Will ''experts'' and scientists accept the idea of polar cities for survivors of climate chaos in 2500 or sooner?

A science fiction novelist, well known, bestsellers and movies to his name, offers his take on POLAR CITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE ideas about
polar cities for future survivors of climate CHAOS in 2500 or so...maybe sooner:

Dear Sir

I cannot promise to look at your
''polar cities project'' webpage now, but I can spare some
thoughts.

First, I note you know about the new popularity of the Northwest Passage
route as an ice free sea lane from the USA to EUROPE and RUSSA, etc, and the rush for sub-sea resources.


What you need to consider, however, is this:


1) Canada .....(and northern Alaska, away from Ring of Fire earthquake
zone in Juneau / Anchroage regions) .....is the oldest geological "craton" of
extremely solid volcanic rock on Earth. Much of it without any
faults, meaning there's little geological activity.


2) Much of Canada [and northern Alaska] has almost no topsoil. The
same holds for much of Siberia. An expanded growing season and new
farms do not automatically translate into productivity.


3) No matter how warm summers get, you'll have just one growing
season.. The equatorial lands we'll lose had two.


4) Much of the tundra and taiga contain massive amounts of methane.
If these soils warm much, there will be floods of new greenhouse
gases.


I am sure you have considered the effects of 6 months of night. It
propels high suicide rates in Scandinavia.

Sincerely,

[A well-known light of reason living in Seattle]

Climate-change scepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist Kari Norgaard -- and she is right!

Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be "treated", according to an Oregon-based professor of "sociology and environmental studies". Professor Kari Norgaard compares the struggle against climate scepticism to that against racism and slavery in the US South.

Prof Norgaard holds a B.S. in biology and a master's and PhD in sociology.

"Over the past ten years I have published and taught in the areas of environmental sociology, gender and environment, race and environment, climate change, sociology of culture, social movements and sociology of emotions," she says.

She was recently in London at the momnt for the "Planet Under Pressure" conference, where she presented a paper dealing with how best to do away with the evil of scepticism and get the human race to focus all its efforts on saving the planet.

The discussion, she said, is comparable to what happened with challenges to racism or slavery in the U.S. South.

Professor Norgaard considers that academics such as herself must stand shoulder to shoulder with the actual real climate scientists who know some math in an effort to change society and individuals for their own good. It's not a new idea: some in ye olde Blighty and the US have lately called for a "science of communicating science" rather reminiscent of Isaac Asimov's science-fictional "Psychohistory" discipline, able to predict and alter the behaviour of large populations*.

BRAVO Kari Norgaard!

'Spy-F'i with a Twist: ''Arctic Rising'' by Tobias Buckell

Stefan Raets writes:

 Whether you call it climate change or global warming, by the time Tobias Buckell’s long awaited new novel Arctic Rising gets started, the results are obvious: the Arctic ice cap has melted down, and the Northwest Passage has opened completely for shipping. Companies are rushing into areas like Greenland to take advantage of the abundant natural resources that are much more easily accessible now all that pesky ice is no longer in the way.

At the same time, nuclear electricity generation has become even more indispensable due to the dwindling fossil fuel reserves, and illegal dumping of its toxic waste is rampant. Anika Duncan is an airship pilot with the United Nations Polar Guard who monitors the Northwest shipping lanes for possible offenders. When she approaches a ship with suspiciously high radiation readings, it suddenly opens fire on her airship. After she is rescued, she tries to investigate the incident, but it looks like everyone is trying to cover up what happened — including even her superiors. This sets off a far-reaching plot that will involve the highest levels of power and affect the future of the Arctic and the Earth’s climate....

