--- title: "Future Tense" canonical: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/30/futures" publication: "The Docket" publisher: "The Docket" language: "en-US" guide: "https://anchor.is/docket/llms.txt" permalink: "https://anchor.is/docket/issue/30/futures" issue: 30 section: "futures" description: "Imagining plausible climate-changed futures to illuminate choices we face today" authors: ["Yuki Tanabe","David Kern"] published: 2026-05-04 updated: 2026-04-29 articles: 9 --- # The Docket > The Docket is a weekly publication about the decisions climate change is already putting in front of Americans: whether to buy the generator, whether the flood insurance is enough, whether to stay in the city you love. It follows the people making those choices now. It treats climate anxiety as a reasonable response to real conditions. It won't tell you what to do, but it shows the tradeoffs clearly. [Read on the website]() ## Issue 30 — Future Tense Imagining plausible climate-changed futures to illuminate choices we face today ### The Count - [The Count]() — By [Yuki Tanabe]() · Published 2026-04-29 · Format: The Count A Cassin's auklet fits entirely in a gloved hand. Alive, it weighs two hundred grams. Dead and starved, it barely dents wet sand. Along the Central California coast, trained volunteers walk measured transects each month, counting what washes ashore. They record species, decomposition state, the presence or absence of oil. A zero is data too. Most months, a zero is what they get. ### The Wrong Summer - [Good Day]() — By [David Kern]() · Published 2026-04-29 · Format: The Wrong Summer The water off Bodega Bay runs in the low fifties in July. Cold enough to seize your chest, send kids back to the blanket after three minutes with white skin and chattering teeth. That's the Northern California coast in summer. Fog so thick you lose the headlands by noon. Rocks packed with murres. Kelp piled knee-deep at the tideline, dark and reeking. You pack sweatshirts for the Fourth of July. You always have. ### The Catch - [Denny Lopes Is Catching Fish He Can't Sell]() — Published 2026-04-29 *Futures is speculative fiction. Denny Lopes does not exist, though by the time you finish reading this, you may find that hard to believe. The ocean he describes is extrapolated from conditions documented through early 2026.* ### The Forecast - [Central Coast Surf Forecast: Morro Bay to Monterey — July 14–16, 2029]() — Published 2026-04-29 CDIP/CeNCOOS Combined Marine Forecast — Updated 0430 PDT Mon July 14 ### The Water - **A 5,000-Mile Marine Heat Wave Is Rewriting What Summer Means in the American West** — [Source]() — Published 2026-04-29 The big picture: a Pacific hot spot from Micronesia to California reshapes wildfire, hurricane, and humidity forecasts. - **Emaciated Seabirds Are Washing Up on California Beaches. The Ocean's Food Web Is Unraveling.** — [Source]() — Published 2026-04-29 Scripps researchers trace mass seabird starvation to collapsing forage fish populations in overheated coastal waters. - **Seven Years of Record Marine Heat Waves — and the Pattern That Won't Break** — [Source]() — Published 2026-04-29 Useful context: this year's ocean anomaly sits inside a seven-year escalation that keeps compounding. - **NOAA Marine Heatwave Tracker** — [Source]() — Published 2026-04-29 Bookmark this. Real-time probability maps, regional forecasts, and the California Current Blobtracker in one place. - **March's Record-Shattering Western Heat Was "Virtually Impossible" Without Climate Change** — [Source]() — Published 2026-04-29 The attribution study linking the same high-pressure system behind the land heat dome to the ocean's thermal spike. ## Other sections in Issue 30 - [Human Stories]() - [Cascading Effects]() - [Emerging Science]() - [Climate Past]() - [The Lab]() ## More - [Publication guide]() - [Issue archive]()