CO2 did not destroy Venus

Not long ago someone in the United States tweeted that this Climate Change thing is a hoax, because Venus has 97%CO2 and it is still there, so 0.04% CO2 is not going to destroy the Earth!  No it was not Trump, but he certainly reTweeted the post.  The danger has never been for the planet, but it has been a danger for the inhabitants.  

I recall that I had once thought of a plot for a SciFi novel that I wanted to write.     It was a story about three people that survived the doom that was Global Climate Change.  Each chapter would have a name, like so many books have been doing lately.  Each character gets to tell a story about what their survival has been like.  The first person a scientist that lived in the Arctic and his life venturing out onto the northern bogs as he carried out his research to remove Carbon from the air and the biosphere, his world is bleak, his habitat is fairly comfortable, but when he leaves his dwelling he must don a oxygen mask, as he would suffocate in the atmosphere that contains only half the oxygen that it would have had in the year 2000.  He sees the results of the devastation.  All mammals are dead, most of the animals are dead in fact.  There are birds flying around, but they prey on other birds to survive or plants.  He talks about other survivors that some other animals have also survived, crocodiles and fish, but these are smaller in number.  The plants are suffering too, but because there are no humans and fires do not have enough oxygen to burn, there is an abundance of litter.  All sorts of interesting sciencey stuff would be in these chapters.

Another character would be the son of a wealthy Televangelist living in an underwater habitat just off the Florida Keys.  The habitat was one of many shelters constructed by the wealthy and God's Blessed ones, a large cult that survived the Rapture and is waiting for God to free them to walk in Paradise.  It has been a long wait, bunt they are there waiting still.  Some of the cults have gone silent after the first year when they opened their habitats to walk into heaven and suffocated with the billions.  Now twenty years later this habitat is one of the few that have not been taken in and died from the sins of Hubris and Conceit.  

The third character lives in a computer.  She is young and was digitized not long before the end of earth.  She is one of millions who were sent on a long journey to a different planet.  Her spaceship is a small foot ball sized computer with a gigantic sail that first used the Sun's light to propel it and later used or will use e sail to slow that ship down.  The plan is to crash the ship into a new home and rewrite the ecosystem of the new home to be suitable for human life.  The rewrite would take a thousand years as self replications machines are built that alter the new planet.  These robot have the capability to creat life, building it from the cellular level and building bigger and bigger machines that can build bigger and bigger life.  This way they hope to be able to repopulate humanity amounts the stars.  The hope is that will be able to reintegrate the digitized humans into new bodies.  But at is the future.  Right now they are traveling through space, or have they landed? The computer representation of the world is a fractal fantasy similar to World of Warcraft, where the inhabitants are able to be entertained.  There is education as each individual is taught stuff about what is happening and the world they are going to.  About how the earth based astronomers selected these planets and sent the voyagers onwards 

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My point was that climate change, could destroy the ecosystem enough that the World is uninhabitable for humanity as we are now.  That there will be survivors, but the world will not look like it does now, the vast majority of humanity will die and a lot of life will die with it, but humanity might survive, or it might just end too.  But the planet will continue on spinning no matter what we do, with or without life on it.  

Next installment:long Resting in an active Dungeon

The warlock started with a detailed description that his powers to use identify were not spells, not really, just spell like effects.  He has a ring and he can identify any non-unique magical item if it is extant on the World in the Ring.

I need to go into more detail.  The setting world I am playing in is positioned as World Prime.  Every monster is native to this setting as World Prime and every other world is in it.  The molecules of World Prime are the various other worlds everywhere.  Not molecules, atoms.  In this ring on the warlock's finger are a few atoms suspended in a magical suspension.  If the magical item is extant in those worlds, and has known properties he can consult them to recieve this information.  The suspended worlds include Torril, Oerth, and Krynn, so he will likely beable to identify most magical items by simply entering a meditative trance, as if he actually cast a spell.  Later on he will get other spells like Legend Lore that will act similarly.  

