POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Climate Fiction (and the Apocalypse Thereof) as an Exploration of Climate Solutions

Using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared on Sunday, August 2, 2020 at 0900 hours (aka 9:00 am).

Living and Reading the Apocalypse: Ecological Disaster and Science Fiction
Post-apocalyptic fiction provides pathways for navigating ecological apocalypse. These crucial imaginings are particularly relevant to current environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

Octavia Cade: writer
Julie Hofmann: AD Medievalist
Dr Gillian Polack: writer, editor, historian and teacher

Despite my rants against “dystopian literature”, a chronological descendant of “apocalyptic literature) (https://www.sfwa.org/2012/07/11/guest-post-when-did-science-fiction-and-apocalypse-become-interchangeable/) and a recent essay reflecting on the drift toward “dark and gritty realism” in the “literature of ideas”, aka Science Fiction here (http://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2021/03/putting-my-writing-where-my-mouth-is-by.html) – I had NEVER thought about this kind of literature as a drill for navigating an ecological apocalypse!

Briefly looking at Cade’s and Polack’s books give me a hint that they’re about positing a climate-destroyed world and what resilient life and characters might do. As a Medievalist, I suspect Ms. Hofmann’s primary interest is in how society will collapse, reverting to Medieval times, which Wikipedia suggests is “One misconception, first propagated in the 19th century and still very common, is that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat…lecturers in the medieval universities commonly argued that evidence showed the Earth was a sphere…Christian scholar[s] of the Middle Ages…acknowledge[d the] [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference’. Other misconceptions: ‘the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages’, ‘the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science’, or ‘the medieval Christian Church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy’, are all cited by Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by historical research.’”

I find this interesting, especially because outsiders (those who are not in the Christian faith) in the third decade of the 21st Century seem certain that climate apocalypse will lead quickly to the death of science-as-we-know-it. As a Christian myself, I wonder how many Christians doubt Climate Change – certainly it’s more than “none” (see the NPR podcast below). I certainly don’t doubt that the climate is changing, it just irritates me that some anthropogenic climate change people keep messing with the very definition of what “climate” is. For example, Wikipedia writes that “Climate is the long-term average of weather, typically averaged over a period of 30 years.” This definition was posted in 2016. The sentence following the first states, “More rigorously, it denotes the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorological variables that are commonly measured are temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, and precipitation. In a broader sense, climate is the state of the components of the climate system, which includes the ocean and ice on Earth. The climate of a location is affected by its latitude, terrain, and altitude, as well as nearby water bodies and their currents.” On a kids website, the definition was a bit closer to the definition my professor used in 1979 for climate (which has obviously been altered since then to fit the data: “Climate is the average weather in a place over many years. While the weather can change in just a few hours, climate takes hundreds, thousands, even millions of years to change.”

By limiting “climate” to a LESS RIGOROUS period of 30 years, it’s easy to say that Humans have dramatically altered the climate of Earth – that’s like since 1991... Of course, the next sentence informs me that between August 2020 to today, March 2121, the climate of Earth has changed drastically: six months ago, the climate conditions were as follows: T = H 83F, L 69F (avg: 76F) ; it was sunny, and the wind was out of the south. Humidity was in the mid-to-low 80%s, barometric pressure was steady at 30.03.

Today, T= H 54F, L 34F (avg: 44F). It is sunny, the wind is out of the south at 14 mph. Humidity is 27%, barometric pressure is steady at 30.5. By the somewhat restrictive definition that is currently in use, the climate in Minnesota has altered dramatically.

None of those changes has anything to do with Humans. They’re seasonal temperature variations that happen over a period of 12 months.

Has the climate in Minnesota changed? Yes.

10,000 years ago, where I am sitting as I write this, there was a solid sheet of glacial ice OVER A MILE THICK. I have water skied on a lake that once held the remnant of a piece of ice broken off of the main glacier.

Did I cause it? No. In fact, at that time, the entirety of Human population would have fit into present-day Minneapolis or Bangkok (between 1 and 10 million Humans), though widely scattered and occupying parts of every continent except Antarctica. Absolutely the climate has changed over the past 10,000 years. 1000 years? Likely, yes, as there were major population centers all over the planet. https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fsdata.2016.34/MediaObjects/41597_2016_Article_BFsdata201634_Fig5_HTML.jpg?as=webp

But had the CLIMATE changed because of Humanity? THAT is the question I shake my head at when climate change scientists answer with a resounding “Yes!”

I think it’s unlikely, even Climate Change Scientists can only demonstrate that anthropogenic climate change has taken place in the past 250 years or so (coinciding with the Industrial Revolution). Prior to that, evidence becomes hard to find and records are spotty and certainly not gathered anywhere – though there are absolutely records of rainfall, temperatures, weather, and insect plagues. All of that data is connected solely to agriculture.

Currently, the reason that the definition of “climate” has changed and grown repeatedly shorter is to accommodate the impact of Humans. Why? Because…well, they’re worried that people who aren’t scientists are ruining the world. Scientists aren’t, because knowing what they know, they work twice as hard to minimize their carbon footprint; drive electric cars, often do “staycations” instead of flying to Paris and Cancun to attend Climate Change Conferences, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_conference) and shop local.

The purpose of Climate Speculative Fiction or CliFi (coined by NPR on August 20, 2013) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_fiction) is to explore both the dangers climate change poses and (sometimes) offering ideas to either ameliorate climate change or alter society to survive climate change. The ideas are flowing, though sometimes they submerge the story in blame and shame and preening, but peeking behind the virtue signaling, I’ve seen some fascinating ideas and explorations of methods and dangers of restoring balance to Earth’s climate.

Program Book: https://sites.grenadine.co/sites/conzealand/en/conzealand/schedule, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages#Modern_perceptions, https://www.npr.org/2020/10/14/923715751/the-loneliness-of-the-climate-change-christian, https://eo.ucar.edu/kids/green/what1.htm
Image: https://mrbdc.mnsu.edu/sites/mrbdc.mnsu.edu/files/public/mnbasin/fact_sheets/graphics/glaciers/us_glacier.gif