Guest essay by Eric Worrall
“The Wheel of Time” TV series apparently features magical powers, dark forces and a warmer climate.
Wheel of Time is set thousands of years from now, yet it’s still burdened with today’s climate change
December 22, 2021 7.41am AEDT
- Dann Mitchell Professor of Climate Science, University of Bristol
- Emily Ball PhD Candidate, Climate Science, University of Bristol
- Rebecca Áilish Atkinson Research Fellow, Cognitive Psychology, University of Sussex
- Sebastian Steinig Research Associate in Paleoclimate Modelling, University of Bristol
Wheel of Time, the 14-book epic fantasy now turned into an Amazon Prime TV series, is a medieval-style adventure set in the Third Age of the World of the Wheel. While not explicit in the storyline, notes from the late author suggest that the First Age was actually modern-day Earth, which ended with a dramatic event (perhaps even climate change). From these notes, we estimate the show takes place around 18,000 years from today.
For climate scientists like us, this poses an interesting question: would today’s climate change still be experienced in the World of the Wheel, even after all those centuries?
About a quarter of carbon dioxide emitted today will remain in the atmosphere even 18,000 years from now. According to biogeochemistry models, carbon dioxide levels could be as high as 1,100 parts per million (ppm) at that point. That’s compared with a present-day value of 415ppm. This very high value assumes that the Paris climate goals will be exceeded and that many natural stores of carbon will also be released into the atmosphere (melting permafrost, for instance).
But the high carbon dioxide concentrations do not necessarily mean a warmer climate. That’s because, over such a long period, slow changes in the orbit and tilt of the planet become more important. This is known as the Milankovitch Cycle and each cycle lasts for around 100,000 years. Given that we are currently at the peak of such a cycle, the planet will naturally cool over the next 50,000 years and this is why scientists were once worried about a new ice age.
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This Conversation article is almost as sad as endless stories about Santa’s reindeer dying from global warming. How can anyone be so obsessed about anthropogenic climate change, that they seriously try to relate a fictional world 18,000 years in the future to their obsession?
I have no problem with stories which involve climate change, I really enjoyed “The Day After Tomorrow“. Its a great adventure story, even if the scientific basis of the story is as ridiculous as the science of “Star Wars“.
“Hiero’s Journey” is an obscure book set in the distant future, which mentions warmer weather, but doesn’t go on about it. The characters in “Hiero’s Journey” have more pressing problems than worrying about whether their distant ancestors should have installed more renewables, like avoiding the radiation mutant horror screaming towards them. Snowpiercer is awesome.
I’ve never read “The Wheel of Time“, its one of those series which has lingered on my maybe list. I might still try the books – reader comments welcome. But now I’m a little nervous about watching the TV adaption.
Merry Christmas from WUWT & Australia
I’d like to see “The Wheel of Time” subtitled “The Dinosaurs Return (And They’re Pi$$ed Off)”. Dinosaurs like it hot and wet and lots of CO2. What’s not to like?
I haven’t read the books, but I have been watching the tv series. It’s a pretty decent fantasy, quite watchable. It does have a small amount of ‘woke’ in it (e.g., several gay couples) but not a lot and it’s not preachy or particularly ‘in your face’ with it as so many shows have become (which totally ruins them for me).
I should also have noted that I sure don’t get where the professors come up with the fictional world supposedly being hotter – in fact in many episodes it’s quite cold, snow, etc… and people dress for cool & cold weather, not warm. Maybe it’s different in the books, but at least in the TV series it’s sure not ‘warmer’ than present day!
hot, cold, its all you fault. Haven’t you been paying attention?
That 18000 year life time of CO2 now emitted is utter bunkum. The lifetime is about 8 years as measured from isotope analysis by real scientists.
We would just about have to burn all the fossil fuels available, at one time, to get the CO2 up to 1100ppm.
The plants would love it.
How did they determine this 18,000-year claim? A model?
