Forty Signs of Rain [Paperback]

The bestselling author of the classic Mars trilogy andThe Years of Rice and Saltpresents a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation’s capital—and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly yet humorously realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines.

 When the Arctic ice pack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke.

The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May.

That was last year.

It’s a muggy summer in Washington, D.C., as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler and his scientist wife, Anna, work to call attention to the growing crisis of global warming. But as these everyday heroes fight to align the awesome forces of nature with the extraordinary march of technology, fate puts an unusual twist on their efforts—one that will place them at the heart of an unavoidable storm.Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of ten previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy andThe Years of Rice and Salt, named one of the best science fiction novels of 2002 byBookmagazine. He lives in Davis, California.I

The

Buddha

Arrives


The Earth is bathed in a flood of sunlight. A fierce inundation of photons—on average, 342 joules per second per square meter. 4185 joules (one calorie) will raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. If all this energy were captured by the Earth's atmosphere, its temperature would rise by ten degrees Celsius in one day.

Luckily much of it radiates back to space. How much depends on albedo and the chemiclG