This time it’s George R.R. Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels, on which HBO based its TV series Game of Thrones. For this post, I originally wrote Mr. Martin a long open letter but had second thoughts when another idea struck, an idea that readers here could have fun with.
Of course, the references later assume you’ve watched the TV series or read the books. The question posed by the journalist(?) and the reply by George R. R. Martin, however, will provide enough fuel for those of you who haven’t done so to enjoy yourselves as well.
First, in a recent Q&A with New York Times staff, George R.R. Martin reportedly noted that the upcoming prolonged, vicious winter in fictional Westeros has parallels to climate change in the real world…the human-induced, not the natural, kind.
Had his answer only appeared in the original article I would have ignored it, but numerous other online outlets published his reply, examples here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Oy vey! Do they really think a celebrity’s thoughts on catastrophic human-induced global warming/climate change in the real world —or anything else that has its origins in global politics—are newsworthy? Apparently they do.
Specifically, in the New York Times article George R. R. Martin Answers Times Staffers’ Burning Questions, Martin is reported to have provided an answer in response to the following question by Farhad Manjoo, who is obviously not a science contributor to the paper:
Many observers have pointed out that ‘Game of Thrones’ offers a perfect metaphor for understanding climate change. What do you think of this interpretation?
I’ll let you, readers, address that question.
And George R.R. Martin’s answer was (my boldface):
It’s kind of ironic because I started writing “Game of Thrones” all the way back in 1991, long before anybody was talking about climate change. But there is — in a very broad sense — there’s a certain parallel there. And the people in Westeros are fighting their individual battles over power and status and wealth. And those are so distracting them that they’re ignoring the threat of “winter is coming,” which has the potential to destroy all of them and to destroy their world. And there is a great parallel there to, I think, what I see this planet doing here, where we’re fighting our own battles. We’re fighting over issues, important issues, mind you — foreign policy, domestic policy, civil rights, social responsibility, social justice. All of these things are important. But while we’re tearing ourselves apart over this and expending so much energy, there exists this threat of climate change, which, to my mind, is conclusively proved by most of the data and 99.9 percent of the scientific community. And it really has the potential to destroy our world. And we’re ignoring that while we worry about the next election and issues that people are concerned about, like jobs. Jobs are a very important issue, of course. All of these things are important issues. But none of them are important if, like, we’re dead and our cities are under the ocean. So really, climate change should be the number one priority for any politician who is capable of looking past the next election. But unfortunately, there are only a handful of those. We spend 10 times as much energy and thought and debate in the media discussing whether or not N.F.L. players should stand for the national anthem than this threat that’s going to destroy our world.
Hmmmm, seems as though George R.R. Martin doesn’t realize that the international global warming/climate change movement is nothing more than an “anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American” campaign masquerading as a crusade to save the planet.
Note: The source of the “anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American” quote is Margaret Thatcher’s Statecraft published in 2002. There she wrote:
Kyoto was an anti-growth, anti-capitalist, anti-American project which no American leader alert to his country’s national interests could have supported.
[End note.]
Then, as I was proofreading the draft of my now-discarded 3,000-word open letter, I had a thought: I suspected some of you readers of the post would envision a different relationship between the characters who accompany the coming winter in Westeros and those who prolong the global warming/climate change scare that’s been taking place for a number of decades in our real world. You would view the zombie-like White Walkers as the unscrupulous, dishonest, deceitful, and devious eco-profiteers, politicians, activists, lobbyists, mainstream media, and funding-hungry scientists who constantly try to suck the life out of us by exploiting the misfortune and misery of our families, our friends, our neighbors, and others to advance political agendas every time a weather-related natural disaster strikes somewhere in the world. And I didn’t think it much of a stretch to imagine some readers would chose Al Gore as the evil Night King.
And I will predict the characters in my next short story will have a lot of fun with those thoughts.
So have fun now.
A happy Friday to all. Enjoy your weekends.
STANDARD CLOSING REQUEST
Please purchase my recently published ebooks. As many of you know, this year I published 2 ebooks that are available through Amazon in Kindle format:
- Dad, Why Are You A Global Warming Denier? (For an overview, the blog post that introduced it is here.)
