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).
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