The warlock chose not to attune to the Orb of Golden Death, after he identified its primary power which was to grant the bearer a 24 charisma with interactions with evil creatures and the power to Awe creatures, but that power reduces their Charisma by one permanently.  He identified the other items and then they decided to continue after a short rest. They found a corridor and a right angle turn, but a door heading north at the right angle and they investigated there.  They opened the door and continued in.  There they found a triangular room with four doors and two additional exits including the one the one they were standing in.  Opposite them the exit was a flight of stairs rising to the level above.  There, before the stairs was a gong suspended in the center.  The walls were painted in an intricate mural with an eye motif.  The warlock immediately was wary and thinking that the gnome would want to ring the gong, so he quickly entered the room and cut the gong down so that it made no noise.  Precautions against stupidity taken, the warlock was surprised that one of the doors should open and a large Bugbear stepped into view, who then shouted an alarm.  The warlock had a comprehend Languages spell running and was able to understand that the bugbear, was in fact announcing to the closed doors that dinner had arrived!  

 The Bugbear's companion quickly exited to join the fun.  And it was fun, but not for the bugbears, and really not for the players either!  The characters quickly engaged the foes and discovered that they were not ordinary bugbears, but chieftains, and so stronger.  They quickly began to whittle the bugbears down and one bugbear was dead in e first round, but e second round on the creatures turn, one of the other doors opened and out charged four Ogres.  Panicking the Druid cast a spell and then transformed into a bear and blocked off one of the doors, the door that w blocked clearly had monsters behind it because the door rattled and shuddered but the bear was bigger, so it stopped them.  The ogres while stronger than the bugbear chieftains, were easier to hit and quickly they were targeted with spells and killed.  The fourth door then opened and out came a hill giant.  Not to be phased the gnome charged forth and attacked the Giant.  He missed, but the giant did not.  He bopped the gnome on the head and then lined him up for a line drive with his club, smack, he hit the wall unconscious.  The dwarf raced up to the giant with her Frostbrand and hit the giant with a critical hit causing twenty-five points of hurting damage!  The giant, taken a back, crushed the dwarf with a critical hit, a natural twenty and then a natural nineteen, another critical hit, because this giant was also, a fourth level fighter.  Smack, the fighter was unconscious next to the gnome paladin, the two tanks were effectively dead and the rest were starting to panic and thinking retreat was the only option.  The ranger began firing arrows at the giant bringing him low and the Druid abandoned the door to cast a healing spell on the Paladin.  Revived the paladin realized that using his lay on hands ability the last session was a mistake, as he had nothing left for this more dangerous fight.  As the rest began to retreat the bard/warlock inspired the characters to run away, but the paladin risked his life to stop the giant from pursuing the rest, but e giant saw e ranger as the most dangerous target as he was getting vicious blows in part due to attacks that had Hunter's Mark enhancements and backstab bonus damage, the giant could not quite catch up with him and so threw a boulder at him and striking him nearly to death.      Then the bugbears came boiling out of the hole they were in.  The battle was hard fought and the giant went down after the Cleric healed the Dwarf and she re-entered the battle.  

They decided that a long rest was needed.  The characters were only active this day about five hours; it was just around noon, so they could not get the sleep that they required yet, they took a short rest to heal up and then wait a bit.  During this rest, a few of the characters felt that they were being watched and the Lemmond's Hut spell was renewed quickly.  Shortly afterwards they saw the first troll.  Then the second.  It became clear that there would be a big fight as soon as the spell went down and the characters tried to rest longer.  Then they saw the Mage approach.  He dispelled the Magical protection and the fight began again, the characters did not get their full rest, were not fully healed or recharged.  They quickly took down the first troll and from there they cast a fire spell to stop the beast's regeneration then the trolls left the areas quickly as they could leaving the human soldier and bugbears that had come too.  The Mage slipped away earlier.  

That party figured out that if they decided to rest again in the same location, they would be interrupted again and again, so they left the dungeon to rest.  