- Dad, Is Climate Getting Worse in the United States? (See the blog post here for an overview.)
Regards
Bob
“conclusively proved by most of the data and 99.9 percent of the scientific community.”
He has clearly studied the whole thing in great depth and has even improved on the 97%.
His web site says:
“George Raymond Richard Martin, also known as GRRM, is an American novelist and short-story writer in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres, screenwriter, and television producer.”
I suppose being well versed in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres qualifies him as an expert in AGW. /s
To be fair, many “hard” science fiction writers like Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, etc., are versed in engineering and physics and do their research to at least get the basic numbers right.
good point
Azimov as well. He and Clarke were definitely scientists, not sure about the others.
Heinlein was an engineer and worked with the Navy on special weapons projects in WWII.
“Doc” Smith was a mining engineer, among other things.
L Ron Hubbard’s military career also matched his writing style/content.
I found Doc Smith hadn’t dated well. Not so much of the scope of the ideas, but because he failed to predict the near future and made some of the descriptions unintentionally funny.
There is a passage in one of his Lensman novels where the hero is info dumping to the reader/his girlfriend what has been going on and describes how his base is proof against anything up to a 250lb bomb.
At the time of writing this was an impressively large weapon, but reading it now gives the impression the entire place was made of tissue paper.
Still, not really the point. A similar comparison can be made with John Wyndham. Day of the Triffids can be placed in the 1970s by the clues provided and the main character’s age, but feels like 50s England. Wyndham is/was a poor futurist, but that is largely unimportant as his novels were about the threat, not the future.
Nope. It qualifies him in ratings.
On a cynical note: What if his comment was nothing more than a way to get visibility and more ratings for his books and his TV productions respectively. Look at how many times his words appeared in non entertainment news? Remember the old axiom; “even bad publicity is publicity’
AGW is a fantastic fiction. So yeah! Totally!
AGW is a fantastic fiction. So yeah! Totally!
AGW is a fiction, certainly (since it doesn’t match up to reality), not so sure I’d go so far as to call it fantastic.
Base word for fantastic is fantasy, so, it fits.
I’m always surprised at how many 21st century Science Fiction writers have ‘global warming’ and sea level rise as essential parts of their plots. For writers in the 1980’s (like the UK’s Peter Hamilton) I can understand – but these days, the CAGW has been so thoroughly debunked, I do not see how these writers can continue. Are they not paying attention? Or maybe too many live in California these days!
BTW – Peter Hamilton’s “Greg Mandel” books use the warming flooding of England’s Fen country (East Anglia) as a major plot device. And no mention of the University of East Anglia at all!
I’d love to know exactly what has been ‘proved by 99.9% of the scientific community’
And come to think of it, I’d love to know how one qualifies as part of ‘the scientific community’…
Any ideas?
His 99.9% is a completely bogus statistic, but even if it was correct, let’s dial back to 1905 when 99.9% of physicists KNEW that Newton’s interpretation of gravity was correct. There was this .1% guy who wasn’t even a physicist. AND he had funny hair and looked a little looney. I guess he should have been drummed out of town. George R.R. Martin wants us to believe in dragons as well as climate change. At least the dragons look scary.
A. That “looney guy” didn’t think Newton’s theory of gravity was incorrect but knew that his theory had to correspond to it.
B. Both that “looney guy’s” theory and Newton’s theory were never promoted or accepted based on the number of “scientists” who accepted it but on their predictions being demonstrated by actual observations and experiment.
Have you ever picked up any astronomy or physics book and seen the “proof” of Newton’s theories or general relativity explained with the statement “99.9% of scientists accept them”?
“Community” is surely one of the most overused words in English. The concept of community is very vague (kept that way deliberately?), and rarely do we see it made more specific. I have been a Ph.D.-degreed musicologist since 1978, but I was never fooled into thinking there was a musicology community. Community is a sweet-sounding fluffy-puffy sort of buzzword, with little or no actual meaning. As for the scientific community: According to the definitions of science that I have read, there is–and should be–no scientific community. There are individual scientists, working on individual scientific problems; aside from them, there are various fakers, also-rans, and hangers-on. I get really suspicious whenever I see the word “community.” And then there’s “deserve” . . .