Science fiction begets science fiction.
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Merry Christmas to Oz!.
Robert Jordan does indeed write of an Earth in the future and he sets it in a theoretical future where the climate has changed. He does not dwell on it too much. It’s a plot device.
The TV series, perhaps because of the world we currently live in, like many other TV shows, panders to a number of modern agendas and I’m sure that you can make your own suppositions about what they are.
My opinion regarding what you might do regarding reading and watching? The TV series is very well made. It’s visually stunning. It is very much worth watching for anyone interested in high fantasy fiction. However, the live action show will ruin the books for you if only for the fact that it ( the show ) has to, by necessity, condense the story into what I found to be far too short a season. I would definitely read the novels. I would wait until you are at the very least, ahead of the show before you watch that. But I would watch that. What can I say, I’m a fantasy geek.
Merry xmas to you and yours Eric from a miserably dull and damp Manchester UK.
Is it as bad as reading The Hobbit, and then watching the movies called “The Hobbit”? I couldn’t watch past the first one.
It is not the condensing of the books that turned me off the Amazon series; it is the woke agenda within the Amazon show. For instance, a female protagonist, Moraine, was in love with a man named Thom in the book; in the Amazon show, she is secretly in love with a woman. I stopped watching at that spot and have not returned.
All are also in well done audio books. Most people like ‘tell me a story’.
Read the books, never saw any of the TV shows and never will.
I strongly advise against reading the series. Nothing against the author, he is quite imaginative and the story does draw you in. But it never lets you out. If Jordan hadn’t passed away it would probably be 40 books by now and still spinning off new plot threads. New characters, a new theory of what is really happening, new horrors, no resolution.
Another author did finally wrap it all up, and to his credit the wrap-up is significantly more readable than the last volumes by Jordan. But he had to finish off several plot threads per page. And it still took him three volumes to do it!
I could not discern any real global warming hysteria in what I read. He seems to have the Big Bang theory mixed up with the oscillating universe theory. Not understanding either one.
For those watching the series, it seems from the reviews that the script writers are trying to make a real plot out of it. All power to them and good luck! If you really include all the plot threads and characters it will last 100 seasons. However, as with the Lord of the Rings and others the on-screen version cannot hope to match the thematic density and richness of the written text. Read it if you want the real deal.
Somehow, I thought Wheel of Time was placed in an alternate universe. Never read the books, but I did enjoy Katherine Kerr’s entire series based on a tribe of Celts/Gauls, when facing the Roman army, subsequently being led by a weird being to another world (like Earth, but different, where “magic” works) and setting up camp.
Sara, there are a few really good books like that though possibly not as literate as Katherine Kerr. She also has the sequel imperative. Not enough books selling to live on one or two, or even a multi-volume series. It seems since the invention of speech recognition software the independent literature universe has exploded.
No one like Dostoevsky or Thomas Pynchon in that market but lots of good stories that draw one in using the usual literary tricks. The good ones know how to start and stop a story arc, leaving a satisfactory grand conclusion after three or ten volumes. Each volume also complete, with actual character development. Jonathon Moeller is a good example. Jeff Wheeler.
By contrast, Jordan’s characters all develop down or implode. He never seemed to grasp the trick of continuing the story while completing a piece of it. Of course George R. R. Martin is even worse, not finishing his series even when the TV version is complete! It may not be possible to complete the books because the plot of the TV version diverges at major points. Someone else will have to do the “book version” of the TV series from the books.
Thank you, both you and Disputin (below). Something is going on, not sure what, but there is something stirring and it isn’t going to land on us. It will land on the people who deny the reality that they have no control over this planet.
I pity them, but not enough to feed them if they show up at my front door. I don’t do vegan cooking, and none of them are from Vega, anyway. (Pun intended.)
