Friday Food for Thought #17

Climate Change

Week 3, Month 12, Episode #17

I know I haven't been posting much recently... The reason for this is that I've been really busy.  I've just finished the second installment of VALKYRIE: Into the Heavens and I'm working with an offer from Tate Publishing on the first book of the A Fox's Tale series in print (for free, when normally they have people pay them to publish).  Not to mention working on the cover for VALKYRIE: Pallas and a new cover for A Fox's Tale: The Warden's Daughter.

But none of that is what I wanted to actually blog about.

A couple weeks ago, seven scientists released an open statement that was rather alarming, or alarmist depending on your point of view.  Basically what they said was, in order to stop climate change that all fossil fuel power plants should be shut down and replaced by nuclear power plants.  Not following through would result in catastrophic climate change.

This is an extreme response... it's understandable if they think that not doing it will result in dramatic climate change, but one thing that will never stop so long as human beings build camp fires is carbon dioxide releases into the atmosphere.  Human beings create CO2.

Stopping climate change is impossible, managing it is possible.  One thing that many people don't know is that right now there is an international forum going on about the subject... After the recent super typhoon, the Philippine delegation has been screaming at them to do something.

Anyway, for a writer... especially one working in Science Fiction, it's a good idea to both understand climate change and its repercussions.  As I think I may have said before, climate change by itself is not necessarily a bad thing.  I mean if you want a good example of positive climate change, imagine terraforming Mars.  Earth itself could certainly be made more habitable for human kind.  There are huge swaths of our planet that really aren't ideal places for us humans to live.

Secondly, it's important to consider what the climate would be like in a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years into the future if you're writing during the time period.  This means you have to know what possible results of dramatic climate change are.  Things like, climate zones, growing seasons, and so forth would all be affected, but here are some things that I think would be interesting to consider.

1.) The Great American Desert - Before it was settled, the Great Plains region was often times called this.  As climate changes begin to affect us it's possible that the old name might return as the tropical and arid zones advance further away from the equator.  This may not actually reduce the amount of food production as warming of the Dakotas and Canada's would probably result in their crop yields increasing.

2.) Drunken Forests - A result of the thawing of permafrost in the taiga reasons (Alaska, Canada, and Russia), trees in a Drunken Forest lean as their roots rot or are released from the permafrost.  Ultimately this process will cause them to die and rot.  This is already going on in those areas.

3.) Polar Forests Return - An extreme result from warming of the planet would be the return of the polar forests.  For those of you that are not familiar, Antarctica has not always been a barren ice desert.  During the Mesozoic era it was a heavily forested area despite being dark for large swaths of time during the winter months.  If you wanted to counter increased carbon levels, planting a polar forest as the continent warms would be one way of reversing the trend (though the penguins wouldn't be happy).