As a new Ice Age imperils the world, a lunatic fringe of the environmental movement has taken control of the U.S. government.
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
When outsiders like myself think of California, we normally think of the most rabidly pro-alarmist, anti freedom state in America, a sea of climate alarmist orthodoxy, tempered by the occasional voice of skepticism.
But some of California’s most prominent fiction authors, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn, were poking fun at global warming dogma way back in the early 90s. Their satirical science fiction book, “Fallen Angels”, written in 1991, depicts a world in the grip of a new ice age, triggered by green initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions, with radical green governments trying to pin the blame for crashing global temperatures on high technology and “air stealing” space colonists – the remnants of American and Russian space efforts.
Many, perhaps most of you have probably not heard of “Fallen Angels” – it never achieved the prominence of better known stories such as the Ringworld series, the Known Space series, Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall, and many other Niven and Pournelle science fiction classics. But for me Fallen Angels planted a seed of skepticism – towards the end of the 90s, when a rising tide of voices claimed climate consensus, and predicted imminent doom, I remembered reading “Fallen Angels”, and wondered whether the anti science green dystopia they satirised was actually coming to pass. My doubt caused me to dig a little deeper, and helped me to see past the climate lies of the alarmists.
Perhaps other authors are out there, wondering if now is the time to take the plunge, to satirise that which must not be questioned. My suggestion – it didn’t do Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn’s career any harm. Author Scott Adams (Dilbert) still publishes a lot of cartoons, despite his occasional nods towards climate skepticism (e.g. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/20/dilbert-becomes-skeptical-of-climate-change-disaster/ ).
And who knows – if the lunatic fringe of the climate alarmist movement is sufficiently outraged by your effort, you could sell a lot of books.
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Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(science_fiction_novel)
The book is available on Amazon, here.
I still use the line “throw another log on” referring to the cooling for the past 12 years.
It was a fun read back then. It really was prescient and funny and good adventure. I will now proceed to Amazon abd buy a fresho copy so the authors get at least some benefit.
Yeah, it’s full of tuckerizations, but Gary Hudson was called out by name as a rocket engineer in the Mojave desert, so when all three authors were at the Rotary Rocket Roton rollout in March 1999, I took my copy around to get all four autographs. Once in a lifetime opportunity…
Didn’t Jethro Tull do ‘Something’s On the Move’ – a track on the album ‘STORMWATCH’ – predicated on the nascent Ice Age back in the latest 1970s.
Climate awareness has been around for a generation or more.
Oh – and am I glad that our ships don’t go to California . . . . . .
Auto
Instapundit mentions it all the time in connection with whatever the latest Gerbil Worming (or lack thereof) tomfoolery is.
unfortunately the fight is now global cooling versus global warming
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
I caught a rerun of the 1966 James Coburn movie, “Our Man Flint”, recently. I remembered a lot of it but I didn’t remember the main bad guys and how they planned for world domination.
IMDB.com describes the plot: “…scientists use eco-terrorism to impose their will on the world by affecting extremes in the weather….”
Where is Derek Flint to save us now?
Prescient? You mean we actually have an ice age? In that case perhaps you’d be amused by The Day after Tomorrow as well.
Actually Niven&Pournelle takes a jab at environmentalists in several of their books: Inferno has a environmentalist who opposed nuclear power in hell breathing coal fumes because that was the alternative, in Oath of Fealty a radical environmentalist is the main villain. On the other hand, The Mote in God’s eye is partly a dystopia caused to overpopulation and in Legacy of Heorot human meddling in an alien biosphere creates new problems as quickly as it solves the old ones.
Fallen Angels is freely available online from Baen Books. Have a look, then purchase either an ebook or paperback version if you enjoyed it.
This kind of relaxed IPR policy alone makes the publisher a hero in my eyes. I wish scientific publishers followed this brave example instead of hiding mos papers behind paywalls.
I can see it now. Eventually the catastrophists will claim that the dragon slayers are right and CO2 actually cools the atmosphere thus an impending ice age. Opposite problem, same solution.
Fallen Angels is a great read. I’m a big fan of Larry Niven, as a solo author and in collaboration with others.
.Best prediction of upcoming “morality”. No doubt the IRS will again be the enforcing agency; America’s Gestapo.
I read this book way back when it first came out. I was a big Niven/Pournelle fan and was interested in the subject even then. Unfortunately I don’t think the level of the writing is up to other efforts like Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall and The Mote in God’s Eye but it is interesting nevertheless.