I did read the whole series and thoroughly enjoyed it. Sara is right in saying it is not set on Earth – it doesn’t specify anywhere. “Robert Jordan” ( I can’t remember his real name, but I have his obituary notice somewhere – he was quite a guy ), didn’t plan on more than a dozen books (but they’re big books), and the chap who finished off the series found it was necessary to go to fourteen.
Bruce claims new characters, but I can’t think of any major charecters after the first two or three books. Any way, you don’t need my permission to decide whether or not to read it. Just don’t expect to finish the series in 2122!
” Somehow, I thought Wheel of Time was placed in an alternate universe. ”
… Even more alternative than the universe where alarmists live?…
I do wonder sometimes if they actually come from another dimension: a dimension not only of sight, but of sound and fury….. Merry Christmas, all of you!
first 6 books are good. Jordan rambles on for 5k pages until Sanderson wraps.it up.
Read Jordan’s (James Oliver Rigney Jr.) Conan series and assiduously avoid getting ensnared in the endless Wheel of Time series.
Jordan received a degree in physics and worked for the US Navy as a nuclear engineer.
Still, that knowledge was gained before many modern atomic, particle, galactic theories were developed.
Robert Jordan was far closer to reality in his fiction writings than the yahoos who wrote these comments about the dramatized “Wheel of Time” TV fantasies.
Wow. Climate change causes weird, aggressive alien species to pop out of the ether. Must be fallout from RCP 8.5 again.
Greta.
Came from nowhere.
Weird.
Aggressive.
Merry Christmas
Sometimes, I just come to a stopping point before reading any further into twaddle, and here is what stopped me this time:
“carbon dioxide levels could be as high as 1,100 parts per million (ppm) at that point. That’s compared with a present-day value of 415ppm.” – article
Hmmm….. 1,100 PPM? That would make the planet quite green and heavily awash in plant life, probably a bodacious increase in the insect population as well as the size of bugs, and possibly an even higher level of rainfall. The Cambrian period had CO2 levels of 4,000 PPM, so what was the problem, again? Is that going to throw off this forecast?
Gee, I’m kind of excited about this! I might get to run into something like a 6-foot long centipede with a bad temper, or even a meganeura!!! I wonder if seeded ferns like Alethopteris could revive….
On another note, do these people even stop to think how silly they seem to more rational sorts like me?
“On another note, do these people even stop to think how silly they seem to more rational sorts like me?”
Not even for a nanosecond. To them, we’re not even real people.
Thanks and have a lovely New Year!!!
The bugs won’t increase in size because of a return to Cambrian levels of CO2, heat or rainfall. The partial pressure of O2 was much higher (at least in the Jurassic or Cretaceous period that I’m more familiar with, where there were dragonflies the size of birds). Insects breathe through little holes in their exoskeletons and can’t grow that big without lacking sufficient oxygen in our 21% o2 world. I’ve read that it might have been as high as 30% back then.
Like all religions, Carbon-alarmism has its core mysteries.
Such as that CO2 despite having an isotope measured half life in the atmosphere of 16 years, nonetheless persists from human emissions for all eternity .
And also that CO2 causes the glacial and interglacial cycles, despite the fact that CO2 levels follow – not lead – temperatures by many centuries.
CO2 without end, Amen.
Eric, you summed it up nicely with: “How can anyone be so obsessed about anthropogenic climate change, that they seriously try to relate a fictional world 18,000 years in the future to their obsession?” And then lie about it.
I thoroughly enjoyed fantasies by JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and others, but judging by the cover art, these allegedly future people have much more to worry about than a little warm weather. They have collectively forgotten most of the scientific and technological advances of the 19th-21st centuries. They ride horses, yet have the metallurgy to create fine swords and gear. Women are back to riding sidesaddle on small horses. Clearly, men have reestablished patriarchal society. The lunar orbit has descended to the point that they are in imminent danger of the ultimate extinction event. Evergreen trees and their clothing choices suggest that the world is likely cooler, not warmer. (Might as well have some fun with it. I won’t be reading the books or watching the series.)
