Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t James Delingpole / Breitbart / Willie Soon – according to climate novelist William T. Vollmann, compulsion and coercion is the only way to convince people to comply with his climate ideals.
“Are we prepared to endure lives with less comfort?”: William T. Vollmann on climate change.
The famous novelist and journalist has a new two-volume tome on climate change.
By Eric Allen Been Apr 19, 2018, 8:40am EDT
“For a long time I was a climate change denier,” says author, journalist, and war correspondent William T. Vollmann. “I didn’t want to be stressed out by something that might someday affect people after I’m dead.”
And yet for Vollmann — a brilliant, idiosyncratic writer whom some have described as a plausible candidate for the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature — the reality of climate change has become a personal obsession. Last week, he released the first volume of a sprawling, two-volume polemic called Carbon Ideologies. Titled No Immediate Danger, it explores in more than 600 pages how our society is bound to the ideology of energy consumption. Addressed to humans living in a “hot dark future,” the book is highly technical, chock-full of tables, studies, and hundreds of Vollmann’s own photos.
Vollmann traveled the globe for years reporting for this project, going so far as to self-finance after his publisher’s patience wore thin. “I spent my own money,” he writes, “and occasionally other people’s, to hike up strip-mined mountains, sniff crude oil, and occasionally tan my face with gamma rays.”
…
There are things that that can be done and maybe won’t be done if somebody says, “Well, it’s going to cost too much money to make that change.” Then what do you say? Do you say, “Well, we’re going to make you do it at a loss”? Or do we say, “All right, we’re going to give you money to help you change”? I can’t pretend to have an answer about stuff like that. All I can do is say, well, there are lots and lots of problems.
It’s not just what some consumer does at home. It’s niggling little issues that add up. In Japan, roughly 50 percent or so of all the methane emissions — and that’s one of the three most dangerous greenhouse gases — are caused by rice growing. All this stuff that seems so innocuous. It seems to me that you have to drag people into some kind of regulatory hell, unfortunately. Maybe there’s a better way to do it, but I don’t see one.
…
Can you imagine what the world would be like with people like Vollmann in charge?
Vollmann is the real deal – according to the VOX article, at one point the police suspected him of being the Unabomber, because of the hardline anti-growth and anti-development themes of Vollmann’s writing.
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It probably shouldn’t be all that surprising that Vollmann’s father was a university professor. Back when Vollmann was 9 years old his parents gave him supervisory duty over his 6 year old sister when she drowned while swimming. For parents to expect a 9 year old to babysit a 6 year old is the height of irresponsibility. (Heck, I wouldn’t trust a lot of 25 year old males to babysit a 6 year old.) Vollmann seems to have spent a lifetime immersed in unimaginable guilt over it. He should stop listening to the guilt and recognize that the grownups should’ve been in charge that day. But there’s no reason to allow him to attempt to transfer that torment onto us.
Sorry what?
Famous Author?
Novelist?
I have been a voracious reader for 50 years,never heard of this loon.
So what is his claim to fame?
Unreadable works of navel gazing,with ear lint festooned rants?
However I will mark the name,do not finance this nutjob. Check.
He writes Postmodern felgercarb. Unless you’re into masochism, you’ve not read much of that, if any. I hope he and Dolores will find help.
Good one, JR!
After reading a review of Vollman’s work in early 1990’s, I tried to wade through “The Ice Shirts”. Bad idea. I’ve made worse mistakes, but at least with Vollman’s books I am allowed the luxury of placing them in the trash, and the added pleasure of watching the garbage truck pull up at the curb, grab the trash-container, lifting it up, tilting, tipping and woosh! Gone.
Don’t waste your time with this clown.
There is a particular kind of hubris in which very accomplished people imagine they can do the impossible.
Prescribing how people should conduct their affairs presupposes that the prescriber knows how the prescribed behaviour will turn out. There is ample evidence that experts can’t predict the future. That means they should not prescribe.
A study of history shows that totalitarians who attempt to impose their utopias always fail … miserably … and lots of people die in the process.
I think this is different, Bob. This is an emotionally disfunctional human being thinking he can do something worthwhile. His sole talent appears to be wordsmithing. What you actually write has to be at least as relevant and important as how well you write it
He’s just a cheerleader at the death bed of Western Civilization.
If you want to be considered “brilliant” or whatever as an author, clarity is as important as content and turn of phrase.
