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bakubitch-minusultra · 3 years ago

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Not Alone: Chapter Eleven

-> an apocalyptic series with bnha characters but without quirks because im the writer and i can do whatever the fuck i want :P new character unlocked

-> Word Count: 2.1k

-> Warnings: none(?)

-> Taglist: @5sosfckss @laudthingcat @zphilophobiaz

The sun set as they reached the top of a hill she never climbed. It was in the opposite mountain range from where she had been and she was nervous of it. She didn’t know what lied on the other side. Her feet hurt and she was tired.

He layed a bunch of bows on the ground and gave Y/n a very appealing look. It made her stomach hurt.

She walked to where he had chosen to sleep and smiled at it. There were branches on the ground which made a mat for sleeping. He had chosen a huge tree with great bows to protect them in case it rained. He was like her father, more than she expected him to be. Not that she ever expected to meet him.

“They think you’re dead.”

He put the last bow down and sat on it. He took the jacket he had brought with him and put it down, patting it for Y/n to sit beside him. Her steps hurt her feet now that they had stopped walking. She dropped onto the ground beside him and watched his eyes sparkle as darkness took over the night sky. She tucked her bow and quiver next to her, always close.

“I was taken to the work farms. We were hiding in this old house like your farmhouse. I wasn’t smart like you though. I never thought about bunkers or having a few different houses and traveling between them. I was an idiot. Anyway they came. I hid Mina and Kirishima and let them take me.”

His face was stoic. She wanted him to kiss her again. She started to wonder if he was going to.

“How did you get away from the farms?”

“I met some people while I was there. Doctors who were forced to work the breeder camps and other scientists. They convinced me I needed to start a revolution from the outside. I escaped with some of him.” He shook his head, as if his thoughts entertained him and brushed his hand through his hair again. He looked at Y/n and smiled, “You know a good spot to clean up around here?”

She shook her head, “Never been here before. You’re starting a revolution?”

He nodded, “The camp we were just at is one of our peace camps. It’s like a retreat. The children and young and old stay there. We have people coming and going constantly. Didn’t you notice how easily you were welcomed?”

“I guess. I just thought that’s what people were like when they live in a camp like that. Aside from the machine gun escort that is.”

He laughed again. She liked the sound of it but it reminded her of Kirishima.

“Well that was a big wolf Y/n. How’d you end up with him?”

“His mother gave birth and must’ve gotten sick shortly after. Hades was waiting for me at the door of the cabin one day. He was tiny then. I could hear his brothers and sisters in the woods. I found the mother dead and half eaten surrounded by the other cubs who were weak and sick. It was awful. I shot them and burned them. It’s the closest the infection ever got to my cabin. He was immune anyway so that’s helpful.”

“He’s immune? Naturally? Maybe he never ate any of the mom.”

Y/n shook her head, “Nah, she wasn’t the only sick thing Hades has eaten. He likes the infected.”

He grimaced, “That’s disgusting. Disgusting and lucky all at the same time.”

“It is.”

“What do you know about the start of the infection?”

Y/n shrugged, “People got sick and some died but others lived and went a little crazy.”

His eyes looked dark as his expression lost its humor and the sun set completely. “No Y/n, people didn’t just get sick. The infection was spread on purpose. Everything that’s happened has been a plan all along.”

“That can’t be true.”

“I wish it weren’t. There was something called the United Nations. They did all of this.”

Y/n felt sick, “They were evil?”

“Not evil, just detached. The world was running out of resources and everyone was constantly putting a hand out to them and asking for aid and food and money. The UN had been warning us forever about global warming and the ice melting and the ocean becoming acidic. Anyway in 2012 all of Greenland's ice and snow melted in a week. The earth started to enter a drought. We thought it was a cyclical event but it wasn’t. It was man made. We had pushed it too far. The same time all this was happening, a conference was held in Rio about the environment. Canada, the US and China pretty much pulled out and admitted they had no intention of slowing their pollution to the recommended level. It would be too hard on their economies. That was the final straw. Apparently the UN had a backup plan for a worst-case scenario such as that. They had a plague. It had a vaccine, which made it easy to spread and then control. The problem was it mutated. They spread the virus at the same time they had bombs placed deep in the ocean along the Japanese coastline. They bombed the shelf and pretty much wiped Japan off the face of the earth and made the west coast of North America a target for huge tidal waves.”

It felt like a movie to Y/n. It didn’t feel real. It felt like the ramblings of her father, before.

“How could you know all this?”

“The work farms. I met people who had been part of the initial plan. The plan was to reset everything. Instead the UN decided they wanted to start humanity over but set it up to succeed this time. The breeder farms were built where only the fit and healthy were allowed to reproduce."

She shivered just imagining it.

Bakugo laughed, “It isn’t what you think. I know what everyone thinks happens but it’s not. The girls only breed every three years and only up to three times. The pregnancy isn’t the result of rape, it’s done using science. The baby is made in a lab and then inserted into the woman’s womb.” Y/n gagged and Bakugo laughed. “The religious had the same reaction. The UN never mentioned this plan to anyone but the very high ups. It never went well.”

“The girls are still taken against their will and made to make babies against their will.”

She saw his head nod in the dark, “Yup and the babies are not God’s children to the Christians. Anyway the UN runs the military but again, they sit in their closed office and plan using numbers and facts and data. They don’t leave it to see what the world looks like or how corrupt the military is. They’ve built six cities world wide from the ashes and rubble of previous cities. They plan on cleaning every inch of the world.

Y/n’s head was spinning, “What about the borderlands?”

“They can’t use anymore bombs without affecting the weather and pollution again, so the plan stands at leaving us to our own devices until they have this part of the world cleaned up. Then they’ll come round us up.”

“Why?”

“They want the diseases and illnesses bred out. They won’t allow those people to live and breed.”

“Oh my god it’s like a nightmare.”

“It is. On that note, we need sleep. You sleep first and I’ll keep watch.”

“That’s some bedtime story.” She liked Kirishima’s better. He laughed and Y/n watched his silhouette in the dark for a moment. He didn’t lean in to kiss her. He was watching the hill they climbed. “How long have they been breeding science babies?”

His outline turned to her and she saw the shine of his eyes in the dark,”A long time.”

“Are the babies different than the rest of us?”

“Yeah.”

The broken branches led them to a camp in a valley on the opposite side of the mountain where her farmhouse sat. The size of the camp was disturbing. Bakugo smiled as he saw it and walked directly up to the man holding the gun amid the trees.

“Halt.”

“Oi dunce face!” Bakugo shouted.

The gunman smiled, “No shit, Bakugo you’re alive. I heard they caught you.”

Bakugo laughed, “They think they did. Is Monoma still in charge?”

The man Bakugo called dunce face pointed to the camp, “He’s still in the smallest tent, you know what he’s like. Still paranoid they’ll bomb us.”

Bakugo laughed and pointed towards Y/n, “This is my friend Y/n.” She felt hurt when he called her his friend. She didn’t know why but the word stung.

“I’m Denki,” He put a hand out and Y/n noticed he had a nice smile. She met his golden eyes and smiled back, “Nice to meet you.” His eyes flickered to Bakugo and an even bigger smile crossed his lips, “So where’d ya two meet?”

She looked at Bakugo.

“She walked up to the mountain retreat the other day with a huge wolf for a pet and an unruly teenager.”

Denki’s eyes grew wide, “You have a wolf?”

She nodded. She wanted to find Mina and Kirishima. She didn’t understand why Bakugo wasn’t busting inside to see them. She felt herself fidget in place,

“Well I’m gonna go see Monoma and see what’s new on this side of the hill.”

They walked toward the camp as the sound of birds squawking filled the forest. The gunmen lower their weapons as they hear the sound and they walk past them. The camp opened as the forest spread thin. It looked like the camp they were at before except that everyone was wearing a firearm or knife. At one point Y/n swore she saw a sword. There were no children here.

“Bakguo! You’re alive!”

A girl with long blonde hair and cut off shorts ran and jumped into his arms. Y/n’s heart stopped as she watched the girl kiss his lips. The lips that only just kissed Y/n the day before. She felt heat radiating from her cheeks. She heard about men who weren’t tied down in romance novels and felt sick thinking that she had fallen for one. All the years of reading the novels and judging the ladies who seemed strong and smart and then fell for a jerk. Reality hurts. She wanted Kirishima and Mina and her cabin and Hades and Jirou. She wanted to let the world kill itself and hide up in the mountains. She never wanted to kiss Bakugo again. She couldn’t believe she was so reckless.

“Camie what the hell. You know me better than that,” He twirled her around and looked sheepishly at Y/n, “This is Y/n.” Y.n nodded and gripped her bow.

Camie beamed at her, “Wow nice find Bakugo, He save you from the farms too?”

Y/n raised an eyebrow, “I don’t need a hero.”

Camie looked at Bakugo, who was staring at Y/n. Y/n walked past him and started to look around. If he didn’t want to find his friends then that’s his problem. Y/n would be damned if she would let them live another moment without the knowledge that their asshole of a friend was alive and well.

“You pissed at me?” Y/n didn’t turn and continued along, eyes desperately searching the crowds of people.

“Bakugo.” He shook hands with a very tanned man with the whitest smile Y/n had ever seen. People continued to greet him, but she couldn’t hear them anymore. She saw what she was looking for. She saw a tall guy limping with shaggy red hair. She broke into a run and dived into his arms when she was close enough to him.

As she made contact he turned. His face was exactly as she remembered it. He had her in his arms before she could speak a word.

“Y/n oh my god. Y/n it’s you. Holy shit I thought they got you.” He was planting kisses everywhere across her face.

“Where’s Mina?”

Kirishima’s kisses stopped but his grip on her face was still strong, “They took her.” Y/n felt her heart drop and wanted to collapse into his arms and sub.

“Shitty hair.”

Kirishima dropped to his knees in front of Y/n. His hands left her face and fell onto the tops of his knees.

“Bakugo? Bakugo is that you?”

Bakugo rushed at him and lifted him up. He pulled him into his embrace. The friend’s hug was fierce but all she heard was the sentence ‘they took her’ repeating in her mind.

Kirishima looked back at her, “You found him?”

Y/n shook his head, she had no words. They hug and cry and laugh but she was stunned. Finally able to speak, she muttered, “Where’d they take her?”

Their reunion no longer meant anything to Y/n.

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hermanwatts · 5 years ago

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“I Wish to the Devil the Country was Prepared”

In early January 1932, Robert E. Howard in a letter to H. P. Lovecraft had this to say:

“I love peace, yet I wouldnt [sic] mind a war right now such a hell of a lot, if the country was prepared; but it isnt [sic]. Japan knows it; that’s why she thinks she can kick the flag around, beat up American officials, and get away with it. I wish to the devil the country was prepared.”

This comment was in relation to Japan’s recent seizure of Manchuria in late 1931. Historians often view this as the first shot that would lead to World War 2.

I recently read Cry Havoc: The Arms Race and the Second World War 1931-1941 by Joe Maiolo. It fits in with After the Trenches by William O. Odom, Linn’s Guardians of Empire, and Geoffrey Perrett’s There’s a War to be Won.

Maiolo makes the case that Stalin’s First Five Year Plan set off the 1930s arms race that led to WW2. The Japanese made a gamble to grab Manchuria before the Red Army was modernized and too powerful.

Robert E. Howard was correct. The U.S was not in a good condition to fight a war. But then again, that is the condition it generally goes into war. In 1932, the U.S. Army had 133, 200 men. The National Defense Act of 1920 called for 17,000 officers and 280,000 enlisted men. The National Guard was to be at 435,000 men.

The U.S Army had received no new equipment after WW1. In the 1930s, it was still using the British Mark VIII “Liberty” tank and had 950 French Renault FT-17 made under license. The Renault FT-17 was used up through the 1930s so in terms of quality, not at a disadvantage.

Renault FT-17 Tank

There were designs on the books for new artillery such as the 105 mm howitzer but in 1932, the Army was still using 75 mm and 155 mm cannons of WW1 vintage. Mortars were 3 inch trench mortars with often faulty ammunition due improper storage.

What the U.S. Army had plenty of were around 2 million M1917 Enfield rifles in Cosmoline. During WW1, Winchester, Remington, and Eddystone could produce Enfields in far greater numbers than Springfield Armory with the Springfield ’03 rifle. Corporal (later Sergeant) Alvin York used the M1917 Enfield on that October day in 1918 where he picked off one German after another. Most U.S. Army units in WW1 carried Enfields.

The Enfield was accurate but long (46.25 inches). It does have that short and smooth action the Enfield series of rifles is known for. Some had been sold to the civilian market, but the supply seemed inexhaustible. They were used in basic training during WW2. In the late 1930s, the Army sold around 40,000 a year to the Philippine Commonwealth for the army that Gen. Douglas MacArthur was supposed to create. Enfields were also sold to the Free French, Nationalist Chinese, Irish Free State, and the Royal Netherlands Indies Army. I have seen pictures of stacks of Enfields handed out to Philippine guerrillas in WW2. Some were sent to Britain after Dunkirk. Rear echelon troops such as Signal Corps in the Pacific had Enfields late in WW2. All the M-1 carbines were being sent to Europe. The M1917 is still in use by the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol in Greenland. The Patrol is an elite unit of the Danish Navy. The M1917 works in extreme cold conditions.

M1917 Enfield

The official rifle of the U.S. Army in 1932 was the Springfield ’03. The Army had somewhere around 800,000 of those left over from WW1. It is an accurate rifle owing its action to the Mauser.

The U.S. Army had 102,174 Browning Automatic Rifles from WW1. Ever talk to WW2 vets, they liked the BAR. It was heavy, weighing around 19 lbs. It was originally designed for suppressing fire crossing no-man’s land. Bonnie and Clyde used BARs and did Frank Hamer who took out Bonnie and Clyde. Foreign especially British writers hate the BAR calling it a poor light machine gun. It was used sort of as an LMG but gave a rifle squad a little more fire power. The Marines had two BARS per rifles squad in WW2.

Browning Automatic Rifle

The M1919 Browning machine gun began service right after WW1 and used up through Vietnam. John Moses Browning was a firearms genius.

Browning M1919 Machine Gun

The Thompson submachine gun was not adopted until 1938 by the U.S. Army but in use by the Navy and Marines. So, overall, the U.S. was in similar condition to all other great powers following WW1 with small arms.

The biggest problem is the U.S. Army had no large-scale training exercises during most of the 1930s due to lack of funding. Gen. Douglas MacArthur fought tooth and nail to keep the Army from being further by Roosevelt but money was not present for training.

A bright spot is the Army Air Corps. The Air Corps took 20% of expenditures in 1933. The U.S. at least kept up with new designs of aircraft and some purchases. The Curtis P6-E Hawk would have been the standard “pursuit” plane in those last years of bi-wing airplanes.

Out of 133,200 men, 25% of the U.S. Army was overseas. The old thinking of garrisons strewn across colonial empires ready to deal with any local emergencies. U. S. Army strength overseas:

Philippines: 11,744 (5207 Army, 6537 Philippine Scouts). Three infantry regiments, four coast artillery, one cavalry regiments, two field artillery regiments.

Hawaii: 14,223. The Hawaiian Division (“The Pineapple Army”) and coast artillery.

Alaska: two understrength companies at Juneau.

Panama: 2 infantry regiments, 2 coast artillery regiments, 1 battalion field artillery

Tientsin, China: 15th Infantry Regiment at 2 battalions

Puerto Rico: 65th Infantry Regiment.

Another 20% of the U.S. Army was on the Mexican border. The 2nd Infantry Division was kept at full strength at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. The 1st Cavalry Division at Ft. Bliss, Texas at 9,595 men; the 24th Infantry Regiment, one of the Army’s two black infantry regiments was at Ft. Huachuca in Arizona on the border.

The Washington Treaty of 1922 restricted the U.S. Navy. The Navy had 11 battleships, 3 fleet carriers, 19 cruisers, 102 destroyers, 55 submarines for two oceans. The Navy had 93,384 personnel.

The U.S. Marines stood at 16,561. The Marines were scattered from Shanghai in China to Cuba in small detachments. The 4th Marine Regiment had been in Shanghai with two battalions. The North China Marines fluctuated between 200-300 men at this time.