And another thing. The authors:
What is the field of “climate science?” That is a made-up hodgepodge of unfocused science and liberal arts classes. Professors and graduates don’t know enough about anything to get a useful job in the real world. How did “cognitive psychology” find a role in this, except to help with climate messaging/propaganda? And of course, a modeler, who obviously doesn’t even know the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere within three orders of magnitude.
I gess they forgot to invite to the team a certain fiction-writer called Mann…
Should it be mentioned that U of Bristol is where Lewandowsky is a chair in cognitive psychology?
I believe that is also where sks John Cook is teaching.
Their teaching staff is obviously biased and anti-science.
Oh, now, Flash, you should be aware that a well-preserved hilted arsenical bronze sword was found recently, dating back 5,000 years ago, right around the time that the “Sea People” (probably Phoenicians) came pouring through the Straits of Gibraltar, raiding the coastal settlements of the Med. Came from eastern Turkey.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8055409/The-worlds-oldest-weapon-5-000-year-old-Anatolian-sword-discovered-Armenian-Monastery-Venice.html
I’m very disappointed that some “genius” with nothing better to do has decided to dissect Tom Bombadil in a video. I don’t understand why these silly people have to take the real “magic” out of something like that. All they do is look silly, like they’ve been caught with a hand in the cookie jar.
They dissected this?
Shame on them.
It was a woman, Vittoria Dall’Armellina at Università Ca’ Foscari, who recognized that the sword was far older than the middle ages.
While it was totally irrelevant to anything in the real world, I once sat up all night reading a book of collected essays on Hamlet. Total fantasy but quite involving.
Wheel of Time is trying to rival Game of Thrones. What is unbelievable in both fantasy worlds is that a Medieval level of technology would persist for thousands of years. That’s like thinking a growing child would stay at 9 years old and grow no further for decades. No – once you have steel and metallurgy, and chemical ability such as “wildfire”, then industrial technology will inevitably follow in a few centuries. Guns, electricity, internal combustion engine, electronics and computers, flight, nuclear etc. Not holding jousting tournaments for thousands of years.
But wheel of time does star Rosamund Pike so it can’t be all bad.
Perhaps, but in the real world the Chinese Ming dynasty walked away from an ocean-going fleet in the 1500s and they never thought about the applications of gun powder. It takes an open society and a spirit of scientific inquiry to move civilization forward.
Of course, now that I said that, it makes perfect sense that the warmists like a fantasy about a stagnant society with no real industry driven by ‘magic’…
English monks had perfected a very good method of steel production, but the ransacking and suppression of the monasteries at the start of the English ‘reformation’ set technology back hundreds of years.
Carbon steel production methods were first invented more than 2000 years ago, at various places including China and also Tanzania in Africa. However the best known place for carbon steel production in BC times was present day Sri Lanka and south India. They made carbon steel – called “Seric iron” – in a method exploiting monsoon winds to generate 1000+ C furnace temperatures. From India steel making technology (like much else including “Arabic” numerals) spread through the Middle East. Thus in medieval Europe among the Vikings, most swords were still cast iron and brittle but some privileged warlords possessed the legendary “Ulfberht” swords which were carbon steel. These conferred an obvious advantage in combat. The steel came either from Germany or from as far away as the Middle East or Central Asia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel
Later of course advanced steel making spread throughout Europe and worldwide.
Oddly Charles Lyell’s first edition of his 1830-1833 Principles of Geology argued that time was cyclical. He saw the dinosaurs returning along with their appropriate envirnoments.
“About a quarter of carbon dioxide emitted today will remain in the atmosphere even 18,000 years from now.”
BS, BS and more BS.
The only possibility where this would even be plausible is if all the biomass on the planet dies and the oceans have boiled away.
About a quarter of carbon dioxide emitted today will remain in the atmosphere even 18,000 years from now
That must be so in the Wheel of Time fantasy world. Not in the real world of course where CO2’s half life in the atmosphere is 16 years.
