Conworld random thread

[Travis B.]

To me "plaster" is very marked and is not a word that is in my vocabulary with that meaning. I watch quite a bit of British TV yet the word still sticks out as being very foreign to me in this usage.

What would you call a bandage then, as opposed to a bandaid/plaster? Do you just not distinguish them outside medical contexts? I mean the distinction between an adhesive strip (Plaster, German (Heft)pflaster) and a dressing made of gauze or something similar (Bandage, Verband).

A bandaid is a type of bandage to me.

[Lērisama]

A bandaid is a type of bandage to me.

I think I would consider a bandaid/plaster to be merely a type of bandage. (Like Travis, I recognise ‘plaster’ but it is not part of my native vocabulary with this meaning.)

Okay. For me the generic term is ‘dressing’¹, and I'd consider ‘plaster’ (bandaid) and ‘bandage’ to be separate categories. I assume I've come across this usage before in non-UK media, but I never would have thought that ‘bandage’ might refer to what I would call a ‘plaster’, before today.

---

Raphael, uncapitalised band(-)aid is probably your best bet. It is marked as foreign here, but it will be understood, probably more recognised than ‘plaster’ is outside the UK, and you're aiming for American English anyway. Please don't use ‘bandage’ to refer to one, because it will either mislead your British audience, or strike them as an error.

¹ Albeit mainly used in a medical context

[Raphael]

Raphael, uncapitalised band(-)aid is probably your best bet. It is marked as foreign here, but it will be understood, probably more recognised than ‘plaster’ is outside the UK, and you're aiming for American English anyway. Please don't use ‘bandage’ to refer to one, because it will either mislead your British audience, or strike them as an error.

¹ Albeit mainly used in a medical context

Thank you!

[Raphael]

A bandaid is a type of bandage to me.

I'd say that the part of me that got some limited medical training long ago kind of agrees with you, while the rest of me agrees with Lērisama.

[malloc]

One thing I have wondered is whether global warming could open up new areas like parts of Antarctica to settlement. Obviously the wider effects of significant global warming would be catastrophic for the setting, possibly rendering other areas uninhabitable. Nonetheless, if my setting takes place in the coming centuries, this is something to consider.

[Moose-tache]

IIUC, the problem is the cool summer. The tip of the Antarctic Peninsula currently has a mean annual temperature similar to that of Yakutsk, around -8. But in Yakutsk, the summers are reasonably warm, being in the teens and twenties for months at a time. For this reason, the permafrost begins about a meter down (give or take), and you will see forests of larch, and gardens with cucumbers and tomatoes. Meanwhile, on the Antarctic Peninsula, the lower seasonal variation means that even the warmest months often average sub-zero temperatures. On the northwest coast, if you're lucky, you'll get a few consecutive days and nights above freezing each year, and a bunch of days that thaw between freezing nights. In the south or east it's even worse.

This means that even though the temperature isn't too apocalyptic overall, if you want ground and air that's warm enough to have a growing season, you'll need to increase the overall temperature by a lot. To get to Yakutsk levels, we're talking double digit increases in the mean annual temperature. At that point, the whole planet would be unrecognizable.

[malloc]

This means that even though the temperature isn't too apocalyptic overall, if you want ground and air that's warm enough to have a growing season, you'll need to increase the overall temperature by a lot. To get to Yakutsk levels, we're talking double digit increases in the mean annual temperature. At that point, the whole planet would be unrecognizable.

Drat. Looks like my conpeople will need to find somewhere else to live. Admittedly my grim future scenario assumes that global warming does get pretty serious, but there are obvious limits from a conworlding perspective, since humans must survive.

[Moose-tache]

One hurdle with this sort of approach is that places getting warmer is only a minor effect of climate change. Under the more pessimistic but realistic projections for the near future, say 2.5 to 3 degrees warming, terrible things would happen to agriculture, coastlines, etc. But an actual 2~3 degree increase in temperature is easily dwarfed by normal seasonal variation. In most place you'd barely notice if it weren't for all the knock-on effects to plants and animals and rainfall. For example, the mean annual temperature of Ottawa is about 2 degrees lower than Toronto, but saying "climate change will make Ottawa feel like Toronto" isn't very impactful. Looking at Canadian climate data, even a 4 degree temperature increase (basically a world-ending scenario) only shifts the temperature isoclines north by about 400 km, give or take 200.

Point is, you're not going to find a place that's very cold now that's going to be temperate after climate change. It might be drier, or subject to mass extinctions, or full of an unusual amount of war, but the actual temperature will only change a little. The only places that will become habitable are the places that are already on the edge of habitability now, and that's assuming they don't get wrecked by changing rain patterns, etc.

[jal]

One hurdle with this sort of approach is that places getting warmer is only a minor effect of climate change. (...) Point is, you're not going to find a place that's very cold now that's going to be temperate after climate change.

It's a fact that Antarctica had, in at least part of the Mesozoic, a moderate climate, a time when the average global temperature was at least 6C higher than today.


JAL

[malloc]

It's a fact that Antarctica had, in at least part of the Mesozoic, a moderate climate, a time when the average global temperature was at least 6C higher than today.

True enough, but the continents had very different positions then and that would have undoubtedly impacted climate in various ways.

[jal]

True enough, but the continents had very different positions then and that would have undoubtedly impacted climate in various ways.

Not quite, the continents were by-and-large in their current positions, with some exceptions, but of course the sea level was much higher (no land ice) so there was a lot more ocean.


JAL

[bradrn]

True enough, but the continents had very different positions then and that would have undoubtedly impacted climate in various ways.

Not quite, the continents were by-and-large in their current positions, with some exceptions, but of course the sea level was much higher (no land ice) so there was a lot more ocean.

From a climatic point of view I really don’t think that counts as ‘in their current positions’.

[Moose-tache]

Yeah, when we talk about climate we're dealing with huge knock-on effects of relatively small and hard to predict changes. Intricate models break down under the strain of small externalities. I'm trying to guess what a certain part of Antarctica would be like during part of the year based on two or three specific processes, and that's already pretty speculative. Saying "but they had dinosaurs!" is really beyond the scope of near-future climatic tweaks. If that's al you need to feel confident about writing a story about farmers at McMurdo in 2150, by all means go ahead. But you're fully writing fantasy, and should approach the process of building the reader's suspension of disbelief accordingly.

[bradrn]

I'm trying to guess what a certain part of Antarctica would be like during part of the year based on two or three specific processes, and that's already pretty speculative.

Say more please? (Speaking as someone whose PhD is in that general area.)

[Moose-tache]

It's not that deep. I just mean we can try to guess how an increase in temperature might affect an oceanic and continental climate differently. Antarctica doesn't have a monsoon, and Siberia doesn't have a circumpolar current. We have to look at how those processes work to understand how a change in temperature might affect habitability. My point is that even that is speculative (ocean currents are already being affected by changing temperature), so going back to the Mesozoic makes it almost impossible to estimate the effect of changes, because we have even less concrete understanding of the specific processes acting on each location.

[bradrn]

Er… rereading I realise I had completely misunderstood your post. Sorry about that.

(For some reason I had a vague memory that your job was geoscience-related and I thought you were talking about actual Antarctic climate research. But no, it was just a reference to a few posts up.)

[Moose-tache]

I did work at a petroleum engineering research lab for a while, but doing communications, not actual science.