Side note, some of the players found a complete miniature set for the module that we are playing through and they stated, that there were dragons in the set.  I said, yes, that is true there are dragons in this module, multiple dragons.  The silence in the room did not last, but it did last longer than it should have.  The party has only encountered one dragon so far.  They were fourth level and the dragon nearly TPKed them.  Total Party Kill.  I changed Dragons because in Caranus, the setting we are using, dragons are not just another creature, they are a powerful forces.  I will have to do some work in the next couple weeks to re-write certain sections of the adventure as written to accommodate the Dragons.  Dungeons and DRAGONS, has lots of dungeons but not many Dragons.  I endeavor to put the Dragons back into D&D! 

Jenny and Jake know…

So breaking News.  Natural20 has decided to tell her children.  And her husband has agreed.  That's what she told me last week.  She said that she could not stay with me because, her son had been waking up early and had started climbing into bed recently again and she was tired of lying to him.  He is 12.  Her daughter is 15.  They were planning to do it today.  But her husband had a busy Saturday, and dates on Thursday and Friday, so the decided to tell them last Wednesday.  …

…

So I am single again! :(

…

No not really.  Really it was tougher than they thought it would be, but it is going to be okay.  Her son was the least okay with it and her daughter the most okay with it.  After it was all said and done, her son requested that I not come over anymore.  I was expecting that.  But Natural20 told him that that would mean that she would not be spending as much time with him; if I were at the house, she would be there and she would be spending more time with him.  His response was too cute: I retract my earlier request.

Her daughter, she thought would be most likely to be cool with it, but had unexpected reservations.  She said that she felt that she no-longer knew her parents.  When she was asked if I was allowed to hang out at their house, she stated that she liked me, so it was okay.  So…, so with her husband out on a date, she asked me to come over and have dinner and watch a movie with her children.  And to give them a chance to ask questions, any questions.  I also wanted to give them a chance to set ground rules.  

The dinner was takeout because children could not be pried off their screens and he had thirty minutes with nothing to do in a car…!  Then to her house and the test.  Her daughter asked her Natural20 why I was acting strange and shy, so that was a good sign.  She then proceeded to mock fight me, a battle to seek dominance!  Oh, is that what this is?  As I picked her up, she is bigger than Natural20, and then I said, okay tour turn, she declined as I am bigger than she is and well, she would have difficulty picking her mom up.  

We ate with gusto, her younger turkey son did not react any differently towards me, he has always been standoffish towards me, so this is no change. Then they had no questions at all.  And there was no in to ask about ground rules.  And then her daughter dropped the family bunny on me and we went to watch a movie downstairs.  The bunny was licking my ear and making me laugh, so her daughter took the bunny away from me.  The bunny was also firming my beard.  Then her daughter dropped her feet on my lap and stated foot massage!  Which is odd because she never did that before and it was something that her mother always did.  

I think they need names.  They are Turkeys according to Natural20.  Male Turkeys are called Toms, Female — Hens, Male juveniles— Jakes, Female juveniles— Jennys, so I will call them Tom, Jake, and Jenny— this is not their real names, so it is good.  

We watched True Lies, with Jake on his own, Natural20 and I snuggling, with Jenny's feet on Natural20's lap, and with my hands in Natural20's hand or Jenny's foot and occasionally my other hand around the back of Natural20, had Jenny's Han in mine.  It was like we were a bunch of puppies curled up on a couch.  Near the end, Jake joined us.  

After the movie, jake went to bed and Jenny and I had a pillow fight over Natural20, most of the blows hit her, but ended with Jenny wrecked and off to bed and Natural20 very very happy.  Jenny referred to me as 'your boyfriend' at one point which showed how strongly Jenny had integrated our relationship into her mind and her world.  Things look good.

There will be another bump in the road in the future, probably when they notice a ring on my finger, or one on hers, possibly tomorrow, as the ring is in and has been resized.  Then will be a whole conversation about how one day I hope that we can marry, when the bigamy laws are relaxed.