Al Gore is not one of those White Walker thingies. They apparently have some innate connection to how reality in that fictional place worked. They are able to command natural forces with ease. The undead actually FOLLOW them. Whereas no one follows Al Gore anywhere. He only pretends he knows how to “fix” the climate. He’s a poser and a buffoon. If he were in Westoros, he would have made good cannon fodder, or maybe a role like the Little Sparrow guy. BTW, please, no one read this as an edict to mail pipe bombs, anthrax or anything else. Al Gore has his right to his own opinion as anyone else. Besides, he’s long stopped being influential with his words and he’s surrendered his credibility with his repeated dire warnings and tipping point admonitions. So don’t get mad at him. Laugh at him, instead. He’s Man-Bear-Pig.
They are indeed worthy of ridicule as well as many of their misinformed minions, however even ridiculous mobs can overwhelm rationality and engage in crusades to burn ‘witches’. Wherein ‘witches’ are defined as anybody who is more informed than them.
The dark ages were also intellectually dark.
I truly do fear for my children’s future, but not from the earth.
Al Gore is a white drawler!
I prefer to think of him as “Reek.”
Blimey – makes me glad I must be one of few left on the planet who haven’t seen a single episode of Game of Thongs.
Ian Magness
That’ll be two of us then. Perhaps we’re Grumpy Old Men, or perhaps we have more sense than to waste our time watching fantasy.
This perhaps illustrates as well as anything else, the fantasy nature of AGW (of course the alarmists are scared to call it that any longer and refer to it as climate change in a tacit admission that the world is as likely to cool as it is to warm. We know it and they know it, the difference is whatever happens to the climate they will claim it’s man’s fault, they couldn’t do that by sticking with AGW) as it’s now seen appropriate to draw on the opinions of a professional, wealthy, self promoting, celebrity fantasist.
Pathetic propaganda with no scientific foundation.
I love G.O.T but it is a fantasy make believe world adapted to screen.
Actors, Writers, Producers should all just STFU and just do what they do instead of preaching to us all.
A skill in acting does not denote anything other than that, that is their skill and nothing else.
Other than an opinion, their knowledge of the subject overall is sorely lacking and subject to group think influence at the best.
I doubt any of them could last two rounds with a seasoned poster of WUWT in a sensible debate.
I too like G.O.T., but I was blessed with the intellect to discern fantasy from reality, something these fools seem to lack.
Common sense isn’t all that common.
You’d better watch out or I’ll turn you into a newt!
“That’ll be two of us then.”
That would be three of us, then. 🙂
make it three and I’d be the grumpy old lady;-)
I love sci fi and some fantasy, even the odd steampunk
but Id far rather read a book and use my own imagination than watch folly-woods versions of anthing
My wife and I haven’t— if that makes you feel better Ian. And we never will unless they strap us to our chairs, prop open our eyes and force us to wear headphones.
You are supposed to be banned.
I guess you served your time in the penalty box, so can now return to the ice, hockey stick in hand.
I have not seen it either, Ian, although friends of mine have launched brief portions of it (mostly with dragons) at me in an attempt to get me to watch it.
People are attracted to GaofThro (gowfthro) because they like fantasy, for the same reason that they dress up like ladies of the Court, or make themselves suits of armor and carry swords, and spend enormous amounts of money at Renaissance Faires. It’s escapism and getting to play a Medieval version of cowboys and Indians as adults. And what in the world can be more fun that wearing a corset that bumps up your girls so that you look like you’ve got more than you were born with?
What?!? I shamelessly enjoy the sword fights, too.
Actually I enjoy it but generally dislike fantasy. It is the richly developed characters, the complex plotting and the realistic depictions of ruthless political maneuvering that attract me. It has no saccharine or sweetness to it ever, and regularly and frequently kills off characters you thought were going to be the hero. No-on is wholly good or wholly bad, and it depicts a world of complex shades of grey. And most of the female characters are strong and powerful, or become so, without having to put on armour.
