Forum: Author Hangout

Back in the '80s, there was a manga series (Kimegura Orange Road) involving a MC with two potential girlfriends. One was a classical 'perfect stereotypical wife', the

Ah, the perfect opportunity to revise the entire story, featuring a new, off-beat ending!

I think it might be fun to have people care enough about a story to bet on the out come. It would be a little like professional wrestling.

Actually, I'm generally amused when readers try to 'guess' my endings, as I'll typically plot numerous red-herrings, so my foreshadowing won't spoil any surprise twists in the story. The idea of foreshadowing isn't to give anything away, but to prepare readers so when the surprise unfolds, they'll strike their foreheads and say "Of course, it's so clear why it happened now!"

But then, I typically put at least one major plot twist near the end, just when the protagonist is frustrated and prepared to slink away in defeat, until something reinvigorates his sense of idealism, causing him to come back, rededicated and ready to continue their fight. It's a fairly traditional literary technique that I've found works well, however often it's repeated (though the technique is consistent, the rational and implementation are unique each time, so it continues to work).

What does bug me, is when someone says that a particular character is not realistic or sympathetic simply because they no longer remember what young girls are like, having never had female children of their own. In those cases, I'll try to defend my position, while realizing that NOTHING I say will EVER change their minds. For those who understand younger girls, the characters seem natural and endearing, for those used to older women (who generally cater to the men in their lives), nothing they do will seem 'natural'.

Actually, I'm generally amused when readers try to 'guess' my endings, as I'll typically plot numerous red-herrings, so my foreshadowing won't spoil any surprise twists in the story. The idea of foreshadowing isn't to give anything away, but to prepare readers so when the surprise unfolds, they'll strike their foreheads and say "Of course, it's so clear why it happened now!"

I do the exact same thing. I was reading comments in one story about how this seemed like "the one" and they were getting engaged soon, not even realized that (in the words of one fan) I had already "thrown her under the bus", and simply not written that yet.

However, when I was giving it a final once-over prior to publishing later chapters, I did recognize that comment, and had the main character admit to another that he was planning on proposing to her the next month. But she ended the relationship before that happened.

And more are picking up my style I notice, as the comments now will tend to be introspective and realizing why such events happened. I drop lots of clues, but also in a way that one is never quite sure until I am ready.

If they don't like the story, that's their problem. I'll respond to a complaint with why I've written what I write, but I don't trim it to suit anyone. The only exception to that is to meet legal requirements of where I live and the requirements of the site - both of which are mainly to do with the age of people in sexual activity.

I'm with Ernest on this one, though I DO take each complaint seriously, as often, the complaint's stated reason is NOT why they objected to the book. Often, something set them off, so they look for a semi-obvious rational. But, IF you engage them, it doesn't take long (once you get them talking) to isolate what is was that set them off (the real reason is emotional, while the stated reason is largely fabricated on the spot (i.e. not well thought out).

Also, informed objections often lead (at least in my case) in interesting subplots in later books, as it did in my Great Death series, when one kind fellow pointed out why it's obvious what sex wild boar is. When we talked, he noted several significant differences, beyond the visually obvious one, and that allowed me to build the animal into a significant character in the sequel when he 'attacks' one of the secondary characters. After that, I continued treating him as a regular character, including his succumbing to the plague, and the protagonist successfully treating and curing him, demonstrating that they could treat their livestock, just as they did other humans.

However, the typical 'I hated because (some patently political stance) I largely ignore. I'll respond, explaining my position, but I won't change anything, as the few times I've compromised, they reject ANY changes that don't highlight their particular political views. In which case, I typically double down, making the passage openly hostile to their stated position (hence why I have so many 1-bombers who'll read each of my stories within days of posting, yet continue 1-bombing ALL of my stories. Clearly, they wouldn't continue reading if the character's political view were that offensive!

If someone says something like, "The police don't outline bodies" and I did in my story, I basically say, "If it's good enough for Hollywood to do it then it's okay for me."

While I've never heard of any police force around the world doing a body outline as a routine matter, I have heard of some police forces using body outline or a dummy when doing a detailed revisit or re-enactment of the scene at a later date.

If someone says something like, "The police don't outline bodies" and I did in my story, I basically say, "If it's good enough for Hollywood to do it then it's okay for me."

Alas, that's also why your mystery stories also seem to be derived from established movies, rather than being imaginative fiction twists on the genre. I still like the writing, but the plots are largely easy to anticipate (i.e. the bad guy always does something stupid in the end, and the good guy protagonist exacts his often-fatal revenge on him).

There's a definite reason why movies routinely film literary works, but very few novels are based on films. Films are written for only an hour and a half, while novels often span years, decades or even generations.

that's also why your mystery stories

I think you mean thrillers, not mysteries. That's the thriller genre, like Jack Reacher, James Bond, Will Robie, etc. My Lincoln Steele character is no different.

I'd be shocked if a reader figured out the mystery in "Sexual Awakening." Actually, both mysteries.

It's not hard to write a similar story without infringing the original author's intellectual property rights, allowing them free rein to fix the issues they care so strongly about.

Bad stories have started the careers of many popular SOL authors, as they all conclude "I can write a better story than this crap!" and thus feel empowered to do so. That's how I, and many others here, first got their start.

Bad stories have started the careers of many popular SOL authors, as they all conclude "I can write a better story than this crap!" and thus feel empowered to do so. That's how I, and many others here, first got their start.

That is how I started around 25 years ago. Reading old Beeline books prior to that, then the first offerings to be found online, and thinking that most of them were crap.

And since then I like to think I have improved a lot. Even I sometimes read back through my old stories, and sigh because of what crap it is now, but still think it was better than most of what was around at the time.

Second, I would want to make sure the 'out of character' action was intentional or just accidental.

Also, a common literary technique is to have a character expose a significant character flow as the 'big surprise' moment in a story, so it's a common motif. But the key is often providing sufficient foreshadowing, so the 'surprise' doesn't come as a complete shock to your readers. If you properly foreshadow the even, it'll seem natural, even IF they don't anticipate it.

but if an author places his story in a realistic world it's reasonable to expect that the reader can be unpleasantly surprised with a totally unrealistic fact.

I'm reading a do-over type story, but not "do over." Unlike most where a 40-something guy wakes up in a teenage boy's body with the memory and knowledge of the 40-something man, this 9th grader wakes up 3 years later in the future.

Suspension of disbelief? Sure, why not. All fantasies require that.

The boy, now 3 years older, has grown, both height and muscles. Height, sure. Muscles, stretching my suspension of disbelief but it could happen in 3 years.

