Yes, global warming is a problem, but it's only a sideshow when you consider that our present temperate climate is merely a blip between cycles of ice ages which have been occurring for the last million years. We're currently in a fairly typical interglacial period and no matter we do to warm up/screw up the planet, two or three thousand years from now most of North America and all of Northern Europe will once again be under a kilometre thick sheet of ice. If you don't believe me read this. Still, while the short sighted talk global warming and the long sighted talk about the coming ice age, the last laugh must go to geologists, who think not in thousand year increments but in million and ten million year periods. Plate tectonics is changing the map of the world and thanks to Strange Maps, I found this little beauty (above) which shows you what the continents are going to look like in the future. 250 million years from now Ireland will be the most northerly place on Earth, entirely surrounded by sea ice and under a glacier thicker than that currently on Greenland. Sadly there probably won't be any humans around 250 MY from now to witness nature's final triumph over Ireland's recent architectural and road building excesses.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Belfast at the North Pole
Yes, global warming is a problem, but it's only a sideshow when you consider that our present temperate climate is merely a blip between cycles of ice ages which have been occurring for the last million years. We're currently in a fairly typical interglacial period and no matter we do to warm up/screw up the planet, two or three thousand years from now most of North America and all of Northern Europe will once again be under a kilometre thick sheet of ice. If you don't believe me read this. Still, while the short sighted talk global warming and the long sighted talk about the coming ice age, the last laugh must go to geologists, who think not in thousand year increments but in million and ten million year periods. Plate tectonics is changing the map of the world and thanks to Strange Maps, I found this little beauty (above) which shows you what the continents are going to look like in the future. 250 million years from now Ireland will be the most northerly place on Earth, entirely surrounded by sea ice and under a glacier thicker than that currently on Greenland. Sadly there probably won't be any humans around 250 MY from now to witness nature's final triumph over Ireland's recent architectural and road building excesses.
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Of course,by that time the Evolved Humans will be able to affect Earth's configuration with their godlike telekinesis.If they won't be already merged with the Overmind,that is.
I like your Asimov-Clarke-Heinlein-Le Guin thesis. However have you considered Nick Bostrom?.
All this is some future geek's simulation. Much worse than The Matrix because we dont even have physical bodies to fall back on.
In a response to Bostrom's paper someone suggested that the best way to preserve yourself in a Sim is to hang out with famous people as they will likely not get deleted. Stick with me then and you'll be all right. Ha.
road building excesses?
Ian
Well, the six lane motorway right through Tara for one.
The last straw for me was when they demolished Louis MacNeice's house in my home town of Carrickfergus not too long after bulldozing Jonathan Swift's house about a mile down the road.
The Bostrom article reminds me of a Leiber novel I've read in which there were a few "real" people while everyone else was a product of their imagination and could be erased from history w/o much trouble.
A kind of Oligarchic Solipsism.
And then there's this Hugo-nominated short story,The House Beyond Your Sky ,which I must confess I like,even as I find it a bit too melodramatic.
Ciao,
Marco
So, 250 million years from now, the world will look like what it did about 250 million years ago? Cyclic, indeed.
However, I'll have to disagree with you on the typical interglacial period statement. It does matter what we do: during the last cycle of ice age, people on the continents didn't own nuclear missles............
And the point of the Global Warming campaign is, yes, in two or three thousand years the thick sheet of ice will come. But if we aren't active about clean coals and carbon emissions, disaster will strike North America while you are still alive.
The element of that kind of war breaking out also must be taken into account is what I was hinting at with the nuclear weapons.
TCS
Hey long time no see buddy!
Yeah, I take your point. I'm pretty pessimistic that we'll get it together. When I was kid I thought we'd all be living on Mars by now, shows you how much I know.
Marco
Yeah it's sort of the same idea. Touching too because my youngest is called Sophie. Actually speaking of Sophie long ago I abandoned a novel which was an alternative history of 1916 set in Paris. The prologue began on June 28 1914 when Gavrilo Princip couldnt bring himself to pull the trigger because Duchess Sophie was next to FF.
Isnt there a Heinlein story where the uber-aliens jiggle with the timelines as a joke? Not 'Distant Sound of Thunder' one of the others.
long ago I abandoned a novel which was an alternative history of 1916 set in Paris. The prologue began on June 28 1914 when Gavrilo Princip couldnt bring himself to pull the trigger because Duchess Sophie was next to FF.
And then? What did you have in mind?
If you could write free from market constraints, would you like to try your hand at different genres (or even platypodes)?
Isnt there a Heinlein story where the uber-aliens jiggle with the timelines as a joke? Not 'Distant Sound of Thunder' one of the others.
You probably mean The Big Time by Fritz Leiber.
I would have liked to read more stories set in that universe,but apart maybe for a few shorts,he never revisited the concept.
Ciao,
Marco
Marco
Yes you're right, that was it. Pretty good story I thought.
My 1916 book was set in German occupied Paris. Basically I was postulating that if WW1 hadnt broken out in August 1914 it would have in the next year or two and since Britain got mired in Ireland they couldnt send an expeditionary force to France, hence 1870 all over again. The Germans win easily and occupy Paris.
The Plot? Ah, I cant really give away the plot in case I use it one day, but the title was going to be Temps Perdu which would never fly in the commercial world as you so correctly point out.
Nick Bostrom's thesis sounds very high tech, but in fact reminds me of Laurens Van der Post's words "There is a dreamer dreaming us." I somehow find the idea of being just a dream figure more reassuring than the idea of being a blip on some gigantic circuitry, though it perhaps amounts to the same thing.
Nice work getting that STW link up, by the way!
Seanag
I like the guy who in the NYT who now thinks that we are living in a virtual universe.
I wonder if Brad Pitt is a real person or an avatar of one of the future people. Hes having way too charmed a life.
Your tip on the link. Thanks...
We definitely have customers who think they are living in a virtual universe and the staff a bunch of sims who flicker out when they leave. Someday soon, they may well be right.
seanag
Seanag
I know of which you speak. Two years at B&N on the upper west side taught me bitter truths.
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