I found ‘The Ice Shirt’ on Amazon. I read several pages. It is babbledygook. It is drivel. He has no story there. It is twaddle. His misuse of vocabulary is a blatant attempt to obscure the fact that he can’t create a story.
The Vikings were damned fine story tellers. Their bardic tradition demanded it. He can’t hold a candle to them.
Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That’s the only secret of style.
Somebody said that, I forget who. Anyway, from what I’ve seen, Mr. Vollsman doesn’t get passing marks for either.
The experts and cultural gatekeepers have foisted a lot of crap on us. When we complain, they put us down as stupid and uncultured. Hans Christian Anderson described the process in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’. We all heard the story as children. It’s sad that most people didn’t retain the lesson into adulthood.
Anis Shivani has compiled a list of the 15 most overrated contemporary American writers. William T. Vollmann is first on the list. link
I suspect that Vollmann would consider it a badge of honour that his writing is incomprehensible to the reading public. His lack of clarity is deliberate. It’s what’s demanded by the academy. Modern literature is mostly word salad … not very good and not very nourishing.
Abusing a lexicon’s contents does not infer that the abuser is a wordsmith. It may, however, indicate that because the writer really has nothing to say, he chooses to confuse the reader by using and/or misusing obscure terms and sloppy structure.
(Translation: Just because you have a copy of the Oxford Unabridged, it doesn’t mean you can fool the public into thinking you’re the next Plato or Hemingway.)
So if he get’s a Nobel Prize in literature, what’s it really for?
In recent years, it means you write stuff that the self styled elite want to hear.
“…occasionally tan my face with gamma rays.”
Huh? Maybe chop up your chromosomes into many fragments, induce many genetic DNA lesions, and deeply burn tissues and organs at high flux levels…. but tan with gamma rays… uh no. Photon energy is far too high to induce the tanning (melanin) response in melanocytes, it simply kills them.
This guy is simply an off-the-deep end mental illness case.
Not to mention scientific illiterate.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. He did the world a great favor by removing himself from it.
His fellow CACA criminals should only have his honesty.
What a lot of assumptions and assertions have been made about this guy.
This, from Tom Judd, is about the most disgusting and shameful I’ve read,
“Vollmann seems to have spent a lifetime immersed in unimaginable guilt over it. …But there’s no reason to allow him to attempt to transfer that torment onto us.”
You use a childhood tragedy as a tool against him in an argument about policy? That’s just messed up.
Snap out of it, Kristi. He’s claiming a “split personality” named Dolores. He refuses to recognize the reality of rice as a staple of diet for over two billion people.
He’s psychotic and you are blind to it.
Stop defending someone who would just as soon see you dead as look at you. He says that in his article. Apparently that escaped your notice.
Get over yourself.
+10
Well said, Sara!
I’ve had my fill of ‘babbledygook’ today from Vollman, alt-Dolores, and Kristi today!
PS: Thanks for ‘babbledygook’ – Love It!
I’d bet the cost of a nice dinner that alt-Dolores is the “ghost” of his dead 6-year-old sister. Hey, it happens!
Tom, go to your room.
+1 … but go to your room.
“Vollmann seems to have spent a lifetime immersed in unimaginable guilt over it. …But there’s no reason to allow him to attempt to transfer that torment onto us.”
Kristi, I’ve been analyzing Tom’s comment using a scanning electron microscope with the dial set to 11, and I can’t find a trace of anything disgusting or shameful.
Am I missing something?
“Kristi” could be one of Vollman’s sock puppets on a trolling expedition.
Kristi,
Vollman is extremely childish:
He refuses to use a cellphone. Why? What point does that prove? How does he think the journalists who come to interview him and give him the oxygen of publicity contact his agent/publisher?
He refuses to use email. Why? How does he think his publisher contacts the printers to arrange for his over-worthy tomes to be published?
In the same way that he rails against the fossil-fuels that power the printers and vehicles that get his books into the bookstores, the bog-standard and harmless technology that he obstinately refuses to use is still supporting his career. His luddism is pointless and achieves nothing, apart from making life for those around him that he relies on more difficult.
My acid test about anybody is would I want to share a pint with someone in the pub. When it comes to Vollman I think I’d rather slit my wrists.
Don’t know about staying long enough to drink a pint (though I am very fast at it), but I would like to see the look on his face when I tell him he has done less for Mankind than a worker in a rice paddy. Except for leaving a huge (beneficial) carbon footprint, he seems to have done little to help the world.
What business is it of yours why he doesn’t use email or have a cell phone? Now who’s trying to dictate how others live? It’s astounding how judgmental people are.
