Contrarian Cli-Fi 0.08: The Last Centurion

A sub-theme of this series is the popularisation of science and the role of science journalism within climate contrarian. We started with James P. Hogan in OMNI in 1993, and later we dived back to Analog in the 1980s. If like me, you are British, then you probably got your weekly hit of science news and articles from New Scientist, which has been covering science and technology on Britain’s newsstands since the mid-1950s. In the early 1960s, the editorship of the magazine passed to science writer Nigel Calder.

Calder was a prolific science writer and not just in books and magazines but also in major documentaries for BBC and Channel 4. One such was The Weather Machine in 1974. Presented by Magnus Magnuson, the two-hour documentary took British viewers through the developing discipline of climate science:

“1974 has been a bad year for weather, with disastrous floods and droughts, a failed monsoon in India, unprecedented tornadoes in America, a dismal summer and unseasonable gales in Europe. The machine that makes the world’s weather is changing gear – and the shift is downward, against mankind. The smallest change means loss of life in flood or drought, and the wholesale destruction of crops. For us, the price of food goes up; for millions more, it brings hunger or starvation. In the background looms the threat of ice, and the obliteration of northern lands – including Britain. The next ice-age is already overdue. The trends are revealed in cores drilled from deep beneath the Greenland ice-cap; by instruments high on a volcano in Hawaii, acting as a breathalyzer for our planet; by ships that probe the depths of the sea for clues to the weather of 18,000 years ago; and by satellites that look down from space to encompass the storms of half a world. In the Pacific and Atlantic oceans we see the beginnings of a concerted global assault on the problems of our ever-changing climate. Perhaps just in time, the nations are uniting in the war against bad weather.”

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14735156/

Climate change was on its way…in the form of an ice age. In the accompanying book to the documentary, Calder compared the possible ice age to Norse mythology.

“The end of the world is to be heralded by a summer that is no summer. The bitter cold persists and the Sun gives neither light nor warmth. so that the winter is three winters long. “The twilight of the gods’ is a realistic scenario for the onset of the next ice age, in snow-blitz fashion. But a creed from a warmer zone drove out such pagan thoughts; white was not the fashionable colour of doom. Only in the 1970s of the Christian calendar did wise men again become mindful of the ice.”

The Weather Machine, Nigel Calder, Penguin Books https://archive.org/details/weathermachine00cald/page/136/mode/2up

As we’ve already discussed, the growing understanding of Earth’s climate genuinely did lead scientists to better understand that a relatively small drop in global temperatures could lead to a new ice age. However, that same science was increasingly pointing to a more immediate and insidious danger: anthropogenic global warming.

Calder had a long career in science journalism up until his death in 2014 but while he kept abreast of scientific developments his expectation of global cooling persisted. However, the arguments for a potential shift to global cooling had become rapidly untenable through the 1970s and only got worse after that. The world was getting warmer and the bulk of climate scientists, as well august international organisations, were pointing to greenhouse gases produced by human industry as the culprits.

Enter Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist. Svensmark developed a novel theory of climate change. Entitled “cosmoclimatology”, Svensmark attempted to re-establish solar variation as the underlying cause of climate change. Climate scientists had ruled out changes in solar activity as the driver of the observed global warming^[1]. Svensmark suggested that what people had been missing is that cosmic rays also played a role, and that role was influenced by, among other things, solar winds.

“The title reflected a topical puzzle, that of how to reconcile abundant indications of the Sun’s influence on climate (e.g. Herschel 1801, Eddy 1976, Friis-Christensen and Lassen 1991), with the small 0.1% variations in the solar irradiance over a solar cycle measured by satellites. Clouds exert (on average) a strong cooling effect, and cosmic-ray counts vary with the strength of the solar magnetic field, which repels much of the influx of relativistic particles from the galaxy. The connection offers a mechanism for solar-driven climate change much more powerful than changes in solar irradiance.”

https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/48/1/1.18/220765?login=false

To popularise his idea, Svensmark collaborated with Nigel Calder to produce a book explaining this radical theory that exonerated CO2 on the one hand but also pointed towards potential near-future cooling on the other. The book entitled “The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate” was published in 2007 with much trumpeting in right-wing circles and much rolling of eyes and sighs of exasperation elsewhere.

