Dec 2, 08
Andy Revkin: Climate Change Is Not the Story of Our Times
Andy says, as we say here, it's all one big problem with millions of interlocking solutions needed to solve it: Q. Obviously climate change is the biggest story on your plate right now, but looking ahead what do you see? A. My coverage has evolved. Climate change is not the story of our time. Climate change is a subset of the story of our time, which is that we are coming of age on a finite planet and only just now recognizing that it is finite. So how we mesh infinite aspirations of a...
Charlie Stross and Near-Future Fiction
Charlie Stross says some very smart things about near-future fiction and the difference between techno-thriller science fiction and the sort of science fiction that is about predicting the present in ways that illuminate change: In my view, near-future SF isn't SF set n years in the future. Rather, it's SF that connects to the reader's life: SF about times we, personally, can conceive of living through (barring illness or old age). It's SF that delivers a powerful message — this is where...
Environment, Attitudes, and Behavior
Does where we live shape how we think and act? This isn't the sort of thing I blog about regularly, but it strikes me that this New York Times article on suicide, of all things, has an important lesson about how our physical environments can shape our behavior. According to the article, large numbers of "impulse" suicide attempts -- the ones that are undertaken with little premeditation -- could be prevented simply by making the most common means of taking one's life a little...
Robot Snakes, Smart Farmers, Flying Ships and a Different Sort of Science Fiction
Lots of stuff going on today (media interviews, writing to be done, etc.), but here are some tidbits to tide you over: Scandinavian scientists designing robotic snakes: The robot is designed to have a camera attached and move around the pipe following a pre-programmed map. Thielemann noted in the report that they are working on using the vision system to help the robot navigate itself through the maze of pipes. Pachube The key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments,...
No Time for the Singularity
Scientists like to low-ball their estimates. The now-famous IPCC scenarios for the effects of climate change are already known to be woefully, unrealistically conservative (Freeman Dyson's recent comments notwithstanding). Arctic changes expected 20 years from now are happening now, and in North America the beginning of spring has already been pushed back by two weeks, which is enough to play havoc with the fertility cycle of many migratory birds (among other consequences). The worst-case...
Polar Agriculture
The capital of Nunavut has nearly completed construction of the first industrial agricultural facility north of the arctic circle. Vertical farming in the arctic? This is, of course, April 1st, and we're not going to try to fool you for a minute that this story is true. But what if it were true? Consider the merits: Iqaluit is the only capital city in Canada not accessible by highway. Fresh fruit and vegetables must be brought in by airplane, and sometimes, in summer, by boat. Despite...
How to Start Your Own Country
Paul Raven hooks us up with this primer on how to start your own country. For real: Step 1: Make sure you are eligible As tempting as it might be to declare your cubicle a sovereign state, customary international law actually does specify minimum standards for statehood. 1. You must have a defined territory. 2. You must have a permanent population. 3. You must have a government. 4. Your government must be capable of interacting with other states. Though Paul does advise...
Strange and Happy: Science Fiction and the Bright Green Future
Jason Stoddard proclaims the need for speculative fiction that is strange and happy: The world is changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Just in the last few weeks, I’ve read about active corneal overlays for augmented reality and Russian chatbots good enough to pass simple Turing tests (and immediately being used for sex chat.) Where we live is getting strange. But this doesn’t mean it’s a dystopia, or that we’ll be bowing to evil corporate overlords whose only mission statement is...
The Big Picture
Jamais has a great piece up on the wider forces crafting our future: Climate Chaos: Twenty years is the outside limit of how long we have to make the global changes (in our energy grids, urban designs, transportation networks, agricultural processes, industrial processes, taxation policies, trade policies, etc.) required to avoid real disaster. It's also probably about right for figuring out which geoengineering strategies are the least likely to make things worse. We know what we need to do...
What we get if we win...
More Bruce To me, "sustainability" means a situation in which your descendants are able to confront their own problems, rather than the ones you exported to them. If people a hundred years from now are soberly engaged with phenomena we have no nouns and verbs for, I think that's a victory condition. On the other hand, if they're thumbing through 1960s Small World paperbacks and saying "thank goodness we've finally managed to pare our lives back exclusively to soybeans and bamboo," well,...
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