A bad novel badly written

I write reviews for an online site, TCM Reviews. They pay less then peanuts for the reviews, but it's a way to get some free publicity and help promote books I like. (I also review for POD People, which specializes in self-published stuff.)

As part of my reviewer's duties, TCM Reviews sent me a SF novel to look at. No, I'm not going to name book or author because, frankly, it's embarrassingly bad. As the title of this post says, it's a bad novel badly written. Bad science, bad plot, weak characters and poor writing. Tami Brady, the owner of TCM, and I have agreed to not post a review. I'm surprised the novel got published, because the publishing house, although tiny, doesn't look like a vanity or self-pub shop.

In our discussions, Tami said something in her email that I'd like to quote. "It's kind of a double edged sword eh? Getting critiqued is the only way we grow as writers but often we don't realize that until we stick around for a while and get comfortable in our writing skin."

So, I've offered to send my comments directly and privately to the author. We'll see what happens.

Global Warming on Mars and English Wine

I read a number of blogs, including Jerry Pournelle's blog "Chaos Manor." Now, Jerry is a smart man, with the degrees in aerospace engineering to prove it. On his blog, he asks two questions about global warming. First, he asks "why is the Martian ice cap shrinking?" and second, "didn't they used to make wine in England?" The implications of both of these questions is that at least some global warming is caused by solar or other non man made effects. So I decided to do some research.

First, I Googled "Martian ice caps." A number of hits came up, enough to convince me that there was something to it. Then I dug a little bit deeper. It seems that most if not all of the shrinkage observed was from the southern hemisphere. This is significant. The southern ice cap is almost all CO2, which sublimates, and the ice cap is very shallow there. Also, the terrain in the southern hemisphere is weird, even by Martian standards. The southern ice cap is not centered on the pole, but offset, due to permanent high and low pressure zones caused by the massive elevation changes. In short, the southern ice cap is unstable, and generally will fluctuate wildly. See realclimate.org for a good summary.

Jerry's next question, raising grapes in England, is somewhat more obscure. this site mentions that there were 46 vineyards in England circa 1100, but almost none by 1500. There does appear to be some climatic root to this - all the vineyards listed were no more then 50 kilometers north of London. 1500 is about when Henry VIII abolished the monasteries (which were major wine producers) but it is also towards the middle of the Little Ice Age. Realclimate's article on this subject is rather snippy, but generally doesn't dispute the fact of wine production.

What does this all mean? Well, I don't think we can rely on Martian glaciation to get clues as to Terran climate. The "wine in England" data point seems suggestive that the Medieval Warm Period was real. What it doesn't tell us is what's causing this warm period.