North China Marines

REH to HPL, 1932: “Along the Border there is a definite undercurrent of expectation, or at least apprehension, of Mexican invasion in case of war. There has been a persistent rumor, every [sic] since the last war, of the mysterious presence and vaguely sinister activities of a hundred thousand Japanese in the interior of Mexico.”

The Mexican Revolution from 1910-1920 gets most historical press. Mexico continued to have turmoil through the 1920s and 30s. Some were regional military commander led revolts against downsizing. The Yaqui Indians in northern Mexico fought the Mexican government 1926-27. There was the Cristero Rebellion 1927-29 and Cedillo Rebellion 1938-39.

Closer to home for Robert E. Howard was the San Diego Plan of 1915. Named after the small town of San Diego in southern Texas, the manifesto stated:

“On the 20th day of February, 1915, at two o’clock in the morning, we will arise in arms against the Government and Country of the United States of North America, ONE AS ALL AND AS ONE, proclaiming the liberty of individuals of the black race and its independence of Yankee tyranny which has held us in iniquitous slavery since remote times.”

In the summer of 1915, Mexican rebels and bandits (Sedicionistas) launched 30 raids against targets carried from across the Rio Grande River. The Seditionistas killed almost two-dozen U.S. citizens including kidnapping, torturing, and decapitating a U.S. soldier displaying his head on a pole in the border. The Anglo-Texan response was with extreme prejudice including extra-judicial executions in retaliation. Robert E. Howard would have been nine years old during these events.

The 2nd Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry were kept at full strength through the 1920s and 30s ready to deal with Mexico.

Could war have happened in 1932? The U.S. was so weak militarily that Japan contemptuously went about its aggression with little fear. The U.S. simply could not intimidate Japan. There was a chance of a clash with the North China Marines at Peking and the 15th Infantry Regiment at Tientsin sparking a wider war. The Japanese could have taken out scattered, isolated U.S. detachments in China, Philippines, and even Hawaii.

The plan was for the U.S. Navy to rush to relieve the Philippines in War Plan Orange while the Philippine garrison retreated to the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor island. It was thought it would take the Japanese six months just to cut through the jungle to get to American lines.

A daring attack by the Japanese on Panama could have put the canal out of use. Opportunistic politicians or generals in Mexico under Japanese encouragement could have attacked along the U.S.–Mexico border in the hope of regaining the South West. The Japanese could have trainers and advisors with the Mexican Army. They even could have a regiment of infantry to stiffen up their allies.

The U.S. could find itself with almost 25% of its army gone and another 20% desperately holding the border with no new tanks, no new artillery. It would take around eight months before you get the skeletal army and National Guard divisions filled out and trained. The Army at least had lots of rifles in storage. There were over 2 million WW1 veterans. A fair number would have been still young enough and in acceptable physical shape to provide a trained reserve to draw upon.

American industry would be able to supply plenty of trucks and other vehicles but things like tanks and cannons would take time.

Curtis P-6 Hawk

The Army Air Corps first monoplane P-26 fighter was a year away from first deliveries and the B-10 bomber two years. The Curtis P-6 Hawk, the last biplane used by the Army Air Corp would have been the plane used along the Mexican border and patrolling the West Coast.

Perhaps some sort of new tank would have been produced. An imaginary tank linking the WW1 leftovers and the M-2 tank of the late 1930s could have been produced.

The Japanese Navy could sail at will along the California coast shelling Los Angeles and San Francisco. There would not be much the U.S. could do about it for a while. In the long run, the U.S. would pummel Mexico into submission. A young Robert E. Howard joins up in the Texas National Guard (36th Infantry Division) or the Army to give the Mexicans and Japanese hell.

If there were an opportune time for the Japanese to attack, it would have been around 1936-1937. The U.S. Army would have another four years of deteriorating equipment and financial starvation. Franklin Roosevelt had taken officers out of active duty for one of his New Deal programs. They ran Civilian Conservation Corps camps. The U.S. was lucky in that a generation of young men were in a quasi-military environment providing pre-basic training. Roosevelt admired Mussolini and Stalin’s central controlled economies and emulated them. Hitler had very similar camps for German youth at the same time.

The U.S. was lucky in that when war came, a new generation of planes, tanks, rifles, vehicles were coming off the assembly lines. The Japanese and Italians were off by 10 years. Both had up modern armies for the early 1930s. Involvement in wars during the 30s delayed modernization giving the Allies the upper hand.

A war in 1932 would have looked a lot like something at the end of WW1 with bolt action rifles, bi-planes, primitive tanks. The 1st Cavalry Division would have been on horseback on the border with some old armored cars confined to the probably few functioning roads in northern Mexico. The Marines might have made a landing at Veracruz with a thrust to Mexico City to put an end of that part of the war. The expanding army would have made its mistakes and growing pains in Mexico. The .30-06 cartridge used in the ’03 Springfield, M1917 Enfield, and Browning Automatic Rifle was perfect for fighting in the open territory of the border. If Mexico did not join with Japan, there would have been a period of just some naval clashes for up to two years. The Japanese might have invaded Alaska making for a scenario of warfare in polar conditions.

The fleet would begin the hard fight across the Pacific as laid out in various versions of War Plan Orange would get underway ending with a blockade of Japan. By the 1930s, Navy admirals had a realistic view of a Pacific War with an island-hopping campaign through the Japanese Mandate islands including the Marshall and Caroline Islands. The Army said it could hold out in the Philippines for 6 months, the Navy estimated a two-year campaign across the Pacific to get the Philippines. So, the Army commander of the Philippine Department would be surrendering before help arrived. It was a command that few relished.

The U.S. could have trained Chinese troops to tie down the Japanese Army. Who knows, the Soviets might have joined in taking Manchuria from Japan once the war turned.

A war in 1932 with Japan and Mexico is an interesting topic. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was Chief of Staff of the U.S Army so there would be drama to the conflict. Who knows, maybe Grandpa Theobald would have volunteered as an ambulance driver like he tried to do in WW1.

“I Wish to the Devil the Country was Prepared” published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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freudensteins-monster · 6 years ago

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The Dead of Winter

Fic ideas I’ll never finish #5928034.7

Inspired by: “What you're doing is against protocol, so if you endanger an operation or if anyone gets hurt, I'll reassign you to Barrow, Alaska, and you'll spend the rest of your years pulling the night shift guarding Blonsky's cryo-cell.” - Agent Coulson, Agents of SHIELD.

(Some logistical issues, what with Barrow being over 2000 miles across treacherous north west passage from Greenland, where the Valkyrie crashed - and my only knowledge of Barrow, Alaska being from the movie “30 Days of Night” - but bear with me...)

Steve wakes up in the icy slurry that is the Valkryie’s cockpit, drowning in memories of New York winters, of Father Gleeson giving him his last rites yet again, when he isn’t, you know, actually drowning, as he crawls his way to somewhat stable ground. He’s surrounded by ice in all directions with no real idea where he is (or how much time has passed) so he makes for the nearest rise in the hopes of getting his bearings. No such luck, just more ice, but in the distance he spies a cabin. There he gets a change of clothes and the sinking feeling that something is very wrong. He finds a trail outside that leads to a road, that leads to a small coastal town. It’s full of strange cars and people in odd clothes talking on communications devices that are beyond even Howard Stark’s wildest imaginings. He can’t bring himself to straight out ask anyone the question that’s sitting heavy on his tongue, instead he seeks the answers out in a local newspaper: He’s in Greenland, seventy years in the future.

He spends the rest of the short day wandering around the town in a daze, unsure what his next move should be when everyone he knows is most likely dead. He spends the night shivering on the floor of the local church, considering his next move. He doesn’t know who won the war, if he’s remembered well or not at all, and so isn’t willing to out himself to the local authorities just yet. First thing the next morning he heads to the docks and finds a captain of a small cargo ship who doesn’t ask too many questions and heads back to the USA the long way around.

“I can’t believe I shaved my beard for this,” Agent Barnes grumbled as he stomped out of the Triskelion. He’d spent two years effectively banished to one of SHIELD’s most isolated outposts following the worst mistake of his career (hitting on Hill seemed to be the most popular rumour but truth was far worse and still classified Level 8) and thought being called back to civilization to face the review board meant his punishment was finally over. How naive. He had appealed their ruling out of sheer stubbornness but they weren’t able to schedule another review until the spring, so Bucky just had to hope he could survive another winter in Barrow, Alaska.

A month later Bucky’s mountain man beard was well on its way back and the routine of double checking the security of the “weather station�� was wearing thin. He threw on the required twenty layers and headed into town to collect his last guaranteed delivery before the Arctic was plunged into the darkness for sixty days and he became one good snowstorm away from being cut off from the world. He dawdled on the drive back, taking the scenic route along the coastline to catch one last glimpse of the sun before it disappeared below the horizon. And as he drove past the docks he saw something that was completely impossible: Steve Rogers, alive and well. Steve Rogers with a fricking beard that put his to shame.

The average SHIELD agent would have simply dismissed it as a passing resemblance, if they noticed it at all, but Bucky, despite his current post, was not an average SHIELD agent. He had been trained under Phil Coulson and been exposed to the man’s “academic” interest in the WWII legend for years - he’d bet his last bottle of vodka that the man walking across the street was the same one that "died” saving the world seventy years ago. And if he was the one to bring Captain Rogers in...

Bucky hadn’t even finished the thought before he was pulling his truck up alongside the war hero.

“Hey buddy, don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Bucky called, eyeing Steve’s holey knit sweater and thin coat curiously, “But it’s kinda cold out. You need a ride somewhere?”

#freudensteins-fics #fic ideas i'll never finish #just a random thought that popped into my head that took me 3 hours to get down #ugh #shrunkyclunks #stucky #shield agent bucky #captain america steve #steve rogers #bucky barnes #captain america

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talking-head-productions · 6 years ago

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Fixing the DCEU (sorry, the “Worlds of DC”) With Time Travel. Part 3.

Part 1: https://talking-head-productions.tumblr.com/post/175546007365/talking-head-productions-so-if-i-ever-get-to-go

Part2 :https://talking-head-productions.tumblr.com/post/175627276065/if-i-go-back-in-time-part-2-i-realized-that-were-i

What more could I possibly have to say? Well... I realized that many of the problems with the current group of films originated with the very first one. I said I would leave that one intact, only going back and changing from BvS onward. But now it seems like it would make more sense to start from the beginning.

So, much like Wonder Woman, I don't want to change everything. The overall plot of Man of Steel was pretty good: Clark Kent, having grown up knowing he was different due to his alien heritage, finds a piece of that alien heritage on Earth and, because of what it reveals to him, decides to become Superman. Before he can reveal himself to the world, however, General Zod and the last of the survivors from Krypton arrive, demanding the humans hand over Kal-El. Whether the humans cooperate or not, Zod plans to terraform the planet and colonize it. Superman decides that he has to surrender himself to the humans' judgment in order to better gain their trust. They hand him over to Zod, but he eventually breaks free, and then makes it his mission to stop Zod, with the help of the humans of course. And he does, sending the Kryptonian ship and its crew back to the Phantom Zone for all eternity, but Zod is left on Earth and is now full of rage. Superman doesn't know how to fight, and Zod has all the same powers as him; the only way he can think of to stop Zod is to kill him. Against his own wishes, Superman snaps Zods neck, saving the day for real... but at a cost.

Again, that is a pretty good plot. It's the specifics that really bog it down.

So I've compiled a list of changes I would make to Man of Steel, in more or less chronological order:

Right away, I'm axing that entire sequence that takes place on Krypton. That's like a half hour just gone, but it's not a problem. All of the plot points from that section get reiterated later in the film anyway. Now, the more 'mystery' type elements will actually work, allowing the audience to learn things as Clark does.

That means that the film will start off with Clark on the boat. However, it's not a crabbing boat, it's a fishing trawler, in the sea west of Greenland. Now, a quick bit of googling/wikipedia hunting reveals that most of Greenland's fishing operations are in the southwest area of the country. But the northwest area is a good place to set up a fictional oil rig, and if a small-time fishing boat looking give the competition a wide berth were to move further north than usual, they'd be in the perfect spot to go to that rig should it suffer an emergency. As for why all this is important, it's because in the original film Clark left the boat to help an oil rig- but it seemed to be on Canada's west coast, putting him extremely far from Ellesmere Island, which is where the Kryptonian scout ship was located. And before you ask “wouldn't it be easier to change the ship's location”- the answer is no. Ellesmere is in the extreme middle-north of Canada, near Greenland and almost at the North Pole. It is the furthest north you can actually go in Canada, about as remote as you can get, and that makes it the perfect place for the scout ship to be found. So, Clark on a fishing boat off the west coast of Greenland, they go to help a collapsing oil rig, Clark does his heroic rescue, then washes up on the east coast of Canada not too far south of Ellesmere. Follow so far?

After washing ashore, rather than stealing clothes off some poor sod's clothesline (seriously though, who in Canada would be drying their clothes outside like that? Wouldn't they get frozen stiff?), Clark instead finds a local donation box where people have dropped off clothes for charity. I'm sure you've seen the type, they're usually big and yellow and sitting right next to a church. At least, in the US they are. Canada probably has them, too, and even if they don't, I'm sure only the Canadians will know or care (I don't mean to be rude, Canada is still awesome!). Anyway, Clark pulls some raggedy but passable clothes out of the bin like a good homeless person, and then decides to pan handle a bit because what the hell else is he gonna do? No ID, no wallet. No real choice.

Somebody drops a few bills into Clark's money hat, so he goes to the local dive to get something to eat. There, he flirts with the waitress, but nicely, and mentions to her that he's heading north, because that just feels like the right direction. One of the other customers mentions that he's been contracted to do some infrastructure out on Ellesmere, and offers Clark both a ride north and even a job, if he's actually willing to work. Clark accepts, the man leaves- and then the waitress Clark was talking to gets harassed by another customer. Clark tries to intervene, but the guy's a local, so he gets Clark thrown out. Clark is about to leave- when he notices the guy's fancy new pickup. Cue the smirk, and the scene-cut to later when the asshole comes outside to see his Chevy crumpled into a ball.

After that, the next big difference is that Lois Lane isn't the only press person on Ellesmere, and all of the press are herded into a big tent and only given an 'official' story, which Lois immediately knows is bullshit. That night, she goes outside to secretly take photos of the excavation and have a look around- when she notices Clark sneaking away and decides to follow him. The rest of that scene plays out more or less the same, except for one thing- the scout ship emits a pulse after it takes off, a pulse that travels into space...

After that, we get some similar-to-the-original scenes of Clark speaking to Jor-El's hologram and learning how to fly, while Lois tracks his path from Ellesmere all the way back to Smallville. Oh, and for those who are not aware, most modern versions of DC lore have the Daily Planet not be a simple newspaper. It has television portions and sometimes even a website. That will hold true here, with Perry White just being the old-fashioned guy who runs the print portion of the company and is under constant pressure from his superiors to actually, you know, turn a profit. He's barely making it, which is why he's hard on Lois for not doing her job.

Back to Supes, he returns home to Smallville and tells Martha that he's found out where he came from and all that. Then Lois shows up, and in an effort to get her to drop the story, Clark takes her aside and says that this isn't her story to tell. If he has to be exposed to the world, it should be on his terms. He tells her that his father died from a medical condition, something Clark could do nothing about, and on his deathbed Jonathan Kent told Clark to figure out what kind of man he wanted to be before he revealed himself. Clark hasn't quite done that yet, he's only just discovered where he came from.

Lois listens to all this and still thinks that she should publish an article about him, because she's a hardcore journalist who isn't immediately head-over-heels for a guy just because he's hot and happened to save her life. As a last ditch effort, Clark reminds her that she kind of owes him for saving her life, causing her to reluctantly agree to wait... so long as she gets an exclusive interview with him when he does.

When Zod arrives, he doesn't bother contacting the humans, believing them to be lesser creatures. Instead, he and his crew fly directly down to Kal-El, being capable of tracking him from orbit. Thus the Smallville fight happens a bit earlier. And after Superman fights them off, the human military surrounds him and he surrenders to them as a show of humility and trust. The military then beams a simple message to Zod's ship, letting the Kryptonians know they have Kal-El and are willing to hand him over. Thus, the dropship collecting him. Lois does not go with them.

