Pinatubo II

by Les W Kuzyk

  Chapter 38

  Back in the conference room Tamanna restarted audio record. Nishat had suggested tactics on ensuring the Canadian Minister was best informed, and ways to go forward with this negotiator. National pride, especially for men, could allow a subtle affront.

  “Her Excellency has decided you may represent the Minister at this time,” she intoned. “For the Dominion of Canada.”

  Harry lifted his head, catching the inflection. He ticked off a score; they would not be returning empty handed, and he sat back. Yet his lip twitched into the slightest of smirks, one he concealed with his winning smile.

  Tamanna, however, knew she had him.

  She stared his way, then prodded. “Was it something I said?”

  The smile held. “Oh, nothing really. Look, just to be clear, we refer to our country as Canada. The Dominion of was dropped some time in the past.” Many decades back. These sorry third world countries, to call them developing was too polite. So backwards, so uneducated. Still, stay submissive.

  Tamanna nodded slowly. “Perhaps Her Excellency refers to an earlier name to set a time context. One more appropriate. Back when your country’s lack of knowledge might explain its dated climate change policy.”

  Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see.” But he forced his practiced smile wider. He looked at Tamanna and then Vince, emphasizing compliance. “We remain willing to represent the Honorable Minister.”

  The sound of shuffling in chairs pervaded the room.

  “Before we begin, then, Her Excellency’s office requires it be made a matter of record that the Canadian Minister was officially invited by Her Excellency and has chosen to be otherwise represented.”

  “Yes.” Harry gave a reassuring nod. “Duly noted.”

  Tamanna began again. “The first point of business, then. Your Minister Kendall must realize that negotiations between our consortium and yours, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development—the OEC—can no longer continue as previously. The situation has changed. Significantly.”

  Harry settled back, falling into his practised listening mode.

  “Minister Kendall must know that the HICCC decision to act came about due to OECD non-response to repeated requests. Our appeals to basic human interests and a globally focused solution have not received adequate response. Further to this non-response, a decision has been taken on a project we expect will be noticed.”

  Harry became vaguely aware of some sort of challenge. What could they possibly have? “You realize that while Canada does hold OECD membership, our country does not represent the OECD as a whole,” he said softly.

  “That may be the officially recognized state of affairs, however, we are about to reveal a unique opportunity for your country. With your membership, Canada will play the role of our messenger to the OECD as a whole.” Tamanna looked at Harry calmly.

  Harry said nothing.

  “So we can speak in metaphor or stick with scientific terminology, what would be your preference?”

  “We can be flexible,” Harry said.

  “Brilliant.” She looked to her jPad visiscreen. “We will touch on both then.”

  She stood, straightening her skirt.

  “First, let us point out that we all share one planet and that to a certain degree, we have common interest in our mutual wellbeing. Her Excellency wants to truly emphasize those two words, mutual and wellbeing.” Tamanna paused, looking directly at Harry. “With wellbeing in mind, we must all understand the true value of nature, our biosphere, that being our mutual life support system. We inhabit only one planet.”

  She paused, touching her visiscreen. “Any comment?”

  Harry shook his head absently.

  “Now, there was a time when nature was big, and society was small, yet today those circumstances have reversed. A basic fact. While nature may still seem ample in northern latitudes, when we measure our planet globally, we find significant carbon footprint overshoot. Led by industrialized countries such as members of the OECD. These measurements, with repeated scientific confirmation, speak negatively to our wellbeing.”

  She paused again, waiting. The Canadian team remained silent.

  “Not to beleaguer the point, but simply put, this sets our context. Like all countries, members of the HICCC have specific interests in the wellbeing of their citizens. What we emphasize here, are the effects our mutual now altered atmosphere has on climate change—also mutual. Our project, we believe, will help move negotiations along.”

  Harry kept his look cordial.

  “Now, our engineer.”

  She nodded towards Vince as she sat, and he rose.

