Fifty Degrees Below – Kim Stanley Robinson

This sequel to Forty Signs of Rain takes up the story in the aftermath of the flood that inundated Washington D.C. at the end of that novel. In Fifty Degrees Below we learn that the flood does little to change the political landscape, but that things do start to slowly change as the consequences of the halting of the Gulf Stream are felt.

One of the great fears of so-called Global Warming, the consequences of the loss of the Gulf Stream to Northern Europe and North America would be immense. Kim Stanley Robinson is alive with statistics. Size of population set against ability to produce food, for example. He points out that, as it stands, Europe just about manages to feed itself, but if it were to slip into a Canadian/Siberian style climate, that ability would be compromised.

“Fifty Degrees Below” refers to the winter temperatures experienced in Washington D.C. during a mid-winter “cold snap”. Minus fifty degrees F is (oddly) around -46°C (how does that happen?), so we’re on common ground here. At these temperatures, your car won’t start. Your arctic sleeping bag won’t help. Your power consumption will be so high that there will, inevitably, be power cuts. The only hope in those circumstances is real fire…

Now, the (pessimistic) Crichton take on this is that climate change is both inevitable and impossible to predict since change is all the climate has ever done, throughout history. KSR’s more optimistic viewpoint is that phenomena like the (theoretical) stalling of the Gulf Stream are caused by human activity, and – as such – can be cured by human activity.

One of the more optimistic projects proposed in Fifty Degrees Below is to work to improve the efficiency of solar panels so that somewhere in the South West desert of the USA, a large array of panels can supply the entire United States with electricity. Elsewhere, genetically engineered lichen boosts the carbon-fixing properties of trees; and the UN organises a Niven-like project to restart the Gulf Stream using vast quantities of, er, salt.

Such projects require political will – on the one hand – and high levels of international co-operation on the other. One of Robinson’s more optimistic predictions is that a scarily cold winter will encourage both to happen. But there’s your problem, isn’t it? Because if global warming is about warming most people won’t mind. As Shelagh Fogarty said on Radio Bloke this morning (in reference to the recent warm snap), “I was getting used to living in Seville.” So, of necessity, global warming needs to be about being bloody cold before anyone will want to do anything about it. It’s when his SUV won’t start that Joe America will pay attention.

Kim Stanley Robinson tends to do things in threes, so presumably there will be one more book (called Sixty Something Something?) to tie up the loose ends left by this one. Oh yeah, I just looked it up, and it’s to be called Sixty Days and Counting.

As always, I find KSR’s style to be less than engaging. His main protagonist, Frank Vanderwal, is still an idiot. In fact, there is more focus in this that previously on Vanderwal’s slightly fucked mind. Vanderwal’s mental state is a synecdoche or something for the global climate. While his brain doesn’t work properly, nor does the climate. He has a relationship with a mysterious woman from the intelligence community, but it’s hard to tell if she really exists. He lives in a tree house and plays frisbee golf with similarly homeless people. He is, it has to be said, hard to like.

Still, we need to know what happens, don’t we? So we’ll read the sequel. And this book is to be admired for its engagement with big ideas and huge problems. And the biggest problem, suggests Robinson (not for the first time in his writing career), is with the political system we call democracy.

Ian R. MacLeod – The House of Storms

You may see this book billed as a sequel to MacLeod’s The Light Ages, but actually you could read them in any order. One may take place before the other, but this isn’t a continuation of a plot in the normal sequel sense, and there is a complete set of different characters.

Events in The House of Storms take place some time after those in The Light Ages. By now, the treatment of those adversely affected by Aether is more humane than previously. These so-called Changelings (or The Chosen, as they call themselves) are exiled to an estate in the South West of England called Einfell, where they’re allowed to live out their lives in relative comfort, though still isolated from the society they helped to build.

Consumptive Ralph Meynell is taken to the nearby estate of Invercombe by his powerful and wicked mother Alice, where he meets shoregirl Marion Price and falls in love. Their liaison is inconvenient to the ambitions Alice has for her now-recovered son, and she manipulates events so that Ralph loses Marion and Marion believes their son (Klade) was stillborn.

Alice Meynell is one of the great fictional villains; she has Hitler-like tendencies and starts a civil war, essentially, because the Bristol Post Office loses some of her mail and she has to queue at a cake shop.

As you’d expect from a fantasy novel, there is mystery and magic, but there is also a fully realised fictional world and a cast of fascinating characters. MacLeod, as he always does, takes great pains to tell the story, and his attention to detail is superb. He is surely one of the best writers around – in any genre. Highly recommended, along with anything else he’s written (look out for the novellas “The Summer Isles” and “Breathmoss”, for example).

State of Fear – Michael Crichton

What fascinates me about the negative reviews for State of Fear, Michael Crichton’s 2004 environmental thriller, is the way in which the reviewers clearly resented the lecturing (hectoring) tone of the novel, as if that was something new from Crichton.