Before the dropship collects him, Superman asks the military people if he can speak to Lois. They're hesitant, but he says that he could just leave, so they agree and bring her in. She gets her interview, and she does wonder out loud if she should go into space, but Supes says no. Instead, he hands her the Kryptonian key and says to take it with her to Smallville. She'll figure out what she's supposed to do once she's there.

Up on the Kryptonian ship, Zod imprisons Kal-El, uses the mind-meld thing to learn about him, and then mocks him with Earth's impending doom, before leaving with a parting shot that reveals he killed Jor-El, which is a surprise because, hey, we weren't shown it in the first thirty minutes. Zod tells his subordinates to lower the ship into Metropolis, a location of great importance in Kal-El's mind, then takes a dropship and leaves. He tells his soldiers that he's going to pay respects to an old friend.

So, no World Engine in the Indian Ocean, Superman is literally right there but he's weak because of the Kryptonian environment of the ship. Thankfully, it practically landing on Earth interferes with that and Supes is able to muster up heroic willpower and escape, then fights the ship's outer defenses to destroy the terraforming device on its underside.

At the same time, Lois gets to Smallville and shows Martha the Key. Martha shows her the tiny ship Clark arrived in, and Lois puts the key inside the right slot, and Jor-El appears. He then, offscreen, tells Lois how to defeat the Kryptonians. A couple scene cuts later she's all, 'I have to tell Clark', and runs off. Somehow she's traversing from Smallville to Metropolis in a short timespan, but hey, this is a comicbook movie, just accept it.

Zod finds Clark's ship, 'kills' Jor-El again, and takes the ship as his new flying fortress. He heads back to Metropolis to witness his triumph.

Meanwhile, Lois finds Metropolis shut down by the police and military, but Superman hears her nearby and rushes over. She tells him that if his arrival pod comes into contact with the main ship, it'll make a singularity and the Kryptonians will all be sucked inside. He leaves to go get his pod, while the military starts engaging the Kryptonians. They'll actually somewhat successful, in that they down a few fighters within the already-dead zone, which is considerably smaller, and they keep the individual invaders from killing civilians.

After a bit, Superman comes back and is about to hurl the pod at the ship when Zod arrives, and he shoots Superman out of the sky. He also shoots down the human planes and fires randomly into the city. Then Superman knocks the ship down, and doesn't just throw the pod into the mothership, he flies the pod straight into the ship and then comes out the other side in a spray of debris. The whole thing collapses, and Superman drops down and fields a few questions from curious people. It's also the first time he uses the name 'Superman' himself, after Lois brought it up earlier.

But oh no, Zod survived. He gets out of the wreckage and completely dominates the fight against Superman. Think 'Sam Raimi Spiderman 1', how at the end of the movie the Green Goblin was just kicking the shit out of Spidey for about five minutes straight. Superman finally manages to get an upper hand, but Zod is explicitly stronger than him, and has less control over his powers. The situation in the train station happens again, with Zod pinned but using his heat vision to threaten the humans. Superman struggles with him, even covers his eyes, but that just causes the beams to leak out in weird directions like when you put your finger over a running water spout. Zod starts thrashing at the ground and causing pseudo-earthquakes, while freeze breathe pushes out in bursts, and his whole body is vibrating with superspeed. Finally, Superman does the only thing he can think of- and quickly tosses Zod up into the air. However, Zod doesn't come back down, and the reason why is plain: Superman accidentally tossed Zod into a piece of Kryptonian wreckage, which pierced his chest and killed him. He dies hanging there with a smile on his face. Then Clark falls to his knees screaming and crying.

After a montage of the various news agencies applauding Superman while also dropping easter eggs for random DC stuff, there's an explicit time skip of a few months. Superman stops to talk with the General guy, without destroying anything. He asks him to please stop following him with the drones. They already have the Kryptonian scout ship, that should be enough for them. The general admits he's probably right and will talk to the people even higher in the government. He then formally thanks Superman for killing Zod- to which Supes flinches and we can clearly see that he isn't over the trauma of it. But that's for the next movie (see Part 1).

The ending is just the 'Clark now works at the Daily Planet' bit, so more or less the same as the original.

And there we go! There's more here than I thought there'd be, but I had to really do a lot of clean up. Spread out the action for better pacing, give Lois a role in the story that actually makes sense, remove the stupid subplots, address the extreme destruction without removing all collateral damage, make Supes a better character and not just a messianic archetype... you get the picture. I think this version of Man of Steel would flow better into future movies. Let me know if there's anything I need to change in my version, or anything that still doesn't feel right. Thanks for reading!

#dceu #worlds of dc #man of steel #superman #fix fic #zod lives (not)

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katandhercgbojac · 6 years ago

Text

Inuit vs Eskimo

https://www.uaf.edu/anlc/resources/inuit-eskimo/

Although the name "Eskimo" is commonly used in Alaska to refer to all Inuit and Yupik people of the world, this name is considered derogatory in many other places because it was given by non-Inuit people and was said to mean "eater of raw meat."

Linguists now believe that "Eskimo" is derived from an Ojibwa word meaning "to net snowshoes." However, the people of Canada and Greenland prefer other names. "Inuit," meaning "people," is used in most of Canada, and the language is called "Inuktitut" in eastern Canada although other local designations are used also. The Inuit people of Greenland refer to themselves as "Greenlanders" or "Kalaallit" in their language, which they call "Greenlandic" or "Kalaallisut."

Most Alaskans continue to accept the name "Eskimo," particularly because "Inuit" refers only to the Inupiat of northern Alaska, the Inuit of Canada, and the Kalaallit of Greenland, and it is not a word in the Yupik languages of Alaska and Siberia.

https://www.aaanativearts.com/alaskan-natives/eskimo-vs-inuit.htm

I answered a letter a while ago, from someone at a museum in Alaska. They wanted to know why Inuit (which I am of) dislike being called "Eskimos." After all, many Alaskans don't mind being called Eskimos, and even seem to dislike the term "Inuit" when southerners apply it them, however well-intentioned.

I am not surprised by the confusion. The ascendancy of Inuit culture, through good reportage and the establishment of Nuvavut, has conditioned southern folks to say "Inuit" instead of "Eskimo." Southerners have complied beautifully, but at last they are running up against peoples, related to Inuit, who insist that they are Eskimos. The confusion derives from this sticky fact: Inuit are not Eskimos, and Eskimos are not Inuit.

In simple terms: The first Mongolic peoples of North America (linked by genetic heritage to the Mongols of Asia) settle in Alaska as early as 8,000 years ago. Paleo-anthropologists like to call them the "Arctic Small Tool Tradition," which, frankly, is fine by me.

Millennia creak by. Some of these people move east across North America in waves. The first such Mongolic wave (I dislike the term "Mongoloid") finishes settling as far as Greenland about 4,000 years ago. Once they settle, they are dubbed the "pre-Dorset" culture, later developing into the more advanced "Dorset" culture. These are a Mongolic people from Alaska, but they live in an incredibly cold world without dog-sleds and most of the technologies Inuit are used to. Their rectangular encampments are bordered by short walls of flat stone. They are obsessed with art, particularly images of human faces, which they leave everywhere around the Arctic.

Then the Earth warms up a bit. Between the period of Europe's late dark ages to its early middle ages, about 800-1200 A.D., a new Mongolic people dubbed "Thule" sweep eastward from Alaska. They are tool-obsessed people (over 40 items in a seal-hunting kit alone), mainly following whales and walrus along newly-opened channels in the ice. These are the inventive souls who bring such innovations as dog-sleds, soapstone lamps, float bladders, igluvigak ("igloo") building, waterproof stitching, and toggling harpoons with them. By the time they have completely occupied the area from the eastern edge of Alaska to Greenland, around 700 years ago, the Earth cools again. It is time to curb the nomadism.

They supplant the Dorset, and become Inuit.

Now, I have read too many interpretations of "Inuit" as meaning, "Humans" or "The People," probably under the (incorrect) assumption that this is every culture's name for itself.

However, having been a translator for 30 years, I can guarantee you that "Inuit" is a specific term. It precisely means, "The Living Ones Who Are Here." It denotes a sense of place, of having arrived, a memory that Inuit knew they had kin somewhere else. It also betrays the fact that Inuit once knew they were not the original peoples of their lands. Interestingly, in this way does language act as a code to preserve heritage.

The Alaskan Eskimos are descended from the Mongolic peoples that continued to develop into diverse western cultures. As such, they have their own preferred words for themselves, such as, "Yup'ik" and "Aleut" and "Nunamiut." Nevertheless, none of us has completely left our heritage behind, and I still get a kick out of it when I understand the speech of people from Alaska, or even the Chukchi Peninsula.

There was only one culture in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland before Inuit. These, Inuit refer to as the "Tunit." These are Dorset. Inuit remember them well in their oral traditions. The Tunit were small, very strong, incredibly shy. It is said that Tunit taught Inuit about their lands, that they built the first inuksuit ("images of men," man-like stone structures) to herd caribou along predictable paths for hunting. Paradoxically, they were thought of as poor craftsmen.

Unfortunately, the Tunit are now extinct. Inuit, therefore, have the luxury of using "Inuit" in a wide context, since they are the only ones remaining. But even this can get politically tricky, since there are a couple of peoples adjacent to them - "Inuvialuit," for example - who do not always approve of being called Inuit. But, generally, one can get away with using "Inuit" as a kind of umbrella term for eastern Mongolic peoples.

The umbrella term for the far west, Alaska, is "Eskimo." Alaskans do not seem to mind its usage these days, simply because it provides a handy general term. And there may be another reason not to mind it, as well. The old thinking was that it derived from Cree, derogatorily meaning, "Eaters of Raw Meat." It was thought that it was overheard by French missionaries, distorted to "Esquimaux" or "Esquimau," then Anglicized to "Eskimo."

It is amazing how widespread this belief has become, so that it is cited by all but the most informed sources. Yet, while remaining a bit of a mystery, the missionary-origin of "Eskimo" is pretty much discounted today, since there is some compelling evidence that the word was existent in pre-colonial times. Some researchers have made a good case for it coming from Montagnais vocabulary, literally meaning, "snowshoe net-weaver," but culturally being a term that indicates any craftsman of great skill. It seems to me that this makes more sense and, if true, would mean that the word is not derogatory after all.

Inuit, however, can never be Eskimos. Existent in the west or not, preferred by Alaskans or not, it was simply never part of their vocabulary. Inuit, after all, have their own name for themselves: Inuit. Today, "Eskimo" only reminds Inuit of the days when missionaries kidnapped them, dumped flea powder all over them, and assigned "Eskimo numbers" to them, instead of bothering to note the proper name for the culture or the individuals within it.

It all really boils down to choice, the right to accept or reject specific labels at will, the right to be known as one wishes to be. And is that not what liberty is all about?

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onceuponawildflower · 7 years ago

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If someone walked up to you, handed you one million dollars, and said that you had to use it to travel, where would you go?

I was trying to think about this one. I’m also the sort of person who is going to research how much it costs to go from one place to the next, to answer this as accurately as possible, so here we go.

I’d leave Ohio and first head to Denver/Fort Collins, Colorado to see my best friend, who I would subsequently drag along with me on all of my travels because we both want to travel all over the world. (You’re welcome @lupus-majoris).

Price: $50

From there, we’d go to San Diego, because I want to see Southern California, and then up to San Francisco, because I’ve been there once (backpacking across the city) and I want to see it again.

Price: $300

Total so far: $350

After that, we’d head up to Eugene, Portland, and Seattle. All places on the west coast I’ve always wanted to see, and I’m sure he’d like to see too.

Price: $800

Total so far: $1,200

From there, we’d head to Vancouver, and then on up to Anchorage, Alaska, before heading out to Russia, where we’d visit Lake Baikal, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, and then over to Charlie’s Top Three Pick, Mongolia.

Price: $14,500

TSF: $16,000

After that, we’d head to Thailand for Christmas and Phnom-Penh, Cambodia for New Years.

Price: $1,500

TSF: $17,500

We’d explore Oceana more (Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea), and sail to Brisbane, Australia.

Price: $7,500

TSF: ~ $25,000

From Brisbane, I want to sail to New Caledonia, and then dive with sharks and whales and see what’s left of the Great Barrier Reef before it’s entirely oxidized and bleached.

Price: $2,000

TSF: $26,000

Once we do that, I’d like to head back over to Australia, and check out New South Wales. Preferably visiting Byron Bay, Sydney, Uluru, and Melbourne.

Price: $2,000

TSF: $28,000

After which, we’d head over to Tasmania, and then down to New Zealand. Charlie’s heard good things about Christchurch, and we have to go camping and hiking at length here. And of course, for pure fangirl and fanboy pleasure, visit Matamata to see the Shire.

Price: $1,500

TSF: ~ $30,000

After New Zealand, Charlie would use his new-found skills in sailing to whisk us across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar and then South Africa.

Price: $2,000

TSF: $32,000

There’s so much of Africa I want to see. I’d imagine we’d visit DR of Congo, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt, before heading to the Middle East.

Price: $12,000

TSF: $44,000

In the Middle East, we’d like to explore Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Pakistan.

Price: $15,000

TSF: $70,000

After we’ve thoroughly explored the Middle East, we’d head back to the Far East to explore India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal at length.

Price: $15,000

TSF: $85,000

After which, Charlie and I would head to Europe. From Nepal to Greece, and then on to Macedonia, Italy, Sicily, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, the Faroe Islands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway (where we’d stay for a great while for Charlie), Iceland, and Greenland.

Price: $22,000

TSF: $107,000

Since we’d be so close, from Greenland, we’d head into Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. I definitely want to see the other provinces of Canada besides Newfoundland and British Columbia, especially the francophone provinces. We would most likely go to Quebec. And then head north to Nunavut. After visiting Eskimo Point and the Northwestern Territories, we would head to warmer climates, in Latin and South America.

Price: $8,000

TSF: $115,000

I want to see Baja California and Mexico City in Mexico, as well as other countries in Latin America: Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

Price: $3,000

TSF: $118,000

One of my biggest goals in life is to witness the wonders of the Galapagos Islands. This would be a priority in South America, and I’d like to stay for a while. We would also travel to Columbia, (the rest of) Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil (with as large as it is, I’d like to explore this in detail), French Guiana, and Venezuela, before heading up to Puerto Rico.

Price: $9,000

TSF: ~ $130,000

In the Caribbean region, I’d travel from Puerto Rico to Haiti, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and the Bahamas.

Price: $5,500

TSF: $135,000

Charlie and I have discussed this and we’re both a-okay with not coming back to the United States. However, at this point, I’d probably miss my family and want to see my Mama (my grandma), since she’s so close, so I’d make a quick detour to Orlando, FL and surprise her. We’d only stay for a little while, before whisking Charlie away to a place I’ve been researching and talking to him about for months/years now. Hawai’i. I know it’s part of the United States, technically, but I don’t think it should be, and I really hope they seek independence. So from the Bahamas, I’d go up to Orlando for a quick spell, and then fly off to Hawai’i. We’d probably land on Big Island, but I want to see all of the islands that are accessible to non-indigenous people. Charlie would obviously be sailing us between each island. He’d also be teaching me how to do it because at this point, it seems like a given that I would need to at least start learning.

Price: $3,000

TSF: ~$140,000

And from there, we might choose to live in Hawai’i and help them push for independence, clean up the beaches, live in an intentional community, and become permanent vagabonds. We might split the money halfway and go our separate ways (he prefers colder climates and wants to go to this folk school in Norway and I like mild, warm climates, and might move back to Brazil or Australia or India). Regardless of where we go, we’d have a good sum of money left over from that million dollars. Granted, the prices I provided were from justfly and only included the price of airfare/estimate travel fare. It didn’t include lodging, food, gear, supplies, etc. I’m sure we could use up a bit of that money on these needed amenities, but in general, we’re pretty frugal people, and a little can get us pretty far. (So a lot can get us really, really far).

All added up, that’s eighty-eight countries. According to my plan, we would finish our trip as early as June 2020.

Thanks for sending me this ask, this was fun! I spent about… three and a half hours or so planning all of this, but I really enjoyed it.

#also my school loans are still more than the cost of our whirlwind trip across europe #personal #ask #travel the world

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her-phe-bear · 7 years ago

Photo

Phoebus knew Damia was never fond of the Summer.