Kristi,
Are you really so deaf to reality as not to realize that those most judgmental are the CACA advocates who want to imprison and kill climate skeptics?
None of her professors told her about that stuff, therefore it didn’t happen.
Chimp,
“Are you really so deaf to reality as not to realize that those most judgmental are the CACA advocates who want to imprison and kill climate skeptics?”
That’s pretty judgmental, for sure, but those strategies have also been suggested around here to control the CAGW crowd. Are you deaf to that? There are extremists, fanatics on both sides. So what?
What does CACA stand for?
I’m not trying to dictate to Vollman what he should do. He can do whatever he likes. I’m just pointing out that what he does do is extremely childish. Hence, I’ve got no time for the daft little wally.
Speculating reasonably about facts is not personally attacking someone.
Vollman deserves no less.
Yet he gets press while skeptics do not. Tell me I’m a conspiracy theorist.
Vollman is just another sick pr!ck Groucho Marxist.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/25/al-gore-bilks-people-at-christmas-asking-for-climate-crisis-money/comment-page-1/#comment-2701695
[excerpt]
Marxism made simple!
The Groucho Marxists are the leaders – they want power for its own sake at any cost, and typically are sociopaths or psychopaths. The great killers of recent history, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot. etc. were of this odious ilk – first they get power, then they implement their crazy schemes that do not work and too often kill everyone who opposes them.
The Harpo Marxists are the followers – the “sheeple” – these are people of less-than-average intelligence who are easily duped and follow the Groucho’s until it is too late, their rights are lost and their society destroyed. They are attracted to simplistic concepts that “feel good” but rarely “do good”.
George Carlin said: “You know how stupid the average person is, right? Well, half of them are stupider than that!”
One can easily identify many members of these two groups in the global warming debate – and none of them are ”climate skeptics”.
Allan,
I don’t think intelligence (or lack of it) is Vollman’s problem. He needs to be dropped into a straight jacket and committed to a facility that can treat his multiple personalities as well as his schizophrenic violent delusions.
J Mac:
This guy is probably a sociopath or psychopath – if he had power he would probably follow in the steps of the great killers of the 20th Century. Between them, these psychos (Mao, Hitler, Stalin, etc.) killed about 200 million people.
Repeating from above:
“The Groucho Marxists are the leaders – they want power for its own sake at any cost, and typically are sociopaths or psychopaths. The great killers of recent history, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot. etc. were of this odious ilk – first they get power, then they implement their crazy schemes that do not work and too often kill everyone who opposes them.”
“The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”
– attributed to Josef Stalin
+10
Rewatch the 10:10 video where environmentalists blow up little children
https://youtu.be/5-Mw5_EBk0g
I wonder if Vollman/Dolores ws disappointed that the video was not more popular?
I wonder if he has also hiked through the woods that Apple bulldozed in install solar panels? Or hiked on the hills and mountains whose tops have been flattened to install wind turbines?
Wind turbines?
If I understand this individual correctly there would be no means of generating electricity in his glorious peoples’ utopia.
Except for his electronic devices in order to be able to spread the good message.
And surveillance systems of course to monitor the people’s filthy carbon production. Those still alive that is. Any who transgress can presumably be despatched by carbon-neutral means. Stoning and that kind of thing.
Am I being unkind or mischaracterising?
If you give me a choice between Vollmann’s self-inflicted “regulatory hell” (which may or may not do anything at all to prevent climate change) or a possible climate hell in the future, I’ll take the climate hell any day. We have a good chance of adapting to climate change. But you can never get ahead of regulations because they continually evolve from bad to worse (exhibit A: California). And to top it off, the self-proclaimed elites who impose ever-more-burdensome regulations on the populous believe it is their moral duty to make the masses suffer for the mere sin of being born as a carbon entity.
At the core of Leftist’s socio-economic philosophy is the necessity to initiate force against the will of the people through: theft, coercion, compulsion, corruption, and the implantation of onerous, and carpricious: rules, taxes, regulations and mandates.
CAGW is the one of most expensive and extensive manifestations of Leftist tyrannical rule, and will initiate any force necessary to assure its goals are achieved.
Unfortunately for Leftists, CAGW has already been disconfirmed under the rules of the scientific method and NONE of their dire hypothetical CAGW predictions are even close to reflecting reality.
