Pinatubo II

by Les W Kuzyk

  Chapter 28

  They sat across the table from each other, the afternoon sun filtering in a soft dance through poolside palm fronds. “Sulphur dioxide is an opaque gas in the upper Venusian atmosphere.” Tamanna spoke to Vince over her coffee cup. “But the sulphur scattering effect is totally overridden by the CO2 impact of layers below. Though sulphur gas reflects and diffuses incoming sunlight, the carbon dioxide strata keep the surface temperature hotter than any planet in our solar system. That same sulphur gas forms the thick Venusian clouds blocking our view of the landscape.”

  “Huh.” Vince was picking up more on the chemistry and climates of other solar bodies. The chemistry between him and the soft face before him need be his only to know. No romance imaginings allowed, he needed drama contrasting the Earth of today, or before the steam engine with any Earth of the future.

  “Venus may have had a climate similar to ours at one time,” Tamanna said. “But now, not at all. Venus is essentially isothermal, whereas planet Earth has wide variations in temperature.” The diurnal cycle of day and night and the high latitude seasonal fluctuations. With all these coolings and warmings science needed speak in terms of a mean. That explained the 2 degree danger line as a global average.

  “Right. So what about that 2 degree line.” Vince needed more on home planet. “What’s the danger?”

  So that two degrees global average, Tami told him, was based on thousands of weather stations measuring temperatures for decades, a significant number back to the 1880s. “At an Oxford conference I heard the satire: ‘who needs coral reefs anyway?’ A pretty divisive remark.” She frowned. “A crude joke, perhaps, but totally true. That’s a loss we get with 2 degrees.” Water temperature and ocean acidification were not friendly towards coral; the temperature killed off the polyps and the acid ate up the little houses each one built. “So even if we don’t exceed our 2 degree danger line, we still kill off our reefs. The Australian Great Barrier goes; bleaching they call it. And even if tiny resilient reef patches survive, global reefs face significant biodiversity loss. Even if we don’t pass 2 degrees, we mess up our planet.”

  “Yeah, shit,” Vince said. “And if we do go past two?”.

  “Well, that Oxford conference went under that title. ‘Why we should completely avoid a 4 degree world.’ In a world like that, the temperature increase on land would be one or two degrees hotter than 4, as land heats up more than the ocean. And the northern latitudes double that heat load, as higher latitudes capture more heat than the mid-latitudes. We’d be approaching the Miocene-like world of 25 million years ago”

  He stared.

  “That was an ice free world.” She held her coffee cup in both hands, looking at Vince. “That would only be an overview without getting into much detail.”

  “People. What about people?”

  “A 4 degree world this century would kill a lot of people. More poor than wealthy, but everyone would feel the impact.”

  “Brad found a 4 degree global map,” he said. “The Sahel dries right up. North Africa becomes a no go zone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not good.”

  “No. And temperature change would not be uniform. The Arctic gets over 10 degrees warmer, and in the continental United States more than 6 degrees higher. The Palmer drought index measures cumulative balance of precipitation and evaporation relative to local conditions. In other words, what’s locally normal. Or, what would have been normal preindustrial—now we work with a floating normal. A huge part of our planet is prone to drought. Like the Sahel.”

  “So doing nothing carries a lot of risk.” Vince voiced his thoughts carefully. “But this project we’re working on must have risks too.”

  Tamanna nodded, sighing. “Take a hypothetical global geoengineering scenario.”

  “Hypothetical,” he said. “Right.”

  Tamanna listed off the risks of geoengineering. Natural volcanoes could occur unpredictably at the same time as artificial geoengineering. Say another Pinatubo in Malaysia started billowing extra sulphur dioxide. You get double the effect for an uncertain period of time, so how do you compensate? The whole process, even if global in design, might slow down a monsoon somewhere.

  “Countries of different political persuasions take on this or that unsynchronized geoengineering plan concurrently,” she said. “Another risk.”

  “That would be crazy,” Vince said wide eyed.

  “The HICCC offers the best option to avoid that,” she pointed out.

  He listened, and she went on.

  Picture sulphur emissions emitted towards target, all organized and on track to offset continuing carbon pollution. Then some political disagreement comes up causing unexpected project termination. An abrupt cessation of sulphur would create an abrupt increase in temperature. Political players like Russia might sit on the sidelines cheering on any warming scenario. Canada acted as if wanting a warmer world too, she looked wryly at Vince. Russia appeared wishy-washy on climate change, as one might say to their perceived advantage. Time was on the ex-soviet nation’s side if nothing was done and carbon kept building. Canada’s too if a warmer planet proved out to their benefit. Most science doubted that, but this was politics.

  Vince stared into his cup, then at his cup, slowly focusing on that globe icon. He caught a fractal instance of Annalise there with her kindergarten smile.

  Even with a global geoengineering plan, there would be regional negatives. If they cool only the polar region, they cause regional droughts and flooding precipitation. Or any country, any cooperating states opt out of the global plan. At any time. Or add in their own regional version of a desired global thermostat setting. Say the Sahel countries formed a cooperative group, and they had their own plan. To dump extra sulphur to get 1 degree below preindustrial levels and attempt to really green the Sahara. Lousy science, but the idea might sound good politically.

  “A little Ice Age.” Vince said.