He knows she likes the biting cold, the way the world gives way to darkness more than any other time of year. He knows how unimpressed she is by his father’s ridiculous sunflower bouquet he’d gotten for his mum--but he also knew she liked the thought.

He caught her eye while she sat at his dinner table, just visible over the bouquet perched as a centerpiece. She seemed interested enough, listening to his mother speak while they split a bottle of whiskey, ‘because fuck wine’, they had replied when questioned on their choice.

He hadn’t realized he was leaning against the banister staring until she met his gaze, the corners of her mouth turning up with open amusement. He couldn’t help grinning back, swinging on the banister a bit and holding her gaze before going up the stairs as he originally intended. But not before picking up his old black cat, who had been whining for attention for a few minutes now...

As much as Mia loved his parents, he knew she wasn’t having a good time. If she had it her way she would have dug up anything buried in the back garden to reanimate somehow... but he knew she wasn’t quite that upset. Either way, she wasn’t having fun. Things like garden parties were really not her scene, especially when no one wanted anything more than to ask about her father, whom she was trying to have a break from...

He knows what she likes, the dark mysterious fascinating corners of magic that she would curl into for as long as she could. Mia loved dark creatures, he knew she likened herself to them, the more gruesome the better. He never understood why; despite her taste for blood, she wasn’t quite so... unnerving--’she’d take that as offensive’ he thought, rolling his eyes.

He took a small breath before gently knocking on the door, his father’s voice distractedly called in response from the other side “Come in.”

He stepped in and stood in the middle of the space between the door and the massive oak desk where his father was, and waited patiently for him to look up.

“Sorry Phe, I just need to finish these maps and I’ll--”

“Oh, no, don’t worry Dad, Mum’s entertaining Mia...” He chuckled, lazily petting the cat, now purring “I wanted to ask for a small favour...”

Lucius’ eyebrows raised, setting his quill down and lacing his hands on his desk, “Go on.” he simply said.

“Mia loves you and Mum, and this summer vacation’s been so good for her--”

“But” Lucius bowed his head a bit, still looking at his son.

“But... Mia’s hasn’t really done much of what she likes doing, usually--”

“She cannot skin the cat Phoebus--”

“What? Dad no!” he gasped, holding the animal to his chest tighter, only causing the needy thing to purr louder.

“Oh stop it boy, what are you planning?” he chuckled, shaking his head at the look on his Pride’s face.

“I’d like a Portkey to Greenland”

“Why?”

“it’s cold over there, she’d like it, and it’s where we keep the good horses...”

Now Lucius Malfoy was intrigued, “The good horses?”

“Ye-Yes...” Phoebus tensed, searching his father’s face for hesitation.

His smirk grew, he knew exactly what he was planning. “Fine, it’ll be in the middle of the front garden in two hours.”

He went to his father, and wrapped an arm around the man’s shoulders “Thanks Dad,” He kissed his head before hurrying out the door “We’ll be back before you’ve gone to bed!”

“No you won’t” Lucius replied knowingly under his breath his smirk firmly planted on his face as he continued working....

It didn’t take him long to set it all up, he knew his father would have already sent a House-Elf to the cabin, to make sure it was ready for visitors. All he had to do was pack what they needed...

“Sorry Mum, Dad says he needs you in his study, he wouldn’t tell me why.” Phe interrupted the conversation which had migrated to the soft chairs in the Parlor.

“Mm? Oh, alright, you two have some dinner, I’ll have ours sent to his study, it may be a long night if he’s given in to needing my help..” she winked at the younger pair and slightly wobbled up the stairs.

“Liar.” Mia smirked at him from behind her glass.

Phoebus scooped her into his arms and kissed her deeply, the taste of the liquor never failing to add to her own. “We don’t need to hurry, but we should get going.”

“What? Where? What are you doing Bear?”

“Come on you...” he half-carried her to the front garden, where an old paperweight stood. “We’ve got somewhere to be! Put these on.” he pulled a thick fur coat and a pair of boots from a small rucksack.

Mia’s face lit up against her best efforts to remain stoic--but she was too drunk for that now. “Is this to throw me off your scent?”

“Maybe” he responded quickly, donning his own coat with increasing excitement. He lead them to the Portkey, which she reluctantly crouched down to grab. It took all of three seconds before they flew away into the air, spinning madly and losing all sense of direction before the freefall. He grabbed Mia’s waist, and gently walked them back down into crunchy snow.

“Oh...” Mia looked around, untouched white field as far as the eye could see, the wind whipped her loose curls across her face as she turned to Phoebus.

“Now you need to tell me--where have you taken me?”

“If we head west we’ll reach some stables, then a cabin, let’s go.”

He dodged her questions--and snowballs--as they walked through the field. he wasn’t sure why his father had placed them so far away, but he admitted the walk was pretty.

“Alright, so the stables...is this where you reveal to me you have a farm fetish?” she laughed, her cheeks pink from the cold.

Phe grinned, tickling her sides briefly before taking her hand. He explained as they walked further in. “These aren’t ordinary stables...” he started, rounding a corner and giving them full view of four unicorns, lazily trotting around their enclosure, passing a juvenile Hippogriff fluffing his feathers indignantly at them. “As you know, my father’s deeply involved in the Hogwarts Board of Directors. As such, he’s provided a lot of accommodations for things that half-giant oaf is incapable of...” he stopped in front of a large enclosed space. A large thestral stood watching a smaller, running thestral as it tried galloping around the space.

He turned to Mia, and the look on her face was worth this terrible cold.

What wasn’t worth it was the punch in the arm. “Ow!”

“How haven’t you taken me here before!?” she demanded

“Father finally got ownership of them after that other Hippogriff got away from that poor excuse of a groundskeeper. Before then they were only to be cared for and not shown, he was sworn to keep the knowledge of where they’re kept. Now he’s the one that lets the school borrow them.” he leaned forward and opened the gate slowly, “Go on, slowly, the mum’s very protective”

Phoebus watched Mia slowly approach the two thestrals. Bowing like she knows to do, which the Mother thestral returned. Phe took a few steps, trailing behind her. “Give her a moment, and she may let you pet the baby.” he suggested.

“Where are the other ones?” Mia asked, no stranger to the sheer amount of the poor things Hogwarts uses to lug its students around.

“They’re in another enclosure, I’ll take you to them after they’re fed, she’s off to the side because they need to give birth away from the rest--they’re very private.” He sighed, “This little one was born a few weeks ago, I think, she’s still recovering.”

Damia stroked the mother thestrals’ neck, admiring the creature, surprisingly quiet for a short while before finally speaking. “I hadn’t really thought about them having babies--I mean know that’s how they procreate obviously...just...”

“Yeah it’s weird to think about them as parents...Having small ones and caring for them, they’re so scary every other time...”

“Well...yes.” she simply stated, the wrinkle between her eyebrows emerging as the corners of her lips pulled down. Phe wished he hadn’t said anything...

He placed an arm around her waist, squeezing it a bit before kissing her head. She turned her face towards his, catching his lips quickly “Thank you, I know you think I’ve been such a dick to your parents all summer--”

“What? No! No my little Bunny, Dad set this up for me, I wanted to give you something I know you enjoy... You know, after we feed them, she may let you ride her over the forest over there, she doesn’t spook if you want to hex something you see running around down there...”

“Wait really?” she exclaimed, pulling him close and kissing him properly, (that of course, meaning they both had bloodied lips when they pulled apart. “Thank you Phe, I need to let off some steam--your parents really are great, but fuck they can’t stop being so...” She stuck out her tongue, making a whining noise

“At least you didn’t have to put up with all the time, I have to live with them!”

#sunflowers cat snow thestrals #prompt drabble #I did it!

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littlereyofsunlight · 7 years ago

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thaw depth

Written for Steggy Positivity Week, Day 1: Agent Carter Timeline

Idiotville, population: Steve Rogers

Steve didn’t like airplanes so much these days.

It probably had something to do with how he’d crash-landed one in a frozen wasteland once. So he wasn’t very keen on working through the fear.

He’d still been asleep when he’d been flown back to New York from Greenland, so that had been fine. When summer had taken a turn into fall and Steve shivered just thinking about the winters he’d passed when he was younger, he’d jumped at the room and board Howard had offered him in Los Angeles. Steve borrowed one of his cars and drove cross-country rather than board Stark’s private plane. He’d been out west a few months now, and he was pretty sure he hated it. But winter wasn’t over yet.

Now here he was, on an airfield. He wasn’t even there to fly, but his palms were still sweating and he’d been having a hard time swallowing past the lump in his throat. Worst of all, Edwin kept clucking over him like some deranged mother hen.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait at home, sir?” he asked, giving Steve yet another worried once-over.

“I’m fine,” he said again through grit teeth. I’ve been through worse than this, he thought. Then again, Jarvis had been there to see part of the aftermath of that, so Steve felt he couldn’t blame him for his concern. Even if it was driving him nuts.

A small plane taxied up and men rushed over with the staircase, ready for the passengers to disembark. Steve straightened his spine and shoved his hands in his pockets, determined not to show the thoughts suddenly racing through his head. He focused on the propeller as it spun on the nose of the plane, pushing down the nausea that came rushing up with the memory of another prop whirling just under his feet, miles up in the air.

And then she was there in front of him, and the rest fell away.

Steve had yet to get over seeing her in civilian clothes. She always dressed impeccably, in a way that flattered her figure in the most distracting–but plausibly deniable–ways. Today, despite the transcontinental flight, was no different. If it was possible, the lump in his throat grew even bigger. It had been months since he’d seen her and Steve found her effect on him had not lessened with time apart.

“Mr. Jarvis, thank you for fetching me.” Peggy gave a warm smile as Stark’s butler reached for her bag. “Hello, Captain Rogers.” Her tone was decidedly cooler as she breezed past Steve. Perhaps the same could not be said for his effect on Peggy.

“Agent Carter,” he said, trying to sound only mildly pleasant as he opened her car door. His voice shook, though, so the effect was ruined. He snuck a quick peek up at her face, but she was inscrutable behind her sunglasses. He tried to think of something else to say, but his thoughts were drowned out by the roar of an engine as a plane taxied by. Steve flinched and quickly climbed into the back seat, slouching down against the leather upholstery.

Peggy sat straight-backed in the front passenger seat, waiting patiently for Jarvis to load her bag into the trunk and settle into the car.

“How is Mrs. Jarvis these days, Mr. Jarvis?” she asked as he started up the engine and began to reverse out of their parking spot. Another plane went by and Steve closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deep.

“She’s very well indeed, Miss Carter, thank you for asking. She’s expecting you for dinner this evening.”

Steve could see Peggy freeze. She started to turn toward him, ever so slightly, but stopped herself. “Oh! Well, that is very kind of you, of course, Mr. Jarvis. But I might—that is—I’m afraid I must check in with Chief Sousa straight away. He’s expecting me at the office, and I can’t say how long i’ll be at work.” Right. Sousa. The guy Jarvis had said Peggy’d been sweet on back in New York. That’s why she was here, to see him. To help him with a case, Steve corrected himself.

Now they were on the highway, headed away from the airstrip. Steve unclenched his hands and tried to arrange his features in a bland expression when he saw Peggy glance at him in the rearview mirror. She’d taken off her sunglasses and her dark eyes were fathomless. There was nothing cold in her gaze, though; no reflection of the tone she’d taken with him earlier. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he first thought.

Jarvis glanced up in the mirror at Steve, as well. “Of course, Miss Carter. I would be happy to drop you there, if you have the address.” He and Peggy passed the rest of the ride in pleasant conversation, while Steve mostly pretended not to be listening from the back. They didn’t discuss Peggy’s work with the SSR any further.

Steve realized he’d really, really missed her voice. He wished she’d say his name.

Mr. Jarvis was still a bit tender from the punch he took earlier in the evening, so Mrs. Jarvis sent Steve to fetch Peggy from the Auerbach Agency late that night. He’d heard all about the excitement while Ana pressed a raw steak to Edwin’s jaw. Steve could read between the lines well enough to know that Peggy and Sousa had stumbled onto something far larger than a strange murder.

As he waited in the car, he noticed a young woman standing across the street. She seemed to be waiting, too. Steve watched as she looked at her watch and then up at the windows on the third floor, the ones with the blinds drawn but the lights on behind them. He could just make out the shadows of two people up there. Steve drummed his fingers on the wheel and continued to watch the woman out of the corner of his eye. She didn’t seem like a threat, but that didn’t mean anything.

A dark-haired man with a crutch crossed the street in front of the car and headed straight for her. Steve had never met the man, but he’d listened to enough of Jarvis and Howard’s stories to know that he was Daniel Sousa. Steve saw him lean down and give the blonde woman a quick kiss and a smile, and they left together. Steve’s heart skipped a beat. Sousa had a girl. Who wasn’t Peggy.

To hear Jarvis tell it, the only thing that had kept Peggy and Daniel apart in New York was the job. She wouldn’t open herself up to the criticism and ridicule of dating a colleague. But then Sousa had taken the chief job out west, and Peggy had realized too late her feelings for him were as strong as they were. Jarvis had told him that was right around the time Howard had located the Valkyrie, and Steve on it. Peggy had apparently welcomed the distraction, though by the time Steve was recovered enough to even contemplate making up that dance he owed her, he barely ever saw her. And certainly not alone. Besides, by then Edwin had told Steve all about her new life. She’d moved on.

There was a movement in the window. Steve could just make her out, up there in the shadows. Peggy had seen the kiss. What he wouldn’t give to know what she was thinking in that moment. Had she known before now? Or had she come to L.A. hoping for something?

In the window above, the light went out.

She hesitated when she saw who was behind the wheel. Steve sighed. Not that it should matter to him. He and Peggy were hardly even friends, anymore. He wasn’t sure how it had happened. Maybe they were just good at working together, but didn’t have a connection beyond that. He’d gone over their time together during the war so many times on his trip out here. It was clear he’d allowed himself, in the rush and drama of wartime, to read more into their interactions than was actually there. She’d kissed him, yes, but he’d been about to fling himself into the jaws of death. He had died. She never expected him to come back.

Whatever they’d had then, she clearly wasn’t interested in rekindling it now.

He started up the engine as she climbed into the passenger seat. “Thank you for driving. I’m sorry to make you come out so late.”

Steve focused his eyes on the road. “Not a problem. I don’t sleep too much, anyways.”

“You’re still having nightmares, then?” She gave him a sharp-eyed look.

He blanched. “You know about those?”

“I’ve never met a soldier returning from war who didn’t have them, at least at first. Just because the war has been over two years now doesn’t mean you would be immune.” Peggy checked her vibrantly painted nails. “In my personal experience, the first year back is the worst. It should get better soon.”

This was too much information, but not quite enough. The question bubbled up from his throat before he could stop himself, words running together as he fumbled not to sound too accusatory. “Who did you, I mean were you—uh, how did—”

“Me, Steve. I’m speaking of my own nightmares.”

The relief that flooded through him didn’t last as he took in her exasperated tone. It was their first conversation since he’d decided to leave New York and he was making such a mess of it. The first time she’d said his name since she arrived, and it was while she was mad at him. Didn’t that just figure.

It was late enough that traffic back to Stark’s home was minimal. Steve and Peggy didn’t speak until he’d turned into the drive. He’d been chewing over his latest mistake, trying to figure out the right thing to say to turn things around, but it had evaded him. Still, he had to try. Even if he couldn’t be eloquent about it.

“I’m sorry.”

She’d already reached for the handle to leave, but stopped at his admission. “Are you?”

He summoned his courage and looked her in the eye. “Yes.”

She held his gaze for what felt like forever. “All right.” She got out of the car.

His shoulders sagged. It wasn’t much, but at least she hadn’t shot at him. He made to follow her, but something on her seat caught his eye. She’d dropped a business card for a Dr. Wilkes, physicist at Isodyne Energy. And Dr. Wilkes had dropped what looked like his personal number on the back. Steve’s stomach sank.

“You forgot something, Agent Carter.”

“Hmm?” She turned back to him and he handed over the card. She quickly looked down at it and back up at him a few times. “Oh. Erm, yes, thank you.”

Steve headed for the door.

“He’s a witness, Steve. He knew the victim.”