My hope is that the inevitable demise of CAGW will enlighten people to the failure and nefarious nature of Leftism and will demand their governments only fulfil their duties to protect individuals’ inalienable rights of life, freedom from government oppression and individual property rights— without the initiation of force…
We’ll see if my hopes become a reality, which I, knowing history, serious doubt…
All democracies eventually self destruct because of either some strongman takes over whether on the left or right OR the bureaucracy takes over and the people eventually get so sick of the bureaucracy that they vote in a strongman who isnt really what he says he was. Modern examples Zimbabwe, Venezuela …Turkey……The Phillipines…….etc.. It just takes longer for more advanced democracies but they too eventually succumb to socialist ideas because of the one man/woman one vote principal. Any democracy that has any party that believes in a religion as its core belief Ex: Muslim parties like the Muslim Brotherhood or the Green parties with climate change or green utopia as their core religion eventually either get enough votes to hold the legislature hostage (as is happening in British Columbia Canada ) OR eventually win power through enough votes. It happened in Chile once with Allende until the CIA toppled him. It will happen again to every present democracy. My only saving grace is since I am old I wont live to see it. i will end this rant with a new idea that I came up with last month and which I posted about. THAT IS Believing in any religion be it a God or AGW actually makes you dumber. I think there could be tests for this . I would like to see a scientific study about it. Of course it wouldn’t be valid if an alarmist climate scientist or a skeptic climate scientist was doing the study. Unfortunately there arent too many scientists who are in exactly the middle. The debate has become too polarized.
Double blind methodology can eliminate bias. What you are looking for is àn honest researcher. Diogenes might has something to say on the subject.
Alan-San:
I agree that democracies will always fail once citizens realize they can vote themselves more of other peoples’ money stolen on their behalf by Leftist government hacks.
Our Founding Fathers loathed democracies for the aforementioned reason, which is why they originally established a Limited Government Constitutional Republic where the government is ONLY allowed to spend money on tasks Constitutionally enumerated, regardless of whether 51% of elected officials wish buy votes with wealth redistribution nonsense stolen from hard working Americans.
Granted, after Wilson’s and FDR’s presidencies, along with some atrocious SCOTUS rulings under their terms in office, the US Constitution now basically reads, “The Government can do whatever the hell it wants.”
Prior to Wilson, US State and Federal governments only wasted around 7% of GDP, whereas now, they devour close to 50% (including $2 trillion/yr in rule/regulation compliance costs).
Because the US trashed their Constitution, the US now has $20+ trillion in national debt (growing @ur momisugly $1 trillion/yr) and has $200 trillion in unfundead liabilities….
We’ve become the world’s soup kitchen, ATM, and policeman, which has got to stop.
Cheers, Alan.
The record seems to imply that not all relgions produce the sort of dumbing down and misanthropy that is so notable in the climate consensus.
Miserable, self absorbed people love trying to make everyone else miserable. Can you imagine sitting down at a bar relaxing and having a beer and having this guy sit down next to you? Most sane people would either get up and move or finish up and get out.
For a Change:
The Guadian dated 22nd April 2018 presented a report “Mozambique prays for rain as water shortage hit country’s poor”. [as they don’t accept my comments, I presenting my opinion here].
It states that — Jonathan Farr, a senior policy analyst at Wateraid, said climate change was “eating up the world’s water”, while also making it harder to find a solution. “Things that have worked in the past are no longer enough. Climate change makes everything considerably more serious. Cape Town was something you wouldn’t expect to happen. We are now seeing it potentially in Maputo.”
An hour’s drive west from Maputo is the vast Pequenos Libombos dam, which feeds into the Umbeluzi river, the main source of water supply to Greater Maputo. Completed in 1987, the dam has a capacity of 400 million square metres. But in the last two years, the water level has dropped dramatically. Standing on the bridge above the reservoir, Jaime Timba, the dam’s director, points to a series of yellow guages on the dam’s wall, well above the current water level.
In early 80s I worked in Mozambique for FAO as Expert/Dy. Team Leader — agro-ecological zones project & crop early warning project.
I collected and analysed the rainfall data of Mozambique. They were presented in books form and available in the National Institute of Agriculture [library]. Catuane is a location closer to the dam. It presented a 54 year cycle. It followed similar to Durban in South Africa with 66 year cycle followed W followed by M shaped pattern. W is in the below the average 33 year period and M is in the above the average pattern. The Catuane 54 year cycle also presented W followed by M pattern [instead of 33 years, it is 27 years period]. The current W [below the average 27 year period] started in 1997 and will be continuing upto around 2024 [in between around 3 years above the average rainfall].
