I HATED The Turn of the Screw, but I found MftF to be an OK read, once I got used to the style variations. I think the basic issue is that MftF wasn't really meant to be a novel, with a story arc and such. It's more of a description of moves that could be made to fix things, set in almost-a-novel form.
4) I'm afraid I found the story overall relied on too many almost miraculous developments. Beaming power through microwaves? Airships with enough solar power to drive at 200 kph? Coating the entire fkn Arctic ocean with a not-too-toxic film? Creating a new currency? A new social medium with its own credit union? Some of these things were major turning points in the story.
3) Geothermal is a fascinating technology, but check out the USGS site earthquakes dot usgs dot gov, maps, and locate The Geysers, CA. lots of miniquakes there every day.
ETA: I did not land my point. There's a geothermal plant there, and its activities seem to be contributing to those quakes. Scaling that up might have literally earth-shaking consequences.
2) The Children of Kali just kinda dropped out, huh? I agree with some other folks downthread: not sure a terrorist group runs out of topics to terrorize about.
1) I think Frank was Mary's Jiminy Cricket. Without him, she may not have gotten the urgency needed to make some of the moves the ministry made. Early on, it felt to me like she was ...discouraged? ...cynical? lacking focus? Something like that.
I believe 350 was chosen as a benchmark because of Bill McKibben. In 2007-2008, he surveyed climate scientists and asked them to predict the highest level of carbon the atmosphere could reach and still be consistent with a stable climate. He got a wide range of estimates, but the mean was a fraction below 351 ppm, so he rounded it off to 350 and resolved to make that number famous. That’s the origin of his nonprofit environmental group 350.org. Unfortunately, we shot past 350 within a few years
I kept waiting for the CoK to reappear and I'm a little surprised they just faded away. Maybe since they were only interested in being a group of Indians for India, the big changes in the country pushed them to the side.
I'm glad the universal passport wasn't shown as being a fully kumbaya moment. The acknowledgement of right wing parties and the fact that the family would be okay as long as there weren't too many in the same village and so on felt real.
At the same time I've been reading this I also happened to get my loan of "Homo Deus" by Yuval Noah Harari from the library and it's been interesting to read two different projections of the future at the same time. Harari spends a lot more time on the data revolution and the possible surpassing of humans by machine learning, which was not a big part of Robinson's book but is clearly the Coming Thing of the moment. We're at a crux, one way or another. It'll be interesting to see what humanity looks like in 40 years, if any of us are still around.
Also, I really want to go on an airship tour and cruise on a modern schooner. And live in Zürich for a while. I miss European life. Maybe the Half Earth project will make the Northeast Corridor a bit more like that in the decades ahead, Amtrak Joe willing.
I slogged my way thru his Mars book. I found the final one (Blue Mars? ) particularly slow.
Some parts of MftF were kind of slow for me, but that first chapter pulled me right in. I happened to start it around the the of the historic heat & humidity in India last summer.
Oh, and I think I mentioned this last week, but the inattention to material waste and trash felt like an oversight. We know petroleum extraction for plastic continued to happen, but we also know plastic isn't at all as recyclable as the plastic industry wants us to believe. Maybe with commercial shipping taking longer we don't generate as much "stuff" and this takes care of itself somewhat, but I still wonder how that factors in. We did have a chapter about coltan miners in Africa seizing the means of production, after all. That would also change the way we deal with our various gadgets. Maybe that's just a topic for a different book.
May I respectfully disagree? The geothermal/hydrothermal is anything BUT inexhaustible on a large scale, and it's also inefficient on most parts of the planet.
Not saying it could not be a useful source while we transition away from fossil, but it's definitely overhyped.
Some number games: most everywhere on the planet, the average geothermal heat flow is from 60 (land)-100 (ocean crust) milliwatts per square meter. The average US home consumes 10.6 MWh of electrical energy per year, which converts to 1200 watts permanent energy consumption. So the average US home would need to capture the heat flowing from 20,000 square meters, i.e. 5 acres, just to sustainably supply its electricity needs, not including all its energy needs currently supplied by directly burning fuels up (heating, transportation). That's assuming a 100% conversion efficiency from low-temperature energy to electricity, which hahahaha sorry. Let's assume 20% efficiency and you need 25 acres per household. Try to extract more energy and you're not sustainable at all, you're just taking heat from the earth's crust faster than it can be renewed. Bad idea.
Also, shall we discuss the energy requirements to drill to the bedrock, then to inject water in and extract hot brine, which is not just incredibly corrosive for your pipes but downright toxic?
I kinda remember some discussion in the book about plastic usage and the need for the petroleum to produce it. IIRC the discussion in the book seemed to want to fix the CO2 problem first and deal with plastic later.
I HATED The Turn of the Screw, but I found MftF to be an OK read, once I got used to the style variations. I think the basic issue is that MftF wasn't really meant to be a novel, with a story arc and such. It's more of a description of moves that could be made to fix things, set in almost-a-novel form.
