the changing arctic

“Daunting as the future Arctic looks to be, it may in fact be much worse. What we think we know about the future of the region may be grossly underestimated because scientists are uncomfortable talking about or putting pen to predictions that are not backed by 95 percent certainty.” — from The End & Beginning of the Arctic. This is precisely what’s concerned me since (before, but pointedly, since) the collapse of the Canadian ice shelf mentioned in this article. I understand the politics of science well enough to understand…

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He’s Gonna Send the Water From Zion

Recent climate reports say the Western Antarctic Ice Shelf (WAIS) has reached a tipping point. Comparatively warm water is coming up and melting it from beneath where it’s attached to land, and all that’s keeping it from working its way into a lower-than-sea-level valley where it can loosen the entire WAIS is a granite bulge. There is no stopping it from cresting that bulge; the only question now is when. At the moment the predictions are that water will continue to rise on the order of millimeters per year for…

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Fiery Sunset

Guinness grant

I thought I’d said, but maybe I didn’t! I closed out the Arthur Guinness Projects popularity vote contest with 2976 votes. The leader had just under 4500, and I’m pretty clearly in the top 10%. I think I might have been #6 overall. So now we wait. :) The judges will be announcing their decisions sometime in September, but I don’t know when exactly. Someone hypothesized it would be the 26th, which is the Guinness-invented holiday Arthur’s Day, and having had that hypothesis suggested to me, it’s OBVIOUSLY what *I*…

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o noes!

o noes! Swan River Press has surpassed Last Days! O noes! (Actually, Brian’s doing an amazing job of promotion. I am agog and impressed!) Let’s see. Um. I had thoughts about thhings to blog, earlier today. they seem to have gone away. except I’ve become a convert to streaming TV, and we just watched the first episode of Jericho, which I’ve been meaning to watch for approximately ever. Five minutes in we’re like OMG IT’S ALEC FROM CONTINUUM! and Ted was all, “Thank God! Now we know how he fits…

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Fiery Sunset

Last Days of Ancient Sunlight

In the near future, a visionary leader brings Ireland to the forefront of green technology while in Alaska, communities displaced by the rising seas struggle to rebuild without losing their sense of self. Disparate worlds collide when fracked-out gas fields in middle America collapse, finally destabilizing the last of the old-world power regime in The Last Days of Ancient Sunlight. Here begins a few weeks of probably-daily vote hounding, because I’ve applied for a grant which has a first step of reality-show-style popularity contest to it. Arthur Guinness Projects is…

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