But he not only has an advanced body, but he's a baseball star where MLB scouts are interested. The boy still has the mind and knowledge of the 9th grader so he has to read a book on baseball to figure the game out. Now that's stretching it. To become a star athlete in 3 years when you don't even know the basics of the sport. Suspension of disbelief getting harder.

The 9th grader had one kiss. All of a sudden he knows how to handle himself with not only high school senior girls but older women. Come on now. Getting more difficult to suspend disbelief.

And now for the kicker. In other stories, the teenage MC has the experience and knowledge of the 40-something. This 9th-grader just skipped 3 years of high school and will ace all his classes, even challenge his teachers with his knowledge. Suspension of disbelief. Nah. Too much to suspend.

Where did all this knowledge and maturity come from?

But I'm enjoying the story immensely. I am suspending disbelief so that I can enjoy it.

The knowledge at issue is in there buried even though he can't consciously access it until some external trigger makes it necessary.

Nope. When he turned into an athlete he turned into a jerk. As a star baseball player, the coach and principal set him up with easy courses and he only managed a C average. He didn't learn anything in those 3 years.

the MC of Stitch in Time

That's the story.

Sure, virtually all stories here on SOL are fiction but if an author places his story in a realistic world it's reasonable to expect that the reader can be unpleasantly surprised with a totally unrealistic fact.

As an example, I once based on 'background' location on observed details via Google Maps. Unfortunately, the Google images of a relatively significant America city ended being quite dated, when a reader informed me that the crime that occurred in a nearby mall had been closed for nearly two decades! I'd say that I've learned my lesson, but rather than spending a few months, investigating each new locale to get the feel for the city, I continue to wing-it based largely on online references. :(

I'm now more cautious, but continue taking 'educated' risks.

But regardless the genre, the reader has to keep suspending disbelief. When things happen in the story that shock the reader - because the 'universe' the reader has been introduced to doesn't behave by the rules that have been established, that is - that increases the workload on the reader, because there is now a new source of disbelief to be suspended.

As you've observed, this 'failed suspension of disbelief' typically happens when the story's establish 'rules' are ignored, and they pull a surprise ending out of their hats. That's typically how most sci-fi/fantasy works fail, when they won't abide by the very rules they established for the story.

Now maybe I could reasonable accept 12 or 13 year olds, but children whose balls still haven't descended?

Sounds like some of my work, since my own kids were older when I married their mother, I never really dealt with small children enough to grasp how they behave, especially how they talk. Still, when needed, I try to make it work. ;)

Yes, but there are two levels of accounts, one is free and then there are paid premiere accounts. Free accounts can comment.

While the 'premium' accounts can be 'earned' by posting sufficient stories on SOL. It'll take a while, in most cases, but the benefits to authors are well-worth the effort.

Yes, but there are two levels of accounts, one is free and then there are paid premiere accounts. Free accounts can comment.

Funny thing is, I did not know this until a year or so back.

Something had been done to the accounts, and one day I discovered I could no longer do a search. And several other things were restricted also. I wrote in and asked about it,k and found out only then I had been "premium" for years. I just never knew it.

Of course, I also write for the sheer enjoyment of writing. The upgrade is nice, but not why I do it. I do it because I love telling what I hope others find are "fun yarns", and to expand my creativity.

As for other critics, once in a great while they are correct. I had one guy on that site who suggested how a certain story should have gone - and he wasn't too polite about it. Months later, I tried a new version based on his comments. Now it's going to lead to a new series (or serial as it's referred to here). Yeah, he was right after all.

Those are the critique that I LOVE, those based on factual life-experiences, which highlight details the author may never have considered. What's more, those are often easily corrected, providing you don't resist correcting them for too long.

Strange things? Not so much, unfortunately, and they are realistic events that can happen in a story with a realistic setting.

Though Covid-19 has ruined ALL post-apocalyptic stories for me (and I'll never again write one, for that reason), while the Trump presidency has permanently ruined ANY dystopian fantasy's, as even alien beings won't behave that irrationally. As several famous authors have noted, fiction can create all sorts of evens, but unlike reality, they all HAVE to make sense! Neither Covid-19, or the Republican party abandoning all it's ideals at the drop of a collective hat, just won't fly in fiction (while talking flys, often do!)

the stupidity with the way Trump handles it

Trump is a lousy leader. He says and does stupid things. But although the media and the Democrats are blaming him, he really doesn't have that much power like most leaders in other countries have. Like the governor of NY told Trump, "You can't do that in NY. You're not a king."

The USA is a republic. Much of the power is in the states and in the hands of the governors, not the president. Biden says he'll enact a federal mandate on wearing masks. The president doesn't have that authority.

Even the governors don't have all the authority. Take the opening of schools. In Arizona we have an elected Superintendent of Education for the state. But she can only recommend. The schools are broken into districts each with their own governing body that makes decisions.

Another oddity. I bet COVID is transmitted through the NY public transportation system (e.g., subway). But the Mayor of NYC doesn't have the authority to shut it down. For some reason, the NYC transit system is under the control of the governor of NY (who is quick to let the mayor know that just as he made the president know he wasn't king).

And then you have the cultural aspect. The asian people have always thought of others and wore masks when they were sick (way before COVID). It's part of their culture. In the U.S., it's everyone out for themselves. Some idiot bar owner recently said if you wear a mask in his bar you will have to leave. When the virus seemed to be under control, people started gathering at beaches and pools and bars. That was disaster.

The Mayor of Scottsdale yesterday said masks were no longer mandatory. I'm not sure how he can do that because I believe Maricopa County, which Scottsdale is in, still has it. But he did. Why? My guess is the Scottsdale economy.

And speaking of the economy, one of Biden's campaign attacks on Trump is, "To fix the economy you first have to fix the virus." Yeah right. Wait until the virus is gone before opening the economy and you won't have an economy to open. My governor uses a slogan I thought he made up until I heard other governors use it. All 50 governors have phone meetings so it probably came up there. It's something like: "We need to take care of lives AND livelihoods." There's no sense beating the virus if you cant put food on the table or a roof over your head because you can't make a living.

So Trump handled the pandemic poorly as a leader. But he's not the blame for the 200,000 deaths.

Around 40 percent of US COVID deaths are from nursing homes,

I wonder if it's still 40% or was 40% early on.

Another thing I hate about the media is they pick and choose. They report how many people got the virus after attending a political rally, that annual motorcycle gathering recently, fraternity/sorority parties, pool parties during a holiday weekend, a large church service, large weddings, etc. But I never once heard them tracking how many people got the virus at a Black Lives Matter demonstration. And there sure were a lot of them.

