And To Think Authors Were Once Gullible Enough To Think These Bossy Assholes Mattered (and also, Dan Simmons is Awesome)

Here’s a fascinating demonstration of just how stupid and backwards the political gatekeepers in fiction really are.

This week author Dan Simmons wrote a post about Greta the Climate Scold, and because his opinion went against left wing orthodoxy, a bunch of virtue signalling morons threw a fit.

For those of you not familiar with Dan Simmons, I’ve said this before here, I think he is one of the most talented writers alive. My first exposure to him was Hyperion. I was in college, and dating Bridget. She was already a fan, couldn’t believe I hadn’t read it, and loaned me Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion. A week later I got Endymion and Rise of Endymion out of the library. They are amazing, big imagination, huge universe, crazy (multi)world building, stories.  They are considered classic works of sci-fi for a reason.

(I learned a lot about how to write big casts of interesting characters each doing their own thing while that was somehow connected to everybody else from Dan Simmons. Kassad and Ashok would probably get along really well)

Personally, I like Olympos and Illium even better. They have the most batshit crazy plot synopsis I’ve ever heard of. It’s the battle of Troy on Mars, with space gods, and post-apocalyptic Earth has dinosaurs and Jews menaced by killer Muslim robot pods and a giant brain thing, and monster characters from Shakespeare run a space station, as narrated by a reborn history teacher, and a robot from Jupiter who really loves to quote Proust… and Dan Simmons MAKES THIS ALL WORK.

Also, The Terror is just fantastic. It’s this moody, historical piece, where he makes being trapped in ice the most menacing thing ever, and then it gets really really weird. Then he’s got classics like Song of Kali, which is straight up scary ass horror, or Carrion Comfort (which Stephen King called one of the best three novels of the century).

So basically, Dan Simmons is really freaking good at his job. You might even say by the harshest standards of the literary snoots, he’s a *real* writer. They even used to give him Hugos back when those meant something.

Well, he used to be a *real* writer, but then Dan Simmons made the unpardonable sin of having public opinions that went against the mandatory left wing orthodoxy of publishing. After 9-11 he wrote a short story where a time traveler from the future comes to our time to warn us about an Islamic Caliphate… and the woke scolds declared that to be super bad islamophobia and totally unrealistic right wing hatemongery (even though it was basically ISIS’ mission statement a few years later)

Then this week, Dan Simmons had the audacity to have an opinion that was different that all good thinking, proper, authors should…. and thus he must be destroyed. What did he do this time? Unfortunately, like most reasonable adults, Dan Simmons was not impressed by a teenager throwing a rather impassioned tantrum about how if we don’t give government’s absolute control over everything right now, we’re all gonna die. Oh yeah, and we all stole her childhood.

Now, personally, my childhood was spent milking cows, so it wasn’t all that awesome to begin with, and we lived down the road from a SAC base that had dozens of Soviet nukes aimed at it for the inevitable upcoming End Of The World As We Know It and we still managed to be happy and hopeful… So I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Greta’s parents are really really shitty at their job.  And it’s really cruel to fuck over your kids like that, just so the wokescolds (who never actually change their lifestyles) can feel superior to you for not changing your lifestyles, per the commandments of their unimpeachable climate gods.

Oh yeah, and it’s the ultimate Motte and Bailey play, because they can put an uneducated teenager with no scientific creds at all in front of one of the biggest government bodies in the world to demand socialism now or else, and when you go LOL WUT they switch to We Just Want A Clean Environment Why Do You Hate Children. It’s total bullshit.

But that’s just my opinion. Dan Simmon’s opinion was actually far more diplomatic.

Anyways, as soon as this author said his badthink opinion, hordes of virtue signalling morons piled on to talk about what a horrible child hating monster this former elementary school teacher must be. There was lots of rage, and screaming, and lamenting how sad it was that he used to be talented, before he descended into hateful hatemongery, so on and so forth. Basically, the usual.

Of course after that, Fandom’s Prolapsed Anus (the shittiest gossip website ever, File 770) simply had to report on it. China Mike can never resist any opportunity to screw over an author’s career when given the chance. Their headline might as well have been AUTHOR GUILTY OF WRONGTHINK! GET YOUR FRESH OUTRAGE HERE.

http://archive.is/tNELI

Don’t worry. It’s an archive link so you don’t get File 770 cooties.

I’ve talked about File 770 before, and how China Mike Glyer is a wretched scumbag vulture made of pond slime and syphilis, but this post isn’t about him being a parasitic piece of shit who rejoices in sabotaging the reputation of any authors who get out of line. It’s about how bad these people are at it.

So what was the result of all these has-beens, never-weres, and virtue signalling assholes dog piling this author for having an incorrect opinion?

 

Yep. A book that came out THIRTY YEARS AGO shot to number one.

This is good, because it’s a really good series,and the more new people who get to read it, the better. But more importantly it shows just how powerless the wokescolds are.

In ye olde tymes most authors still believed that the monolithic, left-wing, mean girls table of publishing and fandom could actually harm their livelihood. The bullies were very much “Hey, nice career you’ve got there, be a real shame if something bad were to happen to it.” And authors fell in line.

So conservative, libertarian, or hell, anybody to the right of Mao basically had to keep their mouths shut because they were scared of getting articles written about they by wretched shitheels like China Mike, Cameldung Frapington, or Frau Butthurt, proclaiming Author X is a Bad Person And Should Be Shunned.  Then the authors would see the internet lynch mob of wokescolds sharing those articles getting out their torches and pitchforks, get scared, and then debase themselves by apologizing even though they’d done nothing wrong.

Thankfully those days are coming to an end.  Rather than being a career threatening bludgeon like they used to be, the wokescolds are so annoying and obnoxious that fans actually go out of their way to thwart them. If a wokescold starts screaming than an author is guilty of badthink, the fans take that as a sign it is probably pretty good, and go check it out.

The only places these people still have power is where people grant it to them, meaning they are also members of the Church of Unrelenting Bossiness and  need to ritually flog themselves to remove theirs sins, or they are the poor authors who are stuck at publishing houses where their editors are members of the church.

As for the rest of us, we can now safely laugh at these idiots, and go on writing whatever we feel like.

Seriously though, check out Ilium and Olympos. They’re nuts. Dan Simmons is a bad ass.

 

 


Edited to add: If you’re a fan of WrongThink and great fiction, here’s a link to the paperback -Jack

Invisible Wars is in Stores Now
Invisible Wars, the Complete Dead Six Collection, Comes out October 1st. You Can Preorder Now

194 thoughts on “And To Think Authors Were Once Gullible Enough To Think These Bossy Assholes Mattered (and also, Dan Simmons is Awesome)”

    1. In this case, I think it’s more of what I’m starting to call the “Chappelle Effect.”

      When his most recent Netflix special was announced a lot of people said “Hey, neat. He was pretty funny back in the day, maybe I’ll watch it.” But then the wokescolds, the crybullies, and the rest of the perpetually offended class launched their campaign to tell us how wrongthink it was… and the viewing numbers for the damn thing shot into the stratosphere.

      1. Yeah, Streissand is when you wanna hide something you’re ashamed of and it blows up. Your Chapelle effect is them trying to silence someone for wrongthink and that person suddenly finding out they have become Very Popular, if only because the crybullies hate them.

        We used to call it the Siskel and Eibert effect. They only ever seemed to give their approval to depressing, dull, and depressingly dull movies… So when they panned some movie, it had a damn good chance of being entertaining, happy, or both.

      2. Yeah, Darlin’ Daughter and I watched it last weekend. Only because of the SJW whining. I usually don’t watch comedian specials and had never actually watched anything by Chapelle before.

      3. Wife and I loved it. We’d never heard of him until the furor brought the movie to our attention.

        Thank you, Wokescolds.

    2. It’s the Chick-fil-A effect.

      Their profits have double since 2011 when they were scolded for their founder supporting traditional marriage.

        1. To dislike bullies is very American. After all, the country came about because the colonists didn’t like being bullied by the crown. This is something that the woke crowd forgets to their peril.

  1. Hyperion and Fall are the best science fiction novels I’ve ever read. Dan’s answer to IT, Summer of Night is the scariest novel I’ve ever read and much better, and it doesn’t have a creepy pedo child sex scene.

    1. I have to thank you Larry and Brad Torgersen for drawing my attention to it. I posted on Simmons’ FB page to show my support. And everyone who reads this and has not read Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion should buy them and start reading them immediately.

    2. Yes. Summer of Night is one of my top ten personal favorite novels, regardless of genre. I personally think it’s even better than Hyperion, which I also love. And I don’t think there’s a single genre of fiction, outside of romance, that Simmons hasn’t had at least one best-selling novel on the charts. Dan is an *awesome* writer, in every sense of the word.

  2. “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can imagine.”
    — Dan Simmons (or at least it should be)

  3. The Hyperion Cantos still are one of my favorite pieces of literature. Endymion had me in tears, still does when I read it.
    It’s a universe I wish he would revisit, but aside from a short story about the Helix folks, there was nothing else written.
    It made my month when he accepted my FB friend request.

  4. “The only places these people still have power is where people grant it to them, meaning they are also members of the Church of Unrelenting Bossiness and need to ritually flog themselves to remove theirs sins, or they are the poor authors who are stuck at publishing houses where their editors are members of the church.”

    This point is why, at the moment, the main victims of the mob tend to be members of the mob themselves. There was that Asian lady who was super excited about all the “diversity in YA” until the diversity crowd decided she’d portrayed slavery wrong. Then there was the gay guy who eagerly piled on the Asian lady until the mob decided that his book was Islamophobic.

    Sometimes they go after people like Larry or Dan Simmons, but the response tends to be “STFU, with extra helpings of F and U,” and that isn’t nearly as satisfying as forcing one of their own to grovel.

    1. I’ve noticed and talked about that before related to Requires Hate (so nothing new there!) because most already non-conforming authors either fought back or rolled their eyes, but not even the very new and least established had as much vulnerability as those who are dependent on that super-woke “community.”

      YA is unreal, from anything we hear, the specific examples you mention were egregious. The result is often some allowance after appropriate groveling and submission.

      But bottom line always… people looking for power over others also look for vulnerability in their victims. The most vulnerable are always going to be people that are dependent on the “community.”

      But you know… getting thrown into the outer darkness isn’t as bad as people may think. Tell them to shove it where the sun don’t shine, write what you want to write, and come visit if you want, we have cookies.

  5. Now I regret passing on a fifty cent copy of Hyperion years ago. Something about it seemed weird. I’ll have to go spend more money now, because with a recommendation like that it’s high time I gave him a try. Oh, and your plug was pretty good, too.

  6. FYI, if you’re already an Audible member, check your email. There’s a $6.95 audio book sale on, and Hyperion is on the sale list. I bought my copy long enough ago that it’s a well-thumbed paperback, so no Kindle-Audible bonus price for me…

  7. I didn’t read Simmons back when Hyperion came out. It just didn’t seem like my thing.
    But the ILOH and the Butthurts just sold me a book or four.

  8. Yeah, I grew up with fallout drills and helpful pamphlets on how and where to build a fallout shelter in your home. And I managed to grow up fairly well. But we worried about the actions of evil men, while this generation worries about vast, impersonal, unstoppable forces. Could it be another side effect of culture going secular? If you don’t have any belief in any sort of higher power, are you (or many of you) doomed to live fear that humankind will manage to tip nature over the brink?