Don’t let the the synopsis on this novel’s cover turn you off. Actually, I strongly recommend not reading it at all, because for some reason it includes major plot elements that you’re much better off discovering by yourself, when they’re revealed late in the novel. (In other words: spoilers.) However, if you do happen to read it, the strong environmental message and names like “Gaia Corporation” may turn you off. It sounded a bit preachy even to me, and I’m as green as they come. I’m here to tell you: please don’t let it turn you off, because even though Arctic Rising does incorporate an environmental message, it’s also a well-written, exciting and action-packed novel that’s part science fiction thriller, part secret agent spy novel, and all fun. I’m glad I gave it a try despite the cover blurb, because it’s a great read.

The setting Tobias Buckell has created for Arctic Rising is, as it is so often in great science fiction, an extrapolation of current events. Right now, many countries are jostling for the rights to the previously unattractive polar region, because it’s clear that they are the next great untapped source of mining and drilling revenues. As Arctic Rising gets started, the area has been open for business for a while. As a result, it has become the 21st century’s version of the Gold Rush. On Baffin Island, where most of the early parts of the novel take place, multiple nationalities mix in an atmosphere of borderline lawlessness, all jockeying for position to make a profit. All those workers need food, drink and entertainment, and because the area is relatively young, the businesses providing them often operate on both sides of the law. Other parts of the vastly changed Arctic have turned into autonomous regions with unique government systems, allowing them to create their own laws.

In this setting, we meet Anika Duncan, the Nigerian-born UN pilot who accidentally gets sucked into a series of events that are more far-reaching than anything she bargained for. She’s an amazing character: a kick-ass female protagonist with a complex, hair-raising personal history who initially almost gets overwhelmed by the forces who are trying to cover up the evidence of her discovery. Later, in an unforgettable scene, she musters the resolve to fight back with a ferocious vengeance. Her “I bow to no man” attitude is amazing to witness and makes the novel a pleasure to read. Anika is helped in her quest by Vy, the Arctic region’s foremost supplier of legal and less-than-legal drugs, and Roo, a roaming Carribean special agent who uses his impressive catamaran as a base of operations for his spy missions. Character-wise, Anika would be enough to make Arctic Rising a winner, but combined with Vy and Roo there’s really a lot to cheer for here. I wouldn’t mind reading another novel set in the Arctic Circle with any of these three as the main character.

To make matters even more interesting, Arctic Rising takes an surprising turn along the way. The novel starts out like a fairly straightforward near-future environmental SF thriller, but as you continue reading, the references to spy/secret agent novels and movies become more and more apparent. There are a few scenes that are obvious winks to fans of Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum and John le Carré. After a while, it starts to feel like Tobias Buckell is using gadgets, characters, and plot devices that wouldn’t be amiss in something like a Bond movie, but rather than writing a standard spy-fi novel, he’s subverting them in ingenious ways. Even the spectacular conclusion of the story is, in a way, the mirror image of what you’d expect to see in a standard spy flick. Tobias Buckell tells a great SF story in Arctic Rising, but it also feels like he’s nudging reader while he’s playing with the tropes of another genre.

Arctic Rising achieves something that’s not as easy as it may sound: it delivers an environmental message without getting too preachy. It does this by telling its story from the point of view of a no-nonsense heroine who you can cheer for, adding some excellent supporting players, placing them in a unique setting, and then letting the spy-tale-with-a-twist plot do the rest. Secret agents, drug dealers, soldiers, strippers, governments, and big corporations all play a role in a story that balances environmental change against political advantage and big bucks. Arctic Rising is a tight novel that doesn’t waste any time getting up to speed and doesn’t slow down until the very end.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stefan Raets reads and reviews fantasy and science fiction whenever he isn’t distracted by less important things like eating and sleeping. His website is Far Beyond Reality. .

Carbon footprints with deadly consequences

RAY BATES writes:

CLIMATE CHANGE: Climate Wars: What People Will Be Killed for in the 21st Century

By Harald Welzer, translated by Patrick Camiller. Polity Press, 214pp

SINCE THE THREAT posed by global warming first gained widespread public attention, about three decades ago, a large and diverse literature has grown up on the subject. The first statement by climate scientists alerting the public and policymakers to the dangers of uncontrolled greenhouse-gas emissions was the 1979 report Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment, issued by the US National Academy of Sciences. That slim volume, known as the Charney report, after its main author, warned that if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were to double relative to its preindustrial value, as foreseen to occur well before the end of the 21st century – and with no further increase in carbon dioxide after that – the globe would probably warm by about three degrees.

