Transition to Green

Transition they say.  They need time to transition.  They need time to transition from Fossil Fuels to the Green Economy.  How much time?  

The answer is almost no time is needed.  

Canada.  Four provinces produce almost all their power from clean sources: Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Newfound.  Three of those are the most populous provinces.  Three of the remaining provinces receive more sunlight and are windier than the rest of the country.  Two of those three provinces are littered with holes that reach the warmest parts of the Earths Crust, meaning they are prime locations for geothermal power.  The remaining three Provinces are on the coast and therefore get a lot of wind all year long. One of them gets the one of largest tides in the world so tidal power is a possibility.  

Solar is the fastest type of energy to build, you just need a solar panel and a place to put it and then plug it in.  Wind power, you need to build a tower first.  Geothermal you need to dig a hole to the hot stuff, preferably to temperatures of 400°C and then you need to build a steam power plant.  The temperature really only needs to be above 100°C but I have an idea that if it is hotter it is better.  Nuclear power plants take a decade to build.  Same with hydro, but most large projects have already been completed, because they are the easiest things to build, so most of them are already built.

Complaints:

The sun only shines during the day:  most of the power used in a 24hour day is used when the sun is shining.

Cloud cover limits power production: rare is the day that clouds cover all parts of a province, spread out the solar power plants, put the excess in batteries and use when the sun is not shining.

The wind does not blow all the time: it blows most of the time at higher elevations, ie up a tower.  The wind blows mostly at night, it blows mostly in winter too.  So, when the sun is not shining, the wind is usually blowing.

Nuclear waste is a problem, but it is not as big a problem as the alternative.  It does not produce mountains of waste like coal ash does.  It is a problem, but we need to tackle this problem right now.  In any case, we are not going to use nuclear for a huge chunk of power anyway.

Electricity from one source of fossil fuel  has always been a problem; generation was dependent on the price of the fuel.  Moving to multiple sources with battery backup is the best solution.  We use most of our power when we are awake.  Less power when we sleep.  We need to build a system that produces a background level of electricity equal to the minimum power used during the day.  The background energy requirements will be fueled with electricity from Hydro, Geothermal, and Nuclear.  We can't change production amounts to these type of plants easily, energy lags greatly between surplus and deficit.  Wind and Solar power can fill in the gaps, producing as much energy as it can when it can.  The part of the system that makes it all work is a system of batteries.  The batteries charge when there is excess energy and they provide power when there is a deficit.  They can switch between the two states on a second by second basis, meaning little or no brown outs.  

Moreover, if our provinces are linked, if the power requirements of the nation are linked, there will be greater resilience in the system.  If we treat North America as one system, then the resilience of the system strengthens more so.  

What is stopping this transition?  People are not building green power technology.  Collectively, we know how to do it, but fossil fuels are subsidized and therefore cheaper.  Remove the subsidies, or better yet move them to green power technology and we will quickly be there.  

Green cars.  We have the technology, but governments are not interested in them.  Electric cars are expensive, because gas powered car makers have a lot of pull and electric ones no pull.  Stop it.  Stop building Gas powered vehicles.  The car companies know it will happen, they are preparing the way now, but we need to tell them that the end is now!  Not in five years.  

Realistically, transition will hurt some people a lot, but realistically not transitioning will hurt almost everyone a lot more soon.  

If fourteen year old Greta Thunberg could see that two years ago as clear as day, why can't we?  

Transitioning is not the problem.  The problem is understanding that it is necessary now.  Well, necessary ten years ago, but now is the best we can hope for.  

Carbon Neutral by 2050 is a joke, we need to be Carbon Negative as soon as we can.

Brown Face: the lie

So the news this week has been mostly centered on the election and on the Prime Minister and his past where he dressed up in Brown Face and Black Face.  Dominated.  Everywhere around the world.

Black Face and Brown Face were serious things in their day.  It was when a white person would dress up and a Native person, a Black person or a Chinese person to entertain white people and make fun of the assumed culture.  No actors of the given races were availible, or more likely, they were not allowed to act.  Or when they did they were given roles that were insults.  The Lone Ranger's Native sidekick was named Tonto, for slow or stupid.  So, clearly when white people don the guise of another race and don the colour of their skin, this is a bad thing when there is no context.  

The position that I have to take as a white person is that it was an unconscionable act, in the least very stupid.  And because I am white the feeling is that, I Must, say that it is wrong.