I know I do. It's been a weird epoch.
Yeah, COVID response was pretty enlightening.
4) I'm afraid I found the story overall relied on too many almost miraculous developments. Beaming power through microwaves? Airships with enough solar power to drive at 200 kph? Coating the entire fkn Arctic ocean with a not-too-toxic film? Creating a new currency? A new social medium with its own credit union? Some of these things were major turning points in the story.
I'm going to miss smoking meat.
3) Geothermal is a fascinating technology, but check out the USGS site earthquakes dot usgs dot gov, maps, and locate The Geysers, CA. lots of miniquakes there every day.
ETA: I did not land my point. There's a geothermal plant there, and its activities seem to be contributing to those quakes. Scaling that up might have literally earth-shaking consequences.
If you are familiar with the Energy Gang podcast from Woods Mackenzie, they have selected that for their first book club
2) The Children of Kali just kinda dropped out, huh? I agree with some other folks downthread: not sure a terrorist group runs out of topics to terrorize about.
1) I think Frank was Mary's Jiminy Cricket. Without him, she may not have gotten the urgency needed to make some of the moves the ministry made. Early on, it felt to me like she was ...discouraged? ...cynical? lacking focus? Something like that.
I believe 350 was chosen as a benchmark because of Bill McKibben. In 2007-2008, he surveyed climate scientists and asked them to predict the highest level of carbon the atmosphere could reach and still be consistent with a stable climate. He got a wide range of estimates, but the mean was a fraction below 351 ppm, so he rounded it off to 350 and resolved to make that number famous. That’s the origin of his nonprofit environmental group 350.org. Unfortunately, we shot past 350 within a few years
I kept waiting for the CoK to reappear and I'm a little surprised they just faded away. Maybe since they were only interested in being a group of Indians for India, the big changes in the country pushed them to the side.
I'm glad the universal passport wasn't shown as being a fully kumbaya moment. The acknowledgement of right wing parties and the fact that the family would be okay as long as there weren't too many in the same village and so on felt real.
At the same time I've been reading this I also happened to get my loan of "Homo Deus" by Yuval Noah Harari from the library and it's been interesting to read two different projections of the future at the same time. Harari spends a lot more time on the data revolution and the possible surpassing of humans by machine learning, which was not a big part of Robinson's book but is clearly the Coming Thing of the moment. We're at a crux, one way or another. It'll be interesting to see what humanity looks like in 40 years, if any of us are still around.
Also, I really want to go on an airship tour and cruise on a modern schooner. And live in Zürich for a while. I miss European life. Maybe the Half Earth project will make the Northeast Corridor a bit more like that in the decades ahead, Amtrak Joe willing.
I slogged my way thru his Mars book. I found the final one (Blue Mars? ) particularly slow.
Some parts of MftF were kind of slow for me, but that first chapter pulled me right in. I happened to start it around the the of the historic heat & humidity in India last summer.
Oh, and I think I mentioned this last week, but the inattention to material waste and trash felt like an oversight. We know petroleum extraction for plastic continued to happen, but we also know plastic isn't at all as recyclable as the plastic industry wants us to believe. Maybe with commercial shipping taking longer we don't generate as much "stuff" and this takes care of itself somewhat, but I still wonder how that factors in. We did have a chapter about coltan miners in Africa seizing the means of production, after all. That would also change the way we deal with our various gadgets. Maybe that's just a topic for a different book.
May I respectfully disagree? The geothermal/hydrothermal is anything BUT inexhaustible on a large scale, and it's also inefficient on most parts of the planet.
Not saying it could not be a useful source while we transition away from fossil, but it's definitely overhyped.
Some number games: most everywhere on the planet, the average geothermal heat flow is from 60 (land)-100 (ocean crust) milliwatts per square meter. The average US home consumes 10.6 MWh of electrical energy per year, which converts to 1200 watts permanent energy consumption. So the average US home would need to capture the heat flowing from 20,000 square meters, i.e. 5 acres, just to sustainably supply its electricity needs, not including all its energy needs currently supplied by directly burning fuels up (heating, transportation). That's assuming a 100% conversion efficiency from low-temperature energy to electricity, which hahahaha sorry. Let's assume 20% efficiency and you need 25 acres per household. Try to extract more energy and you're not sustainable at all, you're just taking heat from the earth's crust faster than it can be renewed. Bad idea.
Also, shall we discuss the energy requirements to drill to the bedrock, then to inject water in and extract hot brine, which is not just incredibly corrosive for your pipes but downright toxic?
We installed solar panels in 2016. We're at the time of year when we're getting negative balance electric bills.
That'll change in the winter when we rely on the heat pumps (with gas backup when it really gets cold) and National Grid jacks their rates up again.
I kinda remember some discussion in the book about plastic usage and the need for the petroleum to produce it. IIRC the discussion in the book seemed to want to fix the CO2 problem first and deal with plastic later.