But in light of the carbon cycle in nature and the fact that northern spring and summer remove about 80% of the co2 built up over the rest of the year, what does that even mean? These climate so-called scientists are acting like co2 is radioactive or has the cooties, instead of being a basic building block of life.
That’s got to be a cherry gig. Modelling something you know even less about than current climate, which they suck at modelling. You can just make shit up.
Never let data get in the way of a good model!
I don’t know what these people are talking about. A significant part of the plot is crop failure and starvation because spring fails to arrive and it stays cold. I read the series, enjoyed it very much.
https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2021/dec/25/climate-science-prevails-over-politics/
Craig, I wouldn’t take his ideas seriously at all. Similar crank theories abound.
In reply to:
“I really enjoyed “The Day After Tomorrow“. Its a great adventure story, even if the scientific basis of the story is as ridiculous as the science of “Star Wars“.”
The problem is the great reset.
The Day After Tomorrow had a plot. Big special effects. That was before the great reset.
Before the great reset Hollywood cared about making movies that people watched and enjoyed. Positive movies which were imaginative and creative. Like Forest Gump or Star Wars. Catchy music sound tracks. Surprises and humour. No politics. No lectures. No serial killers or slow pointless, mean torture games. Family entertainment.
The great reset started with Covid, which started official internet censorship for political reasons, out of control energy cost increases, the start of energy shortages, and so on.
As part of the great reset, Hollywood/Movie Industry was taken over by the corrupt, stupid, wok, clueless, angry Democrats/Left wing who are trying (following a plan) to destroy both culture and art.
The Netflx movie Don’t Look Up, a stinking/fake ‘parody’ about climate change, is a perfect example of Hollywood’s great reset.
A list stars. Angry clueless characters. Terrible dialog. No plot. No humour.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dont_look_up_2021
“As part of the great reset, Hollywood/Movie Industry was taken over by the corrupt, stupid, wok, clueless, angry Democrats/Left wing who are trying (following a plan) to destroy both culture and art.”
Yeah. You gotta watch out for those woks.
Actually, I just got done watching “Don’t Look Up” and thought it was pretty funny – it pokes a ton of fun at our society’s current obsession with themselves, politics, “likes” and social media coverage, lying clueless politicians more worried about the next election and the polls than the end of the world, and so on. There wasn’t anything in it about climate change that I remember – it was all about a 5km to 10km asteroid impact, e.g., a “planet killer” event. It’s not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s watchable and funny.
It’s also really weird that you claim before the “great reset” as you call it, there were supposedly no serial killers in tv shows and movies. Er… Silence of the Lambs & Hannibal Lecter – 1988? Pschyo & Bates Motel? American Psycho? Pulp Fiction? Se7en? The Green Mile? Twin Peaks? Basic Instinct? Clue? It? Halloween (1978)? There are reams of examples of shows and movies with serial killers in them going back almost as long as we’ve had tv & movies – and long long before “woke” which started well before covid and what you’re calling the “great reset”!
And fwiw, I should probably note that I’m also really irritated by the preachy “woke” takeover of so many tv shows and movies. It’s despicable.
I agree that Don’t Look Up is very funny. While many claim it’s about climate change I agree that there’s much more to it than that. It could just as easily be about refusal to use nuclear power. And the failure of politics and media.
At Rotten Tomatoes there’s a very easy way to see the woke-ness or anti-wokeness of a film. If the “approved” puritan reviewers give a low score but the public give a much higher score, it means something in the film is offensive to wokes. Thus it’s worth watching. Conversely if it’s praised by reviewers but disliked by the public, then it’s a woke tract.
I just also watched “Unforgivable” starring Sandra Bullock. Reviewers score 38%, public 78%. Watch it and you’ll see why.
I just watched Don’t Look Up
I too found it mostly funny but of course it was all allegory for us supposedly not taking climate change seriously, it’s a DiCaprio movie, a pretty blunt instrument.