  “Okay, so...once upon a time there was a volcano.” Vince gauged initial reaction. “The first volcano in our story was named Pinatubo. One day, on a peaceful island covered with dense forest, a lava leak sprung and blew up into the sky to form a naturally active volcano.” He detected interest, the human ear innately tuning in to story. “Now, you may have heard of Pinatubo ‘cause that eruption was recent. You may not be aware of are the atmospheric effects, some of which jump out on any global temperature graph. What do we know? Volcanic eruption can, in fact, have a cooling effect on our planet, albeit short-term. And from Pinatubo, we get our project name, Pinatubo II.”

  Vince’s felt that spinal tingle permeate his being.

  “So our Pinatubo II venture, really, can be called a make-your-own-volcano project, and our HICCC client has defined five different volcanoes of interest. Each comes with increasing size, and by default, each has a greater effect.”

  He held a hand up, five fingers extended.

  “So, we classify our volcanoes geographically. We’ve got local, regional, national …” he held his hands close together, moving them wider as he went down the list, “major regional and even a hypothetical global.” He stretched his hands far apart.

  “Major regional would be a group of countries.” He moved his hands back in from the widest. “More than one country stretches into the Sahara desert, as you may know, so an area like North Africa.”

  The Canadians watched, with increasing attention.

  “At this time, our client’s Minister Jabbar has directed we carry out sulphur release tests for both the local.” He returned his hands quite close. “And the regional.” He shifted them a step wider. “So we’ve already created both of those volcanoes.”

  He opened his hands to hold them at middle size.

  “And, we now have the green light on a Niger national release. The first country to create its very own volcano.” He paused. “I’ll let my colleague speak to this, but I believe the Niger volcano has solid political support.” Tami nodded confirmation. “Just to give you some project engineering insight, the Niger national sulphur release has an expected initial effects timeframe weeks from now.”

  “Okay, wait, wait, sulphur release?” Harry began tapping his pen on the table. “Create a volcano? Can you please clarify.”

  André leaned towards Harry’s ear, pointing to his visiscreen, speaking quietly. “Geoengineering. What I have been telling you, Harry. High or low, this has been a building risk as time has passed.” Harry stared at his assistant, then back at Vince. He turned his pen sideways, tapping now in staccato bursts.

  “Vince, can you explain the impact of sulphur dioxide release in the stratosphere as you summarize the Nigerien national,” Tamanna said.

  “Sure, no problem. So back in school, we all learned how a volcano works. Later, any earth science class would teach a little on plate tectonics. Now, our natural Pinatubo eruption took place geographically in the Philippines, recently yes in 1991, when a dormant volcano erupted unexpectedly. Pinatubo importantly sits geologically on the edge of a subducting oceanic plate. And to help our story explain let’s bring in a second volcano, Krakatoa, which erupted back in 1883 in Indonesia. But importantly for us, also on one of those subducting oceanic plates.”

  He paused, eyes on Harry’s bouncing pen.

  �
�While Pinatubo adds significance because she blew recently giving us enhanced records, Krakatoa gave us noteworthy data due to her size. Now to that sulphur question. One emissive substance, when volcanic eruption occurs on a subducting oceanic plate is sulphur dioxide. And this sulphur gas can be blown clear up into the stratosphere, that portion of our atmosphere way above the weather zone. Skipping all the boring chemistry, once up there, sulphur gas turns into a haze, or an aerosol. And that haze blocks a certain portion of the sun’s rays, like a super thin sunshade parasol. Global cooling, again, all natural.”

  The Canadian delegates appeared to be following, no glazed over eyes.

  “So our Pinatubo II project basically replicates that process.” He spoke slowly now. “We reproduce that haze in the stratosphere and block a calculated portion of the sun’s heat. We engineer a cooling effect.” He took on the demeanour of a cartoon salesman. “We can design-a-volcano for any client, for anyone actually, anyone with an interest.” More serious, he held up a finger. “When I say replicates, well, there are actually some differences. Unlike natural volcanoes exploding, artificials keep silent. In the secret night time only if you wish, when everyone’s faaast asleep. And invisible. So unnoticed, kinda like no one wants to notice the global-average temperature.”