The Charney report has been followed by the increasingly voluminous reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued at intervals of about six years since 1990, with the most recent appearing in 2007. These, and the mainstream scientific literature in the interim, continue to affirm the main conclusions of the Charney report while extensively documenting ongoing developments.

By now the atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration has risen to 40 per cent above its preindustrial level and continues to rise at an accelerating rate. The global-temperature curve, though not following the carbon-dioxide curve monotonically year by year because of natural climate variability, shows a global warming of 0.8 degrees over the past century. The latest models continue to project several degrees of further warming before the end of this century.

Among the early general books arising from the climate scientists’ warnings, Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance, from 1993, became a bestseller. James Lovelock’s apocalyptic volumes, culminating in his most recent, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning (2009), have presented graphic visions of possible global catastrophe unless urgent action is taken to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.

Harald Welzer’s new book, translated from German, considers the issue of climate change from the perspective of a social scientist. Welzer is profoundly concerned with the potential for violence and for the breakdown of world order inherent in the pressures that climate change will generate. He sees Sudan as the first case of a war-torn country where climate change is unquestionably one cause of violence and civil war. Over the past 40 years, the desert in northern Sudan has moved 100km towards the once-fertile south. The causes are, on the one hand, steadily decreasing rainfall linked with global climate change and, on the other, the overgrazing of grassland, deforestation and ensuing soil erosion that makes the land infertile.

Welzer provides a framework for his vision of the future by chronicling mankind’s propensity for violence, emphasising the wars and genocides of the past century. His focus includes not only the dictatorships but also the former colonial powers, whose “democratic amnesia” allows them to distance themselves from the consequences of their earlier activities in Africa and elsewhere. Extrapolating from the historical record, he argues that climate change will lead to violence on a large scale, first within the poorer countries that are most directly affected and then, as waves of environmental refugees look for a better life elsewhere, in the affluent countries that try to keep them at bay.

Considering the question of what can be done to avoid the worst, Welzer presents two scenarios. The first, “for the optimists”, envisages a cultural change that would permit an escape from the logic of unstoppable growth and limitless consumption, a society in which people demand a radical worldwide reduction in resource use as a positive good. The second, “for the pessimists” (a category in which Welzer includes himself), foresees a world in which efforts to control climate change fail and the western world’s concern for its own security and self-preservation lead it to abandon the values of freedom and democracy by which it has come to define itself.

Developments since Welzer wrote this book will not change the views of those who are pessimistic about the prospects for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Canada’s recent withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol and President Obama’s acknowledgment in his 2012 state of the union address that the US Congress is too divided to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change do not bode well. The EU seems likely to push ahead with its own plans, motivated to reduce fossil-fuel consumption by the additional imperative of energy security, an issue that is much more pressing on this than on the other side of the Atlantic.

Only time will tell if a global low-carbon economy will emerge in time to check the accelerating increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and its likely consequences for Earth’s climate. Those who are concerned with these and related issues will find this book by Harald Welzer a thought-provoking if uncomfortable read.

Ray Bates is adjunct professor of meteorology at University College Dublin. He was formerly professor of meteorology at the University of Copenhagen and a senior scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Putting Alaska in center of new sci fi book: mission accomplished

When I scoured the internet over the past 5 years looking for a sci fi
writer to write
a novel I had in mind about climate change and climate refugees in the
future, I stipulated one main item in all my help-wanted ads and
online author searches: the book had to take place in Alaska.