And most of the female characters are strong and powerful, or become so, without having to put on armour
While they don’t put on armor, from what I’ve seen they’re certainly well versed in taking it off. 😉
Phoenix44
Star Trek was better.
Liking you more and more, Sara!
Me neither, and never will. I guess I went off the whole idea of watching it when I learned that even the most ardent viewers and fans of the show were writing in to complain that there was “too much rape”… An author who relies on unrelenting, indefensible scenes of violent rape as a key plot device is, to my mind, questionable.
And now he’s lecturing his fans on climate?
Concerning his books, Dorothy Parker had it right. “This isn’t a book to be put aside lightly. It should be thrown aside, with great force”.
Sorry but you have pretty much all of that wrong. Fans didn’t say “too much rape” they said that the one scene of rape was too harrowing and too long. The scenes are defensible and far from frequent, let alone “unrelenting”. As for being a key plot device, in what way is that bad? Rape is portrayed as a violent act that is wholly wrong: you have a problem with that portrayal?
Perhaps criticising something you have never seen and know only from what appear to be garbled descriptions is not a good idea?
Lets see what people who *have* seen it are saying, just for balance.
https://jezebel.com/game-of-thrones-heard-the-complaints-will-temper-the-s-1749214597
https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/entertainment/spoiler-alert-see-why-game-of-thrones-fans-are-switching-off-677851.html
From ‘fans’ of the show:
“Erasing an entire character and storyline just so Sansa Stark can be raped for shock value is not good writing. ”
“Rape is not entertaining. Enough with making rape proof of a character’s depravity.”
From an analysis of the books/TV shows:
“Tafkar’s analysis found that the book’s numbers are staggering. Here are her findings:
Rape acts in Game of Thrones the TV series (to date): 50
Rape victims in Game of Thrones (to date): 29
Rape acts in ASOIAF the book series (to date): 214
Rape victims in ASOIAF (to date): 117
The books contain over 4 times as much rape as the show (and probably even more; the method of analysis likely underestimates the rape in the books – see below).
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/game-of-thrones-asoiaf-rape-statistics/
No, I don’t have a problem with rape being portrayed as violent act that is wholly wrong. My problem is when it’s used as entertainment or a plot device, over and over again. Seems I’m not alone.
You are not alone. Prior to reading Bob Tisdale’s piece, I couldn’t have told you who George R. R. Martin was (and, believe me, I hold Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert and Arthur C. Clarke dear to my heart).
Add me to the list. I’d heard the title and thought it some TV ‘reality’ or guessing game show.
You can count me in on that few. And, given the GRRM climate change twaddle, you can count me as a proud member of that group. Whatever interest I had in watching it has now permanently declined to zero.
Thank you, AGW is not Science. I suspected there would be repercussions, like the one you expressed, to GRRM talking about a politics-filled subject as catastrophic human-induced climate change.
Regards,
Bob
Count me in on that too – real history and good science fiction are so much better than this fantasy garbage. Good science fiction as in writers who have studied something about science and don’t require belief in magic to make their plots believable. Don’t forget H.G.Wells in your list of greats.
Moderately Cross of East Anglia
GoT is low-fantasy setting and events in the series do take a lot of inspiration from real history. The world of GoT is very detailed and complicated. Way more than real history. And this is coming from a history buff. And besides writers have used magic and fantasy elements since ancient Greece. Things like that have always fascinated people. It’s a fiction. It’s not meant to be “real”.
Why do I get the feeling that if GRRM would have skeptical of AGW, people here would be praising his work. I get that you don’t like what he said but that doesn’t make his work any less good.
Nice moniker. Its fun to type ” AGW is not Science”. Although the S maybe shouldn’t be capitalised (False gods)😂. I may change my name to Never Was.
99.9% ??!?? What Precision these people have. Accuracy, not so much.
I’ve got a load on DVDs but I never got past 3 episodes of series 1.
I don’t need to pretend soft porn and gratuitous violence is actually drama…
The dwarf can act though. He was the only reason I stayed after episode one….
Yeah, from what little I watched (about the same as you) he was the best thing in the show, certainly puts the rest of the cast to shame.
You could at least use his name, Peter Dinklage.
