Chapter 12
Tamanna checked the late afternoon time in her London office. Britain was six time zones back around the globe from Bangladesh. Evening would have settled in for Nishat in Dhaka. Tamanna’s plane for Africa leaves tomorrow morning and she had hoped for a final update on HICCC contract instructions. She felt comfortable speaking with Nishat. “Your mother is well?” Nishat enquired. “Yes, she lives healthy,” Tamanna answered. “I will have tea this evening with her and my father at their terraced house.” She hesitated, but went on. “The UK feed in tariff works so well. Their house creates more energy than it uses so they live comfortably in a country like England yet emit little carbon.”
“Yes, a valiant effort. Many will soon follow.” Tamanna heard such a confident tone in Nishat’s voice. “Your mother was born in Chittagong?”
“Yes. And of course I was my mother’s Dita. As a child she would tell me stories of life on the Bay of Bengal. Many of my cousins live there even to this day.”
“The carbon for a citizen of Bangladesh carries little weight. Also to this day.”
“Yes, I have come to twig that quite well,” Tami said. “My cousins live in such a way they contribute almost not at all to our planet’s climate demise. Yet they will bear the brunt of the storms.”
“Yes,” Nishat said. “We must speak again on science and politics. I hope you will not mind.”
“Yes, of course.”
Nishat briefed Tamanna on the latest geopolitical outlook on climate change from an HICCC perspective. Lately backroom talk revolved around the Russia factor, a nation showing a disturbing take on accelerated global warming. The Russian perceived advantage translated into relative disadvantage for their rivals, the Americans and Chinese. Analysts classified climate change risk into extreme weather events, sea level rise and agricultural impact. While China showed high vulnerability for all, Russia was less susceptible to extreme weather events than the United States though Russia and the US were near equal in risk of sea level rise. Although Russia did carry risk on existing agricultural land, the food exporting country may have been calculating potential farmland further north. More likely, offshore Arctic energy sources opening up added to that calculation.
When Tamanna mentioned Jake’s stupefying idea of Russia constructing CFC production machines, Nishat only nodded, that manufacture was simple. “Chlorofluorocarbons have an extreme greenhouse gas effect as a carbon dioxide equivalent,” Tamanna said. Russia’s public voice ignored all rumour, maintaining highly critical language on any such idea as HICCC climate engineering. The Russian voice built on public revulsion, and tapped the fear among people of disrupting the natural climate. As well as whatever sway scientifically analyzed dangers held in the public eye. A rumour in the mill ran that Moscow had secretly approached Canada suggesting negotiations around their common global warming interests.
Tami wondered if Russia had considered migration issues in a potentially chaotic world. Asians could swarm that sparsely peopled nation with dropping birthrate and expanding energy and food resources. She mentioned the scientific estimates of a perhaps twenty percent increase in cultivatable land in northern latitudes. Desirable perhaps for Siberia or Canada. “But, Minister,” Tamanna said. “Many soils lack fertility. Thawed tundra would not readily turn into grain fields.” Also, Tamanna wondered, had the northern leaders considered the fast approaching methane release threshold for Canadian and Siberian permafrost? This climate tipping point put climate change on an out of control path. Run away climate change means no one wins.
Politics, again politics Nishat pointed out. The general populace at any cold Siberian or Canadian moment thought no further than a warmer day. “Indeed, this issue is one of our greatest barriers to international agreement,” Nishat said. “The everyday desires of the common people for local reasons have significant influence on our decisions. When decisions must be global.” Canada, like Russia, had the polar advantage. Yet the North American country outpaced Russia when it came to economic base. And rather than follow the way of the economically strong Nordic countries of Western Europe, Canada defined its own path. American’s northern neighbour took full advantage of its polar geography, developing global exports of one of the dirtiest energy sources. The world knew of the bitumen or tar sands.
“Yes, I was at COP Durban,” Tamanna said. “Canadians took the Fossil of the Day award.”