    1. We were taught how to deal with the crisis (however unrealistic that may have been for a 6th-grader), not to just panic over it.
      I still remember the instructions for making traction splints out of tree limbs and bed-sheets.

      1. Boom.

        This.

        Seems like How To Deal With Things was dropped from the curriculum along with math, science and critical thinking.

        We see the unfortunate results everywhere, every day.

  9. Just ordered Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion and should be expecting them some day next week. Dan Simmons was already on my “to be read” list, but this demonstration has raised him at the top of the priority reading.

    To hell with Cancel Culture and everything it stands for. It’s about damn time we started countering these assholes.

  10. Echoing the thought on growing up near a SAC base, grew up near a NORAD/early warning base, so my dad’s plan for nuclear war? Get out the lawn chairs and enjoy the show.

    1. You forgot grab a beer. That was an important item on the checklist and sufficient reason to make sure there was always an adequate supply waiting in the refrigerator because you wouldn’t have time to run to the store and back.

    2. Reminds me of the Gary Larson cartoon depicting two fisherman watching nuclear explosions in the distance. The one says to the other, ‘I’ll tell you what it means. It means no size restrictions and screw the limit!’

    3. Hell, I lived at a place where they tested Sprint and Spartan ABMs.

      Let me tell you, nothing prettier than a Sprint blasting, like literally blasting into the atmosphere and making a hard hit against that glowing incoming fake warhead.

      Beautiful.

      The Spartans were neat to watch, too, just chugging downrange to slam into the glowing incoming fake warhead.

      That, and playing on an island that was blasted from the Japanese during WWII, finding the occasional box of live grenades, stuff like that.

      And never living in a place that wasn’t a first strike location.

      Yeah, the good old days…

    4. Grew up watching the Looking-Glass planes lumber in and out of Offut AFB near Omaha NE. Then moved upwind of a nuclear bomb assembly place. I always figured that 9/10 of the year, if something happened, we’d just wonder why sunrise was in the afternoon and farther north than usual.

  11. Seeing the comments on Dan Simmons’ original FB thread (he took it to friends-only, so the whole universe may not be able to see it) has been an interesting experiment. What happens when the members of a secular church — the Church of Climate Catastrophism — are confronted with criticism by someone whose credentials make him essentially unimpeachable?

    Apparently Dan Simmons hates children, is a Trump-loving “denier” of the End Times prophecy, and should be eternally ashamed of himself for daring to have an original, informed opinion which contrasts markedly with the cow-mooing, predictable, herd-mentality “St. Greta is the bestest EVARRRR!” opinions echoing from all corners of Proper Establishment Science Fiction.

    This follows on the heels of his famous shaming for daring to write a story in which the future is a bleak religious hellscape — golly, they have deified Margaret Atwood for that, but I guess it’s totes cool to predict a hellish religious dictatorship as long as American Evangelicalism is to blame, versus Islamism, even though Islamism actually kills thousands upon thousands of people every single year — so we probably can’t be shocked that Simmons is being given the Martin Luther treatment by the denizens of Climate Catholicism.

    Frankly, I am relieved that someone of Simmons’ stature has the cojones to tell the truth. His opinion (on St. Greta) was well-reasoned, spoke from personal experience, and was an ADULT OBSERVATION OF THE FACT that children lack the experience which takes mere ideas, and transforms those ideas into wisdom. So, they can be emotional dynamos who lack the seasoning which teaches: just because you feel strongly about something, doesn’t mean your feelings are a gateway to unquestionable moral truth.

    Feelings — even very strong feelings — can often make us act and speak rashly.

    So of course when Dan Simmons (cough, Martin Luther) nails up a few complaints on the cathedral door of Climate End Times prophecy, the congregants within storm out of the cathedral, rhetorically tie his blaspheming ass to a stake, and burn him with their earnest, hand-wringing remonstrations. About how it’s pure evil to a) criticize St. Greta in any way, while b) questioning the Climate End Times prophecy.

    Good on Dan. And I am delighted to see his book soared back to #1 for its category.

    1. Simmon’s credentials on climate change are unimpeachable?

      A dude who writes good scifi (wrote good scifi) and has a BA and MA in English is as qualified to comment on climate change as… well… a 16 year old.

    2. I wrote a more detailed reply to Travis below, but in general, I find it frustrating that the public opinion on global warming seems to have settled into two camps: “OMG we’re all going to die tomorrow !” and “LOL it’s all a Liberal propaganda plot”. There are gradations in between these two extremes; a problem doesn’t need to be apocalyptic in order to be worth solving, nor should we only pursue solutions to truly apocalyptic problems while ignoring the rest.

      1. That simply isn’t true at all. That’s the straw version the media likes to use to make conservatives look stupid. The vast majority of people I know believe climate changes, but don’t think we have much to do with it, and even if we did, more government isn’t the answer.

        1. Heck, I’m halfway thinking that the entire CAGW kerfluffle is to distract folks from the fact that while the 1st world has largely cleaned up its industrial emissions, the 3rd world is busy spewing out all sorts of crud into the atmosphere.

          I’m a lot more worried about Chinese SO2 emissions than anybody’s CO2 emissions.

          1. One reason why our environment is so much cleaner is because we’ve exported so much of our manufacturing to places that don’t give a s**t about the environment. Power and fuel production is the same thing: Going apeshit about a few oiled ducks but thousands of eagles (and other birds and bats) having their lungs blown out of their bodies due to supersonic wind turbine blades that’s OK, ‘cuz they’re GREEN!

        2. That’s still pretty close to the “it’s all propaganda” position. If you look at the evidence, though, the climate is definitely warming, and humans are definitely responsible; the debate is centered around the questions of “how much ?” and “what do we do about it ?”.

          The problem is, though, that it’s kind of impossible to look at the evidence if you believe that scientists are all evil leftists (or are colluding with such) making up data for nefarious reasons. The Right is not alone in this; the Left treats evolutionary psychology the same exact way. So, you have a situation where 99% of scientists agree on something, but “vast majority of people” think it’s all a hoax or a mystery or whatnot.

          1. No, we don’t have a situation where 99% of scientists agree on something. In order to get those numbers the ones who disagree have to be disqualified somehow and removed from the data pool.

            Sort of like problematic temperature stations.

            Essentially, 99% of scientists who are 100% dependent on grant money specifically given to study climate change and the pending apocalypse, agree on something.

            I mean really… in the past I’ve been told that Freeman Dyson’s opinion on computer modeling and complex systems doesn’t count.

            Freeman.

            Dyson.

            Because he’s not a “climate scientist”.

          2. @Bugmaster global warming really IS all a liberal propaganda plot. (according to ME, but not all conservatives). So lets go over it as briefly as the subject matter allows.

            One: the primary founder of the global warming scare Michael Mann REFUSED A COURT ORDER to turn over his data in a lawsuit that HE started. he thus lost the court case. It is an integral part of the scientific method to allow others to review your data and duplicate your results. It isn’t science if it cant be duplicated by someone else. Mann refusing to turn over his data can be nothing other than a defacto admission of FRAUD. Mann fabricated his data AND HE KNOWS IT which is why he was too scared to allow anyone to review that data.

            Two: the entire global warming scare is ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT on the claim that CO2 levels are abnormally high, and this is caused by man. In fact we know FOR CERTAIN that CO2 levels are currently abnormally LOW. Our current level of CO2 is 400 parts per million, while the AVERAGE over the last 500 million years is 1000 to 1200 ppm. We also know that the HIGHEST CO2 levels in the last few hundred million years is OVER 9000! (parts per million). (let the dragon ball z memes begin, we bow to our super sayan overlords) We would have to TRIPLE the co2 concentration just to get back up to NORMAL levels for this planet. The claim that current co2 levels are abnormally high is such an absurd lie it is almost funny that the left get away with it.

            Three: global warming alarmists heavily depend on the claim that 97% of all scientists agree with them. First, this is a lie because it is a logical fallacy called ‘the appeal to the majority’. If they have science on their side they don’t need a popularity poll. they can just present the scientific evidence. It is also a lie BECAUSE IT IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE! They made up the 97% number, it was debunked as a lie, so they faked a study to again come up with 97%, that study was again debunked as a lie so they came up with a THIRD way of faking a study to lie to people and claim that all scientists agree with them. The only semi valid study I’ve seen on that topic suggest that only around 40% of scientists really agree with the global warming scare.

            Four: global warming is a hoax because ALL of the solutions suggested by its proponents are hoaxes. No global warming supporter has EVER suggested a solution to global warming that has even a possibility of working. This is because their solutions are not INTENDED to stop global warming. The solutions to global warming are intended to implement socialism. This was even admitted by the campaign director for AOC’s campaign. He admitted the green new deal had almost nothing to do with the environment and was really just a vehicle for pushing socialist policies. Global warming is actually a trivial problem to solve, because WE ALREADY SOLVED IT DECADES AGO. We simply refuse to use the solution because environmentalists wont let us. Nuclear power has zero emissions and is not only cheaper than all other forms of energy but it is safer as well. there are no downsides. if the environmentalists really cared about the environment they would be pushing for nuclear power instead of blocking it.

            Five: the current warming trend is really just the end of something called ‘the little ice age’. which was a cold period that hit its peak 300 years ago and ever since then the planet has been warming. this is an entirely normal warming trend, and it started about 200 years before mankind started increasing the co2 concentrations.

            the evidence that this is all a deliberate lie is extensive and I could go on much longer. I will refrain.

          3. 99% of scientists. Really….

            The fact that the only model that comes close to backcasting accurately is one that looks entirely at the sun and ignores atmospheric composition would tend to indicate the exact opposite.

          4. The climate has been in a state of flux forever. In that sense only, “climate change” is real.

            “So, you have a situation where 99% of scientists agree on something, but “vast majority of people” think it’s all a hoax or a mystery or whatnot.”

            There’s a reason for that, and the reason is: It is an illusion that 99% of scientists agree that we are experience man-caused global warming. The reason it APPEARS that 99% of scientists agree is because of the gatekeepers who decide what gets published and what doesn’t, and what gets mercilessly ridiculed. Gatekeepers are positioned at strategic choke points everywhere — in education, in government, in the media, in publishing, in the professions. They are placed there by the “Hidden Hand,” the real power behind thrones and legislatures.

      2. Dude. Simplifying assumptions are the difference between an unsolvable mess, and simplest possible constant climate model. They are an art, not an exact closed form solution.

        Cheating is easy. Ask for data, get blown off?

        How do you parse: Spanish speakers stopped Aztecs, hurt sun. Sun causes climate change/extreme weather, fix by limiting or decreasing Spanish speakers.

      3. Science is not a popularity contest.

        99% of all scientists in the 1890s ( including Lord Kelvin, the top thermodynamics expert ) thought the geologists were all wrong, because the sun would not last more than 30,000 years by using carbon-oxygen oxidation to remain shining, given its mass.

        Lord Kelvin had the grace to issue a complete retraction when he learned about the energy released by nuclear fission(!) in the very early 20th Century.

  12. Ah yes. I saw an article about Greta a while back before she was getting too much traction. She has some severe behavioral issues that went ignored or were coddled to instead of getting proper help/therapy. But since she is focused on climate change – suddenly she is getting lauded. I need to check out this book series..