Peter Dinklage is great and I have enjoyed him in many different types of roles. But GoT is nothing but gratuitous sex and bloodshed, not my cup of tea. Give me a Disc World novel any day of the week and I will happily re-read it. I have most of them in my Luggage….
yay Pratchett! sadly missed;-( getting his latest book was always a highlight of the year,
I just re read the Fifth Elephant and I still get a laugh every reading
So what’s wrong with “soft porn and gratuitous violence?”
Nothing, as long as that’s what you’re looking for.
I liked the (slow witted) giant guy that just says the same thing over and over (kinda like groot)
(I don’t mean to disparage large guys, but I just don’t know his name….)
Michael Mann 😂
Hoder….
Same here, never seen it apart from clips here and there.
We should start a club, I haven’t seen any either.
Game of Thongs or Game of Thrones
I know nothing of either of these.
Do folks not have any thing useful to do?
Our local paper has a section for charity-type organizations asking for volunteers.
” Game of Thongs”
I’d watch every episode of that…
…as long as it was about nubile women & NOT about sumo wrestlers. (:-))
Do not diss sumo wrestlers.
They have my most profoundest admiration for demonstrating clearly that even morbidly obese gentlemen can do the splits if they work at it.
Game of “Thongs”? It’s unlikely that this misspelling could be accidental!
If reducing greenhouse gases is paramount to the survivor of the world, why would China, the world’s largest emitter, get a pass until 2030, under the terms of the Paris climate accord?
By exempting China and India, it will be impossible for the rest of the world to reduce sufficient emissions to meet the accord’s targets.
Good for Trump to see through this rediculous sham!
Yes, ron, but it is OUR fault that the GHGases exist in the first place, so we must pay the penalty and let China/India get away with murder or some such thing.
In GOT, the Winter they reference is natural and cyclical. The stories of it and the White Walkers that coincide with it go back to the dawn of their humanity. It isn’t caused by man either.
Just sayin’
I agree the winters are natural, John. The winters go back at least 8000 years to when Brandon the Builder constructed the wall. No, I don’t remember the series that well. I did some research when I wrote the original open-letter post.
I wasn’t trying to correct you Bob. I was merely stating how funny it is that Martin is comparing climate change to the winter in his series. That winter is coming regardless of man. They can prepare for it all they wish to no avail. It will arrive as it always has throughout history…a natural cycle.
Didn’t take it as you correcting me, John. I was simply adding to your comment.
Cheers,
Bob
No problem.
Cheers
Because a fantasy writer and politicians with vested interests in scare mongering are who we all go to for our modern “science”.
So much for scientific method.
Increased reporting of the vacuous opinions of celebrities suggests there isn’t actually much news to report.
Given the media’s preference for reporting bad things, this implies that maybe the world is gradually becoming a better place for humans.
I’ve not read the books, nor have had any desire to watch “Game of Thrones”.
I’ve not been able to sit through the trailers posted almost everywhere, it seems.
“Proved by most of the data“, Absurd! Not even close!
“99.9 percent of the scientific community“, equally absurd!
“it really has the potential to destroy our world“, absurd on a level that makes the first two claims pale echoes!
All three claims are absurd, egregiously in error and bizarre in context.
For a storyline and especially a show, one assume the author did due diligence in research.
Given the author’s belief in absurdities and flat out fallacies, due diligence is absent, completely.
Leaving us with just another celebrity seeking additional fame, glory or attention by any means.
The most important parallel between Game of Thrones and the climate apocalypse is that they are both fiction.
Martin is not the first artist to confabulate their creative expression either reality.
The authors of the Noah story, John of Patmos, the 12th Imam, and other world ending stories, like Martin today, confused their story telling with reality.
Martin us arguably much wealthier than those ancient story tellers.
And the fantasy show made from his stories have great acting and state of the art special effects.
But he forgets that they are fantasy at the rusk of him being made to look foolish.
Excellent summation, hunter!
Confabulate is a perfect term for the author’s comments and claims.
In other words, I wish I thought of it first… 🙂
Thanks. You would probably have written it with fewer typos, lol.
Feel free to use and run with the concept.
Having met a few SF writers, I bet this confabulation issue is a common trap.