I wonder if it's more meaningful to compare the U.S. to the EU rather than individual countries. Can you imagine the person heading up the EU dictating to the Netherlands, Germany, France, etc., that they must close their restaurants, everyone must wear masks, no one can…

That corrupt bunch is afraid to touch it so they leave it to the individual countries.

Except our Constitution gives the states those rights.

Which makes sense. The loyalties of the writers of the Constitution was to their states. They wanted the federal government to have limited powers.

Similar situations have occurred in the UK and are being investigated with a view to prosecution.

And yet here we are again with publicly unaccountable hospital trusts reaffirming their right to discharge patients to care homes with 2 hrs notice whether or not they have covid, and the government decreeing that hospital patients (unless in hospital for covid) and care home patients have a low priority for covid testing, although hospital staff and care workers are high priority. Tossing live hand grenades into care homes again :-(

AJ

Though Covid-19 has ruined ALL post-apocalyptic stories for me (and I'll never again write one, for that reason)

COVID is more "bark than bite", and as many have died, it is nothing compared to bad things could have been if say a slower burning strain of Ebola had spread instead.

But keep in mind, this has been a "weak plague", no matter what the fearmongers have tried to spread. One only has to go back to the Dark Ages to see what a really catastrophic plague could have done. Or even the effects on the natives when Europeans hit the Americas. Often times wiping out entire tribes because of something as simple as Chicken Pox.

It has just been over 100 years since any kind of serious plague has faced the planet, and we forgot how to deal with it. But it will happen again, maybe in 5 years, maybe in 50 or more. But eventually, something we can not handle will pop out of the rainforests and jungles and we will go through it again.

Just hope it is another COVID, and not an Ebola when it does.

Asserted with such confidence! I doubt that the viewpoint is universal.

No viewpoint is ever universal.

A pandemic with an IFR of less than 0.005 for anybody under 70 and .04 for those over 70 with co-morbidities, as per the CDC can be realistically described as weak regardless of who disagrees.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html

Asserted with such confidence! I doubt that the viewpoint is universal.

*laughs*

Actually, it is a fact. Simply look at the death rates, when compared to even a modest one like the Spanish Flu.

It's a fact, at this point we are somewhere around 1 million deaths to COVID in right around a year since it spread into the human population.

In the 2 years that the Spanish Flue swept the world, it killed over 50 million people. And even that is a piker when compared to the Black Death, which killed from 75-200 million in Europe alone.

Compare 1 million globally to 75-200 million on a single continent, then try to tell me this is anything but "minor". Oh, and don't forget to adjust for the population levels. That was over half the population of the continent.

Let me know when COVID wipes out half the population of any continent. Or even 10%.

Anybody that does not recognize that this really is a "minor plague" is literally a moron. And I have also been laughing, because I have been predicting this for over a decade, and warning people that a global pandemic was coming. We were way overdue for one, and we are still overdue for one. This barely even counts, other than the hype and fear generated.

I agree. I recommend reading "The Coming Plague" (I can't remember the author) to anyone who questions this. What I fear is that our present politically motivated over reaction will have a severe negative impact on people's response if we do happen to encounter a slow burn Ebola, a deadly Marburg mutation, a wide spread Hanta or Dengue.

My interest in this actually goes all the way back to 1994, when I heard 2 radio hosts do a 2 hour interview with Richard Preston right after "The Hot Zone" was first released. Then the very next year reading a book by Dr. William Close about his battling the Ebola when an outbreak happened in the Congo in 1976.

While not paranoid, I do recognize that nature has an amazing way to eliminate excess population of almost any species. If not through introducing more predators or starvation, it is normally disease. And with our growing population expanding more into jungles and rainforests (the natural incubators and reservoirs of such diseases), it is only a matter of time until more and more affect us.

We have already seen a strain of Ebola breakout in the US, and a strain cross over to pigs and dogs. That strain is thankfully asymptomatic to all three species (even though it kills other primates). But it shows how easily it can jump species, and it is only a mutation away from not longer being asymptomatic. Or even worse, a strain that does kill humans can jump to an asymptomatic carrier that is more expansive than the bat.

Worst-case scenario: long-incubation ebola transmittable through mosquito bites.

Never-ever going to happen.

One of the biggest factors in a virus is having a vector that is asymptomatic. And there is 0 evidence that Ebola can be spread in that way.

Now, if we burnt all the jungles and rainforests down, after dumping tons of sarin or some such on them to ensure nothing came out of the fire... yeah, we'd be safer. Until some particularly nasty bird flu jumped to pigs and then humans.

We'd never live long enough to find out. We need oxygen to breathe.

Most of which comes from the oceans.

I never knew that. I just googled it and the article said at least 50% of our oxygen comes from the oceans.

As there's more global warming and more ice melts into the oceans, the oceans should get bigger thus produce more oxygen. Ha!

I believe his point was that people are being exposed to fauna that civilized humans have not been exposed to in the past, and thus any diseases that may have developed in isolation would be exceptionally lethal due to complete lack of immunities.

Bingo, "virgin field" susceptibility.

There is already research into both Swine Flu and COVID, because both are closely related to Spanish Flu, and SARS and other diseases we have seen spring out of Asia for the last 20 years.

Specifically, because whole those others appear on the surface to be almost as deadly, that the survivors of that first pandemic in 1919 passed down to their followers at least some immunity. 1919 was "virgin field", like Chicken Pox to the Indians. And even though we have seen millions infected since 1976 by Swine Flu (especially in 2009), the death rates never appeared, even though a great many were infected.

This is farther from Spanish Flu, so we have less immunity. But imagine the next pathogen is even further removed than COVID is. Then we will get death rates akin to 1919, as the entire planet will be a "virgin field" once again.

People have to realize, I look at this entire apolitically, and simply as a "Biological Warfare" exercise, where the enemy is simply nature. And there is really nothing we can do. The only hope is that next time, the country does not sit on the evidence for so long that it breaks out internationally.

But by the time the first people were getting sick in Europe and the Americas, it was just to late. In the era of modern air travel, even an immediate lockdown would only slow the spread most likely. With incubation periods so long, the hope is minimal at best of ever containing and kind of flu variant.

Now as for the variants of SHF, a completely different kettle of fish. Do not even bother, because those are so fast moving and deadly that they tend to burn themselves out long before they can spread very far. And most of those kinds of diseases which plagued humans in the past were bacteriological in nature, not viral.

It may have exacerbated one (or more) existing co-morbidity that they had (high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer

That would be ironic because, basically, people don't die from cancer. So in the UK at least, deaths are medically attributed to, say, heart failure or pneumonia when cancer was the root cause. But if, as happens all too frequently in the UK, the patient is old and frail and the doctors don't want to put them through a punishing regime of treatment, they may deliberately not test for cancer so it can't appear on the death certificate anyway.