    1. That’s the thing that really piss me off, it’s rampant and willful emotional abuse, and Nobody seems to care…i guess abusing kids for the right cause is cricket now…go figure

      1. I agree. Makes me furious to see how her parents are treating her. My oldest is autistic, and I’d be damned before I ever let any of this shit happen to him. (But then, I consider fame at all, especially sudden like this, a very bad thing to happen to any child.)

        1. What is happening to Greta is nothing less than child abuse. Her parents are evidently making quite a pile exploiting their rather sick child. Personally, I consider it criminal. However, as long as she is preaching what the climate alarmist crowd wants to hear, they will continue to support her. She needs help, not adulation. It makes me angry to witness such foul abuse.

        2. There’s an attitude I’ve noticed lately where autistic children are given validation to ‘improve their emotional health’; regardless of whether or not it makes their delusions worse. In therapy. So they encourage the kid in activities that make them happy only, while exercises and training and work which … well, require work and aren’t tons of fun, but help the kid deal and adapt to situations that aren’t ideal… aren’t as focused on because then the carers avoid meltdowns now versus helping the kid have LESS triggers for meltdowns.

          It also makes some people feel better because ‘Hey, they’re happy, what have you got against their being happy?’

          The abuse of Greta, and her false validation, is frankly disgusting.

  13. Ahh, Scoldilocks.

    I raised a teenager. Having an upset teen shouting “you’re ruining my life!” for not doing what she wants? LOL, BTDT. It didn’t get me to buy a new iPhone, it sure as heck isn’t going to get me to become vegan.

    1. Even funnier is the boat greta sailed across the atlantic. It was a non-carbon producing boat, to fight carbon changing the climate. Except it was made of carbon fiber. Which does not degrade, ever. That boat will still be here when the dinosaurs rule the earth again.

      1. That is actually a good thing. All that carbon is locked up in solid form, and can’t get into the atmosphere. Well, unless the boat burns up.

        Climate change? Climate has been changing for three billion years, and will continue to change for five billion more, until the sun expands past the orbit of Venus. At that point, we’ll still have climate, but it will be hot enough to melt lead.

        The leftists need a crisis, so they can scream hysterically and demand to be given control over all our lives so they can ‘fix’ it.
        ———————————
        Ma Lemming: “If all your friends jumped off a cliff into the sea, would you…oh…umm…nevermind.”

        1. “The leftists need a crisis, so they can scream hysterically and demand to be given control over all our lives so they can ‘fix’ it.”

          And that about sums it up. More particularly, the crisis must be advertised as big and urgent enough to suppress any reasoning or attempt to find a rational solution – one that, perish the thought, might not need a grand global(ist) resource control framework.

          Ultimately, as with just about all liberal policies, the whole point is not to develop reasonable policies addressing the problem presented, but to present a problem in such a way that makes their policies seem reasonable.

      2. The whole idea that the sailing trip was somehow carbon free is laughable.
        They needed power for the lights, nav equipment, amenities, fridge and so on- likely via diesel generator.
        They needed some means to move about port or when wind & tide were against them- likely via diesel engines.
        Even if the yacht was made of carbon fiber, there’s a lot of petroleum products on that ship, from the glue used to hold the strands of carbon fiber together, to the fabric of the sails to the lines of the rigging to the various plastics for the plumbing and waste systems.

        1. My understanding is that the crew was shuttled back by plane as well…

          Though they may used my least favorite method, the Carbon Indulgence… err, offset.

  14. Agreed with Larry. I really liked the Hyperium books, but Olympos and Illium? Simply amazing. My favorite books of his, hands down.

    Good riddance to the wokescold gatekeepers.

  15. Cliff beat me to it, and got the ebook version. I haven’t read his work in years, but I DID enjoy it when it came out!

  16. Larry mentioned that Simmons won Hugo awards back when they meant something. Any opinions about when the Hugo train derailed?

    1. The 1980s, in my opinion.

      In 1983, members of the Church of Scientology were encouraging each other and the general public to nominate ‘Battlefield Earth,’ but it failed to make the final ballot. They tried again in ‘87, nominating Hubbard’s ‘Black Genesis.’ This time their book made the final ballot but a counter-campaign by the True Fans ensured it finished behind “no award.”

      Of course, since the Scientologists were actually playing by the rules for the Hugo Awards the True Fans rewrote the rulebook soon after.

    2. There ‘s a “Harlan Ellison’s Watching” video from 1994 on YouTube where he points out “someone has been mucking with the voting for the Hugos and/or Nebulas”. Now, the Hugo Nomination and Win records are public record; go look them up, and notice what names keep reappearing in the nom and win columns — particularly “Best Editor”.

      It’s why I’ve said: “Rename the award from the Famous SF Editor, to the mentally-defective cripple who serves evil — and call it the Torgo Awards.”

  17. Ah cool I’m always looking for good books to read regardless of the politics involved.

    Regarding the politics involved does anyone think it’s maybe dumb to put a child on stage then whine when your tactics become the topic instead of the actual debate at hand? Seriously? Seriously.

    1. You’d think so. It’s sort of weird. But it’s also a common pattern over and over. With kids it’s clearly “no one can be mean to a kid so they can’t disagree or call an idea stupid”, but it’s broader than that… the “tactics become the topic” thing.

      I think that in some ways it’s almost a Trial for the faithful. It’s a test. Putting forward ever more ridiculous ideas and ever more questionable spokes-people and it’s possible to gauge people’s dedication and commitment to the cause while demonstrating your own.

  18. Just bought the Hyperion ebook. I probably have it in paperback, but I’m not going fishing through several hundred books to see if it’s there. Either way, buying it (again) helps support sanity.

      1. Well, I went and got married a decade or three ago. Apparently some women have priorities for storing things other than books and left-over-bits-that-might-be-useful.

      2. I have over 400 just on my Kindle four large bookshelves of stuff bought in the last 10 years and another 40 boxes of books still to be unpacked from the last move and not enough bookshelves so I will have to start culling. I hate doing that. I guess I’m a hoarder, but a hoarder of knowledge. It could be worse …

  19. Ordering an ebook now. Tanks for the recommendation, Larry. Oops, meant thanks, but a tank would make such a wonderful conversation piece for the inner courtyard. BTW, the website for Associated Scavengers and Organic Recyclers issued a statement disavowing any possible connection between them and China Mike, and recommend incineration over ingestion by any of their member species

    Mike Kupari, no one wants to go vegan. They’re far too dry and stringy. 🙂 Raised a teenage daughter also; it’s amazing how much smarter we got after a few years, once the hormones burned down a bit <– a lot. Princess Pigtail of the Magic Yacht needs chocolate, a husband, and 2-3 babies of her own, in that order. Get a real life, kid, and get away from the pornstar family.

      1. That’s why we’re here with the ILOH, right? Just trying to enhance your user experience. 🙂

        I’m about a third of the way through the book, and intrigued. I’m puzzling over interwoven story layers of “The Canterbury Tales”, “Solaris”, and possibly “Theseus and the Minotaur”, with some Ludlum spy intrigue lurking behind the scenes. This is not something I would have had patience or appreciation for at a young age.

  20. Bought the Kindle and Audible editions at smile.amazon.com, which kicked a small donation to the Second Amendment Foundation. Because might as well.

  21. Huh, thought I was well read in this genre but apparently there are gaps. Just got hyperion on whisper synch thanks for the recommendation and your consistently good work.

  22. I’m pretty sure I read Hyperion many, many years ago. I know I don’t have a copy. Or didn’t, until I picked up the Kindle version about 5 minutes ago. I will almost certainly end up buying the whole series.

    These damned wokescolds are costing me a lot of money. And buying a number on BadThink authors their very own mountain fortresses 😀

  23. What is sad and revealing is the level of condescending hatred directed not only toward Simmons on social media but toward those who stand up for him. (Experienced it myself today.) These people have no clue.

    I assigned excerpts from the Hyperion saga in a class I taught on the book of Genesis – for how it interprets the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22.

  24. I’ll admit, I feel a little embarrassed at never having read any of his work. But I’m about to start a five hour drive to meet up with my girlfriend, and needed something to listen to. So Hyperion is now loaded up from Audible (which btw, it’s on a big sale too $6.95 on Audible right now).

  25. Oh hey, more people growing up in the circular error of probability for a Prime Target! (insert fistbumps here) I was about a mile and a half west of Malmstrom AFB in Montana, smack in the middle of the Minuteman fields, and thus even with the sirens going off as soon as possible, no one was getting out because Ivan was glassing the whole middle of the state just to be sure.

    (A couple open house/airshow days, I did get to turn the key in the command simulator. My childhood didn’t seem to be stolen, however, even with semis full of ICBM rolling through regularly.)

    1. Yep. I grew up in rural Norfolk, England. About a 1/2 mile as the crow flies from RAF North Pickenham — which was a USAF base with Thor missiles. I could see the missiles from my bedroom window when they stood them up to test their launch capability.

  26. Ever notice that while “Get Woke, Go Broke” is a thing for the Left, that when a skold goes all moral panic about non-conformist not falling into lockstep, there’s a line around the block.

  27. I’m going to be the odd one out here and say I’ve never enjoyed Dan’s work. I first read Hyperion back around when I was first reading Dune (so about 25ish years ago) and it just didn’t work for me. I especially found the shrike to be kinda ridiculous.

    It was maybe 10 years ago that I read Olympos/Ilium, and that pair never really struck a chord either. Caliban was especially poorly done IIRC. Also, the flow between the characters stories and how they intertwined was lacking. I will grant that I finished them, but off the top of my head the only book I recall not finishing is Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight, so that’s not saying much. (And if anyone has a memory erasing machine, I have a few I’d like to purge thanks to Ms. Meyer)

    Nonetheless, while I may not enjoy the man’s books, I quite like his politics and grasp on reality.

  28. If you think Ilium and Olympos are rich and heady as the merry band crosses wine dark seas, but you cut your teeth on the deep technical background required to grok The Void Which Binds…

    Nibble on Muse of Fire. It may well be the most perfectly crafted novella yet penned.

  29. Steven Spielberg stole my childhood (June 20, 1975, to be exact). I still occasionally watch his movies — even That One (I just know when to Not Be Looking At The TV). Someone tell what’s-her-name what I kept hearing all through my childhood: “Suck it up and walk it off, wuss.”

  30. This whole Greta thing should be sending up red flags to everyone, but the masses have been trained to not question the media. What people should be asking is “Why did this girl, who was unknown not that long ago, and who doesn’t have anything original to share suddenly get so much publicity?”

    You don’t become an overnight superstar without a whole lot of big time help. Did her showbiz parents do some unseemly things to the latest Weinstein/Epstein in exchange for their daughter’s stardom?

    My magic 8 ball says yes.

    Also, retards that bleat on about how smart they are about climate change should quote more than a tiny sliver of actual climate data. I looked over the whole CO2 and temperature record going back hundreds of millions of years. It is very clear that we are coming out of a very deep ice age and are at one of the lowest levels of CO2 PPM in Earth’s history.

    But let’s not let facts interfere with the Climate Religion.