Tamanna could so tell of Nishat’s real interest in science. She reviewed the ongoing summer sea ice loss that was so much a part of northern countries. Such an obvious visual indicator of climate change. With a view to economic interests over the planetary environment, the Arctic nations saw only hydrocarbon reserves and shorter shipping lanes. The loss was not all obvious Tamanna emphasized; there was a hidden environmental change when sea ice lost thickness from year to year. The ice typically remained frozen for one or two years and even up to five year old ice stayed solid, yet each layer was thinning. This loss did not show in any satellite view. Also, Tamanna went on excited with her attentive audience, transformation of the polar ice cap was highly visible in any polar image, and this climate transformation showcased a classic feedback loop. Science could easily explain this loop to even school children—bright white ocean ice melted away into dark salt water, converting a highly reflective surface to a darker ocean blue. Dark water absorbed much more light and heat than the mirror effect of white ice, and this compounded the warming effect. Over three quarters of Arctic ice now warmed into seawater by the time of September minimum and reliable satellite mapping imagery showed this event easily. Any online hologram played out the story of recent arctic ice cap history.
“Why do people not notice this?” Tamanna lamented. “I have never understood, auntie.”
“This type of event may be too distant from their everyday lives. The image on a screen is distant and they do not pay attention to what happens so far away,” Nishat said. “People notice more that which is under their own front step.”
Five more years. Tamanna had seen the latest statistical extrapolation projected for an ice free North Pole in September. Depending on climate noise, maybe in two or three years. Nishat appeared to appreciate statistics. Would that be noticed by the people, though? Tamanna wondered how many would hear the scientific say-so. She realized her voice had to shift from the scientific.
“The North Americans notice their Santa Claus has a home swimming pool installed,” Tamanna said. Would that make climate change noticed? Nishat seemed unsure. “North pole sea ice retreat should be one of the climate change canaries in the coal mine.” Tamanna tried again. “Could a bird story catch public attention?”
Nishat brightened. “Perhaps the polar canary will remain a distant ghost, my child,” she said, picked up on the story. “However another canary, Bangladesh, sings a chirping song, or a chipping song as she pecks at her seed. This song bird will be our concern. Much more than half, over seventy percent of Bangladeshi land will be inundated by a one meter sea level rise. Our canary must sing louder, much louder, and begin chipping and pecking at more than just seed.”
“Yet we begin in Africa?” Tamanna said.
“Yes, my child.”
The discussion turned to the information they each had before them. Tamanna and Jake had submitted a technical proposal.
Had Bangladesh been with the HICCC for long Tamanna wondered. Well, yes, Bangladesh was classified as one of the Lease Developed Countries, the LDCs, and together with the OASIS, the Alliance of Small Island States, they had put forward a one point five degree limit at COP in Copenhagen.
“At Copenhagen we students were not allowed into the meetings.”
Nishat told her, the AOSIS and the LDCs and other states had come together to form the HICCC. Now they represented the interests of the country where Tamanna’s mother was born. You speak for the people of Chittagong who wish to keep their seaside property just as it is now, or more truthfully, as it was decades in the past.
“
Minister, our consultancy proposal addressing the terms of the HICCC request is based on recent publications and climate model runs,” Tamanna said. “For the Sahara regional initiative, we suggest injection of sulphates at the top of the troposphere, our weather zone. The sulphates will drift northward from their release points towards the poles. To meet the HICCC defined regional effect, our models show that we best inject at an elevation between fifteen and seventeen kilometers at the latitude of the Sahara. Although a lower elevation than the ideal modelled for any hypothetical global project, this height assists in keeping the project regional. Our model shows that sufficient mixing of the reflective aerosols with the weather of the troposphere will draw fifty percent of the sulphates back down within months, before they drift north of the Sahara, and that eighty percent will never make it across the Mediterranean leaving Europe mostly unaffected.”
“Yes.” Nishat nodded. “Your proposal has great promise.”
