欧宝娱乐

“Western scientists built an intellectual culture based on the premise that it was worse to fool oneself into believing in something that did not exist than not to believe in something that did.”
― Naomi Oreskes, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future

“By the early 2000s, dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system was under way. Fires, floods, hurricanes, and heat waves began to intensify. Still, these effects were discounted.”
― Naomi Oreskes, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future

“Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540鈥�2093); the dilemma being addressed is how we鈥攖he children of the Enlightenment鈥攆ailed to act on robust information about climate change and knowledge of the damaging events that were about to unfold. Our historian concludes that a second Dark Age had fallen on Western civilization, in which denial and self-deception, rooted in an ideological fixation on 鈥渇ree鈥� markets, disabled the world鈥檚 powerful nations in the face of tragedy. Moreover, the scientists who best understood the problem were hamstrung by their own cultural practices, which demanded an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind鈥攅ven those involving imminent threats. Here, our future historian, living in the Second People鈥檚 Republic of China, recounts the events of the Period of the Penumbra (1988鈥�2093) that led to the Great Collapse and Mass Migration (2073鈥�2093).”
― Naomi Oreskes, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future

“The Earth is bathed in a flood of sunlight. A fierce inundation of photons鈥攐n average, 342 joules per second per square meter. 4185 joules (one calorie) will raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. If all this energy were captured by the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere, its temperature would rise by ten degrees Celsius in one day. Luckily much of it radiates back to space. How much depends on albedo and the chemical composition of the atmosphere, both of which vary over time. A good portion of Earth鈥檚 albedo, or reflectivity, is created by its polar ice caps. If polar ice and snow were to shrink significantly, more solar energy would stay on Earth. Sunlight would penetrate oceans previously covered by ice, and warm the water. This would add heat and melt more ice, in a positive feedback loop.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain