Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk and baroque.
Gregory Dale Bear was an American science fiction writer. His work covered themes of galactic conflict, parallel universes, consciousness and cultural practices, and accelerated evolution. His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.
Snow Crash is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, its themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.
Global dimming is a decline in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface. It is caused by atmospheric particulate matter, predominantly sulfate aerosols, which are components of air pollution. Global dimming was observed soon after the first systematic measurements of solar irradiance began in the 1950s. This weakening of visible sunlight proceeded at the rate of 4–5% per decade until the 1980s. During these years, air pollution increased due to post-war industrialization. Solar activity did not vary more than the usual during this period.
A space sunshade or sunshield is a parasol that diverts or otherwise reduces some of the Sun's radiation, preventing it from hitting a spacecraft or planet and thereby reducing its insolation, which results in reduced heating. Light can be diverted by different methods. The concept of the construction of sunshade as a method of climate engineering dates back to the years 1923, 1929, 1957 and 1978 by the physicist Hermann Oberth. Space mirrors in orbit around the Earth with a diameter of 100 to 300 km, as designed by Hermann Oberth, are intended to focus sunlight on individual regions of the Earth’s surface or deflect it into space so that the solar radiation is weakened in a specifically controlled manner for individual regions on the Earth’s surface.
Lucifer's Hammer is a science fiction post-apocalypse-survival novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle that was first published in 1977. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978. Two issues of a planned six-part comic book adaptation were published by Innovation Comics in 1993.
Climate engineering is the intentional large-scale alteration of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change. The term has been used as an umbrella term for both carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification when applied at a planetary scale. However, these two processes have very different characteristics, and are now often discussed separately. Carbon dioxide removal techniques remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and are part of climate change mitigation. Solar radiation modification is the reflection of some sunlight back to space to cool the earth. Some publications include passive radiative cooling as a climate engineering technology. The media tends to also use climate engineering for other technologies such as glacier stabilization, ocean liming, and iron fertilization of oceans. The latter would modify carbon sequestration processes that take place in oceans.
Charles Chowkai Yu is an American writer. He is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown, as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. In 2007 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. In 2020, Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for fiction. Yu created a television adaptation of Interior Chinatown which premiered in 2024.
References to climate change in popular culture have existed since the late 20th century and increased in the 21st century. Climate change, its impacts, and related human-environment interactions have been featured in nonfiction books and documentaries, but also literature, film, music, television shows and video games.
Solar radiation modification (SRM), are large-scale approaches to limit global warming by increasing the amount of sunlight that is reflected away from Earth and back to space. Among the multiple potential approaches, stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is the most-studied, followed by marine cloud brightening (MCB). SRM could be a supplement to climate change mitigation measures, but would not be a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. SRM is commonly about using atmospheric methods but can also be with ground-based albedo modification (GBAM). Space-based concepts also exist but are not currently included in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report as a relevant option. SRM is a form of climate engineering.
Arctic geoengineering is a type of climate engineering in which polar climate systems are intentionally manipulated to reduce the undesired impacts of climate change. As a proposed solution to climate change, arctic geoengineering is relatively new and has not been implemented on a large scale. It is based on the principle that Arctic albedo plays a significant role in regulating the Earth's temperature and that there are large-scale engineering solutions that can help maintain Earth's hemispheric albedo. According to researchers, projections of sea ice loss, when adjusted to account for recent rapid Arctic shrinkage, indicate that the Arctic will likely be free of summer sea ice sometime between 2059 and 2078. Advocates for Arctic geoengineering believe that climate engineering methods can be used to prevent this from happening.
Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is a proposed method of solar geoengineering to reduce global warming. This would introduce aerosols into the stratosphere to create a cooling effect via global dimming and increased albedo, which occurs naturally from volcanic winter. It appears that stratospheric aerosol injection, at a moderate intensity, could counter most changes to temperature and precipitation, take effect rapidly, have low direct implementation costs, and be reversible in its direct climatic effects. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that it "is the most-researched [solar geoengineering] method that it could limit warming to below 1.5 °C (2.7 °F)." However, like other solar geoengineering approaches, stratospheric aerosol injection would do so imperfectly and other effects are possible, particularly if used in a suboptimal manner.
David W. Keith is a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He joined the University of Chicago in April 2023. Keith previously served as the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics for Harvard University's Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and professor of public policy for the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. Early contributions include development of the first atom interferometer and a Fourier-transform spectrometer used by NASA to measure atmospheric temperature and radiation transfer from space.
Novim is a non-profit group at the University of California, Santa Barbara that organizes teams for objective scientific study of global issues and identification options for addressing the concerns, based upon a collaborative problem-solving approach used in the field of physics.
Climate fiction is literature that deals with climate change. Generally speculative in nature but inspired by climate science, works of climate fiction may take place in the world as we know it, in the near future, or in fictional worlds experiencing climate change. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. Climate fiction typically involves anthropogenic climate change and other environmental issues as opposed to weather and disaster more generally. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society.
Shovel Ready is a science fiction novel by Sternbergh. It is Sternbergh's first novel and was released on January 14, 2014, by the Crown Publishing Group.
Poseidon's Wake is a science fiction novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. It forms the conclusion of Reynolds' Poseidon's Children future history trilogy, which follows the expansion of humanity and its transhuman descendants into the galaxy over the course of many centuries. Poseidon's Wake follows Blue Remembered Earth (2012) and On the Steel Breeze (2013), and was published by Gollancz on 30 April 2015.
Gernot Wagner is an Austro-American climate economist at Columbia Business School, where he is a tenured full professor. He holds an AB and a PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University, as well as an MA in economics from Stanford University. A founding co-director of Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program (2017-2019) he joined the faculty of New York University in 2019, moving to Columbia University in 2022. Wagner writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate, and is the co-author, with Martin L. Weitzman, of Climate Shock, a Top 15 Financial Times-McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2015. He won the "Austrian of the Year" award in 2022, awarded by Austrian daily Die Presse.
Fall; or, Dodge in Hell is a 2019 speculative fiction novel by American author Neal Stephenson. The book explores mind-uploading to the Cloud, from the perspective of Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, a character introduced in Stephenson's 2011 Reamde.
The Ministry for the Future is a climate fiction ("cli-fi") novel by American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson published in 2020. Set in the near future, the novel follows a subsidiary body, established under the Paris Agreement, whose mission is to act as an advocate for the world's future generations of citizens as if their rights were as valid as the present generation's. While they pursue various ambitious projects, the effects of climate change are determined to be the most consequential. The plot primarily follows Mary Murphy, the head of the titular Ministry for the Future, and Frank May, an American aid worker traumatized by experiencing a deadly heat wave in India. Many chapters are devoted to other characters' accounts of future events, as well as their ideas about ecology, economics, and other subjects.
