This is an exciting moment, for we have just gone “live” with a new web site that is part informational resource, part weblog, part entertainment, and part online meeting place for anyone who is interested in the future of our planet and the fate of the human race.
Here is the Mission Statement of Star Phoenix Base:
Inspired by the story of The Star Phoenix [a soon-to-be-published novel about which you will learn more in time], this is your portal to the near future. The mission of Star Phoenix Base is to bring you real-world news, research, commentary and analysis about the many dangers and challenges facing humanity and our world. We will seek out and present possible steps that we can take to stave off disaster, and report progress wherever it is being made. We invite you to enlist in Star Phoenix Base to participate in this important mission. By signing on as a registered member, you will be able to participate in our day to day postings by adding your ideas and comments, providing links to new facts, and sharing in a virtual operation with the goal of helping save the very Earth itself.
Although the story of The Star Phoenix is fiction, the facts about global warming and the other dangers we face are very real. Our goal at Star Phoenix Base is to bring these facts into focus and provide a source of information, analysis and discussion on the real scientific, historical, psychological and sociological factors that are driving us toward an uncertain future.
We of the Phoenix Team will present excerpts and links to factual articles from news media, scientific literature, and the internet with our own commentary and analysis. We will also post original articles, commentary, and opinion written from our own points of view. We will encourage feedback and commentary from our visitors. We will create an archive of resources on the broad range of subjects that bear on the future of the world, including climate change, over-population, environmental degradation, international conflict, economics, biotechnology, astronomy and space science, energy … the list is almost endless.
At present, Star Phoenix Base is an empty vessel, waiting only to be filled with a steady flow of news and commentary, discussion and discovery.Join us then for this new adventure.
UPDATE: Star Phoenix Base has been on-line for nearly six months and Val Germann and I have posted more than 200 articles. We are beginning to be noticed. A recent retro-review of The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich brought the following comments from that distinguished scientist and prophet:
I went to your website and read the retrospective review (you are very kind) and also your article [note: "The Malthusian Conundrum" which I mentioned in my letter to him]. Looks like you are doing a great job on the site.
My recent article “The Time to Act on Carbon Emissions is NOW” referred to a paper in SCIENCE Magazine by Reuel Shinnar and Francesco Citro of the Clean Fuels Institute, City College of New York. Dr. Shinnar, a world-famous authority on nuclear power and alternative fuels, had these kind words:
Dear Mr. Brown,
First of all Dr. Citro and I would like to thank you for the attention you dedicated to our paper in your very interesting website, which we will check frequently from now on. But mostly we would like to thank you for pointing out a very critical issue of our paper. Due to some space limitations, we could not clarify as much as we wanted one important issue, $170-200 billions a year is an amount of money absolutely affordable, given the three problems it would solve: global warming, energy independence, and fossil fuels shortage. While some of the readers have been puzzled by the large number, you have been able to put it in the right perspective by comparing it to other numbers in our economy and correctly realized that, not only technologically but even economically, the plan can be surely implemented.
Thanks again and compliments for your website.
With my best regards,Reuel Shinnar