However, these cyclic patterns change as we move from south to north & east to west in Mozambique.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Dr. Reddy, please consider sending your view of what went wrong to Anthony via Submit a story – you’ve actually been on the ground in Mozambique, we’d love to learn from your experience.
Dr. Reddy,
Fascinsting study. I hope you do write an article on this.
We should all pitch in and buy him a little cheer-me-up.
I think that’s his size.
If it isn’t his size, it might fit Dolores.
And, in the ultimate irony of the endless stupidity of sheeple, the ignorant version of the same t-shirt: (GoatGuy)
https://www.cafepress.com/mf/30233172/i-love-co2_tshirt?desired_product_type=1398
Superscript? Really? Some designer is woefully unaware of chemistry notation. It is like what I just (astoundingly) encountered: I gave a 24 year-old millennial a birthday card. Wrote a half page long birthday wish. I used my very best Spencerian connected handwriting (its taken 50 years to develop a ‘beautiful hand’) to write the birthday cheer. Now, understand that if you read handwriting at all, this hand is the epitome of clarity. The fellow claimed an inability to read the connected handwriting at all. Gave the card to his girlfriend, who also couldn’t read it. One of the dozen adults took a look and easily read it off to them. The card was passed around, and as always happens, I got many accolades per the penmanship.
The point? The point is that the modern generation is FULL of otherwise (one would think) educated people who are woefully ignorant of a remarkable swathe of things. Ignorant of science, ignorant of literature, ignorant of nominal duties and tasks of living. Ignorant of the law, ignorant of self-care, ignorant of behavioral expected norms in social settings. Ignorant of causality, ignorant of the rigor of correct attribution, ignorant of rhetoric, ignorant of free speech, ignorant of history, ignorant of geography and geopolitical ideologies.
Just saying.
Ignorance in the next generation is profound.
Thank you “smart phone”.
GoatGuy
I too love the pen and penmanship, so I appreciate your gift.
When I was in about 4th grade, my teacher, a nun, told us to always celebrate our handwriting, as it is the very sign — the pulse — of our being alive.
That made a HUGE impact on me, and I have always loved and enjoyed my penmanship ever since. This really amplified in college physics and math courses; I took great pride in making all of the formulae as beautiful as possible.
I think it is an absolute abomination that cursive has been erased from following generations. Much more is lost than people realize.
Vollmann adds to my discomfort, knowing how much must be done to bring real world perspectives to the different problems that must be handled to create an ever-advancing civilisation.
Strip mining is one way to ‘manage’ mining. How that is done has nothing to do with whether or not CO2 greatly raises the global temperature. It is the conflation of pollution with methane and CO2 emissions that lies at the root of his fanaticism.
The very sensible ship fighting against pollution has been hijacked by uninvited stowaways.
Vollmann adds to my discomfort, knowing how much must be done to bring real world perspectives to the different problems that must be handled to create an ever-advancing civilisation.
Strip mining is one way to ‘manage’ mining. How that is done has nothing to do with whether or not CO2 greatly raises the global temperature. It is the conflation of pollution with methane and CO2 emissions that lies at the root of his fanaticism.
The very sensible ship fighting against pollution has been hijacked by uninvited stowaways.
Anyone who thinks “energy consumption” is an “ideology” is sick in the head. Has he tried going without it?
Oh, I forgot to ask what his living accommodations look like. Someone needs to start keeping track of how the hypocrites live so we can show them exactly who it is that needs to reduce their carbon footprint.
4Times,
You forget, THEIR carbon footprint is virtuous and for OUR good.
4times: this was his living arrangement in 2009 (easy enough to find out in the information age)
but then, something that might make him appealing to some of the conservative-minded of those who hang out at WUWT:
and then again, he:
He appears, on a quick stroll through the internet, to be a very intelligent eccentric, who spends a lot of time observing, thinking and writing (at interminable length) about what he perceives as the ills of the 21st century world. But not so much about offering solutions to the problems he sees.
Although the head-post article suggests he has belatedly discovered global warming/climate change and latched on to the alarmist worldview that posits:
■ global warming is happening (or if it isn’t, climate change, whatever that means, is)
■ it must be bad
■ it must be caused by human activity
■ it must be stopped by modifying human activity
■ if humans won’t modify their behaviour voluntarily, they must be coerced into it
Reading about his lifestyle suggests that he is the kind of person who doesn’t like regulations at all, but the quote about “regulatory hell” implies that he might reluctantly accept them to force an outcome that he favours.
