PROGRESS ON THE VENUS SYNDROME

At the end of my posting yesterday, I hinted about THE VENUS SYNDROME, (Part 1 of 15 from this blog site in 2008), which was first introduced in the final chapter of my book on SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.   You can also gain updated details from three of my Huffington Post articles:

• The Venus Syndrome (Part One, 17 June 2008)
• The Venus Syndrome (Part Two, 18 June 2008)
• The Venus Syndrome Re-visited (5 December 2008)

Nearly a decade ago, and I was particularly dismayed by the attitude of politicians and decision-makers about the seriousness of climate change.

So if 97% of climate experts agree that humans are causing global warming, and the United Nations, representing an international consensus--even winning a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007--keeps reminding us that we must take steps now to prevent calamity, why isn't this happening?  Sure, we have some scientist, mostly financially supported by the fossil industry, now and then capturing headlines when they cherry-pick scientific data and jump on actual mistakes innocently made by researchers.  But why do the masses sometimes believe them?  How can a problem regularly considered to be the most serious problem facing humanity continue to be largely ignored?

So, I thought I'd use a different strategy and apply fear as the simple solution.  What about creating a potential extinction event for Humanity induced by global warming, where the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis (essentially, enormous amounts of methane were released 56 and 252 million years ago, triggering near total extinction of life) is induced with the sudden release of methane into our atmosphere, quickly increasing the temperature of of our globe to catastrophic levels.  I've been mulling over a solution to this crisis for several years, and appear now ready to actually write that novel.

Twenty-two years ago John Barnes wrote Mother of Storms.  The plot (from Wikipedia):

In the early 21st century, the Earth suffers from a giant hurricane spawned by the release of clathrate compounds, as the result of a nuclear explosion. While the hurricane spawns hundreds of progeny, which, by novel's end, kill at least 1 billion people, two massively computer augmented human intelligences, both of whom witness their organic bodies die, race to corral a comet from beyond Pluto's orbit. They use the ice from the comet to reduce the Earth's surface temperatures, and quell the mother of storms.

I might add that, if you click on that book site, you can purchase a copy for a penny.

As I once worked for NASA on the Search for Artificial Intelligence (SETI), and this will be a novel, I'm mulling over the possibility of  SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array, just like in CONTACT, detecting decipherable signals in the form of an Encyclopedia Galactica, which provide key clues on how our society might develop a solution to survive.  While definitely far-fetched, after nearly a decade of pondering over how to avoid extinction, this is the best I can at this point do.  The end of human life (bacteria and cockroaches will no doubt survive...and perhaps in time evolve into another form of intelligent life) could well also be a pathway.  After all, this will be a book to scare decision-makers, and, maybe even become a Spielberg film.

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Tropical Cyclone Fantala is at 120 MPH, and has made that track reversal to the southeast.  However, computer models show Fantala switching back west, and in a weakened condition, threaten the northern tip of Madagascar:

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