…comes the ice. Thoughts on a new book by Jerry Pournelle.
9 thoughts on “After Atlas Shrugs”
What people don’t seem to understand is that humanity is *already* beyond the brink of returning to nature. We need industry to maintain our current standard of living, including our infant mortality rates and average lifespan. We don’t need nature anymore and the sooner we cut the umbilical cord the better.
So Trent, why do you think an industrial society isn’t natural? 😉
Who froze John Galt?
While the premise is interesting, it’s worth noting that the average person would given a present danger of global cooling (that is, ice age), want to fire up the SUV. Any such morality tale would have to explain why and how people choose to ignore and/or fail to act in the face of such climate changes.
For example, there’s a story out there already which is similar in nature. I don’t recall the title or author, but the plot was that humanity managed to get into space, but Earth became controlled by some sort of environmentalist radicals who are effectively in a North Korea-style standoff with the space people. As I dimly recall from the cover blurb, the plot concerns a crew of atmospheric scoopers from space, who are shot down while scooping valuable nitrogen. They land somewhere in North America and eventually run into sci fi fans who I gather protect them from the authorities. Apparently, Earth-side society is experiencing both advanced economic decay and an incipient ice age.
[…googling…]
Heh, Pournelle wrote it with Niven and Flynn. “Fallen Angels” is the name of the book. The funny thing is that the Amazon link to the book was the first hit of my search (for “atmospheric scoopers shot down saved by sci fi fans”). I’m having a bit of love/hate with Google right now, but when it delivers, it delivers.
His site doesn’t appear to allow comments. But the idea that an Ice Age would be bad for humanity and would need to be stopped is a very Eurocentric perspective. In fact it would likely create a much better world in terms of the planet’s capability to support a large population.
When Ice Ages occur they draw large amounts of water from the ocean, lowering sea levels hundreds of feet. This places more fresh water into circulation, especially in the lower latitudes. Nevada where I currently live is a desert, but during the last Ice Age it was a land of large lakes and greenery fed by increased rainfall and runoff from large mountain snow packs and glaciers. The same was true for most of the arid Southwest. Nevada, along with New Mexico, Arizona and West Texas would become pride agricultural areas.
Southern California would also greatly benefit, with the lower sea levels providing new land stretching to the Channel Islands, land rich with oil that is now off limits. It would also be prime real estate for urban expansion, supported by vastly increased melt water from the mountains and Colorado River.
Florida would be a major winner as well with the reduced sea level nearly doubling the area of the state, creating rich new farm lands for the refugees from the Northern states and Canada while bringing the offshore oil reserves in the Gulf on land for easy drilling.
Australia’s deserts would be become fertile plains and it would likely be the destination of choice for the population forced from the British islands by the glaciers. One could imagine the Royal Family taking up residence there. Argentina’s Pampas would also become a rich agricultural region fed by increased run off from the Andes and it would also be a prime destination for European migrants.
The Sahara was a rich region during the last Ice Age as radar images from the Shuttle showed some years ago, a land full of rivers, roads and human settlements. One could easily imagine a reversed immigration from Europe to North Africa as a result, with the Europeans over whelming via numbers and arms the sparsely populations North African nations. The move would likely invigorate European culture as such shocks usually do as migrations tend to be a good filter mechanism. One could also imagine the Russian population moving south into Asia transforming that region as well.
So yes, there would be disruptions and war, but when the dust settles you would likely find a much improved and productive world. So although there would be anti-technologists fighting efforts to stop the glaciers the real opposition would be from those groups, including global financial, agribusiness and energy corporations that would stand to gain greatly from their advance. Hmmm, I wonder what iron filings are currently going for…
The problem, Thomas, is that a huge amount of land would be under kilometers of ice. There’s a lot of land in the upper latitudes of the Northern hemisphere. We can use desert, we can’t currently use ice fields.
Karl,
Yes, there is a lot of land, but most of it is of little value anything except for wilderness encounter groups and survivalist TV shows. Look at Canada, most of which would disappear under an ice sheet. Only 5% of that huge land area is arable and less then 1% has permanent crops. Russia is worst, with only 1/10 of 1% permanent crops.
Then compare that with the land gained, from Australia and the Sahara from the increased rainfall. And since are both at lower latitudes you would have year round agriculture.
I must admit that it would be kind of neat to see Nevada in an ice age climate, but I’m not so keen on it that I’m willing to sacrifice so much land for that. One of the ice ages, we have ice down to New York City and Iowa. That’s a lot of land to lose.
Karl,
Iowa is smaller then the service area for the College I work for (56,000 sq miles versus 62,000 sq miles) and there are ranches here larger than New York City. I sure they would have no problems finding land to relocate.
