The New Normal - Beyond Doom

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Bird on a Fire
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The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:33 pm

Something I've been grappling with recently, and wondering what others think.

I've been struggling to come to terms with the fact that, suddenly, almost overnight, the world has probably got quite a bit worse. There wasn't covid-19, and now there is, and it's going to be there rumbling away forever now.

The climate, too. The science-based Paris target, 1.5°C, is toast, and the political compromise of 2°C isn't looking good either. The constant hottest-ever, driest-ever, on-fire-est-evers will continue their record-breaking march, probably accelerating as more systems cross critical points in the minefield of unknown thresholds out there.

And that's it. It's almost like grief. I grew up with an awareness of various social ills, but always took for granted that the environment itself wasn't inimical to civilisation. Jumpers for goalposts, cartons of milk, and things weren't on fire and spewing out deadly pathogens. Simpler times. Nature was where I went to escape and have a happy time, but I can't walk anywhere now without noticing species vanishing, plastic and traffic noise and light pollution everywhere, like when you go for a party at a student flat and it's just perturbingly gross.

I don't think these things are going to get better, and I don't think we can stop them getting worse from here. I guess I always harboured just a little bit of hope for a better world, but I'm liberated from that now. The dice are cast. States will choose expediency over mitigation, for acute emergencies as much as long-term creepers.

So here's the hope: the trolley is already ploughing into the crowd of bystanders. We can choose to watch aghast, or fight as hard as we can to stop it. It's no longer pass-fail (save the world or not), it's clawing back points after ending a scrappy first half in danger of relegation. There's no big goal, so every small victory is important.

Does that make any sense? How are y'all dealing with the reality of a f.cked environment?
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Opti » Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:40 pm

I'm coping with it by being old.
And trying very hard not to think about my boy and his family.
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by WFJ » Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:41 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:33 pm

Does that make any sense? How are y'all dealing with the reality of a f.cked environment?
You never know. Putin rolling into Ukraine could trigger a nuclear winter that stops global warming in its tracks.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:47 pm

WFJ wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:41 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:33 pm

Does that make any sense? How are y'all dealing with the reality of a f.cked environment?
You never know. Putin rolling into Ukraine could trigger a nuclear winter that stops global warming in its tracks.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by lpm » Fri Jan 21, 2022 6:21 pm

We're got a bunch of things colliding right now.

- The great economic unbalance from the 1990s, with China transforming to its export economy and flooding the world with cheap money
- The financial crash of 2007-8 required desperate measures to handle - which were still in place in 2019
- Social media f.cking up the meaning of truth, knowledge and expertise from around 2010
- The genius of Putin and his strategy of subverting his western rivals
- The pandemic of 2020-21, which severely weakened economies and worsened the covenants between citizens, plus between govt and citizens, in every country
- The inflation of 2022-23, which is a global phenomenon mainly caused by the pandemic and which will have far worse consequences than people think
- And of course climate change as the long term destroyer

I think you're right that the fight is about clawing back every small point we can. There certainly are plenty of victories to be had - the Covid vaccine for example. The global economic imbalance is flattening out as China matures. Inflation is going to make living standards worse of the 90% but that has the result of reducing frivolous consumption and leads to a new upswing. And above all the fast-falling price of clean energy is going to create new winners and halt the fossil fuel addiction.

There are going to be some major set backs though. It might be a question of whether winning the small points outscores the big losses, such as a Ukraine war or the USA falling to one-party rule in 2024. This isn't going to be linear.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by dyqik » Fri Jan 21, 2022 7:08 pm

lpm wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 6:21 pm
We're got a bunch of things colliding right now.

- The great economic unbalance from the 1990s, with China transforming to its export economy and flooding the world with cheap money
- The financial crash of 2007-8 required desperate measures to handle - which were still in place in 2019
- Social media f.cking up the meaning of truth, knowledge and expertise from around 2010
- The genius of Putin and his strategy of subverting his western rivals
- The pandemic of 2020-21, which severely weakened economies and worsened the covenants between citizens, plus between govt and citizens, in every country
- The inflation of 2022-23, which is a global phenomenon mainly caused by the pandemic and which will have far worse consequences than people think
- And of course climate change as the long term destroyer

I think you're right that the fight is about clawing back every small point we can. There certainly are plenty of victories to be had - the Covid vaccine for example. The global economic imbalance is flattening out as China matures. Inflation is going to make living standards worse of the 90% but that has the result of reducing frivolous consumption and leads to a new upswing. And above all the fast-falling price of clean energy is going to create new winners and halt the fossil fuel addiction.