All right.
I went and read some of the author’s interview Q&A.
What I do absolutely agree with is his take on women;
Well, most of his take on women.
And it still doesn’t change his foolishness about climate change.
Marvellous! Black hair is nice too.
Martin seems confused. CO2 and global warming are supposed to make winters milder. He can’t even get his fake science fiction right.
Another famous Climate Numpty, Stephen King, calls climate change “the scariest monster of all time”. He goes on to list all the things he believes are caused by “climate change”. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Institutionalized ignorance, of the type displayed by King and Martin is the true monster.
Gotta link to Stephen King’s scary things about climate change, Bruce?
Yes: https://www.nrcm.org/projects/climate/global-warming-air-pollution/stephen-king-teams-with-nrcm-to-talk-about-global-warming/
Thank you, Bruce
Cheers,
Bob
and I used to appreciate Kim stanley robinsons books
till he went full agwpusher in his material too
red/blue/green mars was a great trilogy
50?or 40? below zero is pure agitprop for agw and he wrote another using bits of that again
cheeky and utter dross, glad it was library and i didnt buy it. gave it a lousy review;-)
I have met Kim and his wife briefly. Both were utterly charming and polite people.
Struggled with his novels though and never finished one.
To get back on topic, I have also met George RRRRRRRRRRR Martin. Or more correctly stood in the same room as him while he was completely surrounded by very attractive women. George, for all his AWG delusions, is a total chick magnet and my main motivation into wanting to become a Fantasy Author.
(Hey, I can be shallow.)
I’m not sure which is worse, celebrity science fail or science expert misconduct of the Mann type. I guess it’s both.
Ja. Ja. Winter is coming. It is already globally cooling.
Click on my name and figure it out for yourselves.
“But while we’re tearing ourselves apart over this and expending so much energy, there exists this threat of climate change, which, to my mind, is conclusively proved by most of the data and 99.9 percent of the scientific community. And it really has the potential to destroy our world.” GRRMartin
Uh, no, George. No, it does not have the potential to destroy our world. We are too puny to do that, too small and weak. But I am struck by your need for attention in the way you responded to that reporter. And your powers of observation seem to be sadly lacking. Since you live in the Southwest, how many critters can you name that inhabit the area around your house? Any at all? Or plants? Are they just cacti to you, or can you distinguish one species from another? They all had their uses to the tribes who used to live there back in the Long Ago.
Perhaps you should have told the reporter the real reason for not naming the planet on which GaofThro takes place. Obviously, its orbital path is considerably longer than that of Earth, which has annual seasonal changes, and it seems to be further from its central star than Earth is, which could account for a summer season that lasts – what? – NINE Earth years. You haven’t addressed any of that, but I guess that REAL science, like geophysics, is too boring, and you’d rather pander to The Strange than to such reality.
Also, I don’t find any reference to how the inhabitants of this unnamed world manage to produce or store enough food and other resources to survive a winter that lasts nine years. It’s almost like you take food and clothing, arms & armor, and medicine and sanitation for granted and nobody ever gets sick with a severe illness. So do your characters have no digestive systems and they live on air (unless it’s an official feast, of course)? Do they just magically somehow blow off disease-causing organisms because those are inconvenient?
That’s rather negligent on your part. At least Katherine Kurtz addresses such things in her Deryni series, as does Katharine Kerr in her prolonged Celtic fantasy saga of the Westlands and Deverry. Man, you just bulldoze your way through a story and the things that would make it solid and real are thrown off to the side as if they don’t matter.
Even J.R.R. Tolkien had enough common sense to address such things when he described the prolonged and unseasonal Long Winter and the Fell Winter in the Shire, winters in which the white wolves and Orcs crossed the Baranduin and the Rangers of the North had to provide food to the Hobbits to keep them from starving to death.
That’s kind of lame on your part, but it appears that such things don’t really matter when some limp-brained reporter asks you questions that are ridiculous. If you had any sense of self, you’d have told him to go away and bother the Orcs.