Natural20 is Indian, that is her cultural base is from India, and she thinks it was stupid but does not hold it against him.  She holds other things against him like Election Reform and other important issues.  She said it like this: he was at a costume party and it was themed and he dressed as Alladin and he took it too far, but after appropriating the dress and everything else, coloring his face was just a minor step to complete his image.  Then she chuckled, as no Indian would ever want to be that dark, they all want to be light skinned.  

Half the responses on the internet, I say half, but in reality it was more like 90% of the ones I saw, seemed to exonerate his behavour from 18 years ago saying, that his actions in the years following the incident bely any perceived insult by dressing Brown Face.  The people in his school where the insult was perpetrated felt that he had given no offense at the party and that his context, meaning he as the type of teacher he was, no one thought he was doing anything racist at the time or since.  The people thought he took his role beyond what was necessary, but it was not meant to make fun of any culture.

That said, I am white and some would say that I am just defending my tribe.

And are they?  The Liberal party was quick to move on, but e Conservatives and the other parties were not.  The Conservatives were a little two faced, they emphasized the event to the press and admitted that they had dug the photos up to be used during the election, but in private memorandum to party members made no mention of this incident.  Did that mean that they did not really care?  The other parties, the green and the NDP held the photos more strongly.  The NDP, the only leader of a party that is a minority, a brown faced minority at that, is not eager to forgive, certainly not publicly.  The Greens with the only female leader, which is a different sort of minority, stated that they thought that this was a distraction from important issues.  They were not saying that racism was not important, they were saying that in the face of climate destruction, everything pales in importance.  The People's Party of Canada, also right wing, seemed to say that the liberals were racists just like them, but their leader was hiding it better.  

So.  It comes down to this: the polls suggest that the Liberals have 37% of popular vote, Conservatives, 34%, Greens 10%, NDP 9% and the PPC 5% and 4-5% undecided.  What this is all about is 1-2% of the vote.  With 5 parties, 3% of the vote is the difference between a majority government and a minority government.  In a post electoral reform election, this poll would mean a minority government with the Left wing parties supporting the Liberals.  But in that absence, it is about moving the conservatives up 3% and moving more people to the Greens and the NDP. 

Listen.

37% is enough for a overwhelming majority with 4 parties.  With 5 parties it is also as likely.  If the Liberals lose 3% to the Greens and NDP but the Conservatives maintain their 34% it becomes more likely a minority government.  But it is not certain. Nothing is certain.  The Right amounts to 39% of the vote and the Center 37%, the Left 19%.  In our electoral system 37% can be a majority or a minority.  

I have not looked into many of the policies of the parties, but I know the Conservatives, they speak nice words but have hidden agendas and their actions make their words lies.  The Liberals are Conservatives with a conscious, which means they mean the nice things they say, but they don't say what they mean: they are an old party that is used to the revolving door of Canadian politics, sweeping to power for a decade then switching with the conservatives for another decade: they believe this is how the world works and it is a game.  They are wrong.

American Politics: a perception

I have said before that my awakening to world politics was the Iran Iraq war, but other things were occurring at that time too.  The 40th president of the United States was elected at that time too.  He was an actor, which was thought to be odd at the time, I had not seen any of his movies and he had been retired from movie making all of my life, but he was an actor.  A lot of today's politics is said to come from his time.  He gave the church more powers and set the path for the country to become a theocracy.  He also nearly started WWIII, and he oversaw the fall of the 'Evil Empire' of the Soviet Union.  He saw the Berlin Wall come down too.  He was the first President who had dementia in office.  He was shot, someone tried to kill him.  And he started the Star Wars initiative, trying to arm space; that is what almost started WWIII.  And he had no qualifications to hold the office of president; he was an actor.  Just looked him up, he was also the governor of California for eight years, probably the reason why I never saw him act.   

He was also the first president to tie the Republican party to religion and that also tied the political system to a partisan system.  It was always a partisan system, there were usually only two choices us and them, but in his years it started to go down the road of this is a good policy if we do it, but if they do it, it is a bad policy.  For an example, when the President had people break in to the oppositions head quarters in the 70s, he resigned because his own supporters thought he did a bad thing.

Fast forward to today, we, the world, has an American President that is allowed to do illegal acts every day because the opposition knows that it can pass censure on him because the President's Party controls one of the two houses in government, and they know that that party will shut down any bill that casts their president, their party in a poor light.  

The Democratic Party did something four years ago, and the Republican Party decried it and pronounced it as "Evil", but now, circumstances are different; they can do the same thing except ten times worse and it is a good thing, Holy even.  It is not just one thing, it is everything.  Having extra marital affairs, imprisoning children, wearing a tan suit, loading the supreme court with morally questionable people, more and more and more.  Too many to count too much that it is all rolling in to one.  