Goodread's Reading Challenge 2018

This year, I completed my GoodRead Reading challenge, not as successfully as my friend Tim, who read 100 books and then has continued to read a hundred more and then kept going… not that good.  But I did finish twenty-five books.  My biggest feat was to catch up in a series that I started years ago, the Elantra series.  I finished Cast in Silence in late May and then by late November I finished Cast in Deception, that's books 5-13 not quite all in a row, but it means I will be able to read the new book in February and be very current.  The series mirrors the journey of the book in my head a little bit, but not too much.  The main character is a young woman who was born in squalor and hardship, true desperation that does not exist in any time in our history and she survived unscathed until she was on the verge of reaching a teenager when she was selected for greatness buy unknown powers and marks appeared on her skin that glowed in the presence of magic and granted her the unique power to heal people and fix the world by giving up one or two of the marks on her skin.  The world at large is an empire ruled by immortal Dragons and the residents are a mixture of humans, bird people, lion people, mind reading empath people, but also dragons and Elf-like immortals.  The setting is a huge city called Elantra that sits next to oblivion that threatens the world.  Adventures ensue, you learn about each of the races in a well thought to manner, and you learn how the most important resident, a young woman who has only achieved the rank of Private in the local Law enforcement organization is the Chosen, because of the marks, and how she changes the World and fights the oblivion.  Each novel is medium sized, about 500 pages and despite the length of the series, the novels have not begun to brag on especially, matter of fact the series seems to have been planned well, the first few books introduced the characters in detail and the races well while slowly ramping up the tension, as this is done the plot has thickened to the point where the tension is ready to snap and I will have to wait for the next book, Cast in Oblivion book 14.  

The author, I've met her.  She works at the book store that I shop at.    Really.  I pretended I did not know who she was, and asked her which books I should read, and she steered me away from her books and offered her opinion about the best books in the genera.  Then I ask about these books, and she sighed and admitted that she wrote them, and I said I knew that, but I had been missing a single book in the mid series that stopped me from progress in the series.  She found it for me and I was able to read the next several books, as you saw.  Typical Canadian, Michelle Sagara, she sighed again and asked if I had any questions about the series.  I responded no, but now I want to know if the main character will ever reach Corporal in the Hawks, but since this has been her personal goal in the series, I suspect it is the endgame event, unless the world ends.  She said that the number one question was which of the Male characters the female lead would hook up with.  Gah I said that's not important!  And then she offered to sign the books I bought and I declined, I was honest, I was going to donate them to a used book store when I finished them, I move too often to keep books.  :( 

I read three more Raksura books too, that is the book that features the dragon like being that discovered a colony of his own when he thought he was alone in the world.  He discovered his actual home colony in e books and fought to stay with his adopted colony.  

I read two more Charles Stross books, and one of them I went to the North American launch party.  That was awesome there were a hundred people and I got to read the book before the release in New York.  I got to ask if he was going to continue his other series at he wrote.  I was disappointed as mostly those lines were dead.  Both books I read were from the Laundry files, so low fantasy set in the recent past world in a different time line where Cuthulu Gods exist and magic is real, but is actually math, also superheroes because that is just magic. The latest book was a subtle comment on American politics, specifically that the USA was under a spell cast by a sleeping Elder God.  Fun fun fun.  I did not wait to get it autographed.  I listened to the reading by the author and I learned stuff.  The author reading is different than the book, it is similar to the book but not exactly, it is almost that he was speaking his own words about the story and the book was an edited version and expanded. Fun.

I read the second Airship novel, where she liberates her home town only to discover that her mother is … important to the plot.  