A review of Svensmark’s theory at the denial-debunking site Skeptical Science concluded:

“Hypothetically, an increasing solar magnetic field could deflect galactic cosmic rays, which hypothetically seed low-level clouds, thus decreasing the Earth’s reflectivity and causing global warming. However, it turns out that none of these hypotheticals are occurring in reality, and if cosmic rays were able to influence global temperatures, they would be having a cooling effect.”

https://skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming-advanced.htm

In the end, empirically, shifts in solar activity did not match observed shifts in temperature but also many aspects of Svensmark’s theory did not add up. Yet Svensmark had his champions on the right but also from Nigel Calder. In his Guardian obituary, this side of Calder is described as:

“Calder was one of a number of journalists who spoke up for environmental causes in the early 1970s, and he displayed from the very beginning an affection for scientific mavericks and nay-sayers, people prepared to swim against the current.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jul/01/nigel-calder

Readers at this point may wonder what a British journalist and a Danish physicist have to do with John “oh John Ringo, no” Ringo. Don’t worry. Dubious military fiction and disturbing interest in underage sex is the next stop on our journey.

In the years after 2005, the already divisive issue of global warming became more intensely partisan. The Republican Party of the Bush Jr years paid lip service to the reality of climate change, but the US right more generally was adopting a more overt denialist stance. The civil discussion we saw in the last chapter between Jerry Pournelle and Gavin Schmidt would not typical of climate change discussion across the internet. By 2008, disbelief in climate change had become a badge of loyalty on the right. This was further intensified in the following years during the so-called Climategate scandal, in which leaked emails from notable climate scientists revealed that they said the same things in private as they did in public, just less politely. The scandal (or if you prefer pseudo scandal) though marked a final fracturing. For many on the right, it proved that the “scientists” were liars and frauds which rendered any appeal to the actual science of climate change moot.

2008 saw the publication of a stand-alone near-future military adventure novel by Baen author John Ringo. Entitled “The Last Centurion” it follows the adventures of a US soldier who must fight his way from Iran back to the US amid a global disaster.

The book is not very good even by the standards of this small sub-sub-genre of contrarian climate fiction but it did gain some extra notability in 2020. The book is set in 2019 and the hero is a soldier who has been deployed to a US occupation of Iran. Unfortunately for him, the world takes an unexpected turn for the worse:

“”We’ve got an important directive from the Chief of Staff,” he said. “The Med Branch chief of staff?” the CO asked. “No, sir,” the captain said. “It was sent through Med Branch from the Chief of Staff of the Army. The Chief of Staff’s portion is two lines. I’d like to read it and then expand.” “Go,” the colonel said pompously. ” ‘Indicators indicate significant outbreak of Human-to-Human transmission of H5N1 virus in China Operational Zone. Begin immediate Type Two immunization procedures for all DOD and affiliated personnel in your AOC upon receipt of vaccines. End.’ “

Ringo, John. The Last Centurion (p. 22). Baen Books. Kindle Edition.

One year early, Ringo writes about a major pandemic from a respiratory virus that starts out in China. So we’ll grant Ringo that bit of prescience.

From there though Ringo is off on his own plot about a Hillary Clinton-like President messing up the vaccination role out because she believes in “socialised medicine” and the pandemic leading to social chaos. However, the pandemic is just one of the disasters that the hero has to face. The second is the cold.

Early in the book, we get the first foreshadowing of the terrible weather to come:

“The article my dad sent me was from a British source. See, there was this solar physicist in Britain who had sort of gotten out of the solar physics field and entered the long-range forecasting field. Weather, that is. We all know, Lord God do we know, that all that baloney about “greenhouse gases” and “man-induced global warming” was so much horse shit. But back then it was all “global warming! CO2 will kill us all!” Man, we wished we’d had that sort of CO2, didn’t we? But the thing about this guy, don’t recall his name, was that he did long-range weather forecasts based on solar activity. He’d studied the sun until he should have been blind and had figured out that just about everything related to the sort of weather farmers cared about came down to solar output. Forget CO2, it was all the sun. We all know that now. Most of you probably know who I’m talking about. Damn, why can’t I remember his name?”

Ringo, John. The Last Centurion (p. 20). Baen Books. Kindle Edition.

Stuck in Iran with his squad, the book’s hero (known by his call-sign “Bandit Six”) discovers that amid the chaos of the pandemic he can’t be extracted back to the US. With refugees gathering outside, he decides the only way to protect the women (sorry “females”) is to bring them inside the camp and the only way to then protect them from his men is if they all get (temporarily) married off to the soldiers and hence act as domestic servants^[2].

“And all they are asking, asking mind you, is if you’re willing to work at cooking and cleaning and, oh, yeah, spending some time on your back. Probably in a bed not the hard desert floor. You’re not being told, mind you. You may not quite realize that, you may be thinking that they’re being nice now but will change their mind soon. But you’re being asked. And asked if others would be willing.”

Ringo, John. The Last Centurion (p. 156). Baen Books. Kindle Edition.

The age of the “females”?

