/
Chapter 14 titled FIRE ON THE LAKE mirrors Katie Walter's research on methane at UAF in Alaska
LINK:
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/arctic-methane-seeping-through-thawing-permafrost-fuels-warming
Chapter 15 titled INSIDE THE MOUNTAIN mirroｒs http://www.google.com/
Chapter 16 titled TUNNELS mirrors http://www.jimlaughter.blogspot.com/
Chapter 17 titled NEW HOPE mirrors http://www.google.com/
Chapter 18 titled REVELATION mirrors http://www.google.com/
Chapter 19 titled SCAVENGER ATTACK mirrors http://www.google.com/
Chapter 20 titled MILITARY RESPONSE mirrors news reports and books about Arctic security in the future:
http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9781107006607
Chapter 21 titled PERMAFROST mirrors Katie Walters work at UAF in Alaska.
LINK:
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/arctic-methane-seeping-through-thawing-permafrost-fuels-warming
Chapter 22 titled LAKE OF FIRE mirrors Katie Walters work at UAF in Alaska about methane.
LINK:
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/arctic-methane-seeping-through-thawing-permafrost-fuels-warming
Chapter 23 titled BEQUEATHAL mirrors http://www.google.com/
Chapter 24 titled LIBARY mirrors James Lovelock's idea that a complete encyclopedia of human knowledge be created on printed pages to be kept in storage in case future humans need to consult it
in the case that all computers fail in the future due to power outrages and climate chaos
LINK: http://www.google.com/
The Epilogue titled THE BEGINNING mirrors Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel
about an apocalypse in North America created by a comet strike titled ''THE ROAD'', which was
also made into a movie by director John Hillcoat. http://www.google.com/
==========================================================
THE BOOKS OF JIM LAUGHTER:
http://www.jimlaughter.com/
http://www.jimlaughter.blogspot.com/
http://www.galacticaxia.com/
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