The Four Phases

Years ago, I saw a film called The Four Feathers. A story of English society, it features heroism in the face of class pressure. In many ways, The Four Feathers is the analogue for my series of books, “The Galileo Syndrome,” “The Fires of Home,” “The Dirties,” and “Hobo Signs.” As the planet’s retort to our negligent forcing of the radiative balance comes clear, the four phases of an energized climate will be presented to us in ways we cannot ignore. Like The Four Feathers, we will cope with the four phases coming at us because we have no choice. Lastly, like The Four Feathers, courage will emerge in ways we can hardly imagine.

A project at work brought me to the concept of anthropogenic forcing of the radiative balance and later the idea of modeling the changing climate in a novel. I began my research in 1988. By 1989 I figured out one book would not do it. I also found that while the science was murky, society’s response was predictable.

Leaving Silicon Valley to begin the project, I produced four novels representing the four phases of society’s response to the coming climate regime:

1. Recognition – too late our society accepts and responds to the climate crisis  – “The Galileo Syndrome”
2. Chaos – the climate shifts to the new regime – “The Fires of Home”
3. Triage – a new environmental regime takes hold – “The Dirties”
4. Reset – as respect for the environment finally becomes part of us – “Hobo Signs”

Had I known, in 1996, that over the next twenty years our leadership would fiddle away precious time by upholstering greed with apparent ignorance and then market that greed to the world in the form of climate denial–effectively crippling a rational response to the climate crisis for two decades–I might have produced “Hobo Signs” first. “Hobo Signs” is about respect for the authority of our environment. It is also the first book of the set–from the casual reader’s perspective.

“The Galileo Syndrome” came out first. Insofar as phase one, you’ll know it has begun when the economic myth (economics is more important than the changing climate) has been uncloaked as the patrician’s bleat of greed, upholstered as ignorance, decorated with concern. Note, rather than pump up the books or take a slap at the oligarchy, my intention here is to elucidate the four major phases of our thrill-ride with a rabid climate.

Good things to know, so…

Recognition – as our society accepts and responds to the climate crisis. Once events become so ugly we have no choice but to see the facts of what we have done, political attitudes will swing away from economic myth. Political will then nests in the repair process–for a few decades. In “The Galileo Syndrome,” the repair process is a set of repressive worldwide laws, called The Greenhouse Laws. Normally laws like The Greenhouse Laws will cripple an economy. On the other hand, with an economy  badly damaged by a new climate regime the affect of repressive laws is negligible.

See the future.

Society’s response to anthropogenic forcing of the radiative balance will impress us all. Events put in motion by self-indulgence and climate denial will furnish humanity with sixty (plus) years of an uncompromising climate as it continues adjusting to our GHG emissions. During that period, we will find courage, ingenuity, and a sense of national greatness currently reduced to myth by media–because courage is one of the natural states of a free people.