Chapter 26
Vince stared from his Gaweye room at the green bridge strung across the Niger River. Divided by support pillars the bridge briefly broke into frames, his father’s fractals scrunched ever thinner—Brad’s grinning face now pained, Tami’s instructing voice and his daughter’s fractals expanding into a field of flowers. His own reflected image turned into a running action figure—spewing sulphur atoms into the discolored mix of a once familiar sky. What did they all mean?
Life...so hard-core real these last few weeks. That was it, he felt so damned alive. This project, this place, these people. Fantastic, if he could keep his life going this way—to hang on to this new paradigm, this new energy. The oomph running through his veins had his insides roaring like a Rocky Mountain waterfall. Action, yes, but along what path?
Was Tamanna being evasive? Or truly unaware of the drone deaths two days ago? Brad had talked before on that Arabic balloon. But ever since Keith and Sanoo vanished into a fire-from-the-sky hole, he’d become incessant on back home and their wives and children. His beliefs took a turn, downgrading any benevolence idea out in the universe.
A chasm lay between global action and answers existing. That desert thievery of Aahil’s cousin. Greening a piece of the Sahara by managing farm animal pens—when livestock eat and where they crap. Like, yeah! Exactly what Tami had described as the pie-in-the-sky idea of some scientist. Yet there it was, a living grassroots think-global-act-local solution to climate change. Benevolence offered the answer, but free will reigned supreme. Not that Aksil thought global, but he stuck to his guns running counter the wishes and frets of family and community. Later, having proved himself he ended up with a healthy herd to feed his people. Feed them on a high protein diet, no less and in Sub-Saharan Africa. What innovation. African beef, like the Alberta Beef slogan back home yet burgers for all as the planet greened not degraded.
How would he be other than what he was when a world of his father’s powerful voice and his wife’s demands stood in the way?
Brad’s pep talks had turned into calls to war, nearly, after Keith and Sanoo. But people were always at war, blowing each other up, he needed change something deeper. From anyone else the talks would’ve been offensive, but Brad had his way of revealing true Vince to misguided Vince. He’d convinced Vincent uncontrollable rage to be actually a deeper passion. One to be guided in a new direction. Had that fractal angel been giving Brad a push? Rather than lashing out at the world, he could grow that energy of his true nature into activism. The passion would speak for itself, Brad said. He could satisfy those inner drives without punching walls.
Was he a lifetime oil patch employee? So many bells rang unhappy on that. Bonded to a carbon polluting salary and spending habits—values never his—he found no exit door. That high road to an ever bigger house would crash one way or another he now knew. His father’s archaic ladder of traditional success might fulfill his wife’s dreams, but to acquiring another warehouse stocked with the latest consumer items to ship in, catalogue and rotate out to the landfill would never work for him. Me must accept that truth. So why not pick his own path? Why not decide himself what he would do? Instead of conforming to the business plan of some oil corporation executive.
One persistent line of thinking told him politicians could sure use a new story. The ones who made decisions seriously needed strategic advice. Yet in the strange way of people, that advice had to come in such a way as a court jester informing his king. The ones voting for those decision-makers needed to be educated too, to keep the wily political manoeuvres on the straight and narrow. He could become an information source.
Somehow.
He pulled a chair over to the window and sat elbows on knees with chin resting on hands. Now he saw only the riveted steel of the bridge, and slow traffic flow crossing.
All that mind chew rattling about the back of his mind. That cloud base tour, that ride up Brad’s magic air elevator. All those words, others out of Jeri, and from Tamanna’s soft voice. Such insight freely give by Brad in everyday chatter. A career change. No shit! The solar powered streets of Vauban flashed through his brain like an infogram guide pointing out a fact. But facts for people needed extra guidance, suggestive stories about their true insinuations. He could be the one telling those stories! If he could get the right words flowing and add meaningful touching drama to flow past or around barriers to true understanding. Numbers were his fractal gift, that had always been a given, but not so for most. Everyday people tuned out any list of figures. Numbers dried up like light rain on a hot metal roof. He needed to actually translate, yes, numbers and facts into story-time rhythm. Tales that caught the inner child’s ear could help influence decisions. Not just for the benefit of deciding now adults but for everyone’s future. For someone like his daughter and all other children now and to come.
His hands fell from this chin, and he felt the fingers of one hand begin drumming on the window sill. He leaned forward to stare straight down the hotel wall, as he had from the paraglider or as he would have as a child.
Take any old number...take the amazing low cost figure for this project. He had never ever before worked on such a low cost to impact ratio. The climate cooling effect was cheap! All due to the sulphur leveraging factor—a geoengineering basic. That Harvard professor had published that leveraging power of sulphur at a near million-to-one advantage. In simpler story words, you knocked off a million tons worth of carbon warming with only one ton of sulphur cooling. He’d confirmed the chemistry through infograms more than once. If he could build chemistry into story background he knew that million number resonated with people. Win a million and all that.
His fingers stopped drumming, and he leaned back kicking his teenager-like feet up against the wall.
Tami’s measure was cool, the climatologists’ heating figure in watts for every global square meter. The eye catching image of a Christmas tree drew a picture familiar to crowds. That Space Agency climate scientist told you a 240 watt bulb shining on every planetary square meter gave you an energy balanced Earth. Next frame, you add in not many extra watts and the impact got scary. Or should get scary, that being a problem. The scariest thing was no one did get scared. You double the atmospheric carbon load, a happening fact, and you get only 4 watts extra. That’s less than 2 percent. The tree bulbs got slightly brighter but no one really noticed. The story had to be rewritten, those numbers recast.