But the big one is Obstruction of Justice, in other words getting involved in court cases or legal proceedings to influence the decisions.   

Using the office to personally enrich himself.

Hypocrisy.  I know, everyone thinks that this is a defining trait for all politicians, but really that is unfair.  In this case I mean instances where the president rails against things that he has personally taken advantage of multiple times.  

Changing the language.  Fake news: news that you don't agree with is fake, except fake literally means untrue, not real.  

Illegal Immigrants as a synonym for refugees or asylum seekers: quite literally the opposite meaning refugees and asylum seekers are people who would rather have stayed in their own country but can't and still live, they are not immigrants in the traditional sense, and it is completely legal to seek asylum.  The problem as I see it is these people are poor and have no political power, which is part of e reason why they are refugees, if they were wealthy or had power in their own countries they would not have to flee.  The other thing is he has fixed the idea that refugees are all criminals.  When ever the President talks about refugees, he never says refugees by-the-way, he says illegal and criminals instead.  He refused refugees from Hurricane Dorian, because he said they were criminals.  Criminals who had lost their homes and families in a storm and were trying to find a place to stay until they could rebuild and sought the closest country to them.

Hinting that it is time for the US to become a dictatorship.  

And that last one is it, the most troubling thing.  In 2016 when the election was called, Trump had a speech prepared how Hillary had used illegal means to win the election, had rigged the election, but he won and had to make up a new speech. 

This time, after he has disenfranchised the vote from so many people, if he loses, he may not choose to accept the results.  He may call on his supporters to rise up.  And if they do,there will be war.  

Speaking of war.  Recent wars where the US was involved in: the break up of Yugoslavia, Syrian civil war, the Libyan Civil war were during the Democratic Party, they were all coalition wars or UN wars.  The Persian gulf war, the invasion of Somalia, the invasion of Afghanistan, the US-Iraq war, possibly the US-Iran war (it looks likely) all were republican administration wars.

This would not matter as much to me except that it appears that Canada is getting dragged into a similar partisanship in its politics too.  And I fear it, dread it. 

Refining a setting For D&D 5e Caranus plus ideas

Geography of the East Bank

There are two notable features.  The Mountains, called many different things to different people.  They extend beyond the distance that anyone can expect to travel to the South and to the North.  To the East they remain without pass and reach far into the sky, most of the peaks are too high to climb and are all covered with ice even during the longest summers.  There are many valleys in amongst the peaks where Giants, Elves and dwarves dwell, but most of the dwarves live under the mountain in pursuit of wealth.  The River, known as the Great River, as it is the largest river anywhere.  At times, boats sailing in the middle of this river have lost their way because they could not see the edges of the river; when the river floods this is a quite common experience.  The river moves across the landscape like a giant snake's curves move as it goes forward, erasing civilizations as it does so.  Cities that had direct access to the Great River for a century have been left alone a week's journey overland from it, almost overnight.  The fringes of the river are the most fertile lands anywhere.  The river floods in an intricate schedule based on the little year and the long year; the melting of the snows in the mountains cause local flooding, the tropical rains in the extreme north send floods southward in the long summers, but the peak of those floods arrives this far south many months after the rain first fell.  The western side of the mountains seems to reap a bountiful harvest of rain and snow throughout the year from the weather sweeping off the great plains of Caranus.

To the South is the Earldom of Causnought, a city that is based at the western eaves of Gwendyl Wöse the Elven Kingdom that gives its name to the forest therein.  Causnought is on a surprisingly stable river that flows through that forest to the Great River.  Up until a generation ago it was a small insignificant city of survivors from other failed cities in the region.  They farmed and traded with the elves and the outside world.  This changed recently as an enterprising clan of dwarves opened up trade with the Empire and the city through Gwendyl Wöse.  

Gwendyl Wöse is an ancient forest.  It is a temperate rainforest with trees that are thousands of years old with a lofty city of Hight Elves, set in the natural boughs of the trees.  Magic keeps the winters milder, the rain falls cold but it rarely snows.  The roots of the trees the forest is wild with thick dense bush that makes passage through the lower regions almost impossible except to the Wild elves that live there.  In the extreme east of the forest the forest climbs the mountains and the magic of the forest fails, the scant population of elves here are mountain elves.  Most of the elves that live here are Wild Elves, they are nearly xenophobic preferring to keep to themselves; High Elves are more diplomatic, but compose only a quarter of the population.  They trade with outsiders and travel further afield when they are young but invariably return after a few years.  The Mountain Elves are the vast minority on the land, living in the East, they make up a twentieth part of the elves here, but their extended community includes all the Mountain elves of the area a number equal to all the elves in Gwendyl Wöse.  