There are going to be some major set backs though. It might be a question of whether winning the small points outscores the big losses, such as a Ukraine war or the USA falling to one-party rule in 2024. This isn't going to be linear.
For the English speaking world (well, US, UK and Australia), you can add the culmination of Murdoch's takeover of the media and that cancer metastasizing to even more extreme media - an element of your third item, I guess.

Although at least now there's only one cable network that is prepared to carry O(n)AN. I'm off to listen to some early Black Sabbath to cheer me up.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by discovolante » Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:08 pm

You could try reading The Ministry for the Future. It's described as an optimistic novel about climate change, which it is I guess, but not before allowing a few dozen million (or a different number of millions I can't remember) people to die first.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Sciolus » Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:31 pm

In the UK at least, you've also got the steady transfer of wealth from young to old, through things like student loans, the housing market, pensions policy and of course our new NI increase. This is clearly unsustainable and will have to be rebalanced somehow at some point, but I can't think of a gentle way of doing it.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Fishnut » Fri Jan 21, 2022 10:10 pm

I feel the same way, boaf. I look to the future with fear these days. I am so angry that we've come to this position, that there are people who have actively worked so that we have come to this position. And plenty of others who have looked the other way while they did.

I don't think there's any chance of 'fixing' things, the best we can do is manage the consequences and try and minimise the number of people badly affected.

I've been reading Hillsborough - The Truth by Phil Scraton and in the description of the disaster what really struck me was how it was other fans who did their best to save those injured in the crush. The authorities, in the words of Scraton, "did not recognise... the distinction between disorder from distress" and refused to help. Instead it was ordinary people pulling people out and taking them to safety and doing what they could to keep them alive. It was the failure of the authorities that led to the disaster and it was the actions of ordinary people that stopped it from being even worse.

It feels like a parable for many disasters, including climate change. The authorities have ignored all the signs of impending doom and have treated those trying to warn them as criminals and people intent on causing disorder, rather than honourable people trying to prevent harm. But where I take comfort is that ordinary people are starting to take action. We know it will take top-down change to have any meaningful impact, but that change will only come reluctantly and will only come through collective pressure from ordinary people in large enough numbers that they cannot be ignored. That's starting to happen. So while I don't think we're going to manage to derail the trolley, I have hope that there's enough people who will try to get in there to help the victims and campaign to ensure that the rails aren't left in a state of disrepair again, to stretch a metaphor.

Though that sounds more optimistic than I really feel. We're going to see people dying natural disasters and conflicts caused by lack of access to basic resources. We're going to see even more inequality, more nationalism and authoritarianism as more people become refugees. Things are going to get so much worse before they get better.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by headshot » Fri Jan 21, 2022 11:11 pm

You should all listen to this: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/56f40 ... thur-snell

I avoided the fear of a terrible legacy by not having children. I didn’t think the climate would start falling apart so significantly within my lifetime.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Millennie Al » Fri Jan 21, 2022 11:54 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 5:33 pm
Something I've been grappling with recently, and wondering what others think.