Tamanna looked at Nishat. “Regional climate modification gets tricky. I don’t know about the politics, but yes for climate engineering. Background science has been determined and well defined, so we term this exercise as an effort in engineering. For any global scenario, sulphur injection would be up in the stratosphere proper—above twenty kilometers. At that elevation, retention time in the atmosphere would be maximized. Most aerosols would circulate all the way to the poles and remain aloft for one or two years. The acid rain effect of sulphur in the weather zone would be kept to a minimum.” Tamanna looked at Nishat. “That would be for the hypothetical global scenario, the one HICCC wants for reference only.”
“Excellent,” Nishat said. “We will still have some effect on Europe?”
“For the regional?”
“Yes my child, we speak only of the Sahara region.”
Tamanna nodded. “All factors considered, this proposal makes up our best compromise for regional. We argue that any acid rain will be minimal over an extremely arid and relatively uninhabited desert. We have emphasized an alternate scenario that shows significant improvement over our regional model run but those benefits can only be added with a mid-Atlantic sulphur release. If we create an aerosol cloud to cool the mid-Atlantic, this would greatly enhance the west African monsoon.”
“Unfortunately,” Nishat looked to Tamanna. “Any operation carried out in international airspace holds too much political risk. We appreciate that scenario, but will have to retain that as part of the global for reference only.”
Tami stared down at the desk before her, frowning, but nodding.
“Does any other thought come to your mind, my child, on assisting us in catching the attention of the world.” Nishat smiled. “To the plight of our canary?”
Tamanna looked up. “Well, as morbid as it seems, people do pay attention to death tolls.”
In any news cast, a story with the word fatal caught attention. And, Tamanna had noticed, more increased attention was paid to the drama of tragic death in a safely faraway land. The British public would know of the search for a plane crashed and missing, or ship sinking, while at the same time local deaths remained hidden in backstage traffic fatality statistics. Climate change fatalities had been catching attention to a certain degree. Europeans had been informed that eleven of the hottest summers since 1500 came about in the last three decades. Maybe a boring fact, but the heat rang in a death toll of over seventy thousand French just after turn of the century. Then another fifty thousand Eastern Europeans less than a decade later. Including eleven thousand Muscovites alone—would that not catch the ear of heat seeking Russia? Of course the deaths never were of the affluent, but rather the sickly, the old and the poor who lacked air cooling systems. That latest year of death caught the most attention, the extreme heat that saw over two hundred thousand dying across Italy and Spain. America had had its woes too; the Texas heat wave and the U.S. heat waves after.
“We can shift terminology to replace extreme weather events with say a hurricane, or a super hurricane. One that strikes not only the Philippines and then Bangladesh, but New York City and up the Chesapeake Bay to Washington DC, then that gets noticed. Beijing has hurricane potential.”
“Our canary’s song must sing of storms then,” Nishat said. “But of rising seas even more. Our Bangladeshi song bird, along with her bird friends living by the sea, must find a spot to peck. That spot may need be economic.”
Nishat pointed out people noticed lifestyle while politicians talked to them of jobs. All in a global growth economy. Yet, Tamanna pointed out, carbon emissions graphs showed economic “recessions” to be the most effective human events that actually slowed carbon emissions. At the same time, people struggled and strained to return to the celebrated economic boom of high carbon output. Events could be compared. There were historical events—the UK ‘dash for gas’ converting coal-burning electricity to gas by end of last century translated into a one percent annual reduction over a decade. Yet the unplanned economic collapse of the USSR showed much better—a five percent decline for the same decade. The best news for a climatically stable planet came from an economic recession, while people struggled for the opposite.
“Perhaps global growth is no longer a viable option,” Nishat said. “That growth and associated wealth remains so uneven. Globally. Our canary must sing of how some have grown too much.”
“Yes.” Tamanna nodded. “Economy and people aside, most scientists agree we will surpass the two degree danger zone. And I don’t think I need too much economics to understand the economic cost. Damage is the underlying word, not a nicer day in warmer weather.”