  Vince looked at Harry, dead serious.

  “So that’s the sulphur release we’re talking about.”

  Harry stared at his now motionless pen. “What you’re talking about will screw up our entire climate.” His voice rose. “Completely.”

  “You’re screwing it up right now.” Vince matched tone. He had practiced this.

  Harry glared, but caught himself. “We need to discuss this more...we can speak to specifics.”

  “Sounds like you already have been speaking. A lot. Minus any real action.”

  Harry began the pen tapping.

  “One more fact,” Vince went on. “In spite of our story volcanoes both being local, that is, at a one mountain location, they each had significant global effects. People in Europe felt the Krakatoa cooling, but what they noticed most was a different colored sky. So, our project design, at this point our Niger volcano, will impact the global climate due to aerosols blocking out sunshine, mostly but not entirely above Niger.”

  Vince almost did a spin-around like his daughter after ballet class, but he held it in and sauntered professionally over to the window.

  “If you can bear with me, just a couple baseline numbers.”

  He turned to face them, hands behind his back.

  “For Krakatoa, gentlemen, global thermometers recorded a drop of over one degree, precisely 1.2 degrees. Celsius.” He paused, scanning their faces for comprehension. “Good, we all speak Celsius here. For Pinatubo, the cooling effect was less than half a degree, 0.4 degrees. So we now need to offset the global warming effect of current greenhouse gases emissions.” He grinned. “And...we can do that with Pinatubo II.” He raised a paper report to show a title. “Or Pinatubo 2.0 if you like.”

  “Okay, hold on.” Harry cut in. “Remind me, how much warmer are we now?”

  “Now? Yeah, well, triple Pinatubo, or 1.2 degrees so far, same as Krakatoa.”

  “Yet two of your 0.4 volcanoes makes only 0.8 degrees,” André spoke. “The math is not good.”

  “Yes, excellent observation,” Vince said. “Technical risk reasons explain that. But also Pinatubo II instead of III gives you guys wiggle room to act—gets political there.”

  “But really.” Harry went on with his suggestive look. “How much difference would one or two degrees ever make?”

  Vince looked at this man of the political world, wondering what he might or should know. He came up on his toes against the wall, and spoke slowly. “Most trend estimates agree the carbon already released into the atmosphere will double that temperature increase. So we are committed to 2.4 degrees. When that happens, we’ll need even more multiplications of Pinatubo.”

  “But I mean, give me a break. That kind of temperature change happens all the time.” Harry spread his palms wide. “I’m no engineer, but I’d guess that kind of heat change happens here in this room at the touch of a button.” He waved towards the air controls. “Or even more, outside in this African heat. We all know that. Right?”

  Vince looked Harry over. He could hear his wife’s nonchalant voice telling him of the new Bow River valley after the Calgary floods, freshly formed channels, gravel bars shifted to new places…quite pretty actually, she had said. He toned his language down more, to a child’s level, still with precision, yet keeping it simple. “Look, no one feels the global-average climate. You must base what you know on a measure, like a ruler or a thermometer. You gotta be smart enough to know the change is there based on that measurement. Are you familiar with two degrees? What impact a global two degree increase will actually have?”

  Harry looked to André, who slowly shook his head to keep silent. He turned his pen to bounce on end.

  Vince took a deep breath, and began his spiel on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defined two degree danger line. He emphasized danger, making direct reference to the high-risk game being played by humanity, and the many global feedback loops waiting to be touched off just past two degrees. Or triggered even below two, that being a Russian roulette game of chance. With a warmer world, the hydrological cycle intensified. Extreme weather events increased out of proportion to regular temperature changes. Thermostat settings like the one on the wall didn’t count; he searched their faces for understanding. Simply put, evaporation forms clouds, which comes down as precipitation and lots of rain makes for a flood. Lots of heat makes deserts, and extra heat spreads deserts with droughts. Still, quite unpredictable, and erratic. In semi-arid southern Alberta where you’d expect drought, the new normal brings on floods. Floods also come with rising sea levels, for any ocean-front property.