Trandle's Stand was built of the refugees of another city that fell to the Great River in a Thousand Year Flood.  The town was built with a paranoia of flooding close in mind.  All the larger buildings have their entrance on the second floor and this includes all the warehouses.  This is a reaction to the downfall of the previous city, who boasted that it was flood proof, whose walls were higher than the highest flood that there ever was, which served the city until that statement was no longer true.  The city of is ruled by the heads the family guilds in a complex calculation based on the profitability of the guild; the wealthiest guilds make the rules.  

The Free City of Dhewtudum is the most recent failed city.  It was an outpost for the nascent Dwarven Empire where the wares of the Empire were traded for goods that the Empire desired.  When the city fell twenty-five years ago to the predations of a massive Red Dragon.  The city was built on the foundations of a volcano long dormant, thought to have been dormant for dozens of thousands of years, and last year became active.  The clouds of smoke was visible even to the City of Gutral Mastekeena, and the pyrotechnic display seen over the horizons.  The wealth of generations of dwarves lies still in the hoard of that dragon.  

Gutral Mastekeena is on the other side of The Great River.  Although it has been in existence for over two thousand years, it has never attempted to expand to this side of the river.  

()()()()()()()()()()()

Overall, the climate of this area is complex.  The latitude is about 50° South, so over the course of the 24 year long cycle it has the weather similar to central British Columbia, with more rain.  Lots of rain, similar to the west coast of British Columbia, but with more extreme temperature swings.  This is what the weather is like in the Autumn and Spring periods.  The Winter years are more like the Yukon, with more rain, something like a region at latitude 75° with shorter days of Winter as opposed to the longer days that that latitude receives In their summer.  The Summer period receives the length of day similar to 50° latitude, but with the intensity of 25° latitude.  Basically, the day length varies in winter from 8 hours to 16 hours in Summer, and the suns are lower in the sky in the winter too, and higher in the Summer.

Additionally, the river rarely freezes over.  Partly that is because the river is moving, but also it is because the water it carries is from warmer climes, which means while there is a lot of snow, it is wet snow and the closer to the river the more it is likely to be rain.

History of the East Bank

The feel of this region is that it is old, very very old.  In the areas that don't flood traveling across the plain appears simple and expedient, but can be dangerous if not done with the minimal care.  One is likely to trip over a wall that has been overgrown by a centuries growth or could it be a wall from and ancient town from a thousand years ago, or a city from ten thousand years ago.  This area has been continuously inhabited for the past ten thousand years, perhaps twice that and there are rumors that it was inhabited by the First Ones before that.  Still, the river has done a great job at erasing many of those cities.  

The areas around The Great River are all new.  The age of the ground in the flood plain is measured in months on the surface and possibly years at greater depths, some portions might be as old as a century, but that is as old as the land gets.  The River turns and twists, forms Oxbow lakes.  It floods and the silt erases all the landforms made since the last flood.  The people on the floodplains live in silted huts that can float when they need to.  The land is rich and plants grow thick here.  Crops grown in this soil can feed nations, nay, empires.  Harvesting the crops is the hard part.  The flooding is difficult to predict and errors mean crop loss.  Crops like rice flourish in the wet and often produce bumper crops.  Fish, waterfowl, frogs and many other animals flourish here too and the people eat them all.  There is no nation in the river.  There are no cities in the river.  No empire lays claim to it, only the River Elves can reall saw to live in it.  

The have been a great many cities along The Great River over the years, many still stand on its banks, but the majority of all the cities are in ruins.  Recently, Dhewtudum fell to a Dragon of immense power, and since the dragon still sleeps there, no one has ventured that way in a score of years.  Stuj, the next to most recent tragedy in this area, fell victim to hubris and its mighty walls that were said to be impregnable to the River, were breached during an unimaginable flood.  The victims remain within the walls, tales of intelligent dead controlling the streets keep all but the fool hardy from attempting to scale it's walls; the truth claims them.  Stuj fell not a century ago.  

Gladen fell when the access to The Great River failed.  Canals were dug out to the River and the life of the city was maintained, but the fickle river swung close again and destroyed the work of decades in a year and then swung out a hundred kilometers to the West a few years later taking the trade with it.  The people left and formed the base for the city of Causnought.  All the stones that built that city were taken from that ruin, built in its shadow shy by three hundred years.  