    PS Hyperion is really good. 🙂

    1. The Left loves props, and they really love when little kids parrot their talking points- that whole “out of the mouths of babes” thing.
      Plus, she’s a nice little shield, as Larry points out.

    2. Did her showbiz parents do some unseemly things to the latest Weinstein/Epstein in exchange for their daughter’s stardom?

      My magic 8 ball says yes.

      My Magic 8 Ball says “perhaps, but probably not.” I think her anger and fear is real. Just displaced onto an acceptable target. I don’t think her PARENTS did unseemly things. Or pimped her out. But given the crap-swirl that Sweden is becoming, the notion that, yes, the adults failed to protect her (or someone close to her), and she fears it may happen again, is not at all far fetched.

      After all, the Religion of Peace needs to do something “relaxing” when they aren’t throwing grenades in peaceful, multicultural Sweden, and there IS an abundance of unprotected infidel girls around.

      If Europe were civilized, Anders Brevik would have been executed within a week of his massacre. The rotting bodies of the Rotterham “groomers” would be hanging in front of the charred remains of the mosques they attended.

      1. “I don’t think her PARENTS did unseemly things. Or pimped her out.

        Two activist celebrity parents had nothing to do with their daughter becoming an activist celebrity? Looking them up, they’re the ones who trumpeted her hunger strikes and nightmares to the overseas media. It doesn’t paint a very pretty picture.

  31. I spent most of the 80’s at either SAC bases or other high value targets that were either on the Soviet (Theater/MAJCOM HQ) or NK (Osan) first strike lists.

    I grew up up not far enough to make any practical difference from an Army Ammunition Plant that was probably on the 3rd or 4th tier list .

    When stationed at Offutt the Junior Officers in the back row seating in the Command Post had a standing plan to head out to the Playboy Club on confirmed launch warning and run up the the credit cards, screw the limit!

  32. As of this moment, the Kindle of Hyperion is sitting at:

    #4 Classic Science-Fiction ebooks
    #21 Space Opera Science-Fiction

    Oh well. If only he hadn’t destroyed his career by offending the wokescolds.

  33. Eh, I disagree with the guy on his view with regards to poor Greta. I’m more on Andrew Klavan’s side here, that girl is being emotionally abused and manipulated by the political people around her. It’s disgusting. The child should be allowed to be a child. Did you SEE that FEAR in her eyes? That anger? The resentment? That was all brought on by adults who are manipulating her, poor girl.

    Still, what he said was rather mild… why the heck are people freaking out again? He wasn’t calling for her execution or anything, just saying that she was/is 16 and doesn’t know anything… that should be obvious.

  34. In the immortal words of Saruman, “YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE!” I do what I want, and that always includes thumbing my nose at File770

    Just ordered Hyperion and “In search of lost time”, because even if Proust sounds…honestly like the worst of predatory faggots*, ISOLT is supposed to be good a good read.

    *Go read his wiki, I’m just paraphrasing and refusing to use any PC terms.

  35. Dan Simmons is a fellow alumnus, from Wabash College, one of only 3 all-male colleges left in the country. I’m proud of him for speaking out here.

  36. Larry

    Dan exposed pedrophasy.

    kids as human shields to prohibit debate on topics that the powers that be decide can’t be broached

    Nicholas Nassin Taleb coined it but the definition is mine. I’m cruder than he is.
    xavier

  37. Here’s a debate tactic, or rather just a point you can bring up, whenever some pinko tries harassing you for your eating or driving habits in relation to climate or environmentalism in general. Or, even more appropriately, regarding gun violence.

    “How about a curfew?”

    Now, I’ll bet rubles to dollars they’ll first get an instinctive “oh, crap” reaction at the thought alone. So when they object, you can ask them why. Why is it wrong to set a time of day, well after business and evening culture hours, when most people are expected to stay at home? Anyone will tell you that the vast majority of violent crime occurs at night – think of the lives that can be saved that way. Sure, it violates the people’s rights of free movement and assembly… but it’s not like the left can tout the sanctity of the Constitution anymore. And yes, plenty of nighttime businesses will suffer – but that’s a good thing, see, because they’re usually establishments of rampant consumption of electricity and non-essential foodstuffs. It’s better for nature, isn’t it? And does anyone really need to go clubbing anyway? So it’s only logical that these establishments are restricted, out of environmental concerns.

    Of course, the actual reason this rhetoric can work has nothing to do with logic. Instead, there’s the simple fact that, for all the numerous restrictions that leftists are eager to impose on others, modern pop-culture still thankfully regards curfews as the surefire sign of a dictatorship. And so it can engage them emotionally… and hopefully cause a well-deserved bout of cognitive dissonance regarding the kind of crap they shovel on everyone else.

    I’m still not quite sure just how well it would work, so I’ll appreciate any suggestion for improvement or any results if anyone tries it in practice.

  38. I’m going to have to re-read the Hyperion Cantos, now. Truly one of my all-time favorite series. Simmons is an absolute gem of a writer, and deserves all of the accolades you have heaped upon him.

    I tried to get my ex- to read Hyperion, but she couldn’t deal with it. Perhaps one of the reasons she’s now an ex-…?

    I started Olympos, but got lost in all of the historical/mythological references so quickly I had to put it down. I’m in serious need of a classics refresher, unfortunately. I’ll have to get back to it, now that you’ve sung its praises so highly.

    Have you read Flashback? Damn good.

  39. And here are the fruits of SJW labor: I’ve never read any of Dan Simmonds stuff. I don’t recall ever having heard of him before. I’m sure I’ve seen or heard him mentioned, but it just didn’t “click” at the time.

    This clicked. Loud. You say Hyperion is a good place to start? Let me fire up my Kindle App.

  40. Odd how tastes are so different. I read Hyperion when it came out and didn’t like it at all. Bored me to tears. Never read another book by Simmons after that. Now I’ll have to go back and see what I may have missed.

    1. It’s sometimes funny how a person can bounce off of a book one time and years later enjoy it. Or love a book to death and then go back to read it years later and find it impossible.

      And something I’ve noticed it seems, maybe other people have too. There used to be a LOT of science fiction that people both loved, loved, loved, while other people proclaimed they just couldn’t get into it at all. The weird levels were higher. Does that make sense? And authors would do stuff with language that tickled some people and set barriers to others.

      Has anyone else noticed that, or is it just me?

      1. It’s not just you. Gene Wolfe is someone I can admire for his ideas and his style, but it’s not my cup of tea for fun reading. Other people love him. There really seems to have been a period when you had a huge range of writing styles, topics, and approaches. And then things narrowed, and there’s less experimentation with ideas and language.

        John C. Wright is another one who comes to mind. I enjoy his short stuff and he makes me think and work, but I don’t love his long-form fiction as much. After work and writing, I want popcorn, not a steak. 🙂

  41. I’m afraid I was never able to get into Hyperion, though I really liked Flashback and his version of the Donald Westlake/Richard Stark novels, the Joe Kurtz books.

    Anyone who has read Flashback will get that Simmons would be no fan of Greta.

  42. The one who stole Greta’s childhood was her mom when she drank even though she was with child, because Greta absolutely LOOKS like a case of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome at the very least. Speaking of her parents, her dad’s an actor, which I’m sure is PURE coincidence.

    1. Apparently, Greta’s mother published a book about her family. Does the cover feature said family? No…instead it features an intense close-up of the mother’s face.

      Make of that what you will.

    2. Fetal Alcohol syndrome?

      No, she has a fairly common Scandinavian face, the sort that usually evolves into what casting people look for when seeking the next Crunchbull or Nurse Ratchett. Just a variation on Resting Bitch Face.

    3. I’ve seen that comparison bandied about, actually, that Greta looks like a classic fetal alcohol syndrome kid. Having seen the symptoms illustrated, and then Greta’s photo next to it, highlighting the symptomatic features, I can see that there’s a possibility of it.

      Which means that her systemic abuse began long before it was made visible.

  43. Crimeny, I just realized this is the same Dan Simmons I heard about earlier this year.

    I sell our books at local festivals, and got into a conversation with this guy who loves loves loves Simmons. He sounded like an interesting author, and the guy (who saw my Sherlock Holmes books) said I must read “The Fifth Heart.”

    “It’s Sherlock with Henry James as his Watson,” he said.

    Sold. What a great book. A novel and a Sherlock pastiche, woven around Henry and Clover Adams (real people) and her suicide and why, Holmes claims, it wasn’t a real suicide, but murder.

    It was a great read, and now I’ll order Illium.

  44. How can you NOT like a book that starts like this:

    “Rage.

    “Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus’ son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you’re at it, O Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they may have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur-ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede.

    “Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-again-against-his-will Hockenberry—poor dead Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust on a world long since left behind. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage may be when measured against the anger of the immortal gods, or when compared to the wrath of the god-killer, Achilles.

    “On second thought, O Muse, sing of nothing to me. I know you. I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit.”

  45. Has anybody used the term “lynch snobs” to refer to these assholes yet?

    Because if not, we need to start doing that.

  46. Already own hyperion, but it’s been lingering in my queue. Now I’ll have to read it and continue the series. 😛

  47. Okay, Book-brags.

    Since these books, Ilium, Olympos, Hyperion are classics wouldn’t you want the first editions in hardcover for your bookshelves? To show off?

    Come on!

    Oh, I have 100 books, oh, I have 200 books, oh, I have 400 books on my e-reader. BFD.

    Such brainiacs.

    When I was dying I gave away boxes of books to the local Greek Orthodox church that holds annual book sales. Mostly paperbacks. They were in the basement doomed to be never looked at again. Mere reminders of all the crap that I read. All the Hugo and all the Nebula winners up to that point, spy novels, and the like. Plus everything the regular book stores recommended. Historical novels. Many that didn’t get SF awards because something else that year won.

    I no longer cared about the books, it was their mass that I cared about. As reminder of all things I had read. Other than that they were nothing more than a fire hazard and a massive pain in the butt to move.

    But I lived!

    And moved. Then moved again. Then moved again.

    When my 4 siblings cleaned up my parent’s house for sale they had cleared out the basement and put things to save in white storage boxes that stacked up against the far wall forming another wall of identical white boxes. I had never seen the basement so clean. They drew my attention to one white box on the top that was labeled “Books too nerdy for Bo to read.”

    What a stupid label.

    I wondered, what books could they have? I was already surprised my parents had so many of my books that I actually used and marked up to tatters such as Spanish textbook. But which books do my sibs think are too nerdy for me?

    The box was empty. Hardy har har. Their opinion is that there aren’t any books that are too nerdy for me. Such amusing siblings (whose interests are rather nerdy.)

    Abebooks has Ilium in hard cover first edition for mere cents more than their paperbacks. You should buy one.

    I haven’t checked the other titles, but likely the same thing.

    As for myself, I have 3 large lovely wooden very nice tall wide bookshelves loaded with big fat books, mostly classics. The full range of subjects; dinosaurs, castles, sharks, big ships, ancient Egypt, stained glass churches, Jewish traditions, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Moby Dick, Peter Pan, Cinderella, Wizard of Oz, birds, butterflies, bugs and on and on and on. Guest come over and stand before it in awe. Such colorful books so heavy looking. They don’t dare even touch one. They regard me an intellectual.

    Psych! They’re all pop-up books. Every last one of them. The only books worth keeping. Everything else worthwhile is available and searchable online.

