So that’s what climate skeptics need, a “futurist”!

Today’s Washington Post “Outlook” section features an article by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling that needs to be read to be believed. Suffice it to highlight this quote for now. I don’t think it needs any commentary.

“It’s 2007, and the old world has backfired so comprehensively that a new era is truly at hand. I actually knew this would happen. I guess, for a prophet, this is what victory feels like!

“Back in 1998, the Mexican state of Chiapas caught fire and the smoke from its rainless ‘rain forests’ stretched all the way to Chicago. In Austin, my home town, the sky was the color of a dead television channel. Living under that hideous gout of smoke, I realized that the much-anticipated greenhouse effect was as real as dirt. Most people didn’t grasp that at the time. That’s okay by me: If everybody got it about issues of that sort, I wouldn’t get paid for being a futurist. As it happened, though, five years earlier I’d written a science-fiction novel about climate change. So I was fully briefed.”