The stone of that city came from another, the Great city of Awsland, located due west of Dhewtudum.  That city was a great site that had no desire to be a city, but the keep a master Rogue that scoured the region of many treasures and set up a keep just to hold his wealth, the city came about later.  The original purpose has been left in obscurity for generations of elves, but it is known that the core of the city, the seed was a contemporary of Gutral Mastekeena.  The fall of the city was hundreds of years ago, and the raising of Gladen was done with the stone of Awsland.  

All those cities earned the majority of their wealth with trade with the Empire in the Dwarven Lands.  Dhewtudum, the trading city of the Dwarven Empire has been there that long and more, but perhaps the secrets of these ruins can lead to knowledge to free the wealth from the Dragon's Hoard?

@$@$@$@$@$@$@$@$@$@$@$

Recent history

The dragon came without warning.  The dragon arrived in the dark just after midnight on the darkest longest night mid winter.  The dragon came with an army that had encircled the city in secret.  When it struck it was with fire that melted the citadel in minutes.  Those that fought, died.  Those that fled died.  Only one in ten that fled were successful, only one in a hundred had that chance.  Most of the survivors of the city were not in the city at the time of the attack.  For every citizen who fled the attack successfully, two others were able to flee the carnage in the aftermath.  A total of 6500 survived a city of half a million.  Most were Empire Dwarves and they fled to the Empire, but the rest were of a smattering of every other race nearby.  

The invasion occurred not long ago, six months.  The countryside near the ruin of Dhewtudum was one night filled from nowhere with thousands of kobolds.  Where they came from became clear only in the aftermath, but where they came from was no matter to whom they attacked.  Villages and towns were destroyed farms were pillaged and people murdered from the fringes of Gwendyl Wöse, Causnought, Trandle's Stand and the very edges of the mountains thought to the edge of The Great River, nothing was left untouched. Some notable places were left intact like lucky buildings in a tempest, heroes were born protecting villages, heroes died unsung more often.  

Afterwards, the countryside breathed at last when the suns rose over the mountains that morning and the survivors came together.  Many of the towns had no survivors, a few had some.  The cities with steady patrols fought the invaders and pushed them back, some ground was lost but the people woke to the dangers of a dragon neighbour.  The question was who was going to make the next step.  

Adventure areas:

Politics in Tradle's Stand (low level and higher level possible)

The Ruins of Stuj (mid to high level)

The Ruins of Awsland (low level to mid level)

The Ruins of Gladen (low to mid level)

Find the treasures of Awsland hidden for a thousand years, leads to a missing stone with inscription in Gladen.  They found a portion of the inscription in a building in Causnought, that was scavenged from Gladen.  The inscription when read in the temple in Awsland opens a crypt to treasures lost for a thousand years that include maps to the treasury of the kings of Gutral Mastekeena, a hidden vault in the mountains, and a riddle about a powerful weapon that can control/destroy dragons.  Then the players have a real quest, to fight and defeat the dragon.  And they must do it before the Dragon's forces wipe out the region completely.

/-/-/-/-/-/

What makes the Characters, the Player Characters special?  It is the question.  It has been the question since the start of D&D.  There was an answer back in the day, when The World of Greyhawk released a setting update.  It was called Wars.  It described a world that was torn up by a few large wars that drew in all the people's of the setting.  Several countries disappeared, some got bigger, some shrank and one broke up.  And it was based on the premise that certain adventures were never played and events progressed with out the PCs.  There was one adventure that if played and was completely successful, the events of several parts of the wars would have changed a lot and reversed even.  It was an interesting idea.  

Other roleplaying games failed on this level, the players really did not mean anything to the setting and there was nothing that could be done about it.  

So, how do you make your players feel that they are noticeably affecting the way the world runs?  One way is to make them a part of a large project that people are depending on.  Another way is to have the characters stumble upon greatness, that adventure that they just completed was key to a villain's overall plan and thus are now world players.   

4-6 first level people are not really worth noticing.  A group of 4-6 people that have come off a string of victories, who are 5th level, are noteworthy people and together represent a force that is equal to a noble in a nation and are ready to get missions from the leaders of the nation or large companies/guilds.  More successes, or even an impressive defeat may set up their renown and lead to better things, they might be 7th-10th level, they together are as powerful as a king.  They will get missions that impact the nation and further.  Missions that affect Nations.  By the time 4-6 reach 20th level they should be a power in themselves, perhaps they set up nations or more, bring other nations to their knees?

In the adventure above, the fight against the Dragon of Dhewtudum, the characters might very well reach greater than 20th level, perhaps 30th level, if they do that, they might just set themselves up as rulers of the East Bankand form a nation South and North from The Great River to the Dwarven Empire and lead armies South and North and expand into a great empire, because they are Great People alone, but together they are more.