Pinatubo II
Page 13
Chapter 11
Vince trailed along the basement hallway after Brad to the door, and as they entered realized this was that meeting room where he first talked with his new friend.
“Hey, Vince.” Brad called back over his shoulder. “Our number three has arrived.”
They walked in to find a very North American woman sitting at the table nursing a coffee. Brad walked over with a broad smile and an extended hand.
“Jeri Able,” she said, rising stiffly. “I’m the modelling analyst.”
Vince glanced her way again, forming the impression she was an attractive enough older woman. He wandered over to the coffee machine to refill his cup, glaring briefly at the air conditioning controls. His harsh look softened. What had it been, ten days now? Could be he had adjusted to the heat, to the situation, to other realities…somewhat.
“Did you just arrive?” Brad was asking.
“Yesterday.”
“Right on.” Brad’s eyes wrinkled into his smile. “How were your flight connections?’
“Acceptable.”
Vince and Brad walked over to the table and found places in the hard chairs. They looked at each other, then at their newest team member.
“So, Jeri, you'll be running our climate model?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Jeri said. “They want onsite impact estimates of our little smog project. You guys have some data for me, or so I’m told.”
“Well, we’ve run a simple lift so far, mostly testing the mechanics and the release process.” Brad spread his hands palms up, shrugging. “And now, we’re expanding our design based on that. So what’d we release this morning Vince, three tons? That’s it, that’s our Initialize. We’re working on a way to retrieve the balloons for reuse. So we haven’t really moved much load upstairs yet at all.”
“Yeah,” Vince agreed. “Three tons of sulphur dioxide. On top of that Preliminary hundred kilos.”
“Well, excellent,” Jeri said with a flare. “So you guys just give me the data you’ve got. With that, I start calibrating the climate model.” She tapped her finger at the visiscreen in front of her. “Three tons fits in loosely with what I’ve got for a project description, says here ‘a preparatory test involving several tons.’ Any numbers on any release make for a starting point.” Her face eased. “We’ll be setting most of our initial parameter estimates based on the Initialize phase—that was one of the reasons for it. Also helps us get a finer adjustment on some other standard model definitions. For a final run, output quality would not be up to par.” She shrugged. “But we can do a functional run now and we extrapolate from there.”
Her face stiffened towards Brad. “So get me that data.”
“Right, sure, okay. How would you like to connect?”
“An infogram works.” Jeri gave them an address, then pointed to a large data traveller beside her jPad. “This software takes up significant memory and then each run output is humongous. Depending on how things develop, I can give you guys directory access.”
“Cool,” Brad said. “What kinda software you run?”
Jeri told them about her Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, her CMIP5 climate model. “I speak to my code with a gender touch…and I classify her as female. So she’s my pet chimp.” Jeri shrugged. “Good to have a relationship with your work.” She told the engineers that her chimp allowed a variety of hypothetical scenarios and could also process the impact of regional variations. Like small or large local artificial volcanic simulations. “Obviously very important for our little smog-on-purpose project. You guys probably know sulphur dioxide at ground level is the primary source of urban smog.” Brad and Vince looked at each other. “So if carbon dioxide were visible like smog I wonder if we’d notice the greenhouse gas effect better? We being people in general. You know we dump forty times the weight of carbon into our atmosphere as we dump in our landfills. If carbon were visible we’d have cleaned it up long ago.”
They looked at her, neither speaking.
“People.” She half sighed, shaking her head grimly. “Anyway this is our climate model. So after the output we get based on your Initialize data, the model runs become iterative. Our little chimp will apply the output from that run to help define our first phase. An improved definition in the model. Then, after we get numbers from the Phase 1 release, the input helps us calibrate for Phase II. And so on. If and when they ever give us a definition of those phases.”
They nodded, relaxing a little.
“Now back to people. What do you guys think of all this?” Vince noticed Jeri getting all revved up. “All these partially defined phases; you guys got a feel yet for how this experimental project is gonna really play itself out? Out there in the wide world, I mean.”
Vince and Brad gave her a questioning look. She went on. “The way I see it, this little sulphur experiment of ours isn’t all that different from our global carbon experiment.” She shook her head. “And when it comes to how people operate…you can easily say, wow, look how that one’s turning out.”
Vince’s eyes widening as his heart pumped an extra beat. “Absolutely,” he heard himself say.
“People,” Jeri repeated.
She looked back and forth between the two, while they waited, almost as cautious schoolboys.
“You know, Jeri,” Brad said grinning. “You sure got a way with words.”