A year ago, I found Jim Laughter in Mounds, Oklahoma, and he agreed to
write the novel. Only his name
appears on the cover of "Polar City Red" -- published on Earth Day
2012 -- and the entire plot, the cast of
characters and the theme is his and his alone. Jim wrote the book, all
24 chapters. If all goes well, he'll write
two more books in the series to create a trilogy, and again, they'll
be his books, his plot, his characters, his time frame.

I served as a kind of book producer/book packager on "Polar City Red"
-- with all book royalties going to the author alone -- and
all I contributed to the package was the location (Alaska!) and the
suggested title, which Jim graciously agreed to keep. I lived
in Alaska for 12 years in the latter part of the 20th century, and my
days in Juneau, Nome and Fort Yukon made a big impact on me.
When I started working on my Polar Cities Project in 2006, I always
had Alaska in mind. With "Polar City Red" out now in paperback
and in ebook editions, survival in a future Alaska remains the focus
of the ''cli fi'' novel.

And this just in: Jim has already had some nibbles from
Hollywood producers looking to take an option on his book for a movie
deal. Think: "The Day After [The Day After Tomorrow]" and ''Mad''
Max'' meets "The Road."

I asked Jim Laughter, a grandfather of four who just turned 59, a few
questions about his book and this is what he told me:

"Up until 2011 when I was first approached about writing a family
drama about climate chaos and set in a future time period in Alaska,
global warming was a term I’d only heard about in passing or on nature
documentaries. Politicians and Greenpeace environmentalists rattled on
about stuff that I didn’t understand. But now that I’ve had a chance
to dig into the cause and effect of global warming, I’ve grown to
realize that this old world is in trouble and we’re to blame.

"I spent hour after hour on the internet reading everything I could
find about global warming and the effects it is having on the polar
caps and Greenland ice sheets. I didn’t realize that only a three or
four degree increase in air temperatures can serve to melt ice that’s
been frozen for millions of years. Of course, I didn’t know carbon
dioxide from carbonated water when I started, but it didn’t take long
for me to realize that fossil fuel emissions are the culprit behind
the whole mess.

"But even though I learn quite a bit about global warming, I’m not a
scientist. I’m a storyteller. So I had to figure out a way to create a
good story around a serious problem. I knew I needed characters that I
could wrap the seriousness of global warming around without boring
readers with a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo that neither of us would
understand. I think I got pretty close with "Polar City Red".


"My technical writing in the US Air Force had very little to do with
weapons, operations, or hardware. I was a supply and training NCO for
20 years. I dealt with people on a one-on-one basis, working in
customer service, training, etc. I didn’t carry a weapon even though I
was a weapons sergeant for a while. Then again, I was also a security
sergeant for a while in charge of top secret material. But if you know
what you’re looking for, that kind of information isn’t hard to find.
As for the science, I figured if I did good research and stuck to the
facts, I’m a good enough storyteller that I figured I could weave a
good story around it. But as we say in writing, if you don’t know what
you’re talking about, talk about it anyway. There’s always a critic
out there somewhere that will eventually contact you and tell you what
you did wrong.



''My grandchildren are very important to me. Every parent wants their
children to have it better than they had it. As a child, I knew I
would have opportunities that my parents never had. We were small town
people living in a big world. But that was in the 50s and 60s. The air
was clean and the streets were safe. Neither of those things apply
now. I want my grandchildren to grow up in a world where they can be
happy and prosper, a world where conservation isn’t a cliché, and a
world where business and politicians watch out for the future of the
planet instead of the next balance sheet or election result.

''I wish I had a crystal ball that I could look in to and see the
future. I’d like to know if fifty years from now we’d have a habitable
planet or not. I’m a student of history, so I know that people who
fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it. I turned
59-years old this month, so by the time global warming overtakes this
planets, I will have already shuffled off into eternity and my ashes
will be helping young things grow. But for the people alive at the end
of this century, I believe they will face a hostile world that has
turned its back on humanity and is looking for a fresh start. It may
take 100,000 years for the Earth to regain its balance, but it’s been
around for 4 billion years and has learned patience. I only wish we
could learn to respect her wishes and treat her with the dignity she
deserves.''

