AND NOW FOR SOMETHING TOTALLY DIFFERENT... When I was younger I used to write fiction & non-fiction but I have held back my creativity since then because I don't have time to write anymore. But I've been inspired by the last two unusually cold, snowy winters here in Pennsylvania and by Joe Bastardi's teachings about the possibility that the next 50 years could hold Global Cooling instead of warming. I think it's an interesting topic to explore, and is something that's not really being done elsewhere.

The first chapter has been posted below and also other people have contributed additional chapters on the Forums.

Despite the time of day and year it was getting dark fast. The wind howled around me as snow fell in spurts. It seemed like it was always dark anymore as the persistent jet stream kept snow storms tracking through the Northern Fringe (NF) States.

I was hoofing it -- "unexpected" Global Cooling had hit the economy hard over the last 10 years and gas was upward of $30 a gallon. The good news was that cold-weather clothes were easy to come by and I only lived a mile and a half away from the building.

I wondered again why the Myers brothers (only Evan was still officially working but clearly Barry and even Grandpa Joel still had pull) were stubborn enough to keep the private weather company's headquarters in a NF State when most of the populace had fled the icy depths of this latitude.

Even New York City was mostly gone, between the battering Nor'easters that frequently put the city under frozen water and the ubiquity of telecommuting which made business space irrelevant in this decade. Only the poorest people who couldn't afford to move south inhabited the once grand skyscrapers there. Detroit was long abandoned and Chicago wasn't doing much better. Canada was all but empty. If only we could have seen a global 10-degree average temperature drop coming... what was then referred to as "The Big Ice Age" was not anticipated fully by even the much-heralded (and now retired) Joe Bastardi.

The place to be was in the DMCC (Dallas-Memphis City Corridor) or the great sprawling Atlanta-Charlotte Metro Strip, or Florida, now with extra beaches due to expanding ice caps. Weather wasn't great there either, heck these days snowstorms routinely made it down to Puerto Rico, but the climate in the southern cities was akin to the Northeast in the late 1990's, so it was at least livable.

Rounding a turn through a snow drift 20 feet tall on both sides, dug out hourly as the northern version of a sidewalk by some of the only auto-diggers left in town, I could see the dim lights of the red AccuWeather sign in the distance as the whiteout eased momentarily. The red light cut out occasionally; this far north utilities were spotty at best. Maya barked at its inconsistency.

"I should be telecommuting tonight too," I said to her when a beep in my ear an incoming news headline flashed in front of me - a ghost projected by my contacts - "AL GORE, 84, ISSUES FINAL APOLOGY FROM DEATH BED". I didn't know if it was a joke or not, to be honest. I'd look at that later, I had to concentrate on getting to work for now. Even teleworkers had to check in every now and then.

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