AJ

s/punishing/expensive

Because of the dysfunction NHS internal market system, clinical commissioning groups are more likely to gripe about the costs of testing rather than the costs of treatment, overriding GPs' medical opinions about the necessity of a referral.

Expense of treatment does play a part though, when a patient's 'Hail Mary' hope is one of the new range of expensive cancer drugs that buy a few extra weeks of life.

AJ

I agree that this pandemic is a relatively mild one compared to what could happen - and I for one hope I never have to live through a serious pandemic. However, I guess it is predictable that the conspiracy theorists are going wild with all their usual nonsense.

There are (as of my post) about 978,000 deaths worldwide of people WITH Covid, but not due TO Covid. Here in the US, we're at just over 200,000 deaths, but only about 15,000 of them are due to Covid. The rest are deaths where person who died HAD Covid.

I would be fascinated to know where you are pulling this statistic from. It is clearly false simply because of the difficulty of classifying the difference between due to Covid and other causes but with infection and then whether the comorbidity exacerbated or hastened the death but ultimately the death was due to that other condition. Not to mention other deaths that were due to overwhelmed hospitals due to the pandemic.

In the end, the only way to genuinely understand the effects of the pandemic (in terms of death rate) will be to examine the excess deaths

See for example the article here: link

To summarise the article, it looks a measuring the impact of the pandemic by comparing the excess deaths above the mean number of deaths for that particular country/region. Then it digs a bit further into the data because clearly not all excess deaths will be due to the pandemic. But the data they present also clearly shows a remarkable excess of deaths that haven't been attributed to Covid, which raises the question of whether some proportion of those were Covid related but not attributed due to not having been tested etc.

I heard a stat (but haven't been able to verify it) that so far this year, more law enforcement officers in USA have died due to covid than have died due to shootings/accidents/etc.

Ultimately, the pandemic is not as bad as it could have been. It is not as bad as some people have been claiming. But it is also a heck of a lot more than a "non-event" and trying to claim it to be so is as unhelpful as the people who are running around screaming that the sky is falling.
(edited to fix the link)

More to the point, are you seriously suggesting that the deadliness of a virus can be judged by how many more police officers it kills compared to how many are fatally shot?

No, I'm not

Edited to add: I supply that as support for my argument that covid is something more than a "non-event"

That suggests that anyone testing positive and being hit by a bus and dying, is logged as a COVID statistic.

Trying to read between the lines like that can support your beliefs if that is what you want them to do. Numbers get adjusted as the death certificates come in. And those sorts of incidents get removed, and others get added. That's why we should be taking all the statistics with a grain of salt. But that doesn't stop the overall effect from being measurable (with a margin of errror).

Then D.S:

Except there are other sources of excess deaths not related to the pandemic ... and there is no way to separate out "excess" deaths caused by covid, so that isn't one bit better.

I love the way you took a quote from my post and ignored the sentence after that where I said:

Then it digs a bit further into the data because clearly not all excess deaths will be due to the pandemic

And the changes go both ways, for example deaths due to car-accidents have dropped during lockdowns. Deaths due to annual flu season have dropped due to lockdowns and increased hygene measures etc. Those changes can be catered for statistically but ultimately the "excess death rate not attributable to other causes" still turns out to be a more reliable measure than headline numbers.

That suggests that anyone testing positive and being hit by a bus and dying, is logged as a COVID statistic.

That's not a suggestion - that really happens.

The Assisted Living facility my wife works at had the perfect example of that today. One of their residents had tested positive two weeks ago, but was fine and completely asymptomatic. She fell yesterday (which old folks do WAY too frequently) and broke her arm. They took her to the hospital, where she then had a stroke and died. Since she HAD tested positive, her death is considered a Covid related death.

Based on your description, I would assume the doctor would have written a death certificate which would have included the medical jargon equivalent of death due to stroke resulting from complications from the broken arm.

But then you added your own assumption:

Since she HAD tested positive, her death is considered a Covid related death.

I wonder how you come by the knowledge that when that death certificate gets sent in for processing that the death gets attributed to Covid? You may be about to tell me that there was some part of the form filling out where they had to tick whether she was positive for Covid along with a dozen other possible comorbidities, but its a big jump to go from there to the CDC or equivalent organisation attributing the death to Covid.

I wonder how you come by the knowledge that when that death certificate gets sent in for processing that the death gets attributed to Covid? You may be about to tell me that there was some part of the form filling out where they had to tick whether she was positive for Covid along with a dozen other possible comorbidities, but its a big jump to go from there to the CDC or equivalent organisation attributing the death to Covid.

Because the CDC told them that.

The organization that my wife works for currently owns about 50 rather high end assisted living facilities in 14 states. As Director of Nursing, she's in charge of all health care decisions and procedures at her facility. That means she's involved in the corporate calls regarding the nationwide response and CDC rules, she's also involved with the state department of health as well.

If you look at their corporate chain of command, they have one national director, 4 regional directors, and then all the facility directors (her actual title is Wellness Director). They have to follow CDC guidelines for all of their paperwork, as well as their procedures.

That's one of the things that's been difficult during Covid, is that when they went on lockdown, that was it. There have been residents in the facility who, other than via phone or computer, haven't seen anyone other than staff for six months or more.

Anyway, under CDC guidelines, which are also what the state department of health follows with our appropriate state modifications, any death where the deceased tested positive, regardless of whether it was a contributing factor in the death or not, is classified as a Covid-related death, and is thus included in the national death numbers. It's simply check the boxes on the death certificate.

I'm simply trying to figure out why we're in month six of two weeks to flatten the curve so health care isn't overwhelmed, which never happened, and why isn't everyone else simply getting on with their lives like we pretty much are doing here? (Mask up if the store requires it due to their national policy, and otherwise help protect the elderly and the higher at risk population, and carry on with your lives.)

As an example, in the UK it was reported on the BBC website that the figures for COVID deaths included anyone who died within two weeks of testing positive.

I believe that applied only to hospital deaths.

I read a covid update article recently that claimed the UK covid death toll was currently just over 41,000. It then listed a breakdown of deaths by age using the Office of National Statistics figures and the total came to over 51,000 deaths because the ONS counts excess deaths.

Lies, damned lies and statistics :-(

AJ

If it were just a story, would anyone believe Covid 19 and its effects on society?

Anybody who has studied history and seen the affects of the Spanish Flu would. It just has been so long that nobody remembers it.