I've been struggling to come to terms with the fact that, suddenly, almost overnight, the world has probably got quite a bit worse. There wasn't covid-19, and now there is, and it's going to be there rumbling away forever now.
There have always been new diseases and pandemics - most famously the Black Death that killed about a third of the population of Europe. covid shows how the world has got better - for the first time ever a new disease has been met with effective measures. We can now hope that future pandemics will meet ever more effective measures until they are harmless.
The climate, too. The science-based Paris target, 1.5°C, is toast, and the political compromise of 2°C isn't looking good either.
All targets are political. Science tells you about the world - e.g. if you kick that rock you'll hurt yourself. Politics decides what to do about it - e.g. don't kick the rock. A lower target is a consequence of conservative thinking - that the world should be kept the way it is. That may work in the short term, but ultimately will fail. In the long term we adapt or die (except, of course, as individuals where the only option is the latter). Climate change might be slowed for a time, but all that can do is provide more time to adapt.
The constant hottest-ever, driest-ever, on-fire-est-evers will continue their record-breaking march, probably accelerating as more systems cross critical points in the minefield of unknown thresholds out there.
Then be thankful you didn't live 20,000 years ago when the ice sheets covered most of Britain. That was a hostile environment.
I don't think these things are going to get better, and I don't think we can stop them getting worse from here. I guess I always harboured just a little bit of hope for a better world, but I'm liberated from that now. The dice are cast. States will choose expediency over mitigation, for acute emergencies as much as long-term creepers.
Things have been getting better for thousands of years. There's no reason to suppose this will stop. However, the improvement has not been a steady and continuous one. Like waves breaking on the sea shore, there have been advances and retreats, but overall the advances tend to stick and the retreats get overcome with time.
Does that make any sense? How are y'all dealing with the reality of a f.cked environment?
You are in the richest 1%. You can easily move elsewhere if your environment gets too uncomfortable. But you care about other too. Have a look back through history. It used to be the case that people looked on neighbouring areas as opportunities for invasion and conquest. Kill all the men and rape all the women. Or maybe enslave some survivors. We have moved past that, and past mere indifference an tolerance to an age where it is routine to care about strangers halfway around the world. Things really have got better.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Sat Jan 22, 2022 8:34 am

Several off-topic posts have been split into a thread which is now in RS.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by lpm » Sat Jan 22, 2022 9:44 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 11:54 pm
There have always been... etc
The problem with this view, Millennie Al, is it ignores the concept of brittle.

In other words is 2022 society less able to cope with a discontinuity than, say, 1939 society.

For example, a drought used to mean hunter gatherers migrating to lands one of the Elders remembered as being good during droughts. Today land ownership and borders enforce them to stay put - until they end up in a refugee camp.

Things always get better, with downs as well as ups, is a view that works - until a discontinuity arrives. And it's not much comfort to know that 2121 will be better than 2021, if 2051 is going to be a horror show. Germany in 2013 was so much better than 1913 but...
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Jan 22, 2022 11:36 am

Politically, I'm sure there will continue to be both advances and retreats. I'm not too sure what to expect long-term.

In the short-term, we have a small group of ultra-wealthy elitists who have spent decades hiding science and subverting top-down political action to improve return on investments for themselves and their shareholders, at the expense of the quality of life of ~99% of the world's population.

Historically, these kinds of situations - overthrowing systems by which a powerful minority oppress a majority - tend to be resolved violently, e.g. the abolition of slavery, the end of colonialism, the suffragettes, workers' movements generally, the US civil rights movement, ending apartheid.

Slavery is probably the most direct comparison, as we need to abolish a productive force underpinning much of the world's economy. That took over a century of slave revolts and assisting runaways, via the bloodiest war on US soil, and longer still in much of Europe's colonies. (And it still happens today, but generally illegally, so that's a bit of a derail.) Rich fossil c.nts aren't going down without a huge fight, especially as the control so much of states' apparatus around the world. A solution to the climate crisis might end up being bloodier over the short-term than the crisis itself.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Jan 22, 2022 11:38 am

The climate, on the other hand, is a definite discontinuity. Change is guaranteed over a geological scale, and the change is going to be bad.

Parts of ancient history may well have been worse, but I don't think many people are consoled by the fact that they're not living during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction or whatever.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Jan 22, 2022 11:46 am

discovolante wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:08 pm
You could try reading The Ministry for the Future. It's described as an optimistic novel about climate change, which it is I guess, but not before allowing a few dozen million (or a different number of millions I can't remember) people to die first.
I've seen it recommended a lot - is it good?

As in gripping story, not too preachy? 577 pages is a lot for me ;)
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:00 pm

I think you've all got a very blinkered view of human progress. So far the discussion in this thread has just been among rich people.