The above quotes are from a NYT article at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/books/29vollman.html
Eric’s title that calls him a fanatic is a bit simplistic IMHO, unless “fanatic” is synonymous with “a very complex individual, some of whose opinions I don’t like very much”. Sorry, Eric, I’m getting carried away with my own verbosity. Tell me to shut up.
“Mr. Vollmann collects pistols and likes to shoot them”
The pistols or the homeless he lets camp out in the parking lot?
Thanks for the info. A very….strange person to say the least.
Thank you, Smart Rock, for the sensible comment. Eccentric is much more apt than psychopath. (He doesn’t have a split personality, either. Where did that lie originate?)
The article in Harper’s is interesting, too. That’s the one in which he describes what’s in his FBI file – what he got of it. Those who appreciate freedom and privacy should feel for the guy. Someone turned him, thought there was a case based the content of his books. Weird story.
Pol Pot was an eccentric as well.
He was disturbed that so many people relied on things like eye glasses and dentures. Or liked things such as make up.
They were not authentic Pol Pot thought, and in fact cities were not authentic either. He convinced a dedicated group to join him to pursue his pastoralist vision in Cambodia and took power. About half of Cambodia was murdered by him and his band of true believers.
As to the NYT white wash, that faux paper never meets a “progressive” thug or wack job it dorsn’t praise. Its proud tradition of making evil people look good includes Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Maduro, Ho Chi Min, Pol Pot, and now this long winded over rated outz.
Vollmann says “I think that people can deny climate change in good faith, and that a lot of people do. It takes a certain familiarity with numbers, with the scientific method, and a trust in experts to begin to say, ‘All right, yeah, this is a serious problem.’ ”
This is pretty much the nub of what every catastrophic anthropogenic climate change warrior says–“Trust the experts we like because yours are no good.”
Being a windbag doesn’t indicate idiosyncracy and brilliance. He’s just some guy in awe of himself.
He’s not into nuclear as a solution either (not that a “solution” is needed)
That’s because nuclear works. Greenies don’t like things that actually work – it gives them nothing to complain about.
Eric, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of Volmann. He plainly isn’t living a life of misery. He is wealthy enough to tour the world to reinforce his prejudices and push his far-left agenda. What he actually wants is for us plebs to live in misery while he continues to swan about showing how much better he is than us.
I must be reading it wrong because he clearly states that we must burn more oil and coal and grow more rice to feed the hungry .
It’s a Baldrick cunning plan because after all the coal and oil are burnt we then have to have windmills and solar panels but no batteries they are too polluting . Must dash the men with the white coat are here .
And I bet you he didn’t travel the world on a bicycle…
Many wealthy people are quite miserable.
The influential wealthy can impose their misery on many.
Think of George Soros, busy dismantling the West in a bizarre pathetic attempt to compensate for the misery of his youth.
The guy believes his own fairy tales. In other words, this know-it-all thinks he is god. I seem to remember that the bible says something about that level of arrogance. No wonder evangelicals don’t buy into the climate change nonsense.
Found , the only one , THE `climate change denier` !!
As Mr Vollmann states “I was a climate change denier” , but then stupidly explains that by stating “I had other things to worry about” (which is not how one `denies` ) it seems like he misses the fact that no one denies climate change, just that the current modus operandi may not lead to gobal catastrophy which he obviously does as in his hot dark future.
His simplistic statements indicates he has little tenure on his subject from `equipment smoke affecting trees` to NASA`s photos showing the sun doesnt move.
I find it difficult to find a straight line thru this guy, he got a job as a computer programmer even though he new very little about programming “hates cars” doesnt use the internet, cell phones,credit cards or email “bullshit” but then has thousands of books physically printed (from chopped down trees) and flies all over the country to publicize them, and also `drifts` all over the world with only cash in pocket.
I guess his japanese translator probably got fed-up that Bill had never heard of a landline phone (maybe they dont have those in american houses anymore).
My advice Bill, just stick to fiction sounds like you are good at it.
How creepy.
He is doing in written form a sort of self-immolation like that self absorbed tragic lawyer.
Philip K. Dick, another famous eccentric author, spent much of his last years writing out of the increasingly insane obsessions that became darker and more bizarre.
Vollman is well along that same path.
But before PK Dick lost his mind, he wrote some of the best Science Fiction of his generation.
Vollman seems to going straight to the madness part, with no detour through brilliance.