On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:44:44 -0700 (PDT), you wrote: > > >On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Robert Sallade wrote: > >> At 11:47 AM 7/23/04, Philip Hart wrote: >> >[possible eentsie spoiler for the Piroiad] >> > > Heck, we still don't know what the Overcast actually /is/, do we? >> > > What parts of sunlight does it block? How much? >> > >> >I'm under the impression that we know the Overcast is industrial >> >pollution - I think it is observed to recede during the Interregnum. >> >> I thought the Overcast was analogous with CFC emissions. Namely the use of >> sorcery creating an atmospheric residue; a by-product of the transformed >> amorphia where the energy is used but not all the matter is transformed to >> energy. If it were simply industrial in nature I don't think it would have >> lessened during the Interregnum. > > >Sorry - I was using "industrial" loosely - in the Dragaeran context >sorcery is industry. In the snippage I said the updated Orb might be >"a cleaner technology". But we still don't know what it does, exactly, and how it interacts with the vegetation on Dragaera. What if the only thing it cuts from the sun's radiation is a specific element of the visible spectrum, and the plants have evolved (or been engineered with) an alternate form of photosynthesis?