Here's the most important consideration:
Extreme-Poverty-projection-by-the-World-Bank-to-2030 smaller.jpg
Extreme-Poverty-projection-by-the-World-Bank-to-2030 smaller.jpg (114.83 KiB) Viewed 2239 times
Read more here: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-pove ... erty-lines or look at the numbers on things like maternal mortality or literacy.

We're set to practically eliminate extreme poverty everywhere except Africa. For billions of people the past few decades have been ones in which they experienced massive improvements in their lives. Since the dawn of human history their ancestors didn't have basic things that everyone on this forum takes for granted, like being able to read, sanitation, or refrigeration. Now billions of people do. For them the contemporary world isn't doom, its a golden age.

I'm not arguing that everything is rosy and that there aren't serious problems, especially global warming and other forms of environmental degradation. If things go very bad in Ukraine we might all be killed in a nuclear war in the next few months.

But there are reasons to see the glass as being half full as well as being half empty.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Opti » Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:11 pm

Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by discovolante » Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:13 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 11:46 am
discovolante wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:08 pm
You could try reading The Ministry for the Future. It's described as an optimistic novel about climate change, which it is I guess, but not before allowing a few dozen million (or a different number of millions I can't remember) people to die first.
I've seen it recommended a lot - is it good?

As in gripping story, not too preachy? 577 pages is a lot for me ;)
Haha, I hadn't realised how long it was until it arrived in the post and was a bit :shock: but it's a pretty quick read considering. Lots of random preachy bits, but they tend to be only a few pages at a time, bit samey in terms of writing style ie not much distinction between how each of the characters think or speak, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Plenty of things to discuss about it. I did read one negative review which (not very thoroughly) claimed that one of the main geoengineering plots is physically impossible which is a bit of a shame but never mind. Anyway one of my top skills in selling books is to talk about the less good parts apparently? Haha...I liked it, what can I say.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:18 pm

Opti wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:11 pm
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Of course not, but the past performance has been good. Which is in its self a reason to think that the world isn't doom.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:24 pm

lpm wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 9:44 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 11:54 pm
There have always been... etc
The problem with this view, Millennie Al, is it ignores the concept of brittle.

In other words is 2022 society less able to cope with a discontinuity than, say, 1939 society.

For example, a drought used to mean hunter gatherers migrating to lands one of the Elders remembered as being good during droughts. Today land ownership and borders enforce them to stay put - until they end up in a refugee camp.

Things always get better, with downs as well as ups, is a view that works - until a discontinuity arrives. And it's not much comfort to know that 2121 will be better than 2021, if 2051 is going to be a horror show. Germany in 2013 was so much better than 1913 but...
We've had this discussion before, but is the world actually more brittle?

Yes, people find it difficult to move to different countries if there is a famine.

But compared to the past its now enormously easier to transport food to where people need it. There are contemporary famines, but they are mainly the result of political decisions.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:32 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:00 pm
I think you've all got a very blinkered view of human progress. So far the discussion in this thread has just been among rich people.

Here's the most important consideration:

Extreme-Poverty-projection-by-the-World-Bank-to-2030 smaller.jpg

Read more here: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-pove ... erty-lines or look at the numbers on things like maternal mortality or literacy.

We're set to practically eliminate extreme poverty everywhere except Africa. For billions of people the past few decades have been ones in which they experienced massive improvements in their lives. Since the dawn of human history their ancestors didn't have basic things that everyone on this forum takes for granted, like being able to read, sanitation, or refrigeration. Now billions of people do. For them the contemporary world isn't doom, its a golden age.

I'm not arguing that everything is rosy and that there aren't serious problems, especially global warming and other forms of environmental degradation. If things go very bad in Ukraine we might all be killed in a nuclear war in the next few months.

But there are reasons to see the glass as being half full as well as being half empty.
It's true that the basics are improving for a lot of people, and the elimination of extreme poverty etc. is great. I was intending to keep discussion to environmental matters, like climate change, biodiversity and pandemics.