“Okay,” he said over his shoulder. Why she felt the need to tell him that, he didn’t know. “Looks like he might be interested in knowing you, too. You sure do work fast.” His cheeks burned. He knew he shouldn’t let himself get worked up. Who she saw was none of his business. Though it rankled that she’d leapt right from one workplace entanglement to at least considering another. Or else why hadn’t she left the guy’s card at the office?

“Steve Rogers.” Peggy’s voice rang out imperiously. On impulse, Steve ducked. “I won’t have you speaking to me that way.”

He gulped and turned to face her. Peggy’s eyes blazed but her tone was ice cold.

“Don’t you dare insult my professionalism, Rogers. You know what I went through in the service, and you can’t imagine the hell it’s been since coming back. I would have hoped that you, of all people, would have a modicum of understanding and compassion for the position I’m in.” She took a breath and the shift of the detailed neckline of her red dress drew Steve’s focus to the way her chest heaved. He at least had the decency to feel chagrined when he realized just where he was looking. Peggy continued, “You convinced me once that you weren’t like all the rest, but I seem to have been mistaken. I thought, even if you didn’t want me anymore, you would at least treat me with decency and respect, but–”

“What?” Now his full attention was on her words. “Peggy, I don’t what?” He took a cautious, hopeful step back towards her.

His interrogative brought her up short. She cast about for a moment, looking as unsettled as he’d ever seen him. Then she took another breath and he could see her gather her dignity about herself once more. “It’s all right, Steve. We made no promises to each other, not really. I’m not holding you to account for anything that went unsaid between us. It was a different time.”

“Peggy,” he found his voice was suddenly hoarse, “I have always wanted to be with you. I never stopped.”

She shook her head. “But you never said–after you were back, you didn’t say anything.”

Steve ran a hand through his hair. If he’d thought he’d made a mess earlier… “Well, I was in a plane crash, and then I was a block of ice for a while. And then I woke up and the whole world had moved on.” He gave her a small, rueful smile. “Jarvis told me you’d moved on. I guess I was too scared to ask you if it was true.”

Peggy rolled her eyes, but took a step towards him. “I kept waiting for you to ask after the dance I’d been saving for you.”

“We were never alone. And you had so much work on your plate.” He took another step of his own.

“Yes, well, I was after a very dangerous fugitive!” Her words had none of their former bite, and she looked up into his face with a soft, open expression he never thought he’d see from her again. “I thought we could simply continue on as before, when you had your mission and I had mine. But then you left.”

“I’m sorry.” He reached out a hand, and she took it. “I couldn’t face the cold.” He reeled her in. “Not without you.”

Peggy twined her arms around his neck. “You idiot,” she said, tears in her eyes, “you wouldn’t have had to if you’d just said something.”

Steve smiled down at her. “Okay. In that case, Agent Carter, may I have this dance?”

“Sod the dance,” Peggy surged onto her toes and kissed him, hard.

read on AO3

#steggyweek2K17 #steggy positivity week #my fic #steve rogers POV

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ntrending · 5 years ago

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Saving Greenland could save the world

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/saving-greenland-could-save-the-world/

Saving Greenland could save the world

Every year, about half of Greenland’s ice losses happen on the edges, through glaciers like Jakobshavn. But another half is lost through melting on its surface. This melting comprises turquoise lakes and rushing aquamarine rivers and thin lapis creeks. Unlike the island’s biggest glaciers, we already know a fair amount about how much the ice sheet’s surface is warming. For nearly thirty years, a Swiss scientist named Konrad “Koni” Steffen has been taking readings on temperature, wind, solar radiation, and melting at a station known as Swiss Camp, on the central ice sheet. Located about fifty miles east of Jakobshavn’s calving front, Steffen’s camp has weather towers that collect data on the surface environment several times a minute; the information is then transmitted to him in Europe and the United States (he has offices in both Zurich and Boulder) every hour. But the observations aren’t limited to one location. over the past few decades, he has set up a system of eighteen installations around Greenland that measure weather on the ice sheet. Every spring he checks on these towers by setting out from Swiss Camp, moving from one site to another either by snowmobile or by turboprop. “It is really by chance that I ended up studying the ice sheet,” he says.

The station over time had become a destination spot for visit- ing dignitaries seeking to find a kind of ground zero for global warming; Al Gore had been there, along with so many journalists, politicians, and European princesses and princes that Steffen could barely list them all. The true value of Swiss Camp was in the growing record of observations, however. Steffen calculated that between 1990 and 2018 average temperatures on the ice sheet had increased by about 2.8 degrees Celsius, or 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Over the same time period, the total area of the Greenland ice sheet that was vulnerable to surface melting had increased by around 65 percent. Carl Benson would barely have recognized the place.

In talking about the melting in Greenland, glaciologists sometimes like to describe the relationship between rising temperatures and diminishing ice with mock simplicity: “When it gets hotter,” they say, “ice melts.” And yet the surface of the ice sheet has turned out to be far more complex than it once appeared. In recent years, studies have observed that meltwater from the ice sheet doesn’t necessarily run off Greenland into the oceans; occasionally it stays in the firn, trapped like water in a huge sponge. In 2013, a team of scientists even discovered an aquifer under the snow in east Greenland, containing extraordinary reserves of water that covered an area the size of West Virginia. Conceivably, the water could be released quickly, in a flooding gush, in the near future.

In sum, the ice surface is beset by a variety of forces brought on by changing climates. The surface is getting darker, for instance, thanks to a combination of industrial soot, dust, microorganisms, and algae, which have settled upon a “dark zone” on the ice sheet’s western region. This dust, black carbon, and biological life now form an ecosystem that flourishes during the warmer months. But the danger is that the darker Greenland’s ice gets, the more solar energy it absorbs. And the more solar energy it absorbs, the more it melts and the darker it gets. This feedback loop is known by glaciologists as the albedo-melt loop (albedo is a measure of surface reflectivity). And unfortunately, it is reinforced by another self-perpetuating process. As Greenland’s ice sheet melts and drops in elevation, just as it has at Koni Steffen’s Swiss Camp, its ice becomes more vulnerable. Lower altitudes enjoy warmer temperatures; they allow lakes to creep farther up the ice sheet with each passing decade. Therefore it now appears that the more Greenland melts, the more Greenland melts.

At its current pace of erosion, Greenland’s ice sheet adds about one millimeter of water every year to the world’s oceans; at this rate, the ice sheet could last seven thousand years. Yet no glaciologist in the world seems to think this will be the case. An astonishing study published in December 2018 concluded that the ice sheet was now melting faster than at any time for at least the past 350 years, and that the “nonlinear” response of the ice to warmer temperatures would lead to “rapid in- creases” in Greenland’s sea-level contributions. With its mellifluous, singsong Swiss accent, Koni Steffen’s voice tends to soften the bleakness of his outlook. Yet in his reflective moments, he predicts the melting ice over time will lead to a painful migration of 300 to 500 million people, globally, away from the coast. “Greenland isn’t pausing at 2100,” he says. “It continues like this, the warming. And it gets worse and worse. Most people think we can model until 2100, and that 2 degrees centi- grade is not so bad. But it won’t stop there. And the melting won’t stop there. The curve gets steeper, and steeper, and steeper.” one evening in Greenland, he says darkly: “There will be a change coming, and obviously a change that we have not seen in thousands of years.”

It may be the case that the collapse of some glaciers in West Antarctica and Greenland is unstoppable. But for the moment there is great uncertainty when it comes to the ice sheets. It may take one hundred years or three hundred years or five hundred years for some glaciers to fall into the ocean, due largely to the way they will break, sliding backward in the process, sometimes pausing for years or decades on a bedrock bump, as sea waters around and underneath them warm. In any event, amongst glaciologists there seems a consensus that the situation is urgent now, even if it isn’t yet at the point of being catastrophic. “We’re not positive if we’ve already triggered it or if we’re really close,” Pennsylvania State University geoscientist Richard Alley says of a West Antarctica collapse. “I think almost everyone would agree that it’s either one or the other.” But Alley also thinks that if we have committed to losing West Antarctica, “Greenland just became way more valuable.”

This can require a bit of explanation. It’s largely due to the fact that Greenland’s ice sheet sits within a bowl and is ringed by mountains, just as German polar researcher Alfred Wegener’s expedition discovered almost a century ago. Even with its deep glaciers, the losses of ice are constrained to a certain degree by the island’s geography, and by the limits in how glaciers can only push ice into the sea by threading through narrow mountain passes. That isn’t to say that Greenland couldn’t contribute many feet of sea level rise over the next few centuries. But with Greenland, says Alley, “we have a little more leeway.”

To meet the Paris Agreement goals, which attempt to limit average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, “the wealthier parts of the world would need to be zero carbon energy by about 2035,” Kevin Anderson, a climate scientist at the University of Manchester, explains. “And the poorer parts, including China, would have to deliver zero carbon energy by about 2050. And by that I mean everything—cars, planes, ships, industry, all of the energy would be zero carbon by 2050, globally, for us to have a reasonable chance of the two-degree framing of climate change.” It’s not that we lack the technological tools, Anderson says. It’s that the enormity of the task, and the sacrifices involved, haven’t yet sunk in. “I think it will be hugely challenging,” he adds.

And yet the alternative—not to try or achieve the goal—would be dire.

Excerpted with permission from the new book ICE AT THE END OF THE WORLD: An Epic Journey into Greenland’s Buried Past and Our Perilous Future by Jon Gertner. Published by Random House, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, Copyright © 2019 by Jon Gertner. All rights reserved.

Written By Jon Gertner

#Environment

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enddaysengine · 7 years ago

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The Wolf and the Raven (Dark Era, Werewolf/Geist, Chronicles of Darkness

Is there a time period more appropriate for Werewolves and Reverents than the Norse Era? I’m not entirely sure, but I know this: The Wolf and the Raven is one heck of a setting. Let’s look at a map of possible locations you could set your game during this time period using Vikings as your primary focus, shall we?

Yeah, even though the place names are mostly of the modern nations, not the countries that existed at the time, that is pretty impressive. The Wolf and The Raven is set from 700 to 1100 CE, a formative era of Europe where the medieval nation-states were born. This is also the era where Christianity really starts to take off in Northern Europe, and you have various Saints wandering the land, doing miracles and extolling the virtues of a resurrected Jesus. See why Geist is perfect for this period?

Given that we are talking about Vikings, there is also lots of raiding and war to go around. This is the era when the Vikings pour out of Scandinavia in search of wealth and glory. This the era of the Great Heathen Army, the Normans, Alfred the Great, and William the Conqueror. War is an easy thing in this time.

It is also a period of trade and colonization, which is why the map extends so far to the east and west. Iceland is born in this time period, Greenland will be settled for a time, and the Norse will even make their way to North America. In the other direction, trade will bring the Norse to both Russia and Byzantium, where they will become the elite bodyguards of kings.

Worth noting as well is that Chris Allen, one of the writers of Werewolf: The Forsaken, has written an expansion to this era that is really cool. I won’t spill all the juicy details, but suffice to say, if you aren’t happy about the fact that I haven’t mentioned the Norse gods much, especially Ymir and Fenrir, this is for you. Werewolf fans will also know that the latter is important to the Blood Talons, in the spiritual lord kind of way. So if you aren’t as interested in all of the historical battles, but do want to rip your way through some giants climbing the World Tree, you might want to check it out.

Ultimately, my favourite thing about The Wolf and the Raven is the diversity it offers. With a little research, you can turn this from a snapshot of a time period to a full on alternate campaign setting. There is a lot going on and there are a lot of different stories waiting to be told. Mr Wednesday would be proud.

Literary Resources:

Beowulf - The epic poem. Pretty much required reading.

The Saga of the Icelanders - Homaric in its reach and scope, these Sagas aren’t as well known, but paint an excellent picture of what life in medieval Iceland was like.

Viking Settlements & Viking Society edited by Svavar Sigmundsson - Tougher to get a hold of, I literally bought my copy in Iceland, but totally worth it. A broad set of essays that cover lots of ground across the Viking world.

Online Resource:

Thor’s Angels by Dan Carlin - Hardcore History is one of the best history podcasts out there, and this episode is right in the sweet spot for the culture and time period we are talking about here.

The Vikings by Kenneth Harl - Professor Harl’s lecture style does admittedly take some getting used to, but it it is so worth its. This is an excellent primer on Viking history and culture.

The Vikings! by Crashcourse - A quick, ten-minute introduction to the Vikings, who they were, and what some general misconceptions about them are.

Note: I’ve been meaning to start doing some write-ups on the various Dark Eras for a while, so now seemed like an appropriate time. What actually galvanized me into doing this is the fact that I have yet again run up against the limit of how many links I can have in my research posts. To remedy this, I’m going to start writing about the Dark Eras and including my resource links in those posts instead. Even if you don’t play Chronicles, hopefully, you find these posts interesting and some of the resources helpful.

If you know of any good resources on the Vikings, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

Speaking of Dark Eras, the Dark Eras 2 Kickstarter is still running. We are currently sitting $2203 away from adding the Golden Age of Piracy to the main book, and the polls currently indicate it will be a Mage/Geist era. If you’re a fan of historical RPGs or just historical fantasy in general, this book will be a steal of a deal! There are also several high-level reward tiers still available. At $250, you can get your or your character’s name included as part of the text of the book (not just in the backer credit section). At $350, you can have your photo used as an artistic reference. And there is still one of the behind-the-scenes pledges left at $750, which allows you to be privy to all communications between the writers while the project is ongoing.

#Dark Eras #Chronicles of Darkness #CofD #nWoD #worldbuilding #Research #Resoruces #History #Historical Fiction #historical Horror #werewolf the forsaken #geist the sin eaters

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virtuosinovel · 8 years ago

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Ch 48 - Expansion

“Welcome back Benjamin. It’s good to see you again and know this time we’re on the same team. Please sit down,” Victor said as he motioned to the chair in front of his desk.

“Thanks, it’s great to be back. So where do we go from here? You guys don’t exactly have a need for an international spy, do you?” Benjamin asked.

“Well, it’s not like we don’t do any intelligence whatsoever. We do quite a bit, but it’s mostly high tech and mostly counter-intelligence to make sure we don’t get blind-sided. We don’t go into other countries to conduct operations,” explained Victor.

“Great. I’m a dinosaur here. Depressing,” said Dudley.

“Don’t feel bad. So am I,” Victor laughed. “But I may have just the spot for you, at least for a while until you find your own niche.”

“Great, what do you have in mind?” asked Dudley, sitting forward in his seat.

“Well, I usually wouldn’t trust a newcomer with the information I’m about to give you. But hell, you already blew the whistle on the world’s biggest superpower so I guess that’s good enough for me. Come over here for a minute,” requested Victor. He waved Dudley over to his side of the desk so they could both see Victor’s screen. Victor hit a few buttons and the screen started dialing an international number for a video chat.

The call was answered from the other side. All Dudley and Victor could see were several people wrapped from head-to-toe in arctic outerwear: heavy coats with fur-lined hoods, snowboard masks, goggles, and gloves. The one who answered held up a finger to the camera as if to say “hold on a second” and then pointed at a steel building a few yards away, indicating they were going inside to answer the call.

The camera on the other computer spun around and led the person into the steel structure. The computer was set down on a table and the screen shot stabilized. The receiver came around to the other side and pulled down the fur-lined hood. Black, curly ringlets of hair emerged with some snow on the ends. It was a female evidently. She continued removing her mask and goggles. Her cheeks were rosy from the outdoor elements even though she’d been bundled up.

“Hey baby,” Victor said cautiously. He apparently didn’t expect to catch the woman in this state. And who was he calling baby? This wasn’t like calling his nieces “someone special to him” or “sweetie.” This was clearly a romantic interest.

“Yeah, save it. Do you have any idea how cold it is here?” the woman retorted with her face frozen in incredulity.

“Well, I’ve read the weather reports, but if you are asking me to get a point across then no, I have no idea and I feel really bad about it. But hey, Copenhagen is nice, right? You haven’t spent all of your time up there in the tundra, have you?” Victor asked, frowning.

“Copenhagen is charming, but that doesn’t help me at this very moment now does it?” she continued, pouring herself a warm drink out of a thermos, still slightly shivering.

“Honey, this is Benjamin. Benjamin, this is my wife and the best sport in the world, Lira Freeman.”

Lira Freeman? She’s alive? What the hell?

