Here we are in America with the aftermath of a snow and cold disaster recently that killed a lot of innocents.  But is that new?  Noooo, it isn’t and it will get worse if the climate change and anti-fossil fuel fanatics have their way. 

We are also dealing with the nonstop environmentalism push for alternatives for fossil fuels: solar and wind.  Catch your breath: the warmers assert the planet is boiling and the warming, caused by carbon dioxide emissions that will kill the human population with bad weather, rising oceans, name it—the catastrophe is all about carbon dioxide causing warming.  They prescribe poorly productive “renewable resources” to substitute for fossil fuels that have created the current prosperous economies. Their ideology defeats good sense.  They have no clue about practical ways to produce the energy essential for life and survival in our climate.

Daniel Church (a pseudonym) has been working on this subject for some time and he felt compelled to write a novel, Winter Games, offering a commonsense assessment of living on a cold planet.  It puts on display the mindless nonsense of climate fanatics, and the question: can we promote the warming catastrophe narrative and its proposed solutions of wind turbines and solar when the planet is still a place where people can die of exposure to cold, not just in the extreme polar climes but in the moderate climes?   

I had access to the author and interviewed him by email.  I found him to be well informed, a great researcher and committed to exposing the insanity of the climate change fanatics.  He recognized long ago the problem of the idiotic claim that warming will destroy the planet (think Al Gore) and will boil us to death. He is motivated by his disgust for lies and the thousands of people who have died already from energy starvation in the “so-called” moderate climes—places like England and Europe, because people couldn’t afford to pay for heat.

Daniel Church has written a compelling novel on the realities that cannot be denied—if you sat in a room at the average temperature of the planet with a little breeze created by some fans, wearing clothes suited to hot summer days, you wouldn’t survive for two days. You would die of hypothermia.

The thought experiment applies to people trying to survive in homes that are deprived of heat or intentionally reduced of heat because of economics.  Sure, the well to do can afford to set the thermostat at a livable level, but what about the less fortunate who has to balance and make calls on how they will spend their limited funds?  That’s for first world countries—how ‘bout third world countries that are living in severe poverty?  They aren’t all tropical countries. Hypothermia is not an invention, it is a reality, and it is worse if you in are water that is less than 60 degrees.

In Winter Games, climate scientists, angered by the deaths of thousands due to cold, and rejecting the climate propaganda scam, decide to publicly and on social media commit suicide by climate—reproducing the “cool” conditions of the average planet temperature (59 degrees Fahrenheit) along with the mild breeze that exists on the planet on the average.  They commit suicide by low temperature on social media to expose the lies of the warmists. That’s the fundamental element of the story and what develops around the story is a compelling and interesting. They become, in the novel, a series of prominent scientists labeled the ‘59ers.

After a number of these public suicides by rational climate scientists to expose the insanity of the climate and environmental nut cases, the public outcry and reaction compels the media to have a debate broadcast to the world at large by a representative from each side of the issue. Our hero is a volcano expert, Whit, against a physicist named Jones, a long time shill for the warmists/climate changers.

The broadcast debate goes badly for the bad guys—and the story gets to be more fun for our side than I can or should describe here.  You need to experience it.  After that, I wouldn’t want to keep you from the pleasure of watching the conclusions.  Excitement, conflict, bad guy loses, good guys win with the help of some well-directed bad guys.  I can make a good case for making Daniel Church’s Winter Games into a movie. The story begs to be told on the screen; the drama would certainly be a good vengeance movie… and who doesn't like vengeance movies?

Mr. Church’s book reminded me of another climate change/enviro book—Michael Crichton’s State of Fear (2004) that did an equally good job of exposing the bad guy element of the enviro movement. Crichton’s book was never made into a movie.

Mr. Church develops the characters and the story line like a talented genius—I like his characters, the bad guys and the good guys, because he made them real.  He made the romantic relationships real, the familial tensions for the main players real, and he made the climax of the book as good as the best movie thriller—good guys win, bad guys lose, it’s Miller time.

Take this book for a ride -- you won’t regret it.

John Dale Dunn MD JD is a retired emergency physician and inactive attorney in Brownwood, Texas