When I get a "He would never do that" - usually it's someone passionate enough to love my stories. My character is as real or as iconic to them as Captain Kirk or Mister Spock is to me.

If I get "Didn't quite do it for me" that throws me off. Random "I hate BDSM, why do you write BDSM" and trolls downvoting intentionally.

Recently, on my long story I posted a duplicate chapter. Ch. 11 and Ch. 12 had somehow gotten duplicated. I've since corrected it. However, it wasn't until chapter 22 someone let me know.

First of all, I blame myself. I should have gone back and found that long ago. No worries there - I know that's my fault for missing it. I probably posted it, and forgot to re-read and mistook it for the proper chapter because I hadn't read the chapter before and after to realize it was out of synch.

But what it tells me is that either my story is hella-dull and no one noticed, or that no one cares enough/thinks my work is so shoddy that it doesn't matter.

Which was a tremendous blow to my desire to write today.

But what it tells me is that either my story is hella-dull and no one noticed, or that no one cares enough/thinks my work is so shoddy that it doesn't matter.

I've had those moments, most notably when I posted a story with the wrong html setting, as the entire chapter was filled with non-understandable characters, especially the dialogue (as each smart-quote was viewed as a non-printable character). It took readers months to report the problem, and when they did I quickly fixed it (it was an easy one-line patch), but it bothered me that no one cared enough to report it, though they continued reading and enjoying the story, since the rating remained relatively high.

Sometimes, at least for authors, suspension of disbelief applies to your own sense of fallibility.

If you compare death tolls between the Spanish Flu and Covid19, the effect that Covid is having on society/civilization as a whole, is way out of proportion.

Because this is the first true pandemic we have seen in 100 years. Nobody knows how to handle it, and they panic, do stupid buying that causes stores to run out of things, and do stupid things like wear cloths over their faces with does no good at all.

And politicians just feed into it, wanting to be seen to "do something", even if what they order makes absolutely no sense. I work in a medical unit in the military, and my wife has been a nurse for over 20 years. The masks almost everybody is wearing does absolutely no good against a virus, yet we are ordered to wear them anyways.

the government's reaction has been far more severe than was the reaction to the Spanish Flu

Because of social media, the Twitterverse demands the government MUST be seen to be doing something and doing it NOW!

Whether it's the right thing is controversial. In the UK, the prevailing public opinion seems to be that the measures weren't severe enough and weren't introduced quickly enough. However that same public seems to expect the country to be running as normal with no inconveniences to their own lives.

AJ

However that same public seems to expect

I've said it before. We are a society of dimwits. Anger replaced intelligence.

If you compare death tolls between the Spanish Flu and Covid19, the effect that Covid is having on society/civilization as a whole, is way out of proportion.

Except the 1912 flu deaths took years to reach their fatality records, whereas most of the world quickly adapted to Covid-19, significantly reducing fatality rates, while a small handful of authoritarian or authoritarian wanna-be countries refused to take adequate safeguards, and suffered easily predictable results. Canceling healthcare via appointed supreme court judges favorable to your POV, does not make anyone, other than your most-dedicated fans, trust your judgement!

Still, the fights over mast wearing remain the same, except they weren't as common, since the president didn't encourage open revolt against the established safety guidelines.

the other effects of the firestorms though much of the west

Anyone who knows that if you don't clear the underbrush, because it's 'not natural' ... even though it is ... knows that all you're doing is creating a situation for a firestorm.

If we assume an action isn't natural because man performed it, who or what performed the natural action of brush clearance before man arrived in Kalifornia? This question puzzles me so I hope you or someone can shed light on it.

In much of the world brush fires are a natural and regular occurrence - many local plants rely on it to clear away the brush to allow their seeds to germinate.

Mankind, in its infinite stupidity, took measures to eradicate brush fires without eradicating the brush, allowing the brush to build up with cataclysm consequences.

Some of my friends look forward to barbecue season - they 'smoke' seeds, along with their burgers, to imitate a brush fire which encourages them to germinate.

AJ

I mean, why is man building a damn for man's purposes considered 'unnatural' yet a beaver building a dam for the beaver's purposes 'natural' (hat tip to Robert Heinlein for that one).

I would say awareness of consequences or, to be inclusive of millennials and zeroes, potential awareness of consequences. A beaver can't game the result of a dam failing. It can't worry about fault lines and the possibility of earthquakes.

AJ

I was thinking specifically of beaver versus man. There's a spectrum of intelligence and, while it would be a cruel turn of fate if man were the peak of evolution in our universe, there are few earthly species that possess enough self-awareness for reasoning ability. (And even then, the Japanese kill the best for their dinner tables.)

AJ

They dug a tunnel but they don't let you walk through it, they load people in vehicles on railway trains.

Didn't 'asylum seekers' manage to walk through a service tunnel some years back?

AJ

Didn't 'asylum seekers' manage to walk through a service tunnel some years back?

They would not have to.

Under the EU, once somebody got to one member of the EU, they could travel freely to any member of the EU. So that would be like somebody in the US having to sneak to get from California to Nevada.

And this was one of the issues that sparked Brexit in the first place.

Under the EU, once somebody got to one member of the EU, they could travel freely to any member of the EU

I believe they have to have EU citizenship to qualify for that right, and there are several states below that entitling migrants to live in a particular EU country provisionally.

AJ

I believe they have to have EU citizenship to qualify for that right, and there are several states below that entitling migrants to live in a particular EU country provisionally.

No, just legal residence. That is nowhere near the same as being a citizen. And there is a reason why the seekers go to countries like Greece and Italy to apply for such. They simply have to get there, get asylum, then they are free to go to any country in the EU.

And the UK has never really been seen as a haven to go to in order to get that status.

If every single person on earth decided tomorrow to commit to every measure that would stop 'global warming' AND they all accepted that their lives would change drastically, that many would suffer and die, but that that was worth it, necessary. So tomorrow we stop pumping, processing and using oil, coal, gas, pesticides, plastics in any form. No more chemicals, pollution, etc. Would that stop global warming? Would it be worth the suffering and death that resulted?

Honestly, I don't think so. And I often get people mad at me when I say that "Environmentalists are so lockjawed conservative that they make cats look like liberals".

Quite literally, they picked a point in time that was known as the "Little Ice Age" for a reason, then pointed there and said it was the actual temperature the planet should be. Ignoring previous events like the Medieval Warm Period, and multiple other warming and cooling trends in the last 6,000 years.

And as I have studied geology, I look even further. During most of the history of our planet, there were no polar ice caps at all. Entire species evolved on the continent of Antarctica with unique adaptations to almost 6 months of day, then 6 months of night. Plants were what you would expect now in say the US-Canada border.