“Nice to finally meet you Benjamin. I’m glad you didn’t succeed in killing my husband,” she said. Like the others, she was very nonchalant when discussing Dudley’s aborted mission. It was as if nobody thought he could’ve pulled it off even if he had tried.

Benjamin finally managed a “Nice to meet you too, I thought…..”

“Oh, you thought I was dead? Yeah, well you can’t believe everything you read on the internet Benjamin. Although I’m not sure my current circumstances are much better than floating lifeless in the South China Sea,” she said, glaring at Victor.

“I’m sorry baby, but who else was I going to send? I owe you one or ten or…..”

“You can’t count that high so don’t bother,” she interrupted, seemingly in a better mood after warming up a bit.

“How were the Danes? Any final word?” Victor prodded.

“The Danes are absolute peaches. The negotiations went just like I planned. It helped a great deal the yugi-kroner exchange rate kept skyrocketing as we discussed all the details. By the end, they were so glad to get rid of this piece of ice they almost threw me a ticker tape parade.”

“Oh, excellent news!” Victor said. He was genuinely pleased about his new acquisition, whatever it was.

“Great, I’m glad you’re happy. What you’re going to do with this place is beyond me. Now can I come home please?” she asked, going from sarcastic to almost pleading now. “I miss the island.”

“Sure baby. The jet will be there tomorrow morning. Only one more night away from home.”

“Thank God! See you when I get there. You can start thinking of ways to make this up to me. Farvel, min elskede,” she said in her newly acquired Danish as she blew Victor a kiss and signed off.

Victor closed the computer and looked at Dudley, whose head was cocked in contemplation.

“So, that’s my wife. You know, the one who fell overboard on a cruise ship and was never heard from again?” Victor started.

“Yeah, so about that,” Dudley said, fumbling for words.

“Well, first of all, the footage was doctored. Lira never jumped or fell overboard, she stayed in Macau when we were in port and flew to Copenhagen from there.” Victor explained.

“Okay, I’m following the story so far. But why fake her death?”

“To keep our negotiations with Denmark a secret of course. Lots of people freaked out when they heard we were buying this island from Australia. They wanted to stop the deal but couldn’t. It was too late. But if they got involved earlier they may have succeeded. We needed a head start, so we had to make people believe Lira was dead. Once we convinced the world of that, she was free to conduct negotiations without too much hassle or publicity. The Danes also agreed to keep it secret. They didn’t want to piss anyone off until the time was right.

“I’m still lost,” said Dudley. “Negotiations for what?

“Greenland,” Victor said straight-faced.

“What? Why? Greenland?”

“Lots of reasons. First of all, it’s the biggest country we thought might be for sale if we asked nicely. I use the words “for sale” very loosely here. It’s a lot more complicated than just buying Christmas Island and moving here, since the Danes and the Greenlanders have a complex set-up. But Greenland has an enormous amount of natural resources and there’s more livable space than people think, especially with global temperatures rising.”

“Are you planning on moving your operations to Greenland?” Dudley asked. “Why would you leave the island? Didn’t you see the footage? It’s freezing there.”

“No, not moving, just expanding. This island had a population of about 1,000 people when we got here. Greenland has between 50 and 60 thousand. We can make a real impact. Start another society based on our ideals. And there’s also something to be said about not putting all your eggs in one basket. We may be doing great here so far, but one tsunami or cyclone and we’d be hurting. We need another place to call home, or at least be able to call home if we need to. Incidentally, the southern part of Greenland is beautiful a good part of the year. We just happened to catch Lira when she was scouting up north a bit.”

“I don’t know. Seems silly to me. Couldn’t you just buy another island?”

“Yeah, but another island wouldn’t have the sheer potential of Greenland. Few places do. We’re talking hydrocarbon galore, hydro-electric power, iron, uranium, platinum, copper, titanium, rubies. The place is a gold mine, literally and figuratively, but the locals have never had the technology or the financial resources to do anything about it. They’ve sold most of their mineral rights and other valuable assets to foreign companies or countries and are now getting screwed out of hundreds of billions. We outlined a way to stop the bleeding by making a paper purchase of the country. Unlike Christmas Island, we won’t assume control of the government there. Instead, we’ll be there in more of a consulting capacity. But we’ll have enough power to start playing hardball with some of the people taking advantage of the place,” said Victor, getting into his dreamer groove.

“A little white knight action with plenty of benefits to Virtuosi?” asked Dudley.

“Yes. Most of us will still have Christmas Island as our permanent address and just travel there as our skills are needed. We’ll offer jobs to Greenland’s current citizens if they’re qualified or can be trained. Then, the market will bring people from all over: Russia, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and Canada.

“That’s the great thing about a market economy. We’ll make it worth their while to come, and they’ll come. No need for me or any of my top managers to go there and run things. Some might go on short details, like Lira did for the negotiations, but new leaders will be created there by necessity and convenience. Of course, Wilbur and Eve will need a deputy to go there and oversee the initial security of the place for a while,” explained Victor, staring at Dudley.

“Me?” asked Dudley.

“I know it’s cold but hey, you should be in jail for the rest of your life, right? What’s a little cold?” returned Victor.

“Is this your version of banishing me to Siberia? What makes me qualified to go there and manage things?” Dudley asked.

“Lots of your agent training is transferable. You’ll report straight to Wilber and he’ll give you guidance as needed. I think it’ll be good for you to see how this works from the ground up instead of coming in after a couple of years like you did here. Think of it Benjamin, this is like our gold rush. It’s literally the Wild West up there; or the Wild North if you prefer to be literal. It’s like a Jack London novel. You could be our trusty sheriff,” Victor said, getting more animated as he talked.

Dudley frowned and fidgeted in his chair. He wasn’t big on the idea, but it was hard to say no to Victor.

“What if we agree you split your time between there and the island? We’ll make Randall the co-sheriff and you guys can work out a schedule. Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll make it a two-year assignment and then we’ll find something else for the two of you to do. Who knows, maybe one of you will want to stay there.”

Dudley had no choice. He was already getting a second chance most people didn’t get. He would get bored staying in one place for too long anyway, so why not take the job and make the best of it?

“Okay, it’s a deal,” Dudley relented. He and Victor shook hands. Victor reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of bourbon and two crystal glasses. He poured a double shot in each and handed one to Dudley.

“To new beginnings,” said Victor as he raised his glass.

“To new beginnings,” repeated Dudley. They tapped glasses and emptied the contents. The liquid warmed Dudley all over as he thought about his new mission. This one wouldn’t end with him trying to assassinate someone he respected. This time he had a good idea of what he was getting himself into. Or so he thought……

#blook #blog to book #libertarian #libertarianism #revolution #virtuosi #spy novel #conspiracy fiction #book content #chapter forty-eight

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agilenano · 5 years ago

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Agilenano - News: We Need a Massive Climate War EffortNow

Ill take a wild guess that you dont need any convincing about the need for action on climate change. You know that since the start of the Industrial Revolution weve dumped more than 500 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere and were adding about 10 billion more each year. You know that global temperatures have risen 1 degree Celsius over the past century and were on track for 2 degrees within another few decades.

And you know what this means. It means more extreme weather. More hurricanes. More droughts. More flooding. More wildfires. More heat-related deaths. There will be more infectious disease as insects move ever farther north. The Northwest Passage will be open for much of the year. Sea levels will rise by several feet as the ice shelves of Greenland and the Antarctic melt, producing bigger storm swells and more intense flooding in low-lying areas around the world.

Some of this is already baked into our future, but to avoid the worst of it, climate experts widely agree that we need to get to net-zero carbon emissions entirely by 2050 at the latest. This is the goal of the Paris Agreement, and its one that every Democratic candidate for president has committed to. But how to get there?

Lets start with the good news. About three-quarters of carbon emissions come from burning fossil fuels for power, and we already have the technology to make a big dent in that. Solar power is now price-competitive with the most efficient natural gas plants and is likely to get even cheaper in the near future. In 2019, Los Angeles signed a deal to provide 400 megawatts of solar power at a price under 4 cents per kilowatt-hourincluding battery storage to keep that power available day and night. Thats just a startit will provide only about 7 percent of electricity needed in Los Angelesbut for the first time its fully competitive with the current wholesale price of fossil fuel electricity in Southern California.

We devoted 30 percent of our economy to fight WWII1,000 times what we spend on green tech.

Wind powerespecially offshore windis equally promising. This means that a broad-based effort to build solar and wind infrastructure, along with a commitment to replace much of the worlds fossil fuel use with electricity, would go pretty far toward reducing global carbon emissions.

How far? Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that by 2050, wind and solar can satisfy 80 percent of electricity demand in most advanced countries. But due to inadequate infrastructure in some cases and lack of wind and sun in others, not all countries can meet this goal, which means that even with favorable government policies and big commitments to clean energy, the growth of wind and solar will probably provide only about half of the worlds demand for electricity by midcentury. Importantly, the Bloomberg analysts caution, major progress in de-carbonization will also be required in other segments of the worlds economy to address climate change.

This inevitably means we have to face up to some bad news. If existing technologies like wind, solar, and nuclear can get us only halfway to our goalor maybe a bit morethe other half would seem to require cutting back on energy consumption.

Lets be clear about something: Were not talking about voluntary personal cutbacks. If you decide to bicycle more or eat less meat, greatevery little bit helps. But no one whos serious about climate change believes that personal decisions like this have more than a slight effect on the gigatons of carbon weve emitted and the shortsighted policies weve enacted. Framing the problem this waya solution of individual lifestyle choicesis mostly just a red herring that allows corporations and conservatives to avoid the real issue.

The real issue is this: Only large-scale government action can significantly reduce carbon emissions. But this doesnt let any of us off the hook. Our personal cutbacks might not matter much, but what does matter is whether were willing to support large-scale actionsthings like carbon taxes or fracking bansthat will force all of us to reduce our energy consumption.

Solutions depend on how acceptable these policies are to the public. To get a rough handle of what a significant reduction means, the Nature Conservancy has a handy app that can help you calculate what it would take to cut your household carbon footprint in half. If youre an average household, you need to pare down to one car. If its an suv or a sports car, get rid of it. You need a small, high-mileage vehicle (the calculator assumes a regular gasoline car) and drive it no more than 10,000 miles per year. Thats for your whole family. You need to cut way back on heating and cooling. You need to live in a house no bigger than 1,000 square feet. And you need to buy way less stuffabout half of what you buy now.

There are solutions to some of these problemselectrification obviously helps with transportation, and better insulation helps with heating and coolingbut only to a point. One way or another, any government policy big enough to make a serious dent in climate change will also force people to make major lifestyle cutbacks or pay substantially higher taxesor both.

How many of us are willing to do that? It turns out we have a pretty good idea. In 2018, the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago fielded a national poll on climate change. Only 71 percent of respondents agreed it was happening, and of those, more than 80 percent said the federal government should do something about it.

Then the pollsters presented a scenario in which a monthly tax would be added to your electric bill to combat climate change. If the tax was $1, only 57 percent supported it. If the tax was $10, that plummeted to 28 percent. Those arent typos. Only about half of Americans are willing to pay $1 per month to fight climate change. Only about a quarter are willing to pay $10 per month.

And thats hardly the only evidence of the uphill climb we face. Theres abundant confirmation of the publics unwillingness to accept sacrifices in living standards to combat climate change. In France, a 2018 gasoline tax increase had to be withdrawn after yellow vest activistsgenerally an eco-friendly movementtook to the streets in furious protest. In Germany, where the growth of renewable energy has made it possible to shut down old power plants, the Fukushima disaster in Japan prompted the closing of climate-friendly nuclear plants before coal plantsdespite the fact that German nukes have a spotless safety record over the past 30 years and are under no threat from tsunamis. In Canada, a recent poll reported that most people say theyre willing to make changes in their daily lives to fight climate changebut only when the changes are kept vague. When pollsters asked specific questions, only small fractions said theyd fly less frequently, purchase an electric car, or give up meat. And a paltry 16 percent said theyd be willing to pay a climate tax of $8$40 per month.

None of this should surprise us. Fifteen years ago, UCLA geography professor Jared Diamond wrote a book called Collapse. In it, he recounted a dozen examples of societies that faced imminent environmental catastrophes and failed to stop them. Its not because they were ignorant about the problems they faced. The 18th-century indigenous inhabitants of Easter Island, Diamond argues, knew perfectly well that deforesting their land would lead to catastrophe. They just couldnt find the collective will to stop. Over and over, human civilizations have destroyed their environments because no oneno ruler, corporation, or governmentwas willing to give up their piece of it. We have overfished, overgrazed, overhunted, overmined, overpolluted, and overconsumed. We have destroyed our lifeblood rather than make even modest changes to our lifestyles.

We need the kind of spending that wins wars. And make no mistake, this is a war against time and physics.

Even if we could get wealthy Western countries to accept serious belt-tightening, theyre not where the growth of greenhouse gas emissions is taking place right now. Its happening in developing countries like China and India. Most people in these countries have living standards that are a fraction of ours, and they justifiably ask why they should cut back on energy consumption and consign themselves to poverty while those of us in affluent countrieswhich caused most of the problem in the first placeare still driving SUVs and running air conditioners all summer.

This is the hinge point on which the future of climate change rests. Clearly the West is not going to collectively agree to live like Chinese farmers. Just as clearly, Chinese farmers arent willing to keep living in shacks while we sit around watching football on 60-inch TV screens in our climate-controlled houses as we lecture them about climate change.

This is why big government spending on wind and solareveryones favorite solution to global warmingisnt enough to do the job. Subsidies for green energy might reduce US emissions, but even if the United States eliminated its carbon output completely, it would only amount to a small reduction in global emissions.

Yes, we should be fully committed to the kind of framework that congressional Democrats propose in the Green New Deal, which provides goals for building infrastructure and ways of retraining workers affected by the transition to clean energy. But theres no chance this will solve the problem on a global scale, and 2050 isnt that far away. We dont have much time left.

So what do we do? We need to figure out ways to produce far more clean energy, in far more ways, at a cost lower than we pay for fossil fuel energy. As the socialist writer Leigh Phillips warns his allies, Households need clean energy options to be cheaper than fossil fuels currently are, not for fossil fuels to be more expensive than clean energy options currently are.

This requires a reckoning. Time is running out, and we can no longer pretend that we can beat climate change by asking people to do things they dont want to do. We need to focus our attention almost exclusively not on things people dont like, but on something people do like: spending money. Lots of money.

As the Green New Deal suggests, part of the solution is building infrastructure for what we already know how to do. But our primary emphasis needs to be on R&D aimed like a laser at producing cheap, efficient, renewable energy sourcesa program that attacks climate change while still allowing people to use lots of energy. This is the kind of spending that wins wars, after all. And make no mistake, this is a war against time and physics. So lets propose a truly gargantuan commitment to spending money on clean energy research.

How gargantuan? The International Energy Agency estimates that the world spends about $22 billion per year on clean energy innovation. The US share of that is $7 billionthats about 0.03 percent of our economy. (Trump proposed cutting that figure almost in half.) This is pathetic if you accept that climate change is an existential threat to our planet. During World War II, the United States devoted 30 percent of its economy to the war effortor one thousand times what were spending on green tech.

There were three elements to this mass mobilization. First, Americans were asked to make modest sacrifices over the course of a few years. Victory gardens were planted, tin was collected, sugar and gasoline were rationed. Men enlisted and women went to work in factories. The rich paid high taxes and the rest of us bought war bonds. Perhaps theres a limit to how much we can ask of people, but plainly we can ask something of them.

Office of War Information

Second, we built an enormous war machine: 89,000 tanks, 300,000 aircraft, 1,200 major combat ships, 64,500 landing craft, 2.7 million machine guns, and $2.6 trillionworth of munitions in todays dollars. And its worth noting that much of this we simply gave away to allies like Britain and the Soviet Union. This was a global war that required American leadership and funding on a global scale.

Third, we spent money on R&D. There was the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, but there was also the development of radar, code breaking, computers, jet aircraft, plastic explosives, and M&Ms.

That last part isnt a joke. Its true that M&Ms were developed with a candy coating so theyd melt in your mouth, not in your hand, but they provided their first jolt of calories on the battlefield, not in corner candy shops. They were initially produced by a private company in 1941, but for the next five years were available exclusively to the military.