    Delighted, guests take down a book and read it in one minute. They take down a stack of books, light as feathers, and flip through them in a mere half hour.

    They actually read my pop-up books!

    I read them from behind so I can see how they’re constructed, which mechanisms are used stacked together to produce the result, how the art is incorporated into the mechanisms and background, so that I can reproduce something similar for my sibling’s and their wive’s/husband’s/children’s birthday cards. They’re incredibly useful books as examples. The cards made from their ideas go far beyond the intended targets. They’re taken to church and shown to the kids who open and close them a million times. They’re taken to restaurants and shown to dinner companions. Bags of them. They’re left laying around as household decorations so that guests pick them up. Apparently they’re impossible to throw away. So I’m told. I’m thinking about my brothers and sisters. But they’re showing their cards to everyone that they know. And that makes bookshelves of pop-up books worthwhile keeping. For me, anyway.

  48. The problem with Climate Science is its actually extremely complicated issue with no simple or easy solutions. It’s a fact that humans have an impact on the environment purely by existing, but the amount of impact is actually up for debate (even among actual experts) and the long term effects of our existence are ether the mass extinction has already started and we’re fucked (what 16 year old clueless kids believe) to we have 50-100 years to get our act together and clean things up. So actual experts aren’t 100% sure yet how much time we have to fix things or if we even can.

    So we need to cut carbon emissions supposedly, the question is how? In the US roughly 50% of our carbon emissions come from electricity used by buildings for heating and cooling and keeping the lights on. We could make that go away tomorrow if we replace all of our coal and natural gas plants with nuclear.

    Boom fixed, half the problem gone like the snap. Or is it? Nuclear isn’t without its own problems and the End of the World types won’t even bring it up because the problems, which could be solved, if we wanted to.

    Solar won’t work because some places are too densely populated. There isn’t enough roof space in NYC to put enough solar panels to switch to solar. That’s assuming we had the battery technology to cover for cloudy days, fog or just nighttime. Maybe someday, but that still doesn’t solve the population density problem. Where do we put all the panels?

    Republican congressman Thomas Massie’s house is completely off the grid. He even has the battery from a totaled Tesla Model S to give his house power when the solar panels can’t. Guess what? He still has to have a propane generator because he understandably doesn’t want to go without electricity and sometimes the solar panels + battery setup can’t cut it. This is a prohibitively expensive solution, but is a good proof of concept for how solar can work.

    Hydro, Geothermal all also have issues, but I don’t know enough about this to comment on it, beyond to say implementation of these will always limited for obvious reasons.

    The Climate Cultists don’t want you to know that there is hope. Beyond Beef (lab grown meat) is a thing that is coming. There is a group in Switzerland working on technology to literally scrub CO2 from the air. This could potentially reverse the very thing the cultists are crying about.

    Go figure, smart clued in people are actually looking for solutions and finding them. Neat huh?

    All without giving up our way of life which is what the cultists want us to do so they don’t have to. No need for “feel good” climate resolutions that everyone (even the cultists) will ignore the second being green will impact our way of life.

    I could keep going, but I’ve already outted myself as an Earth hating shit lord.

    1. Well, I’m a token bleeding-heart leftist, so feel free to condemn me, but still: I agree with some of what you say, though not all of it. Firstly, yes, nuclear power is the way to go (until we develop fusion, assuming that’s even possible). The leftist opposition to it is the reason why I don’t support any of the major environmentalist groups anymore.

      That said, I do believe that global warming is a more serious issue than most Republicans believe — although a much less serious one than what ultra-Liberals would have us believe. No, it won’t lead to any kind of a post-apocalyptic scenario where you have to learn who rules Bullet Town; however, it will lead to a reduction in food and water supplies, and will render a few areas of the world virtually uninhabitable without advanced technology. All of that translates to a major economic downturn, additional refugee crises, and possibly a shifting global balance of power in favor of Russia. People call me a commie, but trust me, I want Russia to have as little power as possible.

      What frustrates me most about the Conservative response to global warming is that they are supposed to be the party of money; and yet, they seem to be completely ignoring the financial implications of climate change. What’s also frustrating is that the solutions to global warming — more nuclear power, less fossil fuels, improved electrical grids, increased research into power generation technologies — would be worth pursuing even if global warming wasn’t an issue (which it is, with something like 99.9% certainty).

      Are you worried about Russian hackers bringing down our power grid ? Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so easy to bring down if it was more resilient. Are you worried about Muslim countries (and Russia !) gaining too much global power ? Well, then maybe paying them tons of cash for their fossil fuels every year isn’t such a great idea. Are you worried about losing our scientific and technological edge to China ? Well, then maybe more investment into science is a good idea.

      I’m worried about all those things, and I’m a pinko liberal ! Why do Conservatives routinely ignore these issues ? Is it just because the other side claimed ownership of them, so now they’ve got to oppose them just on principle… or what ?

      1. I’ve been watching the whole AGW mess for about 30 years now. (Dang, how time flies when you’re having fun.)

        The predictions made have not been coming true. The icecaps haven’t melted away. New York hasn’t flooded. We’ve not had famines or droughts here in the US. Hurricanes haven’t become more frequent or more intense. The sea levels aren’t rising.

        There are numerous, numerous reports of otherwise impeccable temperature data bases being ‘adjusted’ – so that the temperatures ‘then’ are more in line with what they ‘should have been’. This worries me tremendously from a scientific standpoint.

        The primary pusher of the AGW theorem, Dr. Michael Mann, is towards the end of a lengthy legal battle that he’s losing where he’s been trying extremely hard to ensure that both the data sets and the computations used to get his predictions remain confidential.

        Climategate – the releasing of East Anglia’s emails where they basically admitted internally they were ‘adjusting’ the raw data to get outcomes that looked right – was as far as I was concerned a nail in the coffin.

        Adding in that the long-range climate model predictions are departing further and further from the real temperatures recorded at temperature stations that were kept to the best standards of NOAA (more info on that at Surfacestations.Org) I’m looking more and more at the CAGW controversy as a moral panic that was shamelessly taken advantage of by ‘environmentalists’ to push their renewable energy agenda.

        If we really have X number of years to get CO2 under control – then the answer wasn’t to fiddle-fart around with windmills and solar, at least if you wanted to keep the lights on. Germany found out that solar couldn’t keep their industry going after they dumped both coal and nuclear after Fukushima. Oh, the embarrassment – now they’re building brown coal power plants.

        And neither would it have been a sensible idea to have ‘climate conferences’ in exotic locations that the attendees arrive in private jets at. Seriously, no Skype? Sheesh.

        It would have been to push nuclear power research and construction HARD. Modern fail-safe plants are generations removed from the GE reactors at Fukushima (which had been designed for a Richter 8 earthquake but survived a Richter 9 AND a tsunami – but failed when their emergency generators ran out of fuel. That was a mistake on the emergency coordinators part – not a design flaw in the plant itself) and darn near light-years off of the old design of Chernobyl. (Which, I might add, was blown up ‘inadvertently’ through a dumb-ass test. The history of THAT nuclear accident was exceedingly interesting.)

        But that’s not happening. The ‘environmentalists’ are still fighting nuclear power. They’re fighting fracking – which got the price of natural gas WAY down from the point it was a preferred fuel in the fight against CAGW. The people pushing the CAGW agenda have been buying coastline property.

        And that doesn’t begin to touch on the problems I’ve got with the way it’s all been handled. “The SCIENCE IS SETTLED!!!” is NOT the way you convince me. Neither does the ‘You can’t question what climate scientists say!’ mantra.

        Since this is dragging on so long one last thing. If someone were to tell you tomorrow that there was NO or minimal global warming and here was their evidence, would you be happy about that? Or fight the idea that it WASN’T going to be catastrophic?

        Why do I see so many people insisting that it IS real, and unwilling to even entertain the idea that it won’t be a calamity?

        1. The predictions made have not been coming true. The icecaps haven’t melted away. New York hasn’t flooded.

          I completely agree with you that the alarmist post-Apocalyptic predictions of this sort have not come true; but, as I said in my previous post, I don’t believe they would. True, we have had more droughts (California is still in the middle of one) and hurricanes than we’d normally expect, but one extra hurricane here and there is not a world-ending (or even nation-ending) event. Yes, they are bad for the economy in the long run, and will continue getting worse, but they’ll never destroy civilization as we know it… They’ll just make it a lot harder for places like the US to stay on top. Globally speaking, it’s not a big deal, but I’d still rather prevent it from happening (or mitigate the effects, at least).

          You’re focusing on “Climategate” in particular, but a). the vast majority of it relies on taking emails out of context, and b). there’s been a ton more data and research since then, and all of it points toward anthropogenic climate change. Obviously, you could posit a vast conspiracy of scientists, 99% of whom are all colluding with each other, but I’m not sure how anyone could ever disprove such a proposition, so I won’t try.

          If we really have X number of years to get CO2 under control – then the answer wasn’t to fiddle-fart around with windmills and solar,

          Oh, I absolutely agree; as I said in my own post, nuclear is the way to go. However, detecting climate change, and solving it, are two very different issues. There’s no way Random Joe Climatologist can will a nuclear power plant into being; he can, at best, write a paper about it.

          And neither would it have been a sensible idea to have ‘climate conferences’ in exotic locations

          That’s kind of a petty complaint. Firstly, most of the collaboration does take place online, and through scientific journals; secondly, conferences are always set in attractive locations. AWS re:Invent takes place in posh casinos in Vegas; does this mean Amazon is a hoax ?

          But that’s not happening. The ‘environmentalists’ are still fighting nuclear power… If someone were to tell you tomorrow that there was NO or minimal global warming and here was their evidence, would you be happy about that?

          I think you are confusing the media with actual scientific research. You can read a ton of sensational articles every day, to the extent of “chocolate cures cancer !”; but when you look closer into it, the real news would be something like, “there’s a 1/20 chance a specific type of chocolate reduces the probability of rats acquiring a specific type of cancer by 0.1%”. Secondly, if someone told me that AGW isn’t happening, I’d be suspicious; at this point it’s like saying “the Moon is 20x closer than we thought !”. However, if the evidence checked out, of course I’d be happy… but… I’d still advocate for switching away from fossil fuels; improving power grids; increased scientific research into alternative power sources; etc. As I said in my post above, all of those things are good ideas regardless of global warming; global warming just makes those issues a lot more urgent. As I also said, I find it frustrating that Republicans refuse to even entertain the idea of e.g. largely replacing oil with nuclear, and then turn around and immediately start complaining about the ascendancy of Islamic states. The two issues are related, you know ?

          1. Just the one point…

            It’s not *petty* to complain about climate conferences in exotic locations. What people DO is illustrative of what they BELIEVE.

            It may be only one point (among an storm of them) but it illustrates what the people doing this believe. And it doesn’t match what they say. And if the people who SAY that we have a crisis demonstrate in multitudes of ways, one of which is globe trotting to exotic locations to have big parties, that they don’t believe their own words…

            How are they any less “deniers” than the rest of us?

