Red Dragon Rising & the climate


Rapid climate change in Asia - China, specifically - is a key part of the back-story in the Red Dragon Rising series. Drought and the problems that follow push China to look for a military solution, which in the books begins with the invasion of Vietnam. The U.S., wary of outright war, gets involved in a clandestine campaign to thwart China.

Interestingly, the most controversial aspect of the novels hasn't been China's aggression or even the country they pick on first - it's been the question of whether the weather will really have an impact or not on geopolitical affairs. And whether the weather is REALLY changing.

Admittedly, the books are fiction, where things have to be a bit dramatic. But there are mountains of scientific data indicating that the world's climate is changing. A science writer recently tried to count all of the scientific papers "debating" the issue, and found there is no debate:

Scientists do not disagree about human-caused global warming. It is the ruling paradigm of climate science, in the same way that plate tectonics is the ruling paradigm of geology. We know that continents move. We know that the earth is warming and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary cause. These are known facts about which virtually all publishing scientists agree.
Desmogblog (http://s.tt/1tBXZ)

Or, as his pie chart put it:

(Main link to the entry.)

In terms of the actual plot and story lines in Red Dragon, climate change isn't important at all. You don't need to "believe" in the science behind the book to enjoy the tale itself. And clearly, many people have. I thank them for keeping an open mind.

Still . . .

I think it's more than fair to say that the climate change in the novels is far more dramatic than southern Asia has actually seen (though much of China is under drought conditions, as described in the book, and there have been typhoons similar to those that enter into the story). But I guess I continue to be baffled by claims that there's no such thing as climate change at all.

Debate whether we can do something about it, yes. But the basic underlying facts are not in dispute.