And prior to the most recent series of ice ages, there were palm forests growing around where Anchorage is today (an area known as Northern Alaska now, continental drift).

If anything studying the planet has shown me, it always changes. Always has, always will. Animals became extinct, having never been seen by humans. And this self-flagellation generally pisses me off because of it's arrogance.

IF mankind is capable of vastly changing the environment WHEN NOT INTENDING TO, then it stands to reason the IF mankind INTENDED TO CHANGE AN ENVIRONMENT, we'd be able to make even bigger changes, hence terraforming Venus or Mars should be quite doable.

That argument bothers me. It sounds too much like:
If mankind is capable of vastly increasing entropy when not intending to, then it stands to reason that mankind should be able to make even bigger decreases in entropy if it intended to.

AJ

It's the natural order of things for entropy to increase. Damage to the environment has to represent an increase in entropy.

Mars and Venus both allegedly had climates closer to Earth in the past. An increase in entropy accompanied their move away from an Earth-like environment. A move back towards an Earth-like environment would therefore represent a local decrease in entropy. I suspect it's theoretically possible but impossibly expensive.

AJ

You are right, the planet is always in a state of changing but there's no denying that we are very fast killing of an environment that is livable for us humans. If corona has proven one thing than it is that we humans do make a huge difference on the current environment. Just a few months with virtually no air travel caused the air pollution to almost totally disappear in some places.

Yea, I do doubt that humans are "killing the planet". Affect, yes. Change, no doubt. But if anything, the planet has shown it is amazingly robust, and able to bounce back from incredible blows and carry on just fine.

Our planet has been struck by at least 7 asteroids as large or larger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. We have also gone from "snowball earth" to "hothouse earth" at least twice. The placement of continents has resulted in most of the oceans becoming massive death zones and the ocean currents largely stopping. Yet, life continued on.

And sorry, but that claim about aircraft I find really hard to believe. An area that had so much air traffic that such was the cause of the majority of their pollution?

It's incredible that the earth can recover that fast but arrogant humans like you think that we can just start polluting again without consequences because 'that's how nature works'.

But this is something I love whenever I see it. Somebody then pretty much makes something up and projects it onto me. That is not something I ever said, and is not anything I would have said because I do not believe it. Yet here you are, trying to project onto me some kind of statement. If all you can do is give histrionics and make up things for me to believe, then we really do not have anything to discuss here.

Am I arrogant, no. However, what I am is confident in the ability of the planet to recover from almost anything. And that nothing is as "first time ever" that is so often presented as so.

And that is borne out in the geologic record. This is a science fact and can not be denied, unless you are a "young earth creationist", and think fossils were placed there by a mischievous god. Like large palm forests and crocodiles living in Alaska. Or a large, diverse, and thriving ecosystem on Antarctica, which had actually evolved there so had been in place for millions of years.

And we know that the current "Ice Ages" are an aberration in the climate of the planet, only stretching back around 2.5 million years. Prior to that, the North Polar region was a vast ice free ocean. And as each Ice Age has occurred, the effects were less and the interglacial between them was longer and warmer than the one before.

Me, I just put my bets on science that this will continue. And we have yet to see the effects like that of the last interglacial. With tropical rainforests in North Africa, and areas like the Gobi turning into grasslands.

Sure you don't mean 2.5 billion (with a b)?

Yes, I do mean the current one. Most commonly known as the Quaternary Ice Age, it started roughly 2.58 mya if you want to be accurate.

You are thinking of the Huronian, which was roughly 2.4 gya. (G, not B). And there were 3 other ice ages between that one and our current one. Those are the 5 major glaciations, but there have been smaller ones also. Our current cycle has had at least 8 known major glaciations, separated by interglacials. And we know that after each instance of glaciation, the interglacials have been longer each time. Originally around 41 ky, but the last one was almost 100 ky. If this trend follows, it will just keep getting warmer and warmer, and will likely last so long that Homo Sapiens Sapiens is replaced by the next hominid.

In other words, expect the North Pole ice cap to vanish, most of the ice along Greenland to vanish, and the coastline of Antarctica to start supporting other forms of wildlife, as it was at the end of the last interglacial.

This is just a fact, the geological record says that is what will happen. The Permafrost line will likely move to to around the Arctic Circle, and wetlands will start to push against the Sahara, just like last time.

But here is the good news. In about 10-15 ky, once the oceans have swelled from more runoff, the air will also start to become more humid. Plant life will start to grow rampant, as CO2 is natural plant food. We are still in an intermediary stage, as the planet has yet to adapt to the increased water and decreased salinity of the oceans. Eventually the atmosphere will start to retain more water, and drop it into more areas.

Anyone who knows that if you don't clear the underbrush, because it's 'not natural' ... even though it is ... knows that all you're doing is creating a situation for a firestorm.

Is that part of the 'raking the forests' defense?

Got a one vote in my 22 chapter story today. 1 is for "you call this a story".

That was disheartening

You always need to follow-up with readers, even obvious haters, to put their critiques in context. Are their critiques political in nature, or based solely on racial or sexist stereotypes? Then you can easily ignore them, they're ONLY that readers personal opinion on the current state of national politics.

But, if they have a valid point, it's worth hearing them out. As I've stated before, rather the verdict is as simple or clear cut as they first claim, but when you get them talking, their true rational quickly becomes obvious (mainly by reading between the lines). In that case, you can quantify the reason and deal with it as you will. But, if it's entirely political, don't expect a 'compromise' will help, and the only thing they'll accept is a complete capitulation, and your 'coming over' to their side in ALL matters (i.e. there's no way you can correct anything in the story to suite them).

Is there some place in America that is not prone to natural disasters?

Wildfires in California and Oregon, Inland Hurricanes in Iowa, Floording, Hurricane in Louisina, Earthquakes, tornados, etc.

It's pretty much not fair to tell people "You chose to live there - so just deal with it"

We should be above punishing the victims of natural disasters.

When did we as a society become so rotten?

100 years ago that is what we did.

If you lived through an earthquake and could claw your way out, you could rebuild.

They still do it in third world countries.

I'd rather live in a society that protects it's people and gives them the benefit of their tax dollars. Natural disasters should not be the end for people simply because nature took everything away.

You most certainly are callous, and when karma finally gives you a natural disaster or sits you in a wheelchair because of something outside of your control, you'll certainly feel quite differently.

no place is safe from natural disasters in the US and as I see it - it's only getting more intense.

So if we just cross-cut all our forests down, no fires?

what about the inevitable flooding from removing trees that absorb that rain water?

and you say this never happeend before, because for 100s of years California and Oregon raked all OF their forests?