          2. ” all of those things are good ideas regardless of global warming;”
            this is not true. there are scientifically provable benefits to the world from having higher CO2 concentrations. Plants grow much faster if there is more CO2 and scientists have detected a noticeable improvement in the planet since humans increased the CO2 supply. Ecologists have done research indicating that 800 to 1000 parts per million CO2 is optimal for plant growth, which we could have if we at least doubled our current CO2 concentrations. I see no reason to give up on those benefits, especially given that one of the benefits is to increase the fertility of land that is currently only marginally productive. This would go a LONG way towards reducing world hunger and world poverty. I see no reason to stop that from happening over a bunch of myths and lies with absolutely ZERO scientific evidence to back them up.

          3. @Bugmaster”you could posit a vast conspiracy of scientists, 99% of whom are all colluding . . .”
            Actually its much simpler. A few frauds simply LIE and CLAIM that 99% of scientists agree with them and then all the rest of the climate alarmist repeat that lie ad nauseum whenever they need to dodge someones request for actual EVIDENCE or a debate challenge. It is likely that less than 40% of scientists believe this man made global warming bs.

            Lets break down the three layered lie and see where it came from.
            First a study was done showing 97% of scientists believe in AGW. however the methodology and accuracy of the study were soon debunked. What they had done is they only surveyed scientists they knew had publicly supported AGW. This would be like taking a political poll by only asking people wearing MAGA hats and then acting ASTONISHED that 97% of people surveyed are planning to vote for trump. With methods that dishonest you can get whatever number you want, 97%, 99% or 99.9999%. the other problem with this study was related to the first. They only surveyed a few hundred scientists. Of course since they had to limit the survey to known supporters this makes perfect sense. The 97% number was a fraud and a deliberate lie from the beginning.

            Once that first study was debunked a guy named cook came out with ANOTHER study that just coincidentally also get THE EXACT SAME RESULT. how convenient. This study was also quickly debunked as a fraud. It worked like this. Cook did not ask scientists directly, since that would be too hard to rig. Instead he got the summaries of papers written by scientists and then assigned them a value as either agreeing with AGW or disagreeing. He found the astonishing result that 97% of scientists agreed with his political views. How surprising. Of course he did it by just flatly FAKING HIS DATA. he got caught when multiple scientists complained that he had misrepresented what their papers said. Cook obviously thought no one would check his work. His entire methodology was absurdly unscientific, and it was INTENDED to be so. The entire intent was to avoid asking scientists directly specifically so he could fake the data and get the number he wanted. Another group repeated his study to check just how badly he faked the data. They found that only 40% of the papers cited actually supported AGW.

            The final way leftists lie about being in the majority is to count people like ME as part of their ‘consensus’. They basically count anyone that agrees that the planet is warming, and/or that co2 does absorb infrared radiation. Then they just make the absurd leap that if you agree to those two things you MUST agree with AGW. I think AGW is a total hoax and yet they would count me as part of their new ‘consensus’.

            The claim that there is a scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming and that it will cause harm is an absolute LIE and it always has been. You should stop using it as an argument. If you can present evidence for AGW then just present evidence. Popularity polls are not scientific, especially FAKE popularity polls.

          4. Re California and droughts… sigh.

            You have a lot of people in Sacramento that have (IMHO) not the first damn clue about how to run the state. Disassembling water storage, cancelling plans for reservoirs, and dumping a LOT of water from the Central Valley out to sea to protect the Delta Smelt… yeah. Um… Can’t use what you don’t have, and if you don’t even try to keep it…

            Dude, the state’s darn near a desert. Drought is it’s normal condition. It was the long-term planning of folks in the early 20th century that allowed California to prosper. (But why do I get the feeling I’m telling you something that you know already?)

            Re hurricanes – actually, we’re running about at average. Maybe a tad low? But the record year was 1950. 13 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and 8 made landfall.

            https://stormfax.com/huryear.htm

            Obviously, you could posit a vast conspiracy of scientists, 99% of whom are all colluding with each other, but I’m not sure how anyone could ever disprove such a proposition, so I won’t try.

            Conspiracy? Not as such. Here’s the thing. You’re given X amount of money to research a subject. If you find ‘evidence’ of what you’re looking for, you get more money to keep researching it. If you don’t – then the money goes away. And so does the prestige of your institution because all these OTHER institutions could find it – why couldn’t you? There goes your funding, there goes your rep – how much are THOSE worth?

            So you… adjust the numbers. Just a bit, just enough so you can say your models indicate warming. Maybe not as much as others, but you need more money to refine your predictions. You found the warming, you get more money. Everyone else has found warming – you hide in the crowd.

            Re East Anglia – sorry, man. I’ve been working in IT for 30+ years. Computer models are NOT reality. They They’re simulations. They have to match reality to be useful. A computer model that doesn’t match reality is worthless – except as a bad example. That the EA people were documented as making adjustments to the raw data to get the results they were expecting, and NOT KEEPING TRACK of the adjustments took their results from ‘science’ to ‘science fiction’ IMO.

            Are models useless? Quite the contrary. Engineering simulations are useful because all relevant parameters are known and the results match reality – and even then there’s the occasional wrench in the works that occurs when you build what looked okay in the model – like that pedestrian bridge collapse in Florida. I imagine they modeled the shit out of that before they started building. But when you actually build something… that’s when it works or it breaks.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse

            An examination carried out by the Federal Highway Administration discovered faults in the design of the bridge, which overestimated the strength of the bridge in the region which failed, and underestimated the load it would be expected to carry.

            A model that gives you the wrong result is useless.

            I’d still advocate for switching away from fossil fuels; improving power grids; increased scientific research into alternative power sources; etc.

            So would I. I’d love to see oil relegated to lubricants and chemical stocks – but it’s not going to happen in my lifetime. As far as alternative power solutions go – we’ve been doing that research for the last 30 years. Windmills, tidal, solar… the problem is that they’re not anywhere close to being usable on a large scale, and frankly we use just way too much energy for them TO be workable. (Windmills are too diffuse and mince birds. Tidal’s only useful in certain areas, and again too diffuse… and minces fish. Solar – only usable in certain areas (NOT Germany, lol) … and fries birds. At least in the Mojave projects…)

            I’ve lost count of the number of ‘breakthroughs’ I’ve seen on wind and solar and battery tech that maybe worked in the lab but never seemed to be viable outside lab conditions. I’m not optimistic, but I keep hoping.

            As I said in my post above, all of those things are good ideas regardless of global warming; global warming just makes those issues a lot more urgent.

            If it can’t be made to work, it doesn’t matter how urgent the reason or how good it sounds. (Shrug.)

            Frankly, I agree with you about the grid – I worry about another Carrington event. That’d knock us back to the late 1800s for quite a while and a lot of people will die.

            As I also said, I find it frustrating that Republicans refuse to even entertain the idea of e.g. largely replacing oil with nuclear, and then turn around and immediately start complaining about the ascendancy of Islamic states. The two issues are related, you know ?

            Two things here. First, I disagree with you on the ‘refuse to entertain’ idea. It’s just not high on the list for our political ‘betters’, primarily because it’s not cost effective for a number of reasons at this point and any pol that does push it gets no real credit. And that’s the big thing. A politician will do things that’ll help him advance his career – and nuclear power doesn’t really do that much for it.

            But. Trump doesn’t care about advancing his career. He just wants to get stuff done.

            https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/02/trumps-crucial-decision-nuclear-power/

            We’ll see what comes of that. I’m hopeful.

            So that’s why I think that there’s no real push on nuclear power by both the D and the R contingent.

            As a technology – I really like the idea of it. The reality is that it’s a zero-CO2 power supply. It’s dense and constant. It’ll keep the lights on. And strictly speaking – it’s NOT that expensive.

            Or wouldn’t be but the environment lobby’s been fighting nuclear for decades. Layers of lawyers have delayed projects for literally decades. Run the price up and up and up and up – and you’ll get even the most staunch supporters going “You know, there’s cheaper options out there, dammit.” Power companies HAVE to run at a profit (or at least not a severe loss…) and the anti-nuke lobby counts every abandoned project as a win… and points to them as a cautionary tale to attempt to convince companies considering it that they’re going to fight it tooth and nail and run the costs up to ruinous levels any way they can.

            Discussing this – in the end, I think we’re a bit closer on our opinions than either of us might think.

            I bow respectfully in your direction. 😉 Have a good day!

          5. The instant scientists get government funding, science is perverted into a political mouthpiece.

            It’s inescapable.

            And, Jason missed one additional gotcha for those heretics who blaspheme against the global warming orthodoxy — they can’t get published in ‘respectable’ scientific journals. That’s a worse death than getting un-funded.
            ———————————
            Facts do not depend on opinions. Unfortunately, for far too many people, opinions do not depend on facts, either.

          6. @JasonJackson:
            As I said above (or below ? hard to keep track), it kind of depends on whom you trust. There’s no way I can disprove a vast conspiracy of leftist scientists who are excluding dissenting voices from all public research — and that’s even assuming that I wasn’t myself part of the conspiracy.

            That said, if you google for “Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming” (sorry, I can’t link to it, since links get auto-moderated), you can see a variety of resources from a bunch of major scientific organizations, all agreeing on the following points:
            * The climate is warming,
            * This warming is primarily (though not solely) a result of human activity,
            * The effects of this warming will be a net negative (although some positive effects will be observed as well),
            * There are some steps humans can take to mitigate global warming.

            What you won’t see is a consensus on topics such as “…and therefore we are all gonna DIE in 7 years !!!” or “…and therefore we should ban cars and go live in caves”. Those are not scientific points, but rather mass media exaggerations. In general, the media is absolutely terrible at reporting scientific issues (hell, any kinds of issues, really); climatology is no exception.

            You focus heavily on the Michael Mann controversy, buy a). it’s really more of a non-traversy drummed up by the media, and b). Michael Mann is just one guy, and no real scientist would ever draw conclusions from just one study. That’s why scientific consensus is so important: it means that multiple scientists tried their best to debunk some proposed hypothesis (in this case, climate change), but repeatedly failed to do so.

            I’d like to reiterate, once again, that I do not subscribe to global warming alarmism. I want us to get off of fossil fuels by converting to nuclear power (primarily); I want to spend a lot more money on alternative power research (and especially improved battery storage); but I don’t want to take away your car, nor do I advocate for digging a shelter in the hills and stockpiling baked beans for the coming Apocalypse.

      2. Read JLawson’s response, it will be better than mine.

        Bug, you said…

        “What frustrates me most about the Conservative response to global warming is that they are supposed to be the party of money; and yet, they seem to be completely ignoring the financial implications of climate change.”

        This is actually the opposite. What Conservatives don’t ignore are the financial implications. Maybe, since you’re not looking through a lens of opposition, you simply don’t notice certain aspects of the climate change “conversation” related to the economy. The most remarkable thing, really, is that it starts with a set of political and economic “solutions” as a given. Not as a discussion, as a given. And what comes after are the demands that one admit that climate change is real and catastrophic. That’s not a discussion either. If you’re unconvinced even just of the catastrophe part you’ll be called a denier and the main tactic used is to try to bully or shame you into compliance, because no one wants to be so awful. Why? Because if someone is forced to accept the catastrophe they’ll be forced to accept the pre-packaged set of shockingly destructive political and economic “solutions.”

        So yeah, conservatives see that dynamic and reject it wholly. I mean, what do you really think the Green Nude Eel is all about? The climate?