Why mention that? Because theres never any telling beforehand what research will pan out and what wont. M&Ms were obviously not as crucial to the war effort as the Bletchley Park code-breaking project was, but they were an unexpected success in their own way. We should commit to funding any clean energy research that looks even a little promising. We should do our best to get commitments from other countries to do the same. If were successful, well end up developing cheap technology that can spread quickly around the world and truly address warming on a global basis. Other countries will adopt our technology not only because it requires no sacrifice, but because its actually cheaper and better than what they have now. Why wouldnt they take advantage of our R&D, especially if we give it away for nothing?

M&Ms were able to scale up production thanks to massive military purchases.

Mars, Inc.

So how much should we spend? For arguments sake lets be modest and aim for only 10 percent of peak World War IIlevel spending. Thats $700 billion per year in todays dollarsa hundred times more than we currently spend on energy R&D, but barely 15 percent of what we spent to defeat the Axis. It also amounts to not quite 16 percent of our current federal budget.

Thats a big number, and we wont get there at once. It requires a combination of raising money and cutting spending in other areas. The most obvious candidate for cuts is our swollen defense budgetwhich accounts for one-sixth of all federal spendingbut thats politically risky, and given that climate change is truly an existential threat, we have to continually remind ourselves not to put up roadblocks to addressing it. Maybe we can persuade defense contractors that creating green tech is profitable. But if we have to keep building tanks and missiles for political reasons while we dial up spending on clean energy R&D, maybe thats just something we have to do.

If an R&D commitment bigger than the Manhattan Project were all we needed, our task would be relatively easy. No one is actually opposed to the concept of R&D, after all, and every climate plan worth the name acknowledges the value of continuing it.

What Im proposing is not just that we focus on R&D, but that we focus nearly exclusively on R&Dat least at first. That we throw gobs of money at all the projects I detail in the following pages, and any others that seem promising.

Why so much emphasis on R&D? Turns out I share something with those environmentalists who think that talk of voluntary personal sacrifice is mostly just a smoke screen. I first became skeptical of the standard approach to climate change about a decade ago. Since then Ive watched as, year after year, weve done far too little even though we know perfectly well how critical it is. Sure, Europe has a cap-and-trade plan to reduce carbon emissions, but we couldnt pass even a modest version of cap and trade in the United States. President Barack Obama raised mileage standards for cars and trucks, but President Donald Trump promptly rolled them back. Everything has been like that. There have been a few minor victories here and there, but all of them against a background of relentlessly increasing emissions.

How could this be? Its not that nothing is happening. There are plenty of dedicated activists, climatologists, and politicians who have worked hard for years to rein in climate change, and these people are heroes. The problem is that the global publicor at least their elected representativesare plainly reluctant to accept many of the policies the experts propose.

Take Germany. Its one of the most green-centric countries on the planet, and it boasts both a highly educated, highly productive workforce and a population genuinely dedicated to tackling climate change. Their Energiewendeor clean energy transitiontook off in the 1990s, and Germany represents one of the best cases we have of a major economy making a serious effort to address climate change.

But Germanys progress is tepid. Theres been a massive commitment to wind and solar over the past two decades, which now represent a third of Germanys energy production, but thats barely made a dent in their greenhouse gas emissions. The reason is simple. Instead of using green energy to eliminate fossil fuels, Germany has used it to subsidize other priorities: expanding overall power capacity to support a growing economy; increasing exports of electric power; and eliminating those aforementioned nuclear power plants. Use of coal has declined only slightly, and use of natural gas has increased by about half. As a result, progress has plateaued. Greenhouse gas emissions dropped about 17 percent from 1990 to 2000; then dropped only 12 percent more over the next decade; and have barely dropped in the past decade. German households already pay some of the highest energy prices in Europe, but theyve been unwilling to cut their electricity usage, which has remained stubbornly stable since 2000. And overall power consumption hasnt declined at all; its higher than it was two decades ago.

The American Legion

US Department of The Treasury

If this kind of pitiful response to climate change continueseven in a country with the means and political will to really make changethe end result will be the greatest catastrophe in human history or an unprecedented experiment in geoengineering with uncertain and potentially disastrous effects. Its past time for a radically different approach. As in World War II, a call for modest sacrifice is fine: It produces a sense of solidarity against a common enemy and gives people a personal stake in the outcome. But in the end, thats not what won the war. It was big spending and lots of R&D.

This approach will require some sacrifice from the progressive community. If we truly accept that climate change is an existential threat, then it has to take priority over other things wed normally fight for. Desert habitats may be compromised by utility-scale solar plants. Birds will be killed by wind turbines. Labor unions need to accept that some existing jobs will be lost as fossil fuel plants are shut down. Nuclear power is probably part of the answer, at least for a while.

A cold-blooded dedication to stopping climate change means having the willingness to step away from our comfortable shibboleths, accept the criticism that comes with that, and place ourselves squarely behind a plan that has a chance of working. Building out renewable energy will get us part of the way there, but weve got more to do and not much time to do it.

This isnt a rosy-hued proposal. You can find plenty of naysayers for every project I propose funding. Solar presents problems of geography. Wind presents land-use problems. Carbon sequestration requires mammoth infrastructure. Nuclear produces radioactive waste. Biofuels have been unable to overcome technical problems even after decades of effort. Fusion power has always been 30 years in the future and still is. Geoengineering is just scary as hell.

Ultimately, massive R&D might fail. But unlike current plans, it has one powerful benefit: At least its not guaranteed to fail.

Only Science Can Save Us Now

We need to pump billions into these promising green technologies.

John Tomac

Renewable Energy

Over the past 40 years, the price of delivering one watt of solar power has dropped from about $100 to $1. This makes solar one of the most promising success stories of carbon-free power, and a technology that needs relatively little government research help to keep improving. But although the cost is now close to that of the most efficient natural gas power plants, close isnt always good enough for investors. The price of large-scale solar needs to keep dropping if its going to have a serious global impact, and money for both R&D and the massive infrastructure build-outs that the Green New Deal framework imagines can make that happen.

The same is true of wind turbine technology, which has benefited from steady improvements in blade design, tower height, and computer control. Wind farms today supply electricity for about half the price they did a decade ago, and offshore wind is another promising area for expansion. Denmark, for example, has lots of shallow offshore regions that are ideal for wind turbines and produces nearly half of its electricity via wind. But not every country has Denmarks advantages. Its difficult to anchor wind towers in water more than 200 feet deep, and creative new ways to build turbines in deeper waters are good targets for R&D spending.

Solar and wind get most of the attention among renewable energy sources, but there are other promising technologies. For example, ground source heat pumps take advantage of the fact that temperatures just a few feet below ground tend to stay the same throughout the year. In summer, they can pump warm air out of the house, and in winter, the underground warmth can heat water. Heat pumps only real drawback is that they cost a lot to install, which makes them an ideal target for both research (to lower costs) and federal subsidies (to incentivize installing them in the meantime).

There are less familiar types of renewable energy, including tidal power and geothermal energy, which are not yet always more cost-effective than fossil fuels. But some of them will probably be instrumental in the future, so we should invest in them all.

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power plants are almost carbon-free and provide steady base load power that doesnt depend on sun or wind. Thats the good news. The bad news is that they produce radioactive waste with lifetimes measured in hundreds of centuries. Theyre also expensive and vulnerable to catastrophic meltdowns.

But they dont have to be. Failsafe technology has been on the drawing board for years and is incorporated into designs known as Gen IV nuclear power. In the last 10 years, the United States has committed $678 million to new nuclear technologies, and boosting this amount could produce commercial reactors virtually immune to meltdowns within a few years.

In China, experimental reactors are being built that use thorium rather than uranium as their nuclear fuel. Thorium is more abundant than uranium, but its biggest advantage is that it produces far lessand less dangerousnuclear waste than uranium reactors. If their research goes well, China hopes to have commercial thorium reactors online within a decade.

Nuclear power may not be a long-term answer to climate change, but its relatively green and the technology is relatively advanced. With additional R&D, it could be made better and safer and could provide a stopgap source of carbon-neutral energy until we have permanent solutions up and running.

Energy Storage

Its not enough to generate electricity cleanly; we also need to store it. Batteriesthe kind that power electric carshave gotten lots of attention, but there are other ways to store power. You can, and we already do, pump water uphill into a reservoir and use it later to power turbines on the way down. You can heat salt into molten form and draw off the heat later to drive steam engines, which turns out to be surprisingly efficient. And theres compressed air, an old technology now being tried by some utilities. During the day, a solar plant can generate power that compresses air, stores it underground, and releases it at night to power turbines.

There are only two feasible storage options for use in cars and trucks right now: hydrogen fuel cells and lithium-ion batteries. One promising research avenue for fuel cells is solar-powered electrolysis of ordinary water. The cost has dropped by half over the past decade but needs to fall considerably more to become competitive.

Battery technology is the target of intense research. Some research is focused on alternatives like nickel-zinc and potassium-ion, and theres seemingly weekly news of advances in solid-state batteries and so-called supercapacitors. All of these are prime targets for worthwhile government investment.

Land Use

Although global warming is primarily the result of CO2 emissions, there are other greenhouse gases. Among them are methane and nitrous oxide, largely produced by farming and ranching. These go under the rubric of land use, which is responsible for about 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. This includes deforestation, methane from cows, and nitrous oxide from fertilizers. But agriculture also presents opportunities to remove carbon from the atmosphere, sometimes by measures as simple as changing the way soil is tilled or treating farmland with compost. These methods are called carbon farming, and in France theres a government initiative called 4 per 1,000, which aims to increase carbon storage in soil by 0.4 percent per year.

Until recently, carbon farming has been a fringe activity, despite the promise it holds not to merely slow the growth of carbon emissions, but to actually remove carbon thats already therefor example, through massive reforestation. Theres every reason to think that a serious commitment to further research, along with government-sponsored incentives for farmers, could make a big contribution to fighting climate change.

Carbon Capture

Heres a disturbing fact: Even if we stopped emitting carbon completely, that wouldnt be enough. Meeting the climate goals of the Paris Agreement is going to be nearly impossible without removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, researchers Jan Christoph Minx and Gregory Nemet warned in the Washington Post in 2018. Given how much damage weve already done and the near certainty that well increase carbon emissions for at least another decade, we need to figure out how to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere on a massive scale.

According to the International Energy Agency, governments around the world set aside $28 billion for carbon capture projects over the past decade but spent only $4 billion. Weve given up just when we should be doubling down. The Energy Futures Initiative, a think tank, recommends that the United States commit $10.7 billion over the next 10 years for carbon capture R&D.

The infrastructure to store carbon needs to be built at roughly the same scale as the infrastructure that produced it, which means that pumping even a fraction of it underground would require construction on a scale similar to todays entire oil extraction industry. That doesnt seem politically feasible, but even storing a fraction of our carbon emissions could be a big part of the solution.

Carbon dioxide can also be removed from the air, combined with hydrogen, and turned into fuel. The fuel itself emits carbon when its burned, but the entire cycle is net carbon neutral. A team of scientists at Harvard recently announced a cost breakthrough, estimating they could do this for less than $100 per ton of carbon removed from the atmosphereor $1 for every gallon of gasoline we burn.

There are also natural methods of carbon capture. A research team in Zurich, after studying satellite images of the entire globe, estimated that 2 billion acres of land not in use for agriculture are suitable for reforesting; the researchers say this would remove two-thirds of all the carbon dioxide that humans have added to the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Other teams are investigating gene editing that would increase the amount of carbon that plants can store in their root systems.

All of these solutions, from industrial facilities to planting more trees, need intensive research to be made viable. Theyre ideal targets for an R&D program dedicated not to dribs and drabs that can disappear with the next Congress, but one that fights climate change like a war.

Clean energy R&D needs to be huge and wide-ranging. We cant afford to close off any possibilities.

Concrete

The world uses about 20 billion tons of concrete every year. Unfortunately, concretes main constituent is cement, and the chemical process for creating cement is CaCO3 + heat CaO + CO2. In other words, the concrete industry is basically a huge global machine that digs up limestone, heats it, and turns it into quicklime and CO2. The industry is responsible for about 8 percent of global carbon emissions.

Cement production can be made more efficient, but that helps only at the margins. What we really need is a replacement as cheap and durable as the real thing. Companies are already working on this, including some that approach net-zero carbon by pumping CO2 back into the concrete during the curing process.

Concrete is one of the worlds most popular building materials, and engineers are naturally reluctant to experiment with unproven replacements. Nobody wants to find out, a decade after a skyscraper has gone up, that a new type of concrete doesnt age well. That makes concrete a long-lead item in the war on climate change, which means large-scale research needs to be funded now.

Adaptation

This is not a widely loved subject, because it means were openly admitting that maybe well fail to stop climate change. And no one wants to say that. But the truth is weve already failed to stop it, and were vanishingly unlikely to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius. Even 3 degrees is looking all too likely. Either scenario would require some serious adaptation. Yet the implementation of adaptation strategies is in its infancy.

Part of the problem is that adaptation means something different in every place in the world. In Bangladesh and Battery Park, the problem is storm surges, while in the Sahel the problem is drought and declining pastureland. California worries about coastal erosion, while Kansas fears crop losses from insects.

Half a dozen big US cities have started work on adaptation plans, including New York and Chicago. In 2019, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a $10 billion plan to protect lower Manhattan from rising sea levels. Thats a start, but only barely. With storms likely to become bigger and more frequent, we need to invent better forecasting systems. Restoring mangrove forests can protect some coastlines and restoring oyster beds can help others. Far more preventive work like this needs to be done, and far more funding needs to be committed to it.

Biofuels

The best-known biofuel is ethanol made from cornwhich is no more carbon-friendly than gasoline once you factor in its entire production cycle. But that doesnt mean biofuels are a dead end. The real holy grails in this area are algae-based and have received much less investment than ethanol. One of their many technological challenges is the lack of a scalable method for drying out algae so that energy-storing lipids can be separated out. But the drying process could be replaced by pyrolysis, which involves heating plants to a high enough temperature that they effectively melt into fuel. And pyrolysis isnt just viable for algae. The pyrolysis of wood chips could theoretically be carbon-negative on a long enough timeline because it would require planting more trees, and the carbon-heavy charcoal byproducts could be returned to the soil.

Even with these innovations, ethanol is a low-density fuel and will be less important as more cars and trucks go electric. But other things will require high-density liquid fuel. Air travel, for example, cant yet be electric-powered like cars, and by 2050 commercial aircraft will emit about a gigaton of carbon every year, consuming a quarter of the carbon budget that would keep us under 1.5 degrees Celsius warmingif flights continue to use petroleum-based jet fuel. We need alternatives.

Less Meat, Mostly Plants

Production of meatespecially beefis responsible for at least 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If we replaced three-quarters of animal-based food with grains and vegetables, we would effectively reduce annual emissions in 2050 by more than two gigatonsthe equivalent of one-sixth of current emissions.

Sure, people should cut back on meat, and those corn and soy fields could be turned into forests or crops for human consumption. But historically, as poor countries get richer, one of the first things that happens is an increase in meat consumption. This makes recent announcements about plant-based burgers and oat milk more than just a gimmick. And if those products get good enoughand production gets efficient enoughthey too could go a long way toward reducing carbon emissions associated with a meat-rich diet.

Fusion Energy

Fusion reactors use hydrogen as fuel and produce negligible radioactive waste. It sounds perfect, but to make a fusion reactor work, hydrogen has to be heated to temperatures hotter than the suns core and held in place for at least several seconds. No one has come close to doing this on an adequate scale.

But fusion power is too promising to give up on. MITs SPARC (Smallest Possible Affordable Robust Compact) project, for example, could begin producing power on a small scale by 2025. Thats also the year that ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), a massive fusion project, is scheduled to reach first plasma, the beginning of serious testing on a larger scale.

A surprising number of startups have begun work on innovative ideas for creating fusion reactors on a smaller and less expensive scale than megaprojects like iter. They could be good candidates for federal investment.

Geoengineering

This is everybodys least favorite idea: massive engineering projects to cool down the Earth if it turns out we cant reduce carbon emissions. Some geoengineering proposals sound crazy, like putting a fleet of mirrors in orbit to reflect sunlight back into space. Others are more practical, like mimicking the effect of volcanoes by spraying aerosols of sulfate particles into the stratosphere. This is both feasible and cheap: A program that costs $2$5 billion per year could reduce global temperatures by a quarter of a degree Celsius.