What people don’t seem to understand is that humanity is *already* beyond the brink of returning to nature. We need industry to maintain our current standard of living, including our infant mortality rates and average lifespan. We don’t need nature anymore and the sooner we cut the umbilical cord the better.
So Trent, why do you think an industrial society isn’t natural? 😉
Who froze John Galt?
While the premise is interesting, it’s worth noting that the average person would given a present danger of global cooling (that is, ice age), want to fire up the SUV. Any such morality tale would have to explain why and how people choose to ignore and/or fail to act in the face of such climate changes.
For example, there’s a story out there already which is similar in nature. I don’t recall the title or author, but the plot was that humanity managed to get into space, but Earth became controlled by some sort of environmentalist radicals who are effectively in a North Korea-style standoff with the space people. As I dimly recall from the cover blurb, the plot concerns a crew of atmospheric scoopers from space, who are shot down while scooping valuable nitrogen. They land somewhere in North America and eventually run into sci fi fans who I gather protect them from the authorities. Apparently, Earth-side society is experiencing both advanced economic decay and an incipient ice age.
[…googling…]
Heh, Pournelle wrote it with Niven and Flynn. “Fallen Angels” is the name of the book. The funny thing is that the Amazon link to the book was the first hit of my search (for “atmospheric scoopers shot down saved by sci fi fans”). I’m having a bit of love/hate with Google right now, but when it delivers, it delivers.
His site doesn’t appear to allow comments. But the idea that an Ice Age would be bad for humanity and would need to be stopped is a very Eurocentric perspective. In fact it would likely create a much better world in terms of the planet’s capability to support a large population.
When Ice Ages occur they draw large amounts of water from the ocean, lowering sea levels hundreds of feet. This places more fresh water into circulation, especially in the lower latitudes. Nevada where I currently live is a desert, but during the last Ice Age it was a land of large lakes and greenery fed by increased rainfall and runoff from large mountain snow packs and glaciers. The same was true for most of the arid Southwest. Nevada, along with New Mexico, Arizona and West Texas would become pride agricultural areas.
Southern California would also greatly benefit, with the lower sea levels providing new land stretching to the Channel Islands, land rich with oil that is now off limits. It would also be prime real estate for urban expansion, supported by vastly increased melt water from the mountains and Colorado River.
Florida would be a major winner as well with the reduced sea level nearly doubling the area of the state, creating rich new farm lands for the refugees from the Northern states and Canada while bringing the offshore oil reserves in the Gulf on land for easy drilling.
Australia’s deserts would be become fertile plains and it would likely be the destination of choice for the population forced from the British islands by the glaciers. One could imagine the Royal Family taking up residence there. Argentina’s Pampas would also become a rich agricultural region fed by increased run off from the Andes and it would also be a prime destination for European migrants.
The Sahara was a rich region during the last Ice Age as radar images from the Shuttle showed some years ago, a land full of rivers, roads and human settlements. One could easily imagine a reversed immigration from Europe to North Africa as a result, with the Europeans over whelming via numbers and arms the sparsely populations North African nations. The move would likely invigorate European culture as such shocks usually do as migrations tend to be a good filter mechanism. One could also imagine the Russian population moving south into Asia transforming that region as well.
So yes, there would be disruptions and war, but when the dust settles you would likely find a much improved and productive world. So although there would be anti-technologists fighting efforts to stop the glaciers the real opposition would be from those groups, including global financial, agribusiness and energy corporations that would stand to gain greatly from their advance. Hmmm, I wonder what iron filings are currently going for…
The problem, Thomas, is that a huge amount of land would be under kilometers of ice. There’s a lot of land in the upper latitudes of the Northern hemisphere. We can use desert, we can’t currently use ice fields.
Karl,
Yes, there is a lot of land, but most of it is of little value anything except for wilderness encounter groups and survivalist TV shows. Look at Canada, most of which would disappear under an ice sheet. Only 5% of that huge land area is arable and less then 1% has permanent crops. Russia is worst, with only 1/10 of 1% permanent crops.
Then compare that with the land gained, from Australia and the Sahara from the increased rainfall. And since are both at lower latitudes you would have year round agriculture.
I must admit that it would be kind of neat to see Nevada in an ice age climate, but I’m not so keen on it that I’m willing to sacrifice so much land for that. One of the ice ages, we have ice down to New York City and Iowa. That’s a lot of land to lose.
Karl,
Iowa is smaller then the service area for the College I work for (56,000 sq miles versus 62,000 sq miles) and there are ranches here larger than New York City. I sure they would have no problems finding land to relocate.