Climate as viewed by writers of fiction

The news a few days ago about a possible solution to the potential bird-collision problem at the new Vikings' stadium is encouraging. Perhaps the predicted thousand bird deaths per year can be avoided.

What about those birds and the millions of other birds in the world on a long-term basis?

That — and the fate of my grandchildren — drives my interest in the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere. It's too bad that carbon dioxide doesn't have a bright color or a bad odor so awareness might be higher. co2 is the engine that is driving changes to the earth. It fascinates me, macabre perhaps, but I do love birds and I do love my grandchildren.

With that in mind I searched the Internet for reported daily co2 levels. I found what I was looking for on the web site of the Michigan Wild Turkey Hunters Association. You can find this information on many Web sites. I was pleased to download one from a bird-related organization. If those turkey hunters have an interest in atmospheric co2 levels, that suits me just fine as a birder. I share their concern.

Studies of climate are always underway. The one I read during this search is dated Oct. 29, 2014, and was posted by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego (www.scripps.ucsd.edu).
Using ice cores from the Antarctic, scientists determined that previous climate changes, three in the past 16,000 years, did not occur gradually but arrived in abrupt pulses of co2 increase.

The change from the last ice age to complete deglaciation of the world was driven by an increase of 80 parts per million over a period of 10,000 years. Eighty ppm in 10,000 years.

We were at 315 ppm in 1958. The average monthly reading for 2014 was 401 ppm. We have exceeded the critical gain of 80 ppm, and we did it in 56 years instead of 10,000.

There has been no shortage recently of pithy comment on our plight. The HBO series "The Newsroom" on Nov. 23 presented a truly scary scenario of an interview (fictional, of course; this is a tv series) by a news anchor with an administrator from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The latter is being interviewed about a report showing atmospheric co2 levels hitting the 400 mark, regarded as a point of no return. (Timely, no?)

A few minutes into the interview, the anchor says, "You're saying the situation is dire."

The EPA man answers, "Not exactly. If your house is burning to the ground the situation is dire. If your house has already burned to the ground the situation is over."

What can we do to reverse this, the anchor asks. The answer, the EPA man says, is nothing.

Fiction, yes. But the numbers are real.

I liked this point those fictional scientists make: We, citizens of the 21st century, did not pay sufficient attention to what was happening to us until our pets began to die of the heat. Fido and Fluffy fall over dead, and now we are worried.

An essay by Jason Mark in the Dec. 9 "New York Times" the author discusses climate fiction fantasy as seen in movies. He mentions titles from "Waterworld," Kevin Kostner's bomb, to the more recent "Snowpiercer." What's fictional, he writes, is not so much the situation depicted. The fiction is endings suggesting we will survive.

"Times" movie critic A. O. Scott wrote recently about the responsibility of artists to tell the truth. "Much as I respect the efforts of scientists and social scientists to explain the world, and the intermittent efforts of politicians to change it," he writes, "I trust artists and writers more … through the integrity and discipline they bring to making something new, to tell the truth."