Trump agrees with you. He also believes Bleach, Light, Hydroxyclholoriquine, Oleander and coagulated blood will somehow cure the coronavirus. So I am going to file this in the appropriate expert level file cabinent I keep nearby my desk.

I thought this thread had something to do with reader feedback?

Moderation is a dying quality these days apparently.

It died long ago. And the funny thing is, far to many people tend to twist things that have not a damned thing to do with politics into a political issue.

And yes, I have my own issue with "tree huggers". Not a surprise to many who have read my stories, I am from Idaho. And I consider myself an "old school Conservationist". Which means I recognize the importance of preserving and maintaining our natural resources, and at the same time using and harvesting them in a safe and responsible manner.

Not "clear cutting" huge areas of land, but also not trying to pretend it is a vast museum to never be entered, then whining and crying when after being largely left alone for decades it all burns to the ground because it was not maintained.

And also, not swallowing the hogwash many seem to believe about the "Wise and spiritual caretakers of the natural world" that were my ancestors. Palentologists track the wanderings of the Indians largely by their garbage dumps. They would move into an area, hunt it all out, then move on when there was no game left, and their homes were overflowing with garbage.

They performed "slash and burn" agriculture, which also had a benefit of creating meadows that the deer like. And there were so few of them that they could do this for thousands of years, living locked into a neolithic lifestyle that Asia and Europe had left 10,000 years earlier.

But far to many still live with the Disneyfied version, they were all so wise and did things to take care of nature. Nope, there were just not enough of them to do any lasting damage because very few groups ever learned how to make much more than a stick tied to a rock for a weapon, and making a crude hut out of a bunch of twigs.

They really were around 7,000 years behind the rest of the world.

but also not trying to pretend it is a vast museum to never be entered, then whining and crying when after being largely left alone for decades it all burns to the ground because it was not maintained.

I used to live in the middle of the desert in Scottsdale, AZ. Not a forest, but a lot of dead stuff that dries out in our arid climate. Between the back of my yard and the golf course was an NAOS (Natural Area Open Space) which was on my property that couldn't be touched. The City of Scottsdale said I couldn't even pick up a twig because some bird may want to use it for a nest.

I ignored them and kept it clean.

And then there was a fire in Cave Creek which borders Scottsdale on the north and was very close to where I lived. It was heading our way, but the great firemen put it out.

All of a sudden the City of Scottsdale had a change of heart and allowed us to clear out the brush so-many feet from our houses. In fact, the fire department said if my neighbor had theirs cleared and I didn't, they would put my neighbor's fire out first.

You do have to maintain protected areas if you're worried about fire.

I used to have a summer home in the White Mountains in eastern (and somewhat northern AZ) where there were forests (pine and aspen trees). We often had forest fires except one area. A beautiful stretch of forest on the Indian reservation. The Indians did forest maintenance there.

I used to have a summer home in the White Mountains in eastern (and somewhat northern AZ) where there were forests (pine and aspen trees). We often had forest fires except one area. A beautiful stretch of forest on the Indian reservation. The Indians did forest maintenance there.

Because it is good for tourists, and they can largely tell the BLM and state to "go piss on a rope". Unlike their ancestors, they now live in a single area, and can not just move on if the place they are in now become unlivable.

California and more recently Oregon have been suffering from increasingly severe wildfires, and more and more real forestry experts are blaming the severity of this on the lack of maintenance. Other states like Idaho and Wyoming also suffer from fires, but nowhere near as large in area because they do maintain their forests. For the 2nd time in 3 years I have seen entire cities destroyed, and people scream at everything but this as the problem.

It was ironic last week when I had a friend contact me to make sure I was safe from the massive fire outside of Oroville (again), only to tell them I had already left there, but was dealing with the same issue in Oregon now.

Fire is good for the environment, and is the way nature managed forests since trees evolved. Many trees even require fire, as without it no new trees can grow. And unless you replace the massive efforts to stop all fires with proper maintenance and clearing, when a fire does happen it leaves nothing behind.

Yes. The tree huggers are causing worse wildfires. Lmao.

Simplistic people look for simplistic solutions to complex problems and expect them to work.

AJ

Right now, the issue is a very sudden case of warming where serious effects will be felt within 100 years. It has already started having noticeable effects across the world.

And this has happened before as well.

The Medieval Warm Period along with the Roman Warm Period are both some of the hottest temperatures in the last 2,000+ years.

And the MWP ended in around 1250 CE, and we then sank immediately 50 years later into the Little Ice Age. From an era of high temperatures, to where glaciers were suddenly advancing across Europe and North America again.
Once again, cycles that have always happened on our planet, and I have yet to hear people running around screaming that Paleolithic humans caused the end of the last Ice Age.

The Medieval Warm Period along with the Roman Warm Period are both some of the hottest temperatures in the last 2,000+ years.

The Medieval Warm Period has been shown to have been localised to Europe. It wasn't a global warm period

The Medieval Warm Period has been shown to have been localised to Europe. It wasn't a global warm period

Wrong. It went much farther than that. The Vikings found a warm habitat when they arrived in North America and founded their Vineland colony. A colony that ended shortly afterwards when the climate turned cold again.

Also warmer and dryer weather as far south as Florida and California. And the record of it can be found in Antarctic ice cores as well. And sediment cores from lakes in Asia, Japan, and South America.

It was a global event, where you get the idea it is only in Europe, I have no idea.

However, let's extend your challenge: which environment could you find more comfortable with the lowest level of technology?
Hint: antarctica requires: warm clothing, igloo, fire
death valley requires: A/C, generator, insulation

Antarctica: Almost no fuel for a fire, no ability to grow food, limited ability for wild game. Result, no matter what death by malnutrition if not starvation.
Death Valley, none of those you listed. But I also recognize that most people are highly pampered, and can not comprehend living with discomfort. But all you would need is a shovel so you can dig a hole in the ground (or better still in the side of a cliff or hill).

Of course, I have also been trained to survive at the most basic of levels. With Desert, Arctic, and Jungle conditions included. Arctic, is actually fairly survivable. But Antarctic? Nope, forget that. Best you can hope is that some future expedition can recover your body.

Without modern weaponry (guns), What wild game you might find in Antarctica is more likely to end up eating you, assuming you manage to find it before you freeze to death.

Really? Have some strange form of giant mutated penguin evolved there that I have not heard of before?

And caves and ice shelters can actually keep a human alive for quite a long period of time. Even without a fire.

At an ambient temp of -71F(this is the average September temp for Antarctica) without wind chill? Not buying it.

Oh, so many mistakes.