Nishat wanted to know how people viewed the idea of climate engineering. Tamanna could speak for the scientific view—one global survey revealed half of scientists agreed geoengineering will be necessary as cutting emissions continued at a tortoise pace.
“Good.” Nishat said.
“One large political risk in the wealthy nations has been policy towards adaptation, superseding mitigation,” Nishat said. “Politicians score points by saying ‘let’s adapt’. That touches people more deeply, as they have often adapted in the past. This does not assist with efforts to address the root of the problem...the emissions of wealthy nations.”
“Even the two degree rise creates a mess,” Tamanna said. “Adaptation does nothing to stop the acidification of the ocean. The Great Barrier Reef of Australia and all other ocean reefs are now seriously bleached, half dead one report states. So that’s one side effect they would get along with the adapt-to-two-degrees attitude.”
They talked of the billionaires. The wealthy and likely self-interested would react in ways of little benefit to most. When they knew fully of climate change threat, they would attempt to impose their version of an answer on all others. They will use their power to attempt to control dwindling resources, actions not to the benefit of most people. These people were the ones of significant concern. Though equity was known to be a true solution to global sustainability, where everyone was better off, and everyone had an equal vested interest in the wellbeing of the common planet, the ruthless among those powerful would have no interest in this solution.
“Our canary will sing to them also, my child. And more. She will peck, not drawing blood, not to start. But to be consistently insistent on gaining attention.”
“My mother always shared gifts with me. As a paleoclimatologist, I can tell you Nishat of what I now see as a gift,” Tamanna said. “The Holocene has allowed us to have everything we have today.” One NASA climatologist pointed out how fourteen thousand years ago the temperature rose 5 degrees C and the sea level rose one hundred meters and people were gifted with the Holocene. “The Holocene allowed us time to develop agriculture, and based on that stable food source and the specializations allowed we built cities. We gradually became civilized.”
“Now, we must become even more civilized,” Nishat said.
“We need keep our life support system, our gift.” During the Holocene, the carbon in the atmosphere va
ried by no more than five percent from the preindustrial. The 350 ppm limit would be necessary to keep the planet similar to the one where civilization developed. Yet they crossed over that line way back in the 1980s and were now living on the slow inertia of carbon impact. Many facts and figures define our problem, but enough science, I am sure.”
“We are glad to have found you, Tamanna, your scientific knowledge most impressive,” Nishat said. “I sense people are important to you as well as the physics of the climate.”
“Oh yes, there has to be more,” Tamanna said. “What would you have if there were only the laws of physics, a pretty cold empty world I would say.”
“You have no children?”
Tamanna felt her face warm as she shook her head.
“The future may not welcome children. But a woman, a mother must be responsible and think of the lives ahead.”
“Just a word, Minister,” Tamanna said. “You describe our mid-Atlantic scenario as politically risky. Could I suggest you approach aircraft design companies at this time for quotes only. Our research shows the hardware exists, so quotes would be a matter of business jet design modification. Our company has research interests, and the benefits of that scenario would then be much more feasible...for reference only of course.” Tamanna knew the most effective manner to carry out this mid-ocean release would be with special aircraft, and the design process would take time.
“I see.” Nishat hesitated. “Yes, I will have an assistant initiate that suggestion.”
“Thank you Minister.”
“I have a special request also, my child,” Nishat said. “First, our canary will sing through our fellow birds in Africa. Yet, I must ask that you not reveal any aspect of what one HICCC bird sings into the ears of any other bird.”
“Each national contract runs independent?” Tamanna looked to Nishat.
Nishat returned her look, steady and firm. “I trust that you will do this, Dita. You must await my instruction on what precisely to say and when to speak. Each African country will operate as a separate entity for the first contract phases. We must plan out the optimal point to direct the first peck of our canary’s sharpening beak.”
Tamanna smiled at her childhood name. “Yes Nishat, that will not be a problem.”
HORSE TRACKS