  She nodded, telling him more. Carbon had already slowed down ocean circulation, thermohaline circulation like the Gulf Current and this combined with a Sahel plan like that might work in conjunction to bring about a massive cooling—an unintended Ice Age. Messing with the climate was tricky business, but people had already taken on the job when they industrialized.

  “Snowball Earth,” he tried the sound of it, looking for her reaction.

  “With even a slight error,” she simply agreed.

  “My guide took me to one infogram last night,” Vince lamented. “The Haber-Bosch process allows us to create inorganic fertilizer. That’s the real reason we have the population we have today. We could have chosen a lower population, but we didn’t. That would have made a big difference now.”

  “Population,” Tami nodded. “The untouchable subject.” She told Vince that a couple in North America deciding not to have a child equaled fifty couples in Bangladesh making the same decision. “A child anywhere in the world does not equal another child anywhere in the world.”

  “Yeah, I was talking with Brad about that,” Vince said. “The real equation comes out as Population times Affluence. The result makes for total impact.”

  “Bangladesh may have a high population,” Tami nodded. “But according to that equation, a very small total impact.”

  They sat quietly for a minute, each looking out the window, then back at each other at the same moment.

  “You took on a personal change,” Vince looked down, then directly at her again. “Was that a political move?”

  Her eyes brightened when he said political and she said COP right off. As a mainstream but idealistic student, she’d attended those Conferences of the Parties, those gatherings of nations struggling to globally cooperate on addressing the climate changing Earth problem. Filled with excitement to begin with, she hadn’t understood the sense of disillusion with COP15 in Copenhagen. But the youthful idealism filling out her sails gradually subsided. By Warsaw 19 the reality of the official plan became clear, going formally close
to nowhere. As a distant observer she had by then become more passenger than crew.

  “So you changed then?”

  “Not quite,” she said. “I realized you could try to influence political will directly. Or you could give the politicians social license—the voice of the people.”

  She watched the functionaries gather up steam on their road to Paris. Too-late Paris, many said, but-at-least-something others remarked. After that number twenty one in France, the next year turned out benign for Tamanna. By then she was committed to influence through social license.

  “Like this project?” Vince asked.

  “Just a few countries dumped the vast majority of carbon disproportionately causing the problem. They most need political will, yet social license could come from those most affected.”

  Paris pronounced an inadequate-to-say-the-least agreement at COP21 and to top it off a five year delay before coming into effect. A colossal mark of human inadequacy. In her view, an attempt at crisis management or mismanagement as the laws of physics patiently exacerbated the crisis. Later, post-Paris infograms confirmed her solemn vow never to return.

  Now that carried story to Vince’s ears. Tami had lived out a frame of reference for him, Vince thought, as she had made a decision on a different path. He could follow.

  He wanted to talk on his latest infogram tour and he didn’t. He looked at Tamanna. Geoengineering science had been likened to the Manhattan Project. He wasn’t totally sure what to believe yet, but Harvard said any nation could now play politics like North Korea. Right beside nuclear arms, geoengineering was there for any country to take. You didn’t need high cost bombers or fighter jets either, no intercontinental missiles, just a few balloons and a guy like him to estimate the sulphur tonnage. Then you dictate your back off terms to the world. The thought stabbed Vince with a deep knife blade anxiety. The calculations were simple; the cost quite low. The scariest thing was how people would react. Countries weren’t exactly friendly when it came to global cooperation.

  “Our politics are not overly helpful in many ways,” Tamanna said.

  Vince shook his head. “Nope,” he said softly. But, his heart shivered, his daughter needed a friendly future. She truly did. He needed to act. “So you traded what you were with what you are now?”

  “More like I swapped what I was for what I really am.”

  He stared at her, eyebrow raised.

  “My play role satisfying others went on the block, in exchange for what felt true for me. What feels right, that was the indicator.”

  “So what bottom line made you switch? I mean, really, why?”

  “My people, those I know I can do something for. My mother was the youngest child and I have uncles and aunts, and some cousins living in Chittagong. On the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, they are fortunate to have hills. So many Bangladeshi have lost delta farmland and live in Dhaka slums. These refugees bear living witness as a global canary in the coalmine.” She looked at him directly. “And I know I can help them sing louder. I wasn’t given this highly functional brain to play games, I was given an opportunity. To act responsibly.”

  Vince stared, thinking again of Annalise. His daughter would be a canary too. A canary of the near future.

  “But there’s something else too. It’s hard to describe, but when I look at the green woods growing, or at any living ecosystem, I breathe differently. I hear a quiet voice speaking to me deep inside.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Vince nodded. “Like an angel or something. My voice talks math—I see fractal images at times, and they tell me Pi defines a pure universal balance. I think I get it.”

  Vince looked out the window, at the water and palms. “A lot of things in my life are less than perfect, you know. Sometimes I wonder about that God of creation idea, but one gift keeping me going is my daughter. Whenever anyone tells a story of importance it makes me think of her. You do, kinda.” He wiped at his eyes as he spoke, looking at Tami unabashed.

  She waited.

  “Anyway,” Vince said. “When you talk to someone not well-versed in your profession, you almost have to speak to them like a six year old child.”

  “Yes,” Tami said. “That could be.”

  “I want to be a part of that voice. That HICCC voice,” Vince said. “That louder voice of the coalmine canary.”

  “Oh,” Tami beamed. “Brilliant.”