  Harry kept glancing at André, holding silent.

  Vince ended with the socio-political turmoil likely to come about, not just globally but in each country. And locally, he winced thinking of Annalise in Calgary. He could only imagine climate refugees moving en masse into western Canada, people in the streets turning to crime, god, that there could be such events in a place like Canada. Were these guys hearing, even the basics?

  André leaned into Harry’s ear. “Sulphur gases are cheap commodities.” He tightened his lips. “Any rogue nation could do this, just what he is saying.”

  Harry held his pen up, speaking back to André. “We budget for an improved media campaign.” He tossed his pen on the table. André shook his head slightly. “I would caution our domestic believability may be quite stretched.” Harry shook his head. “Well there’s no flooding in Ottawa. Let Alberta deal with their own problems.” André leaned back, silent.

  Vince sighed, watched them with interest, somewhat exasperated.

  “So, our Nigerien artificial volcano replicates Pinatubo aerosol creation, only less conspicuously,” he said in summary. “Two last items. First, we design the long term impact based on a continual sulphur release over a proposed ten year timeframe. We make adjustments every six months depending on satellite temperature measures and seasonal evidence-based impact such as the greening of the desert. Second, we have strategic release locations spread all across this country. So up north here, that would be the Sahara.”

  He walked back to the table. “And, just to reiterate.” He pulled his chair out. “As you would have deduced from Pinatubo, or Krakatoa, any local sulphur release has a global impact. As will the Nigerien national. Assuming cooling would impact the Nigerien landmass only is a grossly incorrect supposition. But that’s where engineering becomes politics.” He waved a hand towards Tamanna. “So at this point I step out, and Ms. Meacham steps in.”

  The room fell into silence, and as Vince sat he could hear the air conditioning fan squealing in its cage.

  “Lovely. What Mr. Patel stated is correct,” Tamanna said. “Niger has an initial ten year plan.
While the president wants one release close to Niamey for citizens to see, other release points will not be disclosed.” Tamanna rose, looking at Harry. “This plan, however, is available for adjustment into the foreseeable future as climatic and political conditions warrant. With your minister now informed, Her Excellency proposes further talks on a global climate change agreement.”

  “Okay, Okay, just a minute here,” Harry said. “To start, I find it difficult to accept you actually represent the country of Niger. You are nothing but technical support. But just assuming you do, is Niger familiar with international agreements? Does Niger realize how irresponsible this action will be seen by the international community?”

  Tamanna looked at him.

  “We can review the responsibility of other national actions, say those of your country,” she said quietly. “We could discuss the carbon pollution your country has chosen to release into our atmosphere, our mutual atmosphere, the carbon now causing direct climate change impacts. Missing monsoon rains dry up Nigerien rice fields, enhanced ocean storms cause the Ganges delta exodus in Bangladesh, and it sounds like floods have come to your own Alberta south. In fact, we would really like to compare notes as we negotiate. Carbon emissions per capita for Canada versus say, Niger. So please, yes, bring that topic to the table.”

  Harry retrieved his pen, squeezing it tightly now.

  She went on.

  “Might I also mention that at this time there is talk in Niger, as well as in other high impact countries, of a global temperature reduction. Below that of pre global warming. As citizens here learn cooling to be possible, they rally around the idea of their own volcano and what that might do for them.”

  “Below? Why would anyone want a colder planet?”

  “National interests.” Vince put in. “Hungry people.”

  “Politicians want happy citizens,” Tamanna said. “Political points, you know. The Canadian or Russian citizen may be happier on a nice warm day, however, the Nigerien people cheer on a cooler day. And let Minister Kendall know, this outlook is not unique to Niger.”