But while sulfates can lower global temperatures, they dont do anything to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere. If spraying ever stops, temperatures would jump. Another proposal, called Project Vesta, seeks to mimic a natural method of removing carbon that normally works over millions of years. It involves grinding up a mineral called olivine and spreading it on tropical beaches, where it combines with CO2, washes out to sea, and falls to the ocean floor. This has the benefit of removing carbon from the atmosphere, but it costs a lot more than sulfate spraying.

Other possibilities include seeding the seas with iron to increase the population of carbon-absorbing phytoplankton, a marine algae, and thinning the cover of high-altitude cirrus clouds, which trap heat.

All of these proposals have drawbacks, including a political one: Who decides? The United States could easily spray megatons of sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere. So could China or Brazil or the European Union. But the result is global and might impact some areas more than others.

Geoengineering is inherently dangerous because theres no way to know beforehand what the side effects might beand they could be enormous. And once it starts, theres no going back. If anything, the very danger of geoengineering is the best argument for continuing to study it. No one can say for sure that well never have to resort to it, and if we do, we ought to be prepared.

The history of science is littered with accidental discoveries. Many of us are alive today only because Alexander Fleming accidentally left open a petri dish containing a staph bacteria and discovered penicillin. This is why an R&D program for clean energy needs to be huge and wide-ranging. We simply dont know which discoveries are most likely to pan out, and climate change is dire enough that we cant afford to close off any possibilities.

Agilenano - News from Agilenano from shopsnetwork (4 sites) https://agilenano.com/blogs/news/we-need-a-massive-climate-war-effortnow

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

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This Decade We Became Really, Really Sure Climate Change Is Real

In the past ten years, we lost hope in American politics, realized we were being watched on the internet, and finally broke the gender binary (kind of). So many of the beliefs we held to be true at the beginning of the decade have since been proven false—or at least, much more complicated than they once seemed. The Decade of Disillusion is a series that tracks how the hell we got here.

To climate scientist Kathie Dello, the clearest sign that the world had changed was the 2015 drought. As the associate director for the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, Dello spent that year disseminating climate information to the public as historically warm weather melted mountain snowpack and dried out landscapes across the Pacific Northwest, triggering water scarcity, fueling historic wildfires, and offering a glimpse of what soon could be the new normal.

“To me, that was when I saw climate change unfold before my eyes,” Dello said. “This is what we were talking about happening decades in the future.”

Dello isn’t the only scientist for whom the potential consequences of life on a warming planet became all too real this past decade. It was a common theme in the recent conversations I had with nearly a dozen scientists to learn how our understanding of climate change has advanced over the last 10 years. While their specific responses were as diverse as the topics these researchers study, a consistent throughline is that while climate change is now manifesting all around us, whether through the mass coral reef die-offs or Greenland melting at rates unprecedented in the last 350 years.

“Everything we thought was happening [at the beginning of the decade] we’re much more confident is happening now,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “That’s both good and bad.”

On the good side of the ledger, our understanding of climate change has advanced leaps and bounds. Through new satellite missions like the European Space Agency’s Earth-observing Sentinel array, airborne campaigns such as NASA’s cryosphere-monitoring Operation IceBridge, autonomous observatories like the Argo float network collecting oceanographic intel on the high seas, and field research campaigns from Alaska’s tundra to the Amazon rainforest, researchers have collected scores of data that shows how the effects of warming are rippling across diverse environments and ecosystems. Thanks to ongoing advancements in computing power, all of that data is being fed into increasingly sophisticated models to forecast our planet’s future. The big data revolution has also helped spawn a new field of attribution science, which allows researchers to say what kind of a role warming played in a heat wave, wildfire, hurricane, or other extreme event, often in near real-time.

“More and more, we’re able to say yes the following extreme event was influenced by climate change,” said Peter Gleick, a climate and water scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute. That, he said, is an advance that’s “absolutely of the last decade.”

But while scientific progress is a good thing, the picture all of this new data and computational capacity paints is a grim one.

The planet has only warmed around a degree so far, but already Arctic sea ice has retreated dramatically, its loss amplifying warming and helping tip parts of the north, like Arctic Alaska, into an entirely new climate state. All that warmth means Greenland is now shedding about 300 billion tons of frozen water into the sea each year, causing sea levels to rise at an accelerating rate. Ice losses across Antarctica are also contributing to that rise and could play a much bigger role in the future; research published this decade found that the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica might have already entered a state of irreversible decline that will raise global sea levels by ten feet.

As low-lying communities glimpse a future of permanent inundation, offshore the buildup of heat is cooking ecosystems to death. From 2014 to 2017, the world’s shallow water coral reefs suffered a global bleaching event, losing the symbiotic algae that give them color and provide them with food thanks to heat stress. Between 2016 and 2017 half of all corals in the Great Barrier Reef died due to bleaching-induced starvation.

“One of the headline stories for this decade has been the pace at which coral reefs are succumbing to heat,” said Kim Cobb, a coral reef scientist who heads the Global Change Program at Georgia Tech. “This has been a very acute wake up call.”

Less headline-grabbing but equally alarming: Warmer ocean water holds less oxygen, a fact of physics that is beginning to manifest everywhere. In 2017, two studies pointed to an ongoing climate change-fueled depletion of oxygen in Earth’s surface oceans. While nobody is sure exactly how bad this will get, history doesn’t bode well: Research published last year suggests that global warming-fueled ocean anoxia might have been the chief culprit in the worst mass extinction event life on Earth ever experienced.

“This is a really serious problem,” said Matt Long, an oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “We’re fundamentally changing the metabolic status of the largest ecosystem on Earth, at a rate that’s not well-quantified.”

But it’s on land where the consequences of rapid climate change are becoming most apparent to humans, whether it’s the fires of unprecedented size and intensity tearing across the western U.S. and Australia, the historic downpours from Houston to Bangladesh, vanishing snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, or deadly heat waves in Europe and India. In the high Arctic, the very ground communities have built their homes on is crumbling as once-stable permafrost turns to mush.

To Miami University fire scientist Jessica McCarty, last month’s wildfire near Santa Barbara, California crystallizes how climate change can amplify the threat of disasters: The blaze, which tore across a landscape dried out by intense late-summer heat, was quickly followed by “bomb cyclone” that brought heavy rain and raised the risk of mudslides. In the 2000s, McCarty says, “there was a kind of theorized loop of drought and then these bombogenesis storms that would release a lot of water that would cause landslide risk. Now we just see it—it’s this known thing that we expect.”

There’s plenty of research left to be done. To better project future sea level rise, we need to improve our understanding of how ice sheets melt at their base and how warmer ocean waters eat away at their edges, said Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist and glaciologist at the Danish Meteorological Institute. We also need to get better at modeling clouds, which Mottram described as a “climate scientist’s absolute nightmare” but which play a critical role in how much sunlight reaches the Arctic in the summer. And there are feedback loops and tipping points we’re still uncertain about, like how much future warming we could see due to the slow release of carbon from thawing permafrost or a massive, drought-fueled dieback of the Amazon rainforest.

As a commentary published last month in Nature pointed out, those two feedbacks alone could “all but erase” the carbon budget humanity has left in order to maintain a good chance of capping global warming at the “safe” level of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Even if we stopped warming today, that spin up of permafrost thaw is going to contribute” to future emissions, said Merritt Turetsky, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Guelph in Canada. “Our investments in mitigation today help us scale back these climate tipping points.”

There are also fundamental questions about how much warming future carbon emissions will cause. Worryingly, Schmidt of NASA Goddard says, a number of new flagship climate models are “running hot,” suggesting the climate system may be far more sensitive to increased CO2 than previously thought. As we enter the 2020s, he said, climate science faces a strange contrast of more observations, better attribution science, and “greater uncertainty about what’s going to happen in the future.”

But while there will always be more knowledge to gather and uncertainties to rectify, the scientists I spoke with were clear that puzzling out the details of all the planetary chaos we’re creating won’t change the basic picture, which has been pretty much the same since Exxon was doing climate research in the 1970s.

“We don’t need more information on how critical the situation is,” said Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert, a research fellow studying global change and forests at the University of Birmingham in the UK. “We need to start acting.”

Schmidt thinks it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to bring carbon emission down quickly enough to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees. As the U.N. noted in a recent report noted, to do so we’ll need to cut carbon emissions an unprecedented 7.6 percent every year of the 2020s. (In the 2010s, emissions rose 1.5 percent a year, per the U.N.) At the same time, he and most other scientists I spoke felt more hopeful about climate action today than they did at the beginning of the decade. Despite seemingly endless stalling and entrenched climate denial at the highest levels of government, there’s been a revolution in public awareness and concern over the last few years as the dire effects of warming become impossible to ignore.

Cobb called the U.N.’s 1.5 degree Celsius report last year—which alerted the world that we have about a decade left to slash emissions in order to keep global warming within safe boundaries—“one of the most important advances of the decade” because of how it galvanized the public. And while the progress we’ve made cutting emissions hasn’t kept pace with increasingly loud calls for action, we’re now at least discussing radical decarbonization strategies commensurate with the scale of the problem.

“I feel more positive today about the number of people who are concerned [about climate change], understand that it’s human caused, and that human action will dictate our future,” said Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado. But, she added, she’d like to see the conversation move “very strongly” toward figuring out how to meaningfully reduce emissions.

After all, it’s not too late to keep climate change from metastasizing into something far worse. If the 2010s were the decade where warming got real, the 2020s could go down in history as the moment humanity started dial the planetary thermostat down.

Either that, or we’re about to see how bad things can really get.

This Decade We Became Really, Really Sure Climate Change Is Real syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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Trump’s Greenland Gambit Might Be Crazy. It’s Also a Window Into the Future.

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/trumps-greenland-gambit-might-be-crazy-its-also-a-window-into-the-future/

Trump’s Greenland Gambit Might Be Crazy. It’s Also a Window Into the Future.

President Donald Trump’s much-mocked desire to buy Greenland, which was rebuffed by the Danish government to his great displeasure, might be the closest he has come to acknowledging the gravity of global warming—though hardly the sort of acknowledgment one might hope for. According to theWall Street Journalarticle that first broke the news about Greenland, Trump’s interest was piqued when advisers spoke of the island’s “abundant resources and geopolitical importance.” The reason those resources—including reserves of coal and uranium—are available for exploitation is because of Greenland’s rapidly melting ice sheet. Its geopolitical importance has been greatly increased by the melting of Arctic Ocean ice, which has made new shipping routes accessible and opened up a new theater of strategic competition for the United States, Canada, Russia, the Nordic countries and, increasingly, China.

Trump probably doesn’t realize it, but he’s not the first president in recent years to look at the coming impact of climate change and decide to buy land. And with dislocated populations and scarcer resources looming on the horizon, he might not be the last.

Story Continued Below

In 2014, the pacific island nation of Kiribati purchased 7.7 square miles of land of the Fijian island of Vanua Levu for a little less than $9 million. A nation of 33 low-lying atolls, Kiribati is one of the countries that’s most vulnerable to sea level rise. According to the government’s climate action plan, submitted to the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris, a substantial portion of Kirbati’s capital island, Tarawa, where nearly half of its 110,000 people live, could be inundated by 2050. Smaller outlying islands could disappear even sooner.

Then-President Anote Tong described the Fiji purchase as an insurance policy, telling the media, “We would hope not to put everyone on [this] one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it.” At the Paris summit, Tong thanked the government of Fiji for opening the doors to his people.

The purchase made international headlines, with Kiribati described as the first country to purchase land abroad specifically for relocation because of climate change. But it was a little more complicated than that. For one thing, since the purchase, there’s been little in the way of preparation for any mass relocation of Kirbati’s population. The administration that followed Tong’s is mostly dismissive of his plan. The government’s story on what the land was intended for also changed several times—sometimes it was described as for relocation, sometimes for agriculture to provide food security for Kiribati. The land itself consists of steep hills and mangrove swamps, not particularly suitable for either habitation or agriculture. It’s also already home to several hundred Solomon Islanders who have lived there since the 19th century.

When I interviewed Tong at his home in Tarawa in 2016 for my book,Invisible Countries,he told me, “It’s a statement to the international community that our situation is serious. But, apart from that, it’s a damn good investment.” If all goes well, he told me in language that would likely make sense to the current, real estate-minded U.S. president, “in 50 years we can sell the land.”

Looking ahead, Kiribati might offer a model for other countries. Food security in an increasingly crowded world could be another factor that drives governments to purchase land abroad. This is arguably already happening. Chinese state-run firms have been accused of a new “land grab,” having gobbled up agricultural land in Africa and Latin America. In 2008, the South Korean company Daewoo Logistics negotiated a lease on 3.2 million acres of farmland in Madagascar, nearly half the island’s arable land. The deal was highly controversial and contributed to the protests that led to the overthrow of Madagascar’s government in 2009.

But these deals and the Kiribati purchase differ in an important way from Trump’s Greenland gambit: They did not actually involve the transfer ofsovereigntyfrom one country to another. The land in Fiji is still the territory of Fiji, even if the government of Kiribati owns it. The small population that lives on the land didn’t suddenly become citizens of Kiribati overnight. It’s more akin to the sovereign wealth funds of countries like Norway or Qatar gobbling up New York real estate. You don’t need a passport to visit these buildings in Manhattan.

The actual purchase of sovereign territory was once relatively common. Blockbuster deals like the Louisiana Purchase, the Alaska Purchase and the Adams-Onís treaty, through which Florida was acquired, were key to America’s early territorial expansion. Today, this is almost unheard of. (One possible exception: In 2011, Tajikistan agreed to cede 386 square miles of territory to China under a deal, the terms of which were not publicized at the time.)

Why has the market for territory gotten so tight? In large part, it’s because the world’s landmass is now dominated not by large colonial empires, but by nation-states that zealously guard the territory they control. Moreover, thanks to prevailing notions like nationalism and popular sovereignty, the people who live within those nation-states expect to have some say in the matter of what country they live in.

Germany learned this the hard way after 1871, when, after its victory in the Franco-Prussian war, it demanded payment from France in the form of real estate, as countless victorious powers had done since time immemorial. But even though the French government agreed to transfer the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, the people who lived there refused to accept that they were now Germans, and France nursed a grudge until it won the provinces back in World War I. Times had changed, and, as historian Martin Van Creveld has written, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck came to view the annexation as the worst mistake of his career.

A century and a half later, Trump too wants to take over a territory whose people don’t believe their sovereignty is something to be traded like poker chips between leaders hundreds of miles away; Greenland, though part of Denmark, is a semi-autonomous territory with its own government managing its domestic affairs. This isn’t the first time Trump has expressed some premodern ideas about territorial conquest—he has on several occasions argued that the United States should have “kept the oil” after invading Iraq—but he’s going to have a hard time finding negotiating partners for his expansionist dreams.

Still, just because Trump’s Greenland purchase is a nonstarter, doesn’t mean our notions of territorial control won’t get a little more fluid in the future, particularly as climate change physically reshapes the planet. Perhaps some countries will be forced to pick up and move. There’s historical precedent for this. In his book,Vanished Kingdoms, the British historian Norman Davies identifies 15 different locations called “Burgundy,” dating back to the 5th century and occupying locations from the west bank of the Rhine to what is now Switzerland to the Netherlands. These countries more closely resembled family-run holding companies than a modern nation-state. But relocation is a pretty alien concept in a world where countries are first and foremost thought of as particular pieces of land.

The predicament of Kiribati and other low-lying island states has also prompted some environmental law scholars to propose ideas like “ex-situ nationhood,” under which governments would maintain some level of political sovereignty and a role in international institutions, even after territory they used to represent becomes uninhabitable. These might end up looking less like currently existing states than entities like the Sovereign Order of Malta (not to be confused with the country of Malta)—a religious order dating back to the Middle Ages that is recognized as politically sovereign by 106 countries and enjoys observer status at the United Nations, despite controlling no territory and having no citizens. The scenario might seem far-fetched, but traditional notions of sovereignty and citizenship might no longer hold up in a world of growing migrant populations and statelessness.

It probably wasn’t what he had in mind, but Trump’s Arctic dreams could point toward an era in which both the countries of the world and the physical land they sit on are a lot less fixed than they are now.

#Foreign #future #Politics #window

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