And then, there’s your forgetting to let us know what kind of central star this planet orbits. Even Edgar Rice Burroughs gave us the hurtling moons of Barsoom. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, but it also has a planet. Gee whiz, even George Lucas addressed this issue by giving Tattooine a place as a planet in a binary star system. That sunset was really something.
But it is kind of inspiring to see such negligence on your part. It’s sort of an inspiration, George, to make sure that if a planet is a big barren rock like Mars, only bigger and maybe with an eroding atmosphere, maybe not, there’s a reason for it and that it’s okay to turn it into an industrial world for building starship engines and weapons to beat up the Bad Guys, or that a planet like primitive Earth, mostly water-covered with one central landmass, can produce intelligent lifeforms that are sort of like amoebas and can morph into just about anything, but they’re the size of Buicks. Real science opens up all those possibilities. There are still dinosaurs on this planet, you know. They are Sphenodonts, locally referred to as Tuatara.
I have to say that your pandering to the CAGWers and their ilk really is an inspiration to be careful about how to describe things to an audience. Not throwing in some real science, letting people know that you really just don’t care but you do dig the publicity, is telling.
Thanks for letting me know you’re just another hack, George. Cheers!
Sara
Top comment.
Ignoring the everyday realities of life in any show bugs me intensely.
Thank you, HotScot. One thing Heinlein made clear in his novels aimed at teenagers was that planets are all different, BUT they all have something in common: a star that binds a system together, and some kind of environment. Even our own Mercury has an atmosphere, however thin and shallow it may be, or more correctly an exosphere*, and a magnetic field, discovered in 1974**.
So, to ignore these things leaves the story with a rather hollow ring to it. It doesn’t mean you have to explain planetary dynamics to death. That would bore your readers. It just has to be plausible.
*Mercury has a thin exosphere made up of atoms blasted off the surface by the solar wind and striking meteoroids. Mercury’s exosphere is composed mostly of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium and potassium. – source: NASA
**Measurements made by Mariner 10 in 1974/75 showed that Mercury also has a magnetic field. According to the standard models, the dynamo effect in its metal core should generate similar field strengths to those on Earth. Mercury’s magnetic field is 150 times weaker than that of our planet, however. This has recently been confirmed by the Nasa space probe Messenger. — Source: Max Planck Gesellschaft
While I agree, I don’t think GRRM will be reading that.
which, to my mind, is conclusively proved by most of the data and 99.9 percent of the scientific community
Well that certainly explains why he’s a fantasy writer, his mind is full of fantasy.
Conclusively proved, really? Than why does no one ever show us this conclusive proof?
99.9%, really? I’d like to know what he’s been smoking. 97% was bogus and at least there was papers (as greatly flawed as they were) produced to try to “back” that claim,whereas he’s completely pull 99.9% out of his nether regions.
Bleh…
I stopped reading A Song of Ice and Fire long before it became a TV series. The endless wallowing in the very worst of humanity’s inclinations left me feeling filthy and disgusted. An author who has so thoroughly infused himself with this view of humanity is not one that I care to support. Additionally, with this twisted view of humanity, it should come as no surprise that he believes mankind to be the cause of a coming apocalypse.
And, on a side note, for me, Fantasy and Science Fiction should inspire the imagination, and free you from the bounds of this (often) mundane world. These genres provide an incredible opportunity to take you to new and previously un-imagined places. To take this opportunity, and then force the reader into such a depressing and sick version of humanity is not what I call fun.
No redemption. No grace. No beauty. Nothing to stir the soul to greater heights…these are the legacy of GRRM’s novels. Meh…I have better things to do with my time.
rip
George R.R. Martin? Game of Thrones? Who and what are they, and who gives a flying frack?
George R.R. Martin?
sci-fi/fantasy writer
Game of Thrones?
a show filled with soft-code porn and violence broadcast on HBO based on a book series written by George R. R. Martin
(you could have learned all that just from a quick internet search)
Who and what are they,
see above
and who gives a flying frack?
depends on the what people are expected to give a “flying frack” about. for fans of the writer’s work and/or the TV shows, they might (out of curiosity) care a little bit about what he has to say on the subject. The rest of us however, have no reason to care what he as to say on the subject.
John, get a clue — I was being sarcastic. But I really don’t care about him & his children’s game.