Not sure about Angels.
But, it is a comfortable thought, at times.
I’m a fan of Jerry Pournelle from the days he wrote for Byte magazine.
You can catch him blogging at :
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/jerrypournelle.c/chaosmanor/
Not biblical Angels. Astronauts skimming the atmosphere with ram scoops to replenish air supplies, nitrogen, on their orbital habitat. They go too deep, fall down go boom. The rest of the story is about them trying to get back into orbit with the help of Science Fiction Fans. Lots of inside jokes along the way and the science is hard fact real science for the most part. Keeping warm on a long walk pushes theory a bit…
Definitely worth reading!
Dr. Pournelle keeps an interesting blog and addresses many of the troubling issues of the day:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/jerrypournelle.c/chaosmanor/
He’s always worth reading and has quite a few fellow skeptics as letter/information contributors.
Pleasantly surprised to find a Californian sceptical nugget in the latest (and brilliant) season of Arrested Development.
Season4 episode2 @ur momisugly 27mins there is a very quick shot of a fictional magazine called ‘We’.
One of the columns reads as follows:
~Global Warming
~If all the farmers in the world are correct then global warming is something that is a reality but has ~little to do with human interaction.
~They state in a new report that can be read on page 128 that global warming is a natural aging ~process of our earth and something that is not readily stoppable. These reports have been the ~topic of great debate since research group made a small fortune on funding for advancements on ~global warming.
~Note that any opinions expressed in these articles are the sole opinions of the writer and not ~opinions from our very politically correct magazine.
Thomas:-
The Mote in God’s eye is partly a dystopia caused to overpopulation and in Legacy of Heorot human meddling in an alien biosphere creates new problems as quickly as it solves the old ones.
IMO The Mote in God’s eye could still be interpreted as a poke at overpopulation concerns. The fictional Moties have such an extreme biological predilection to overpopulation, its difficult to see how their problem could apply to human populations – or by extension, how overpopulation could ever be a serious concern for humans.
Legacy of Heorot – maybe :-).
Thomas says: June 22, 2013 at 12:41 pm Niven&Pournelle … Inferno
Dan Brown’s latest, Inferno, embraces the green Malthusian Fallacy – clumsily – complete with chart junk. If you read it, you were warned away.
Stuff like this (environmental over-reach) happens all the time in the real world. I consult to the poultry industry of Arkansas USA….municipalities felt that their sewage treatment works were overloaded from all the blood, grease etc. in the effluent, so they imposed fines and forced the processors to install pre-treatment systems.
These pre-treatment systems worked so well that there was not enough nutrients in the wastewater to allow the municipal systems to efficiently treat the human sewage component! So, tail-between-legs, the municipalities worked with the processors to loosen things up so that all systems would work.
BTW, has anyone noticed that the Arctic sea ice extent is not playing according to script? http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
For a real gagger, try “Flight Behavior” by Barbara Kingsolver. v Bill McKibben ,the journalist as science advisor.
From Amazon:
instead of inhabiting her characters, she uses them as a mouthpiece to preach about, ‘dumb humans’ and the ‘wisdom of nature’, and how we’ve messed it all up. Even if you agree with her (and I mostly do), it’s awful reading. Most of her characters are sad, shallowly-written stereotypes. Note to Ms. Kingsolver, talking down to your audience doesn’t inspire positive change. I think I am done with Kingsolver after this one… Flight Behavior – that title describes my feelings toward this book – take flight, run away!
Fallen Angels is prescient in it’s depiction of the lengths that pathological altruists will go to impose their dogma upon others
My advice would be not tot read The Legacy of Heurot in the dark, late at night, on your own, especially if you happen to have a stream close to your reading place!
Without a doubt one of the most frightening books I have ever read, God Speed
It was far from their best book, and as I remember, treated Richard Stallman as some sort of demi-god. I will give him his due for persistence, and he also seems to be a competent programmer, but on the political side he to way to the left of Lenin.
Read it for its climate precience, but don’t expect anything up the normal standards of these authors.
The one thing I noticed is that lefties and eco-nuts don’t seem to have a sense of humour. They don’t understand satire or irony. Heck lefties think that Animal Farm and 1984 are the blueprints to their success whilst eco-nuts think that Soylent Green is their blueprint to success. Oh the pain of it all.