My Final Project for my Climate Change Fiction class involves making my own cli-fi novel. I will do a close reading analysis of the first chapter of my cli-fi novel, “Wild Times in Mizu-Tokyo”.

Contine reading →

I had a lot of fun on Futurecoast.com. I got to make my own timeline using the voice-mail messages from the people in my class, including myself. I named my timeline “Hot and Wet”. I know, not a very imaginative name for a timeline. However, I figured I should be rather straightforward about the future I had in mind. Basically, this is a future for Earth where global temperatures have increased at a semi-constant rate over the years. This has led to almost all the ice in the world melting, which has resulted in the flooding of most coastal areas around the globe. Technology level has also increased, with a more even gap between green-tech and fossil fuel tech. My vision for the future has been slightly influenced by some disaster movies and an article I read in National Geographic. However, if the human race continues on the energy using trend that it has been on for the past few decades, then this could be a likely global weirding scenario for us in the future.

Anyway, back to FutureCoast. I had a great time listening to all of the recordings on the site, not only from within my class but also from without. I admit, there were some voice-mail messages that I felt were a bit underwhelming. I believe that a recording about getting into a hovercraft accident is a bit unoriginal. That’s not even taking into account that one might not survive being in a hovercraft accident. Anyway, there were some ideas for the future that I liked. A theme park about glaciers in a world without natural ice is quite imaginative. I believe that this FutureCoast project will become very popular, even to those not in the climate change community.

I am so glad that we had the discussion in class yesterday about weather and climate. I have seen lots of articles, including on this site, about strange and random weather occurrences going on all the time, and how they were all linked to the changing climate. That’s the thing, though; weather is random. Weather fluctuates often due to multiple factors, and events change all the time. Climate, however, is a constant trend of weather events that gives detailed explanations of what happens in different regions. this is what should be taken into account when talking about climate change.

I hear about freak weather occurring often around where I live. Last winter, Eugene got minus-zero temperatures and inches of snow. Everyone freaked out about climate change. A balmy 50 degrees in February? Climate change. Tulips sprouting up earlier than they’re supposed to? Climate change. It gets kind of annoying after a while. These, however, are just random events.

Climate is different. Climate is the pattern of prevailing conditions in an area over a long period of time. Eugene usually gets more rainfall per year than Bend, Oregon. That is climate. The beaches of Newport tend to be colder year-round  than the ones in Southern California. That is climate.

I am aware of the changing climate, though. The rise in the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. The increasing temperatures in our oceans. I’m not trying to deny the existence of climate change. I’m just saying that people shouldn’t be fussing about it when just one big storm hits one of our cities.

I have been in this class about climate change for about two weeks now. I have read multiple stories about climate change and what the future may hold for the human race. Most of them are bleak, miserable futures, with environments deteriorating in barren wastelands, and society along with it. I quote an example from the short story “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet”:

“In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it. Wars, plagues and famines visited us, but we did not stop in our industrious creation of deserts. At last all wells were poisoned, all rivers ran with filth, all seas were dead; there was no land left to grow food.”

This describes a possible future where the land becomes bone-dry deserts, and the seas becoming poisoned and rotten. And yet, despite all these morbid stories, I don’t feel afraid about the future. The human race is a resilient and adaptable species, and will more than likely live on after the worst of the “global wierding.”

Sure, if the ice caps are lost, then sea levels will rise. Coastal cities will be flooded. Florida will be a thing of the past. Temperatures will swing from sweltering hot summers to freezing winters. Some places of the world will become more productive for plant life, while others will become less productive. Some animal species will become extinct. Others will thrive in new environments.

We can work with all of this.  Contine reading →