I started another novel and finished it after reading the 25th novel in my challenge.  It was by Tanya Huff, another Canadian writer!  SciFi.  Space marines on a vital diplomatic mission with many reverses.  Written in the dictatorial style of old SciFi.  There is a confederation of founding races that is expanding out in the limitless cosmos and they are peaceful and they encounter a new race that is not peaceful and does not want to expand away from the peaceful races, but through them, so the confederation has to figure out some way to survive, so they search out aggressive races and get them to join the confederation and fight their wars.  They find a race of war bent mammals that are descendants of war like monkeys and get them to join up, humans!  The story takes place 150 years after that, the confederation has added two other warlike races to the humans, basically elves, and a race that finds every other race appetizing.  The mission is to get a fourth military species to join the fight, a very very warlike race of lizards where males outnumber females 20:1 and the expendable members of society battle for the right to mate.  Forty battle hardened Marines with their freshly minted, untested leader are sent to show the lizards why they should sign up.  There are twists that continue up until the end.  The alien elder races of the confederation include sentient giant spiders (Get 'em off, get 'em off), giant Sloths, and flightless bird like creatures as well as a certain race that loves cheese and has a fast digestion rate that is unmet, possibly mouselike.  The question of these elder races seems to be, maybe we should stop inviting younger violent races into the confederation and learn to fight our own battles.  But that is just a side bar.  I am looking forward to reading book twenty-six of this year, the next in this series.

Action or Bust on carbon

There have been studies, I have known that they were coming for years, I knew what they would find: the world is warming faster than the worst case predictions and radical action is needed to stave off the worst of the effects and we have to do it yesterday.  I say, the worst of the effects, because if we reduce all emissions to pre-industrial levels, positive feedbacks will still raise the levels of the ocean and cause widespread droughts and floods and the icecaps will still melt; bye-bye the world as you know it.  If they reduce the amount of carbon in the world back to pre-industrial levels, then no-dice; we will still have climate change, but we will avoid the worst effects.  

What we need to do, is accelerate changes that people are reluctant to make.  I see little chance of that happening.  We need a stick and a place to run.  The stick is to make fossil fuel energy prohibitively expensive. Raise the cost of gasoline and diesel by a full dollar every six months, except for public transit, raise the cost of fuel for public transit a dollar every year.  Make electric vehicles inexpensive— make tiny electric vehicles virtually free, cars more expensive and larger vehicles more, but still cheaper than gas powered vehicles of those types now.  The gas tax will help with that.  The gas tax will help with building more power generation, all power generation will be carbon free, and make local power generation a priority, that is local to your home.  

Industry will, no must be fully electric in five years.  The only exception would be production facilities that are producing green energy materials, as increasing the means to get off carbon is the first priority.  An option for a pass on carbon production would be if they can remove 120% of the carbon they produce in the operation of their factory, meaning they are not carbon neutral but actively remove carbon from the environment.  Which brings me to the next point, it is not enough to be carbon neutral, the world must be be carbon negative.  The air absorbs our carbon emissions, the oceans absorb the atmosphere's carbon, the oceans are changed by that carbon—they are acidifying; we must remove the carbon we have been putting in the environment for decades.  Only by doing this last point will we mitigate the worst effects of climate change have a chance to make it to the next millennium.  For now, reducing our carbon output to zero is the goal.  It cannot be overstated the importance we reach this goal as soon as possible.

I will now list the effects of climate change from least to greatest if we don't do this soon.

1) increased storms and unseasonal weather, leading to crop losses.  Fires

2) population displacement leading to war.  The civil war in Syria was caused by an internal population displacement because of a drought caused by climate change, it caused mass external migration which lead to the rise of Nationalism in Europe, which will likely cause more war.  This is one drought.  What will happen when the sea levels rise enough and storms increase to the point that regions are flooded and people are internally displaced all over the world, more civil wars and international wars.  Disease.  People will fight for their little corner of creation and gradually we will be all in the poor house, but wars will be fought with fossil fuels and bombs will set off fires that will burn uncontrollably increasing carbon production ending in:

3) acidification of the oceans to the point that the oxygen producing organisms die and go extinct.  World oxygen levels drop and all mammals and animals that can not survive with 10% oxygen levels die and go extinct.  It turns out that fires require more than 10% atmospheric oxygen to burn fuel, so plant biomass will quickly build up and get buried and the world will reset eventually after building up coal reserves again.  Who knows maybe some reserve of ocean oxygen producing critter will survive and oxygen will bounce back too.  Too late for us though, we will have been dead eons by then.