In my experience (and I’ve read a fair few of his, though not all of them), that’s what you pick up Crichton for. He likes to do that thing that’s so tricky to pull off: to mix enough fact in with the fiction so that you end up wondering what is real, and what is possible. I think what annoys people is when he’s preaching about something that kind of contradicts something you hold to be true. And that’s what this novel is about. “Most people” buy into global warming. And “most people” are probably wrong. Anyway, you don’t pick up a Crichton for the characters or the snappy dialogue. If you do, then you’re sadly deluded and should read some different writers.

The premise of State of Fear is that Politics + Science = Bad Science. Now. If we were in the pub, and I expressed that opinion, I think a lot of people would agree with me. A well known phrase or saying concerning wood and trees springs to mind. Politicians, it’s obvious are not – in general – scientists. Go further: media people are not – in general – scientists, either. Most wannabe journalists and reporters are Arts graduates. Am I wrong? You know I’m not.

In my previous blog life, I argued several times that there simply isn’t enough data to support the theory of global warming (or anthropogenic global warming, to give it its full title). When they can’t predict the weather five days in advance, no way can they predict the global climate 100 years hence. In fact, as Crichton mentions in the novel, most environmental groups don’t even acknowledge theories about chaotic systems and complexity that have developed over the past 30 years. We all know chaos theory exists, that its central tenet is sensitive dependency on initial conditions. What that means, in practice, is that in large and complex systems there are far too many variables for any kind of accurate modelling or prediction. Computer models about what happens to our climate 100 years from now are just guesswork. Nobody knows. Predictions up to now, from as recently as 20 years ago, Crichton points out, have been wildly wrong. 300% wrong. What Crichton says, and I agree with him, is that until they manage an accurate prediction of, say, 10 years, we should just ignore the computers and hope they go away. He goes further: says there are too many computer geeks sitting behind computers, and not enough real research going on in the field. We don’t even know, he says, how to manage a national park as a wilderness. It’s true. National Parks have been around for 100 years or so, but it’s only in the last 10-20 years that park managers realised that forest fires are good for the environment and wild life.

What is certain is that the climate and the environment will change. Because that’s what they do. The Earth, says Crichton, is currently on its third major atmosphere. We’re in the middle of (or at the end of, who knows) a general warming trend that started in 1850 and came after a 400-year “mini ace age.” Note the use of the diminutive. 400 years, in these terms, is “mini.” In global terms, in terms of brains-the-size-of-planets, 100 years in this little world is barely measurable.

It’s clear to me that what’s going on, in terms of Kyoto and all the legislation coming down like birdshit from above us, is that governments are seizing upon an opportunity to increase taxes. It’s a Clarkson argument, but it’s right. For example, just the other day they were talking about making airlines pay VAT for fuel, which they don’t currently have to do. Adding VAT, they say, would be an anti-global warming measure. Except, if you think about it, it wouldn’t be. Imagine your £20 easyjet ticket. How much of that is for fuel? Say a fiver. Add VAT to the fiver: 87 and a half pence. So, are you going to cancel your weekend in Barcelona because the ticket costs an extra pound? No, of course you’re not. So, will adding VAT to airline fuel reduce the number of flights, passengers, or the amount of fuel used? No, of course it won’t. What it will do is raise £xbillion for the government to spend on sweets.

There’s so much debunking going on in this book that it made me laugh. I really enjoyed it, but then I didn’t come into it “believing” in global warming, so I wasn’t offended when all the people who believe in it are made out to be charlatans and idiots.

Now, one reviewer called Kim Stanley Robinson the anti-Crichton when he published Forty Signs of Rain, his own take on the global warming thing. But now I’ve read the Crichton I can see that the two novels share a lot of common ground. Central to both novels is the way that science is conducted, and both find it lacking. Both make strong arguments that environmental research should be double-blind, so that scientists aren’t influenced by their paymasters – no matter who they are. Both feature lead characters who are a bit dumb and lack affect. Both make arguments about events being manipulated to suit an agenda other than the truth.

Crichton is optimistic about the future. He thinks that people in 2100 will be better off than us, just as we are better off in so many ways than the people of 1900. Crichton sees fear being created by politicians and the media in cahoots with each other as panic follows crisis follows panic. If its not salmonella in chocolate bars, it’s p a e d o p h i l e s. If not them, then the environment. If not that, it’s the Iranians, or the Koreans. He points out that the whole global warming fear started around 1989, when the communist threat receded and the Cold War ended. It’s a cynical view, but its one with which I have sympathy. It’s a fact that newspapers have to be filled with something, and TV schedules all have news bulletins. And there’s a lot of complete bollocks out there, I’m sure we all know. And a lot of peer pressure: to conform, or face abuse. I’d argue that the real subject of this book is not really the environment but the media, and the way they fail to keep us informed.

Which brings me back to the beginning, and the abuse that was hurled at Crichton for publishing this. If they could burn him at the stake, I’m sure they would. It’s not a brilliant book, not even in narrow Crichton terms, but it is fascinating, and I think everyone should be exposed to these arguments, and feel like they need to learn more, before they spout yet more bollocks about global warming.