“Did I get my tubes cleaned? Dude, I was the base commander. Her name was Shadi. She was eighteen. The reason I know is that I had a conversation with Hollywood. “How old is this young lady, Hollywood? She’s eighteen, right?” “Uh, sir, she said she thinks she’s … “Eighteen, right?” “Yes, sir! She’s eighteen, sir!”

Ringo, John. The Last Centurion (p. 162). Baen Books. Kindle Edition.

This is not a good book in any sense.

Bandit Six might not know the actual age of his “wife” but he does know the world is cooling and he can see through the fake news spread by the likes of CNN.

“The funny thing was, I knew there was a “cooling trend” going on. The Army knew there was a cooling trend going on. Couldn’t tell it by the news. We were still getting CNN and between the reporting on the Plague they had occasional weather reports. I stopped counting the number of references to “global warming” I got after fifteen in two days. I just quit listening after the damned meteorologist said: “We’re having a cold and wet spring on top of everything else that’s going on due to global warming affecting world-wide ocean currents.” Ocean currents. Ocean currents have a lag that runs from five hundred to ten thousand years. Anything that ocean currents were doing, now, was because of something that happened a long time ago.”

Ringo, John. The Last Centurion (p. 123). Baen Books. Kindle Edition.

Yet despite the imminent cold, people were still thinking there was global warming:

“And there was no “global warming” anymore. Yeah, there had been a slow warming trend going back to a mini-ice age back in the Middle Ages. But we’d stopped warming. Given that it was Old Sol driving it, we might go back to warming soon. From the solar physicist’s predictions, though, it And there was no “global warming” anymore. Yeah, there had been a slow warming trend going back to a mini-ice age back in the Middle Ages. But we’d stopped warming. Given that it was Old Sol driving it, we might go back to warming soon. From the solar physicist’s predictions, though, it wasn’t going to be any time soon. Not the rest of 2019 for sure and probably not 2020. We were cooling off. Fast. And people were still beating the drum of “global warming.””

Ringo, John. The Last Centurion (p. 123). Baen Books. Kindle Edition.

Our multi-talented soldier can even explain the mechanism:

“Cosmic rays are produced from big stars exploding a long way away. They’re all over the place in any galaxy and Earth is constantly bombarded by them. Cosmic rays hitting water droplets in the upper atmosphere form clouds. Those clouds cool the Earth. Cosmic ray impact is controlled by solar winds. What are solar winds? The sun is a big ball of fusing hydrogen that pumps out an enormous amount of power every second. It not only emits heat and light but particles that fly out headed for deep space. Solar wind. When there’s a lot of solar wind, it “blows back” the cosmic rays so less get to Earth. Less cosmic rays, less clouds. Things warm up. More cosmic rays, more clouds, things cool down. Decreased solar activity equals decreased solar wind. Decreased solar wind equals more cosmic rays impacting the Earth. More cosmic rays impacting the Earth equals more clouds. More clouds equal cooler temperatures. QE fucking D. That can be reduced to: Less solar output equals cooler temperatures. But not by direct effect.

“But CO2 tracks with temperature!” Sort of. CO2 increases lag behind temperature increases. CO2 increases in the atmosphere are a result of temperature increases not the cause of temperature increases. They track eight hundred years later. Something that changes eight hundred years later cannot be a cause. It’s an effect. Why? Boyle’s Law. Go see “oceans as CO2 repositories.” It’s okay. I’ll wait. Back? Okay.”

Ringo, John. The Last Centurion (p. 124). Baen Books. Kindle Edition.

Ringo is simply parroting a version of Svensmark’s cosmoclimatology. I don’t know if Ringo had directly read “The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate” or had picked up on earlier accounts of Svensmarks theories but the timing makes sense and it is unlikely that The Last Centurion took a long time to write.

There is a substantial shift here compared to the previous books we looked at. In The Sixth Winter the lead character is also the character who explains climate science and is also an actual climate scientist. In Fallen Angels we have astronauts and science fiction fans, the explanations of the science come from a proxy of popular science writer. In State of Fear the main character is a lawyer and the explainer of the science is some kind of cross between James Bond and a guy with a science blog. With The Last Centurion the science is just stuff that a smart guy in the army knows. It’s not hard, it is just common sense! It’s the sun, affecting cosmic rays!

In 2009 Svensmark went further than predicting a future cooling:

“In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/svensmark-global-warming-stopped-and-a-cooling-is-beginning-enjoy-global-warming-while-it-lasts/

However, Earth’s atmosphere failed to get the memo and global cooling did not emerge.

Next Time: Bits and Pieces

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Footnotes

• [1] It needs to be pointed out that yes, obviously, the sun plays a substantial role in Earth’s climate as the ultimate source of the energy involved. However, the current warming we are experiencing is not due to changes in solar activity.
• [2] I feel like I should make a comment but maybe any is superfluous