One of the things that concerns me is that all this progress, supporting a still-ballooning human population, is dependent on current environmental conditions. We might find that these improvements are not enormously resilient. There are currently only about 80 million displaced people in the world, according to the UNHCR, but it seems likely over the next century that entire countries will be submerged by rising sea levels, coastal cities will be destroyed by storms, and current agricultural areas will face severe long-term droughts, soil erosion and loss of fertility. The pandemic has shown that global supply chains can be quite vulnerable to short-term disruption.

If the present day is anything to go by, developing countries will be forced to bare the brunt of those displacements while rich countries buy their way out of trouble.

I suspect that we will continue to see a rising baseline - more people on average having access to energy, education and healthcare. And I suppose that should give us some hope. I just also expect that there will be greatly increased stochastic variation around that long-term average, as the various systems we're all dependent on no longer function as we need them to.

And the really depressing thing is that it's all been totally avoidable. I was born after the first IPCC report, ffs, and all these smart folks working hard have barely made a dent in the catastrophe.

We haven't started having serious territorial disputes over water yet, either, but it won't be long.
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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Sciolus » Sat Jan 22, 2022 8:24 pm

lpm wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 9:44 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 11:54 pm
There have always been... etc
The problem with this view, Millennie Al, is it ignores the concept of brittle.

In other words is 2022 society less able to cope with a discontinuity than, say, 1939 society.

For example, a drought used to mean hunter gatherers migrating to lands one of the Elders remembered as being good during droughts. Today land ownership and borders enforce them to stay put - until they end up in a refugee camp.

Things always get better, with downs as well as ups, is a view that works - until a discontinuity arrives. And it's not much comfort to know that 2121 will be better than 2021, if 2051 is going to be a horror show. Germany in 2013 was so much better than 1913 but...
That applies even more to non-human lifeforms. Typically they respond to higher temperatures by moving to higher latitudes or higher altitudes. To take a trivial and parochial example, if you're a marsh fritillary living on a five-hectare nature reserve surrounded by mile after mile of barren desert in all directions, and the only other suitable habitat another couple of hectares 50 miles away, you're stuffed. Whole ecosystems are like this: so fragmented they are unable to adapt to any environmental change.

(Warm-blooded humans have a habit of thinking that a change of 1.5 degrees is negligible, because we don't even need to take off a jumper, but most lifeforms are far more sensitive to ambient temperatures.)

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Jan 23, 2022 3:27 am

lpm wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 9:44 am
For example, a drought used to mean hunter gatherers migrating to lands one of the Elders remembered as being good during droughts. Today land ownership and borders enforce them to stay put - until they end up in a refugee camp.
Humanity has been practising agriculture for 10,000 years. While there are a few places where there are hunter gatherers, they cover a very small proportion of the world's population - for the very good reason that it is a very inefficient use of land. For the last 10,000 years, drought has meant famine and migration has meant war. The modern refugee camp is a replacement for wholesale slaughter of either the refugees (if they are weak enough) or the lands they move to (if they are strong enough). We can hope that it will become unnecessary due to countries respecting their obligations to take in refugees, but that may take some time.

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Re: The New Normal - Beyond Doom

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Jan 23, 2022 1:14 pm

discovolante wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:13 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Jan 22, 2022 11:46 am
discovolante wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 9:08 pm
You could try reading The Ministry for the Future. It's described as an optimistic novel about climate change, which it is I guess, but not before allowing a few dozen million (or a different number of millions I can't remember) people to die first.
I've seen it recommended a lot - is it good?

As in gripping story, not too preachy? 577 pages is a lot for me ;)
Haha, I hadn't realised how long it was until it arrived in the post and was a bit :shock: but it's a pretty quick read considering. Lots of random preachy bits, but they tend to be only a few pages at a time, bit samey in terms of writing style ie not much distinction between how each of the characters think or speak, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Plenty of things to discuss about it. I did read one negative review which (not very thoroughly) claimed that one of the main geoengineering plots is physically impossible which is a bit of a shame but never mind. Anyway one of my top skills in selling books is to talk about the less good parts apparently? Haha...I liked it, what can I say.
Thanks for the rec! I found it yesterday in Waterstones and will try to get into it this week - I'm staying in a travelodge and need something to keep me entertained but out of trouble in the evenings.
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