        You said this as well, about what frustrates you:

        “What’s also frustrating is that the solutions to global warming — more nuclear power, less fossil fuels, improved electrical grids, increased research into power generation technologies — would be worth pursuing even if global warming wasn’t an issue (which it is, with something like 99.9% certainty).”

        You probably should direct this particular frustration at someone other than conservatives or deniers. I haven’t heard anyone but myself, so far, explaining that all those kids should be in school studying calculus so they can get into that nuclear engineering program at the State University.

        I do see a whole lot of my Senator insisting that windmills and solar can 100% replace oil for jobs in our state, that electricity will be *cheaper* and there will be more jobs and that the economy will boom, if only people stopped opposing development (of what no one really opposes). It’s a lie. He’s got to know he’s lying. His constituents love it. The love to hear we don’t need oil or gas and that it can be done away with painlessly and that perpetual motion exists and well, those people who say that the economic claims are lies? They’re just deniers who want a bad economy and no jobs… because that makes sense.

        That’s what we deal with Bug. Maybe you don’t hear it.

        1. As I said in my reply to JLawson above (or maybe below ? not sure how thread sorting will work out), there’s a difference between saying “anthropogenic global warming is happening”, and, “it’s happening and therefor we should ban all cars”.

          I have explicitly stated that I don’t see climate change as catastrophic; but “merely” as a catalyst for a serious financial and geopolitical disaster. This is not a global catastrophe. It will not end human civilization. It won’t even end Western civilization… just make it a lot less powerful, and a lot less fun, for a long time. Personally, I’d like to avoid that, even though humanity will likely go on regardless.

          In addition, just because I think (along with the scientific consensus) that global warming is real, does not imply that I would endorse any and all proposed solutions to it, no matter how crazy. It’s kind of like the Creationist argument: “aha, so if you believe that evolution is real, then you must also believe that we should go out raping and pillaging everyone !” Well, no, I don’t, because there’s no logical connection between the two.

          No, “doing away with oil or gas” will not be painless; some of those jobs will disappear forever. But sometimes painful things are worth doing; and if cutting our dependence on fossil fuels ends up buying us a better economic outlook, and a reduction in power of places like Saudi Arabia and Russia, then IMO it’s worth it. We should be focusing on smoothing the transition as much as we possibly can, not on preserving obsolete economic sectors forever just because that’s what we’ve always done.

          And yes, I do believe that kids should be in school studying Calculus; I believe that everyone should be in school studying Calculus 🙂

          1. But do you understand this….

            That’s not what anyone else is saying. The fact that you are a smart, practical guy, and that you aren’t lying about catastrophe has NOTHING to do with the religious and absolute nature of the conversation. I’m not the only one who absolutely refuses to get on board the crazy train just so that someone won’t call me a denier or worse.

            And if the AGW alarmists continue to refuse nuclear, what on earth possible purpose could there be to kissing the AGW ring?

            We won’t save the world but at least we’ll die righteous?

          2. If you believe everyone should be in school studying calculus, why aren’t you in the stacks working on analytical solutions to Navier-Stokes, experimental measurements of fluid mechanics, and the state of the art in CFD? If you can make the methods of Climate Science work well enough to meet the demands of engineers, ANSYS would pay a fancy programming genius such as yourself money to implement them.

            No slight intended on your professional skills; I know nothing about them.

          3. @Julie Pascal:
            I absolutely agree with you about “the religious and absolute nature of the conversation”. However, I think that you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There’s a new article every day to the extent of “chocolate cures cancer !”, but cancer is nevertheless a real disease (or rather a group of diseases), and we have made great strides in treating it; one day, there will be a cure. To use a more poignant example, there’s a very literal religious opposition to the theory of evolution, and yet it is quite real, as well.

            You ask “what possible purpose could there be to kissing the AGW ring?”, but IMO that’s a strange way to look at life. Reality exists regardless of whether it’s politically convenient or emotionally satisfying; and you can accept reality regardless of whether you want to do anything about it.

            For example, I personally really hate the fact that AI is going to take my job soon (I’m a computer programmer, but not a data scientist); but I’m not going to just close my eyes and pretend this isn’t happening already. There are steps I could take to ensure continuous employment or a comfortable retirement, and I could choose to pursue some or none of them; but even if I chose to do nothing, that would not preclude me from understanding the situation as it exists. Why is climate change any different ?

          4. A false apples and oranges switcheroo. Bugmaster purposefully dismisses his opponent’s reservations on the topic, and the introduces a much milder, more palatable, point to try and make his opponent look unreasonable.

            It’s the old motte and bailey.

            AGW is REAL! Give us socialism now!
            -but we don’t want socialism.
            Why do you not believe the weather changes?

          5. @BobtheRegisterredFool:
            I’m not nearly smart enough to work on that stuff, sadly; but, believe it or not, I make my money by writing genomics software for major agricultural firms. It’s no secret that most of them are increasingly concerned about engineering drought resistance into their crops. Why do you think that is ?

          6. Because droughts happen all the freaking time?

            What a painful non-sequitur.

            I like when people toss out something that sounds clever and dismissive, until you give it even the smallest bit of critical thinking and then it totally falls apart.

            Let’s see… it could be that the CEOs of ag firms know the REAL TRUTH and we’re all gonna die of global warming. Or, it could be that droughts happen all the time throughout all human history for a wide variety of reasons, or drought resistant stuff sells better, or drought resistant sounds good from a marketing perspective, or they’re pushing into new markets where people are starting to farm previously untilled areas because their production has been pushed out of more lucrative areas due to population growth, or you know, one of a million other possible reasons…

          7. Hell, my home region was one of the most agriculturally productive areas in the world, and now routinely has droughts, not at all because of the weather, but because of state mismanagement and redirecting the water for other, totally stupid, political reasons, and they’ve not build a new reservoir in the time their population has doubled in size. Maybe ag firms want to sell drought resistant stuff to all the poor assholes who are stuck in California? 😀

          8. “This is not a global catastrophe. It will not end human civilization. It won’t even end Western civilization… just make it a lot less powerful, and a lot less fun, for a long time.”

            So, how ’bout that curfew then?

            * * *

            The main problem with climate alarmism isn’t the claimed scope of effect – similar potential disasters, from critical pollution and disease, to nuclear war, can be just as devastating. No, what makes it hard to take seriously is the “drop all logic and reasoning and do what I say” kind of rhetoric; the notion that this is a situation never seen before, where even the laws of thermodynamics don’t apply. And the fact that liberals tend to use that rhetoric for everything; where policies that have failed time and again are still pushed, saying “it’ll work this time, dude, trust me”.

            All of this relies on triggering some instinctive doomsday fear in people, so they abandon their own reason, their own agency, and trust the speaker blindly. And there’s no faster way to check this, than to agree with their premise, and present your own solution. Like, say, global warming is real, it is primarily man-made, it can be catastrophic… so it’s a good idea to switch to nuclear power. Modern plants are safe, reliable, potent enough to fuel the world for centuries, especially with the newly introduced isotopes and molten salt reactors, and overall carbon-neutral. But just try mentioning that, and count the milliseconds before you get shot down, with arguments that weren’t valid even in the sixties and seventies.

            Ultimately, the problem of climate alarmists has nothing to do with climate. Instead, it’s all about creating a framework, no matter how illogical and inconsistent, where their word is accepted automatically, at face value, no questions asked. A world where they are smart, and good, and right… without ever having to work for it. And no matter how many people they trample on in the process.

      3. Bugmaster,
        How come you aren’t worried about the environmental impact of the Earth making the sun explode because we won’t kill all the Spanish speakers? Is it because you don’t really care about the environment? Is it a false flag issue for you? Are you blinded by reflexive opposition to conservatives?

        Can’t a conservative calculate that since energy, food, and money are somewhat correlated, the economic impact of ‘addressing climate change’ is equivalent to the death or starvation of many foreigners? Can’t a conservative then further ask if the evidence provided is sufficient to murder that many foreigners, and conclude that it is not?

        Can’t a conservative look into Navier-Stokes and conclude that, really, if the fancy science models can predict worth even ‘killing all Mexicans’ standards of evidence, unicorns may also exist?

        Are you so in love with your ‘super smart programmer’ hat that you can’t understand that others may weigh different evidence, and come to radically different conclusions?

        1. You’re doing a great job arguing with some kind of an Apocalyptic Straw Leftist. I’m sure he will be totally struck down by your impeccable logic; but, since I’m not that guy (as I said in my reply to Travis), there’s not much I can do but shrug.

          1. My statements are calibrated carefully. Tests that reject ‘the earth making the sun explode’ reject a certain number of less obviously flawed climate models. Tests that reject ‘Spanish speakers are bad, but other humans are okay’ reject a different selection of less obviously flawed climate models. It encapsulates a lot of the core issues without running much risk that you will opt to endorse killing the Spanish speakers.

            Your financial impacts and my hypothetical environmental impacts are equally imaginary.

            The issue of addressing climate change has three tests to pass. Failing one means that it is reasonable for someone to ignore the issue and treat the whole thing as fraud.

            Test one, show the assumptions, data, and chain of custody. Are they impeachable?

            Secondly, food supply and standard of living have an energy cost. Diminishing returns on efficiency mean that you can’t assume that the engineers will pull a magical fix out of their ass. So, significant energy savings (or nukes) are needed for reductions of human carbon, and you can get those by making people poorer, or making people deader. The proposal is that we will implement these by international agreements. Well, you aren’t going to be able to get foreign governments to deliver on fucking themselves over that way for very long. Over the ‘required’ periods of time, the stability of regimes and agreements implementing these controls will be negligible. So, do you have enough evidence to wage genocidal war against the old world? No? Then why should I impoverish Americans for something you will not kill Chinese, Germans, Indians or Africans to get done?

            Test the third, is it even plausible that scientists could get a model of this phenomena working reliably enough to make decisions of significant human welfare on? Hot tip: ‘Science’ has a lot of specialties. Individual scientists may know more than one broad specialty, but do not know every specialty in great detail. If the details from one specialty cause a problem, a majority of scientists will not know about it. If the context from another specialty causes a problem, a majority of scientists will not know about it. The test of whether something works is not consulting ‘scientists’, it is learning the specialties and putting the pieces together yourself. A mere plausibility check should not be beyond even you.

            If your actions do not merit being beaten three quarters to death, one doesn’t ask instead if maybe we shouldn’t consider beating you black and blue just in case. If the impact is not immediate and serious enough for serious immediate action, lesser intervention is not automatically in consideration. Minor intervention to address ‘climate change’ is going to cause harm in terms of poverty, in America, India, and China.

            If you are going to bitch about the ‘leftwing fraud’ hypothesis, realize that ignoring things when you are handed all the fucking pieces raises two possibilities. One is that you are so lazy and feebleminded that you really should be in supervised living. Second, that you are committing fraud.

      4. Hmm. Made long comment – not seeing it now… dang.

        TL;DR –

        Nukes – we agree. No political good coming from it, and that’s all the pols care about. Environmental lobby has lots of scalps (canceled projects, caused by decades of expensive litigation) to wave, to convince others looking at it they’ll lose money trying it. Other alternatives are cheaper.

        But Trump’s pushing the idea. Maybe he can kickstart things. I sure hope so – considering the crop of D candidates are pushing the Green New Deal.
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/02/trumps-crucial-decision-nuclear-power/

        And… I’ve got no more time to spend on this today, sadly. Good luck to you, sir – I think we’ve got more opinions that are similar than different. I bow respectfully in your direction.

