On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, lazarus wrote: > 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? I think (someone with actual biology/physiology expertise will correct me) that our eyes and plants operate near the same frequency, so if it's darker for us it's darker for them (assuming earth grains anyway). I think Vlad suggests the Overcast leaves some red light, which would mean less energy available in what sunlight there is. To make my assumption explicit, I take it that the plants were efficient before the Overcast, that light is a limiting resource for them, and that the Dragaerans haven't been able to rewrite the basic chemical pathways of plants to make up for the failing light.