She went on. “Listen, did you notice cigarette smoking’s not allowed in this hotel meeting room.” Her look turned severe, and she jabbed her finger into the table. “Here. In this obscure desert country somewhere out in Africa. Even here someone’s learned that human caused smoke in the air turns out to be a health problem.” She let that sit for a moment. “At the same time, people dump spent hydrocarbon emissions into public air anywhere out there in the world.” She waved her hand around. “Now tell me, does that make the least bit of sense?”
“Not really,” Brad nodded.
“You guys into psychology?” She asked. “An expanded study coming out of the Argosy school of psychology says when it comes to climate change people need to be convinced of four things. The first would be that a problem exists. So for you guys, do we have a climate change problem? Or what?”
“Yeah well kind of,” Vince said. “I mean I’m from Alberta. Canada. The primary industry in Alberta is still oil and gas. You know, the tar sands. So what you are talking about isn’t exactly a popular topic.”
“Well, I’m from Chicago where there are some pretty prominent psychologists. People who wanna understand people. People who’ve gotten a little past that ‘let’s pretend it isn’t happening’ stage, and want to have a good look at reality. So the second thing people need to know is that it is bad for people to do nothing about it.”
“Right.”
“You had extreme weather in Alberta not long ago, am I right? Like flooding? Droughts? Wildfires?”
“Well yes.” Vince nodded. “Alberta’s adapting.”
“Then the third thing people have to accept is that people caused the problem. Now that’s the one that gets a lot of push back. So where do you guys stand?”
“Yeah, no doubt.” Brad nodded. “In the Pacific North West we talk that way.”
“Just a minute, though, I am not sure I get the relevance. I mean does it matter who or what caused a problem,” Vince said, “when you know the problem exists? Would you not want to solve the problem, independent of the cause?”
She stared hard at Vince for a moment. “Good point, we should talk more on that one.” She glanced back to bring Brad in again. “And then number four, now listen to me on this one, ‘cause this is the one that should grab you. People have to know that the problem can be solved. Hey, you guys are engineers, right? Solving problems, that’s what you do. And that is what this little project we are working on is all about.”
They sat quietly for a moment.
“People.” Jeri touched her visiscreen.
“You guys know we developed around her
e? People, our species I mean, on the plains of Africa?”
“Absolutely.” Vince chimed in. “We sure as a fact did. Our species’ registries would have Africa marked in as place of birth.”
Jeri stared at Vince, her eyes shifting back and forth. “And somewhere along that path of progress we developed in a way so crisis management comes a lot more natural to us than wise future planning.” She enunciated each word. “A change in behavior still has to feel right according to what happened out on the savannah.” People only transition when they have to, not when it’s a wise idea. They only do something different if ‘necessary’. Jeri was explicit. So the question glared: how do you make it necessary? Her voice trailed off as she talked towards her jPad visiscreen, half under her breath. “Gotta make you fit for that clever biological chimp, that monkey species with the enlarged brain …”
“Okay, so I got your data and I’ll start this initial run.” She made a final touch on screen. “Could take some time.”
She looked up at the engineers.
“You guys ever heard of Dunbar’s number? That would be about one hundred and fifty individuals that make up your tribe. They’d be the who-you-know group. Or the us part of us-versus-them. Now that is a number that comes straight from the savannah. Inside our one fifty group, we need empathy and ethics and communication so all of us become one and stay on the ‘us’ side.”
She looked directly at Vince. He nodded cautiously.
“There’s another Argosy study,” she went on. “That one concludes we need to make the major leap out of being a small group animal directly into the status of a global animal. And with our climate crisis, like now. The whole us-versus-others world approach just does not work anymore. We’ve got some serious fast track evolving to do in a fast paced timeframe. Them has to become part of us and then on top of that our behavior has to be the new common enemy. What we do has to become the new them.”
“Yeah, I see it that way.” Brad brightened. “Nuclear family first, extended family as much as possible. Then local community fits the Dunbar tribe if you want to call it that.” He looked at the others, smiling. “And I like how you put that, we need a global animal. ‘Cause the way I see it, we have a real opportunity to do just that. Lots of motivation for a much better world…so cool.”
“You’re one of those goddam optimists.”
Brad beamed at her.
Jeri didn’t stop. She went on to highlight her critical view of the human experience. She shook her head, not tiring. Brad and Vince eyed each other across the table, carefully sipping their coffee.
“You play crib, Jeri?” Brad asked finally.
“What’s that?”
Brad pulled the deck of cards from his carry bag.