The average temperature in the coastal area is only 14F. Deep winter, around 0F. You are giving the temperature for the deep interior, where nothing would live long as there is no food. And September is like early spring there.

Basically you are giving the temperature for Barrow, Alaska and trying to imply that is normal in the US.

Come summer, the coastal temperatures will be around 40F and higher. And ice and natural caves are amazing for survival. The outside temperature does not matter at all. I have stayed in man made ice caves, your own body heat makes them rather comfortable in a fairly short amount of time. Snow and rock is an amazing insulator.

Oh, and no hunting marine mammals, just get seals when they come on shore. And it's not exactly like seals are a major threat. For thousands of years our ancestors needed nothing more than a stick as they are not particularly large or vicious. Clubs are still commonly used to this very day, when on a land a person can just run up and thump them with it. The only worry are the male elephant seals.

If you're dropped in both locations at the extremes of their conditions, you will desiccate far sooner in Death Valley than you will in Antarctica. Bodies of animals, and even humans, are found out there completely dried out like Egyptian mummies. And it happens quickly.

Antarctica is the driest continent on the planet. Not so Death Valley, which ranges from around 32 percent humidity in the day, to 55 at night.

The average humidity in most of Antarctica? 0%. That is why "freeze drying" is a thing.

I have to wonder, how many in here have actually been trained to survive in extreme conditions? Have any of you ever actually had survival training, and are familiar with the conditions you all are trying to describe?

Absent special protective gear, just normal every day clothes, which do you think you would survive in the longest: Antarctica in September (-71F/-52C), or Death Vally, California (134F/56.6C)?

Well, I have not been to Antarctica, but I have had to live in areas that got to -30F, and it was not fun. Even breathing hurt.

But I lived for a year in an area where the running joke when asked how hot it was outside was "135F". That is because the thermometers we used at our base maxed out at 135, and they were almost always maxed out.

When I returned for a few weeks of R&R in El Paso, we were having a heat wave of around 100. And everybody thought I was insane for wearing a jacket. But for my body, it was a drop of over 30 degrees. It would me like taking somebody that is used to 80, and suddenly throwing them outside when it was 45. And I have had the reverse, moving from Idaho where it was -10, and moving to LA where it was 65. I would walk around in a light t-shirt, as everybody else wore jackets.

The truth is far from global warming being catastrophic, warmer=better.

And geologically speaking, that is dead on accurate.

During the warmest periods on our planet, life thrived the most. Quite specifically, in times of high CO2 and temperatures 10+ degrees F than it is now. Even more so when the continent of Antarctica became ice free, and plants and animals covered all 7 Continents.

But we are in a transition period. Somebody who knows geology and paleontology will know that. Yes, a lot of animals will go extinct and continue to go extinct, unable to adapt to the warmer climate. But guess what, wait a few dozen thousand years. More animals will evolve that love the warmer climate. Dawinism in action.

I laugh whenever people point at the death of all the megafauna, and try to scream that "humans did it". Fact is, it died out planet wide. With only a handful now remaining. Being big and slow when being a beast having to push through snow and lean cold winters made sense. Being big and slow when the climate warmed and favored the small and fast was a detriment. And in 120k years or so when we slip into another ice age, all the small and fast animals will be dying off in droves, as the big and lumbering beasts with massive fat reserves once again start to dominate.

And to be honest, what I find much more disturbing than the CO2 emissions is the massive deforestation that is happening. CO2 is literally "plant food", and rainforests are a major part of how the planet deals with it. In the past geological record, increasing CO2 caused the size of rainforests to explode. Which caused more humidity, and encouraged even more forest growth.

But we are destroying this system, cutting and burning the rainforests, the very system nature uses to sequester CO2 and expand. I could not care less about CO2, this is what I see as the real problem. But nobody seems to give a damn about that, they can't tax the poor dirt farmers in Brazil.

It's like trying to put ice on somebody with a fever, and not even trying to cure the infection making them sick in the first place. And even if we cut CO2 emissions to 0, it will continue to rise because we keep killing the main way to remove it in the first place.

Once again, cycles that have always happened on our planet, and I have yet to hear people running around screaming that Paleolithic humans caused the end of the last Ice Age.

Of course you haven't, and you won't hear it from me either. None of the scientists who are studying this period of warming have every claimed that previous cases of warming didn't happen for other reasons.
It is simply that a significant portion of this cycle is clearly laid at the feet of people and their efforts to clothe, feed, warm, cool, entertain, travel, etc etc.

I'm not arguing that we should shut our civilisation down or whatever other straw-man arguments you want to throw out there. I'm simply saying we can mitigate the risks by some sensible restraint.

Right now, the issue is a very sudden case of warming where serious effects will be felt within 100 years. It has already started having noticeable effects across the world.

Here's an 8 year old discussion on climate by a scientist that you should watch. It's nearly an hour long, but the first 30 minutes is setting the background by explaining the backgrounds of paleo climatology. What bis interesting is the information about events 10,000 to 5,000 years ago and what the trends recorded mean into the future. Oddly enough back then they had some technology that showed past trends and have very accurately predicted climate activity into the future for a some years ; but you rarely hear about it because it isn't the doom and gloom show the political scientists push.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yze1YAz_LYM

ere's an 8 year old discussion on climate by a scientist that you should watch.

I prefer to learn science in places where it has been checked and scrutinized rather than watching a youtube video of someone. I will watch it but am always slightly sceptical. The IPCC report is a worthy thing to read as it is a summary of all the science that has been done in the field. You should definitely read that.

I prefer to learn science in places where it has been checked and scrutinized rather than watching a youtube video of someone.

Personally, I prefer to watch the YouTube videos of talks by qualified scientists than the sound bites of political scientists and activists seeking their 15 minutes of fame.

typo edit.

In the meantime, for us and our children and our grandchildren, life won't be quite as comfortable as it has been for a while.

Considering that we seem to be going into a solar minimum for a while (the next cycle is predicted to be weak and the one after that even weaker if trend persists https://www.weather.gov/news/201509-solar-cycle ), then our kids might be in for a bit cooler weather.

talking about Death Valley, please remember while it often goes up to 120 degrees F or higher during the day it usually drops 50 to 65 degrees F at night because there is no cloud cover keeping the heat in.

More than cloud cover. I live in the Phoenix area which no longer drops in temperature so much at night (we set a record this year of the number of days with a low of 90F or higher). Not because of cloud cover. It's the concrete, tar, swimming pools, golf courses, etc.

So humans affected climate again. I guess we shouldn't have built cities.

Inter-chapter POV changed are common enough in some of the books I read.

Just make a scene change when POV changes.