          1. Ah – thank you sir! Should have realized that.

            BTW, with your new compilation up, I’m gonna go buy you a few pounds of gravel for your driveway. 😉

      5. Can you point to anything North America could do to move the numbers?

        Assuming the IPCC is correct in its estimates, the only thing that the US could do to move the numbers would be to begin bombing China and India’s infrastructure. There simply isn’t enough CO2 emitted in the US to make a difference, even if it were all to disappear tomorrow (100% reduction)

        1. We can feel bad?

          Oh, and pay huge sums to those other places for them not to actually do anything.

          But it would send the right message.

          (… gawd, I choked on that so bad typing it… )

    2. Neat, yes. But CO2 is a very tiny part of our atmosphere and plants “inhale” it and generously give us humans oxygen. Carbon is the basis of life, so this hysteria over “greenhouse gas” and “global warming” seems very anti-human to me. Anti-life. We’ve seen what greedy control freaks look like and that’s what we see today. But now we have teh innernet to boost the signal and really traumatize the kids.

      Thanks for letting me crash your party.

      1. And you’ve hit it on the head. A lot of the green hysterias are very anti-human, anti-people; with plenty of exhortations that the West reduce the amount of children being had (most Western populations, especially Caucasian, are seen as below replacement levels, and then you get the flip coin about ‘we need to get more immigrants to do the labor’), but just TRY to tell other ethnic groups to reduce the amount of children they have or change their behaviour (you get screams of THAT’S RACIST!!!)

        That crazy woman who said ‘we need to eat the babies’ is pretty much the end goal of what is pretty much yet another variation of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: They’ll tell YOU what to do, but they won’t do it themselves, because THEY have to stay alive in order to ‘spread the message’ (unsaid: reap the benefits of the earth with less humans to compete against.)

        I ultimately see the green hysteria people as people who haven’t got the competence to compete or succeed/get more (of anything), so they have to get an advantage by peddling a lie.

        1. They’ll tell YOU what to do, but they won’t do it themselves, because THEY have to stay alive in order to ‘spread the message’ (unsaid: reap the benefits of the earth with less humans to compete against.)

          All that would happen in that scenario is that there would be less white people on the planet, not less people overall (the [likely] majority said non-whites most likely being Muslims, because it’s them that’ve had a recent baby boom.)

          I wish that the environmentalists would wake the frak up and realize that nuclear power is not the great evil that many of them think it is; it’s only nuclear weapons that are bad, and which we have to reduce the number of (keeping a few for big planet-threatening emergencies like asteroid strikes or cometary strikes.)

  49. I’ve got nothing personal against Dan Simmons, but I thought Hyperion was super boring 🙁 Sorry. But I might check out Ilium, it sounds fun.

    In general, I think we’d all be better off if people just bought books that are fun (or interesting in some other way), as opposed to buying books because of the writer’s political opinions or lack thereof. This way we’d get better books (on average, at least). Leave politics to the politicians.

  50. Let me don my industrial strength tin-foil hat:

    Suppose this was all a fiendish plot by Dan to drive up sales of Hyperion?………………Mwahahahahahaha…………………………….

    Seriously, it’s amusing to see this blow up in the woke-scold’s faces like an ACME rocket in the face of Wile E Coyote; certified Sooper-Genius.

  51. Had conversation with my liberal sister over the last couple of days over political correctness. Few days ago I said I do not read as much fiction as I used to because of all the political correctness sci go has been polluted with. She snorted and rolled her eyes. I let it pass as I had no good immediate answer at that moment. Today I found a quote by George Carlin , political correctness is fascism disguised as good manners. Texted her that and blurb on NYC fining anyone 250000 who
    Insults illegal immigrants which is both fascism and p c. Told her to do a general search so she could see multiple sources and could not dispute this info. She kept asking for my ‘source’. I guess so she could avoid having to see the truth. Makes me sad but she is just like all those other libs, will not even allow anything contradictory in to her world.

    1. Source? Try the City of New York ITSELF. They tweeted it.

      Progressives are majestically ill-informed. And arrogant about it. Worse, they’re so convinced of their position they don’t exhibit much interest in actually doing basic research asking others to provide them with a source they will likely reject anyway.

      There’s nothing contradictory or controversial. NYC is threatening citizens with fines. The interesting part in this is that De Blasio is a Democrat. Democrats rail that Trump assaults the Constitution and here is a Mayor directly challenging the FIRST AMENDMENT.

      Strange times.

      https://twitter.com/nycgov/status/1179131384465633281

  52. I remember his books for sale in the Science Fiction Book Club magazines back when I was in high school. I never did read any of them. I guess I better change that soon.

  53. I think I will try those books out next, thanks! (reading John Ringo’s Troy Rising right now, now THERE’S a WrongThinker!)

  54. Wow. Long thread, and I agree with Dan Simmons. I’ve seen one proposal on solving the amount of carbon in our atmosphere, that could be done cheaply by any of a dozen countries with a couple billion dollars at most. (The supertanker of iron oxide (rust) sprayed on the surface of the ocean along the Pacific equator would suck an enormous amount of carbon out of the air, prompt a plankton and fish bloom, and when they all died, drag the carbon to the bottom of the ocean for millions of years.)

    And not one country in the world is interested in doing it.

    Why? Because this climate change crap has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH GLOBAL WARMING.

    It’s all about money and power. As far as I’m concerned, all those social justice climate warriors aren’t any better than the hundreds of totalitarian thugs that have come before them.

  55. I have to admit, when I got to the part about the book hitting #1, I just started laughing, so thank you for that.

    It’s so true. I still recall when the Harry Potter books were coming out, I think 3 had just released and I was seeing all these breaking stories on the news about such and such, stick up their ass church being offended by the wizards and that one religious zealot proclaiming the book series was all about witchcraft and we’d go to hell if we read it. So of course the very next day when I was off work, I went out and bought them all. Turned out they were fun, and I couldn’t wait until the next one released.

    I need to find another series like that, that just awoke the child in me, that excitement about another installment and re-reading the previous volumes again and again. Closest I’ve come since then was the Adventurer’s Wanted series by M.L. Forman. Unfortunately he had a stroke and it hasn’t been the same since.

  56. Buying new copies of the Hyperion series (along with MHI-G to ensure that ILOH can buy a few rounds for target practice) in the next week or so…and one thing that the Cult of Climate Change continually forget is if they would just plant trees (other than pine which is both a water hog and turns the soil acidic) they could help bring down CO2 levels among other benefits…but no they have to continually clear cut land for acres of parking lots (where I’ve found a few weather stations in the middle of 20 acres of blacktop…which skews the numbers up so Climate “Scientists” can get more Grant money) so they can park their 12mpg SUV’s while telling us little people to buy Hybrids and EV’s…

  57. The UN eunchs who applauded the vitriol this poor abused child spewed on them subsequently went out on the town to cetain…….. specialized establisments in Manhattan to further their slake their *needs*.

  58. Olympos blew my mind. Everything I love about Sci-Fi in that book. I need to re-read Hyperion, it’s been to long and maybe I was too young to appreciate.

  59. Global warming … yipes.

    Bugmaster, is CO2 the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, something we need to quash?

  60. I think I’ve found the most concise, hence easy to understand, explanation.

    There are two categories for looking at thermal fluids modeling as a customer. Call them A and B. For me, meteorology is A. The last N predictions might have been 10%-90% wrong, but I’m still checking. Category B, for me, is like hiring a Mechanical Engineering PE to model the cooling system for a nuclear power plant I want to build. For category B I have much lower expectations for prediction error. How low? I would need to research the specifics for a given situation, probably in codes and standards.

    So, are climate models A or B? One case is that climate models are like meteorology, the best available product, hence firmly A. Another case is that the prescriptions based on the forecasts are extensive and detailed enough that you would only pay the implementation cost if they were B.

    People who only follow meteorological data are obviously going to prefer the first case. People who are additionally used to using engineering analytical products to made financial decisions are going to be more inclined to the second case. Of those that prefer the second case, you will see some that believe climate modeling is sufficient for B, and some who do not. For the latter, passing off A data as B data may be a clear and obvious example of fraud. So clear and obvious an example that one can only pretend not to notice it, a naked emperor.

    This model explains the bimodal distribution Bugmaster observes, and complains of. Lefties have no social cost to simply accepting the climate models as A data, acted on the same way as the radar track of a hurricane, and might not dig deeper. Folks who dig deeper may naturally tend to end up at “obviously, A data is passed off as B data”. Or there may be a number of people who have not reached that conclusion, but still cannot say “this is completely A data, but we should make these investments based on it”, and don’t want in on the shouting match. We would expect what Bugmaster sees.

    This formulation also provides a wider range of models for this discussion than I had been aware of. I had not been aware of how many of my important assumptions I had not carefully articulated. These are things that would not have been intuitively obvious to me at 21, so it is not fair for me to assume that they would be obvious to any adult of normal intelligence.

    1. The “cost” of implementing one’s favored ideology would make “A” more than acceptable for just about anyone. The classic “watermelon” environmentalist in this case. No matter what the problem is, the solution is socialism and the deconstruction of modern life. But “A” isn’t acceptable for implementing solutions that they hate, thus we aren’t building nuclear plants.

      And I think you’re on to something because what I recall from 20 years ago is that the idea of global warming got loud enough to get the attention of people who weren’t watermelon environmentalists… people who were scientists and engineers or accountants or economists or physicists or had some other sort of math background, worked in business… people who normally function with your group “B” type decision making and who didn’t have socialism as their preferred solution to every possible problem.

      And they said, oh no! This sounds bad, what does the data look like, and have you considered the Medieval Warm Period? Because certainly if we need to deconstruct civilization itself this deserves some scrutiny.

      And they were told to shut up.

  61. I’ve been a huge fan of Dan Simmons since reading Summer of Night when it came out. Always entertaining and illuminating, he’s a far better writer than 99.9% of the so-called “respectable” authors. His SF, horror and mystery yarns are always superb.

    But did he take down his Facebook account? I tried to visit it today after hearing about his Greta slam-down, but the only page that showed up in my search was Dan Simmons Books, where the most recent post dated to 2015. If his account is still open, can anyone tell me how to access it? Thanks. (I can be sent a private message via FB.)

    I was already bummed that his website has been down for ages.

  62. I have no idea what Dan Simmons stance on climate science is. His Facebook post in question does not address this. He does not even seem to be criticizing Greta that harshly. He seems to be criticizing the public for placing so much emphasis on her or on reacting to her.

    1. Right.

      I remember years and years ago Freeman Dyson criticized the climate models. He didn’t say a thing about climate change or global warming, he said that the climate models were bad. Did that make him a “denier”? To this day I don’t know what his opinion on AGW ever was.

      It would be an improvement if more people were more careful to listen to what other people are *not* saying when they get all upset about what other people have said.

  63. In retrospect, Simmons seemed to be gently defending this Greta teenager against some caliber of right wing trolls. He may have even been trying to provoke those trolls to become more contemplative and literate.

  64. I’ve had that book recommended by so many people, and yet I have never gotten around to reading it. I will now make it a point to do so.

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