Brin and Bear It

Someone I know of in the broadly-defined ''polar cities community'' regularly consults with various branches of America's “protector caste”... from the military services and homeland security to several unnamed “agencies.” He says he is naturally ''encouraged by the fact that some of the most serious-minded men and women on the planet are very interested in well-grounded projections of diverse possible futures'' - not only his ideas, but those of several other "science & sci-fi people, male and female.

He recently shared an interesting observation:

 

''Absolutely all of the top-elite officers of these services appear to be convinced, without a shadow of a doubt, about Human Generated Climate Change (HGCC). All of those I have met consider it to be both real and one of the greatest challenges of our time.


Ponder this: the US Navy is striving with great intensity to prepare for an Arctic Ocean that is nearly ice-free for large parts of the year. Canada is shifting most of its military budget northward.


The Russians have moved an entire division to the Siberian northern coast. The Russian Navy’s top priority? Their pride-and-joy? SIX brand new, double-hulled, nuclear powered icebreakers they recently put in service.




A year or so ago, the Northwest passage opened so wide that a flood of cargo vessels raced through it from China to Europe.




What do all of these groups share in common? They cannot afford to let their view of reality be warped by willful delusion, just-so stories, Beckian rants and denialist dogma, They don't have the time for denialism. ''

''Earth'' by David Brin -- published in 1990

Earth

Publication date -- 1990
Media type -- Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 601

Earth is a 1990 science fiction novel written by David Brin. The book was nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1991.

Set in the year 2038 A.D. post Jesus Christ, the book is a cautionary tale of the harm humans can cause their planet via disregard for the environment and reckless scientific experiments. The book has a large cast of characters and Brin uses them to address a number of environmental issues, including endangered species, global warming, refugees from ecological disasters, ecoterrorism, and the social effects of overpopulation. The plot of the book involves an artificially-created black hole which has been lost in the Earth's interior and the attempts to recover it before it destroys the planet. The events and revelations which follow reshape humanity and its future in the universe. It also includes a war pitting most of the Earth against Switzerland, fueled by outrage over the Swiss allowing generations of kleptocrats to hide their stolen wealth in the country's banks.

The scope of the story expands vastly as the plot gradually reveals itself, bringing into question the future course — and even the survival — of humanity.

Brin set this novel 50 years in 2038 in the future from the time he was writing in 1990, using the book as an opportunity to predict what technologies might — at that future date — be taken for granted day to day. Three technologies he predicted came to pass within only 8 years of the writing, include a media-centric, hypertext Internet, e-mail spam, and the proliferation of personal video recording devices.

Brin claimed at least 15 predictive hits in Earth including:

1 Global warming associated sea level rise and severe storm seasons.

2 Crisis habitat arks for endangered species, with a view to later restoration to the wild.

========================================

In Earth .......it's 50 years from tomorrow...2038........A microscopic black hole has accidentally fallen into the Earth's core and the entire planet is in danger of being destroyed within two years. A team of scientists frantically searches for a way to prevent the ultimate disaster. But while they look for an answer, others argue that the only way to save the Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to let the million-year evolutionary clock rewind and start over.

BRIN WRITES: ''It's been more than a decade since Earth was first published in 1990........Since then, some things have eerily come true. [He started writing the book in 1987].




As for Global Warming, a looming refugee crisis, the need for young people to demand a place amid an aging population, the desperate struggle to preserve species and all the rest... even the notion of a micro-black hole as an ultimate "environmental threat"... none of these originated with me....


As writers go, I suppose I'm known as an optimist. So it seems only natural that this novel projects a future, (now less than forty years from now), where there's been just a little more wisdom than folly... perhaps a bit more hope than despair.



In fact, this is just about the most encouraging tomorrow I can imagine right now. What a sobering thought.