By Wednesday morning, Heather was back to her normal routine of getting at least some sleep each night, and dancing each morning to wake up her mind and body. She wandered out to the office when she smelled breakfast cooking.
“Good morning, Heather,” Colonel Ma-soran greeted from her desk.
“Hi, Sarah. It was really nice to have an empty mail drawer yesterday. I hope it still is.”
“Actually, it’s not.”
Heather frowned as she unlocked it, then burst out laughing when she discovered only her paycheck.
“Don’t worry,” Sarah assured, “you won’t be getting regular topics for a while. My guess would be a long while. We have that non-cleared scientist today.”
“Yeah, I met with Sam yesterday to figure out how to handle that. We agreed someone had to lead the meeting that he’d respect.”
“I’m sorry it has to be that way, but I also know everyone’s going to be watching him to see how he handles you even being on the team. If we see the slightest disrespect, then he won’t be invited back. By the way, Maria made bacon and eggs.”
“That’s
the
real reason I got up!”
“Good morning, everyone,” the short little lady, who usually sat in the back
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row, said from Heather’s place. “For the benefit of our guest, I’m Betty Ko-silma, doctor of chemistry. Anyone missing, Corporal?”
“Just the lieutenant on vacation.”
“Good. Please notice that the security lamp is off, as we have a guest speaker today. Welcome, Doctor To-marin. We are grateful that you were able to come on short notice, and we are all looking forward to whatever light you can shed on the hypothetical scenario we are studying. Please take a moment to tell us about yourself.”
The tall, nearly-bald man acted quite uncomfortable with the person leading the meeting. “I’m . . . surprised that a military program would have
. . .” He glanced around, but didn’t see anyone who shared his discomfort, so he tried to collect himself. “I’m . . . um . . . a doctor of meteorology and climatology, and I teach at East Valley College. But I must point out that I haven’t had a chance to prepare anything . . .” As he spoke, he tried to address his comments to someone other than Doctor Ko-silma, but the layout, with the generals beside or behind him, made it difficult.
Betty noticed and ignored it. “No preparation was necessary, or even desirable, as we want a completely fresh opinion on our study scenario.” She stood and picked up the chalk. “And even though we’ve already discussed some other aspects of it, today we’re just going to work with the most essential element, the hypothetical temperature data, so we can get a very objective analysis from you.”
She started drawing on the blackboard. “We have a reference year, at which point the average annual temperature has been completely stable and unremarkable for decades. Our data points are year forty-eight with plus one degree, year fifty-four with plus two degrees, and finally, year sixty-two with plus four degrees. You have the floor, Doctor To-marin.”
The chemist sat down in the chair next to the blackboard.
The climatologist appeared reluctant to respond to her invitation, but couldn’t see any other option. “Um . . . okay . . . these data points must be anomalies, exceptions in an otherwise stable climate . . .” He looked at the generals.
“No,” Doctor Ko-silma began, “these are representative points along a smooth curve.”
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He pretended not to hear for a moment, but when he saw all the officers nod toward the chemist, he breathed a sigh and turned back to the blackboard.
“Then something’s wrong here, as nothing like this has ever happened before. This is not a climate scenario that could take place on our planet. You must be modeling conditions on another planet . . .”
Again he looked at the generals, but cast his gaze wider, also glancing at the male officers in uniform, and the male scientists he recognized.
They all looked at Betty.
She took a slow breath. “Although it’s hypothetical, we’re interested in knowing the effects such a change would have on our planet.”
He stared at the blackboard, careful not to look at the woman scientist.
“Then there must be a mistake. These must be tenths of a degree.”
“Nope. Whole degrees.”
“Fahrenheit?”
“Celsius.”
A long moment passed as he continued to stare at the blackboard. “Oh my God . . .”
Without much further difficulty, they managed to get the climatologist to describe the severe droughts, massive forest and grassland fires, powerful tropical storms, and devastating floods that would come as the scenario approached plus one degree.
Between plus one and plus two degrees, the ice caps would melt, he was sure, causing the oceans to rise inches per year, then feet per year, too fast for anything in their path to be saved that wasn’t on wheels. But the greatest damage would actually come from the jet stream, steady winds high in the atmosphere, that would become chaotic, or stall completely, as the poles became ice-free. Severe weather systems, hot or cold, would stay in one place for weeks, or be funneled into regions that had never before experienced such weather.
His nerve failed him as he attempted to imagine conditions approaching plus four degrees. He begged for a break in the presentation.
Doctor Ko-silma stood up. “Fifteen minutes. Remember, the security
NEBADOR Book Nine: A Cry for Help 148
lamp is off.”
“Can you explain, Doctor, why these effects are so extreme,” General Ba-kerga requested, “when the temperature changes we’re talking about seem so small to us non-scientists. Even four degrees Celsius is less than typical night-to-day variation.”
“Because these are yearly global averages. They usually vary only hundredths of a degree, at most a few tenths, even across a decade. What we’re talking about here is like going in and out of ice ages, but that happens over thousands of years. To see whole degree changes over mere decades is more like a climate explosion than a climate change.”
General Bo-seklin squirmed in his chair. “I know it won’t be easy, and I realize the science is probably fuzzy on this, but please give us some idea of what the world would be like four degrees hotter than today.”
The scientist breathed to steady his nerves. “It might come close to an extinction event for the human race, even though a few people live in such climates today. Very few. But nothing we call civilization would be possible.
People could survive only in tiny tribal groups in scattered climate niches, like caves. The equatorial latitudes would become completely uninhabitable.
Humanity would be pushed as far north and south as they could get, and therefore divided into six or seven regions that would have little chance of contact with each other.”
“What is a rapid climate change like this called?” General Ko-fenral asked.
The climatologist was silent for a long time. “It has no name. It’s never happened to the human race, and it’s never been studied, even hypothetically.
The only word that comes to mind is . . . Hell.”
The entire team sat staring at the blackboard in silence.