Then next time you should give a clue (can’t get something that isn’t given) 😉
Maybe George R. R. Martin can explain to us how the CO2 levels oscillate so dramatically in Westeros!
He needs to explain the wild climate shifts that the story is centred around.
For those of you who’ve read the books or watched the TV series, I offer you this little gem with which I broke a co-worker:
The Red Wedding as reimagined by Bollywood.
Oy. Veh.
There is even better and crazier… In Canada:
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.4878032/why-this-b-c-man-sealed-himself-in-an-airtight-plastic-cube-for-14-hours-1.4878037
If that is not an IgNobel candidate…
“…It’s kind of ironic because I started writing ‘Game of Thrones’ all the way back in 1991, long before anybody was talking about climate change…”
Well it was being called “global warming” at the time, but come on. Hansen’s testimony before Congress was 1988. Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance” was published in June 1992, and it was full of global warming stuff people had been “talking about” for some time. When I took a course at GISS in fall 1992 or spring 1993, it was already something everyone was “talking about.”
This guy never bothered to lift a finger to do research and see how ignorant his claim was (or how ignorant he was of the topic in 1991)?
Michael, something else of note happened in1988. The IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was also founded in 1988, so GRRM’s been writing the A Song of Ice and Fire series in parallel with the climate-change posturing of politicians, their highly paid science lackeys, and the mainstream media, which is always on the lookout for a real or imaginary crisis.
Cheers,
Bob
The whole theme of Game of Thrones is that ..
WINTER IS COMING
A long and persistent winter is attempting to take over the world (ie a new ICE AGE)
Only CO2 can save us 😉
Why are the Klimate Klowns trying to stop the one weapon that could save us all.!
Give the guy a break! Maybe he has some brilliant ideas to save the planet by harnessing dragons as an alternative ‘renewable’ energy source, or as a more CO2 neutral substitute for aircraft. I can see it now…
Well, to be fair, his 99.9 consensus stat is far more accurate than the usually repeated 97%. After all, since any scientist that rejects the “consensus” isn’t really a scientist at all and should be ceremoniously drummed out of the world of science, then the “consensus” should be nothing less than 100%. The only question now should be who is this .1%, and why should they still get to be considered a legitimate scientists?
I see that the scientific consensus has now risen from 97 percent to 99.9 percent of the scientific community in GRRM’s mind. Perhaps he is confusing that with 99.9% of the Hollywood or Democratic Elites. Even Stalin never achieved the dizzying height of 99.9% approval
“What is GoT anyway?”
“I don’t know, but its creator said AGW is real and huge threat.”
“The books and the show must be trash then.”
Most of the comments in this page in a nutshell.
Four years ago I wrote the original “Winter is Coming” open letter to GRR Martin:
https://climatenuremberg.com/2014/09/05/an-open-letter-to-j-r-r-martin-and-the-makers-of-hbos-game-of-thrones/
I wouldn’t worry about finishing yours, Anthony. Even if it got a thousand times as many clicks as mine, it’d still would fall on deaf ears.
In it I begged HBO to change the Stark house words to something more scientifically-correct than the climate heresy of “Winter is Coming”, for example:
Perhaps this GRRM was a bit behind the times. I refer you to a Wikipaedia entry:
“The World in Winter (US title The Long Winter) is a 1962 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by British writer John Christopher. It deals with a new ice age caused by a reduction in the output of the Sun.”
John Christopher also wrote “The Death of Grass”. Respected SF authors always (well almost always) try to base their plot lines on good solid science. And where they overstep the boundaries they have to make it seem to be good science. For example, when the BBC (bow, genuflect) realised that the Good Doctor would not be able to make the next series, they had to invent a regeneration, which satisfied plausible science. And so we had eventually the best of all Doctors, Jon Pertwee.
The opening statement in his
response: “It’s kind of ironic because
I started writing “Game of Thrones”
all the way back in 1991, long before
anybody was talking about climate change”
reveals him as ignorant of the recent past
or a liar. Having read the endless warnings
of imminent “global cooling” for years back
in the 1970’s I am just tired of and disgusted
by the destructive proggy PC pap.