Good point about using the Rotton Tomatoes scores to sort woke from non-woke! I usually look at the IMDb user ratings, but every now and then ‘woke’ ones will still score fairly high. But I think you’re exactly right, comparing critic reviews to public reviews ought to help sort ’em out… High IMDb scoring ones that are woke would likely also have a really high critic rating at RT, rather than a low one.
Blows my mind that people are trying to claim Don’t Look Up is about AGW – but then heck, everything is caused by AGW these days, just like anyone who doesn’t tow the leftist line 100% is a racist.
The covid pandemic isn’t nearly as bad as the pandemic of insanity that’s so rampant these days and has so very many people utterly divorced from reality.
Fantastic series of books especially if you have children who are of proper age;( teens at least) made avid readers of mine. As a father I felt the books also taught many life lessons. For me the only downside was that Jordan extended the story long beyond a reasonable length, Money????. I even sent him an email threatening to come back and haunt him if I died b4 he finished it. Karma’s a bitch I guess. B. Sanderson who finished the series is quite good and I like how he finished it. Of note, Both my sons and I have re read all the books and get more out of them each time.
Got 10 mins into the first episode – or was it a day, or maybe it just felt like it, then I went to bed.
It’s called “fiction” for a good bloody reason.
“It’s called “fiction” for a good bloody reason.”
seems people can’t tell the difference anymore
The “Wheel of Time” TV show is a mess. The original story by Robert Jordan is not much more than a guide for the TV show. There is A LOT missing from the TV show that is in the books. Much of the missing plot is germane to the story. Essentially, the show runners rewrote the story, badly. The WOT TV show is a different story with a similar overarching plot line. I won’t be watching anymore seasons.
As for the books, I read them years ago. I enjoyed them, a nice bit of escapism. But Robert Jordan does tend to get bogged down in the inner narratives of the various characters and sometimes, overly detailed descriptions.
As for the CAWG disciples using a fantasy story to support their climate change narrative, that seems appropriate. One story is High Fantasy, and the other is Dystopian Syfy.
Brian Aldiss’s Helliconia trilogy is really good.
I read the whole series and would say it is colder world. I have not seen the Amazon stuff.
And let’s not mention that CO2 level trends lag temperature trends.
Geohysterically temperature trend is seen to decrease then the CO2 level decreases after that!
Wattsupwithdat? ……………
Well that makes sense, unlike climate science. The world cools, for some reason -sun, orbit, volcanoes or asteroid impact – then the oceans can dissolve more co2 into the cooler waters. If it warms, then the balance moves to release more co2. Basic chemistry that apparently the climate scientists failed.
Which seems to indicate that CO2 concentrations can persist for a fairly long time. I seem to recall some articles about CO2 levels remaining high for 2500 years after temperatures dropped significantly.
I would highly recommend that you not read the series. The first two or three books are very good and original. After that it appears the author was getting paid by the word and had no incentive to finish the series. I gave up after 6 or 7 very long books when it became evident that no ending was in sight. It was too bad that the author blew it after such a strong start. It could have been epic.
I partially agree, it seemed the middle books were overly extended and spent a lot of words without moving the story line but still a good read.
Is The Conversation even a third rate source?
Wife bought me the first book for Christmas, but you tell me there is 14?
Only now reading game of thrones
You’re not going to be needing any more books for a while. I have all the hardcover versions of both. Although a good read, game of thrones seems a waste since he never finished writing the series before going to video, pissed me and my sons off waiting for something that never came.
I read the whole series. I did not know there is a TV series. I don’t watch TV (or Amazon) could be why 😉 Climate alarmist live in a fantasy world, so it make sense they would add this to their toolbox.
When you can do that ‘suspension of disbelief’ necessary for everything from on-stage Greek tragedies to Disney cartoons, The Wheel of Time is quite enjoyable downtime reading.
Oh my , UK might have a 27’c heatwave , all duck for cover 🙂