  “Not unique,” Harry parodied, chin dropping slightly. “But only Niger now, correct?”

  Tamanna smiled, and went on. “Did you know that during the last ice age, when Canada was covered by a kilometer of ice, the Sahel was not? Not long after that time of ice sheets, the Sahel became wetter, much greener. So now, the president of Niger gains a lot of political traction when he reminds citizens of the Green Sahara. Especially when he talks of how he will bring it back.”

  “Are you threatening us? What, are you threatening to throw Canada back into another Ice Age?” He glared at her. “Destroy our country just so you can have a little more rain here?”

  “As you must have perceived from our presentation, modifying our mutual climate can bring about unpredictable results,” she replied evenly. “Yet rain is good for crops, don’t you agree?”

  “Canada is not just an OECD member, we’re a NATO member.” Harry scowled. “We’ll easily put a stop to your pitiful African president.”

  “As one Canadian to another,” Vince broke in. “I’m telling you we’ve got to have a real look at what we’re doing. To our children’s future, to our own future.”

  “Canada has an extensive carbon capture research program, with many Alberta energy companies on board. We have ongoing breakthroughs from our research teams—there’s a new lab under construction in Edmonton.” Harry spread his hands. “We’ll have a market solution any day.”

  “How many tons?” Tamanna’s voice was loud and clear. “How many have you captured so far?”

  Harry glared at her.

  “Look,” Vince matched Tami’s voice. “I’ve spent most of my career as an oilfield engineer. So don’t try telling me about Alberta. Moving that liquid carbon dioxide would need a pipeline system as extensive as the entire Alberta oilfield production and transmission lines we have now. So who’s going to finance that? Carbon capture had potential, especially with Alberta’s coal burning electric system, but too late. A province with natural gas coming out its ying-yang produces over half its electric power burning coal! Typical symbolic action.”

  “Nearly all the energy driving our civilization remains hydrocarbon based.” Tamanna kept her tone. “We have a dodgy situation in that our economy needs energy and we demand that energy be cheap.”

  “I’ve learned a few things from this non-oilfield project, another perspective on the politics of climate change,” Vince said. “The first world lifestyle, Canadian like mine, like yours Harry, is highly subsidized by a free dumping ground for hydrocarbon emissions. In this situation, what we’re gonna do doesn’t count anymore.” Vince could almost hear his daughter’s not fair voice. “These countries may not be doing the best thing for our mutual planet, but they never caused climate change in the first place. And now, they are doing something.”

  “Everyone wants that lifestyle,” Harry said smoothly, shrugging back and forth between them. Then, subdued in his confidence, he repeated, “Everyone.”

  “At what cost?” Vince demanded. “There are people dying here in Niger and in Bangladesh and a lot of other places specifically because of that lifestyle, not that we ever cared much before. But now it’s global. Think, man, the carbon in the air here in Niger is the same in Canada. Now four hundred twenty parts per million. So I, for one, am thinking about here and back home too. I have my daughter’s future to think about.”

  “I have two boys,” Harry said.

  “Good. So take it from me, you’re raising them on a lifestyle they can’t have.”

  How could an engineer be such a moron, Harry thought, of course they can. “My boys play hockey, didn’t you? Now that’s Canadian, that’s our lifestyle and we’ll never let that be taken away.” He glared. Hockey equipment might cost a lot, but a kid has to play. “Not from my country, not from me, not from my boys.”

  A pin drop might have sounded as loud as a pounding fist.

  Harry spoke again, strategically. “How big is this Pinatubo II project?” He looked from Tamanna to Vince with his determined show-nothing face.

  “At this time, we are authorized to speak of Nigerien national, but,” Tamanna dropped her voice, “a little political insight. There are other high impact national interests. Take what we have told you to your minister.”

  The air conditioning fan wound down into off cycle.

  Harry took a breath. “I would like to request a recess to contact Minister Kendall.”

  “By all means.” Tamanna lifted her hand in a small flourish.

  Harry rose and followed as his team filed out.