Just how would you talk up any dry numbers into spin? First of all, ‘spin’ carried a lot of political innuendo so never mention that word. Scientific, though truthful, carried that unreadable factor. A better story, keeping the truth word from science, had to come from somewhere in between.
But how?
He pushed the chair back, standing to stretch. He slowly leaned side to side, straining to pace the cramped space in front of the window.
Take the science of the Fifth Assessment report Tami handed out. Right there in the title the number 8.5 meant watts per square meter. So you snuggle in an extra little eight and a half watt bulb beside each two hundred forty. That added decoration on Merry Christmas tree Earth should catch glances. But still the average Joe could shrug and say ‘whatever’. And that whatever attitude now scared Vince the deepest. He had to somehow convert those extra little bulbs into flashers.
He needed more air—he had to get out of this room. He had to lighten up. Absently grabbing his jPad, he walked out the door musing his way down the hall. He thought of Annalise. What’s a pirate’s favourite letters? “R, daddy. R.” The Arr5 report, the Arr6 and Arr7.
Christmas went with children and that Christmas tree had potential. But you needed a real connection to the global warming temperature. Another challenge. You needed to translate light bulbs into thermometer degrees. Easy math there, as you take three quarters—the latest climate sensitivity estimate—of the 8.5 watts and you get six degrees Celsius. How to get those numbers into everyone’s head? That much warmer by the year 2100 should raise howling
concern. Was the end of century too far off for people to care? He needed to translate each degree C into a six shooter shell, for a round of the traditional game Russian’s play with a revolver. Or was fear not the best motivator?
That global game of roulette needed more work. Trepidation might at least be woven into intrigue. He stepped into the elevator and selected main floor.
How about that jester’s humour to lighten the message? People love funny stories. That animation he’d watched with his daughter followed a trio of now extinct critters through Ice Age adventures. That type of show held out all fun and games for characters and viewers alike, yet the noticeable background presented in depth detail of an abruptly changing climate. Would people notice that? A Disney moment or a deep rising scream.
That moment needed control; he needed keep his escalating scream contained. One minute a happy ending after lunch at the border, the next a fire hole. And a partner babbling about how that changed everything. He could not ignore the memory in any way.
He stepped off the elevator on the main floor.
The line warning danger had been pegged at Copenhagen as anything over two degrees. Others, like the Space Agency scientist, said anything over one degree screamed too much of a change. All while people lived their inadvertent lives seeking out the latest housing, an automobile identity and jet set vacation thrills anywhere in the world, not to mention the latest Martian romance. Any story had to somehow get in there as a competitive attention-grabber.
Eagerness building, he stopped for a minute. As a practical engineer he knew he needed to systematically review his basic options. Boring for others. But just what were the real options on his list? He had to be rational, objective and analytical. He could do that part, no sweat.
Pushing his way through the glass door, he wandered over to the pool. He stared into the late evening light glittered across undulating wavelets.
He certainly had option one, to struggle on with this engineering life. He could keep up all pretence in just the way things had always been, calculating this chemical compound product and that expansion coefficient. Or option two, he could turn a sharp corner. A tangible corner. This sulphur in the sky dump could be his turning point like a catalyst stimulating a new reaction. His wife would be pissed, but what was new about that? He’d make changes according to what he knew to be right and let the cards fall where they may. Top of the priority list would be Annalise and her desirable future. Unlikely she’d be off to Mars. With home planet Earth as her real place of residence, he needed help that place be happy ending livable. Healthy and getting healthier, not despoiled and chaotic.
What had Tami said when chatting about Venus? How each star had its surrounding habitable zone, and how Venus formed like Earth from the same interstellar gas and dust. How the initial composition of Venus held enough water to form oceans, and earlier in time with a dimmer sun had been within the sun’s habitable zone. Venus lost all water gradually into space as ultraviolet radiation split off hydrogen atoms. Today anywhere on the Venusian surface you measured the heat of a blast furnace. Whatever planetary history played out on Venus, no known biological life form could exist there. Yet the fact that Venus had at one time been like Earth would speak to peoples’ imagination.
He turned from the pool, and glancing out to the palm shadows, strolled along an imagined, redefined arc.
That Tami loved to compare the reality of now with her paleoclimatic data. What history revealed. That thermal maximum happened long before people were around, like 55 million years back. But even if no people lived then, the climate could be compared solidly to a what-if-people-burned-all-the-hydrocarbons scenario. That Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum came about at natural speed, people were wrapping a carbon dioxide blanket around their planet at human technology speed. Confirming evidence to a wiped out world at that temperature came from the climate models concurring with the historical record. Carbon dioxide at five times preindustrial brought you an environment that could at best be described as desolate.
Back to fear. Do people change their behaviour if you scare them? Epidemics of contagious disease or fear of overseas or homeland terrorists bent on destruction did get people going. Respectful trepidation could be arranged.
He could convert the bars of Venusian surface pressure brought on by high carbon atmosphere into a story of horror. Or say the survival struggle of terrestrial life during that Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum…god, that Paleocene-Eocene could sure use a nickname. And some drama, but the dinosaurs were gone by then and the ensuing creatures unfamiliar to people. Venus, say an ancient Venusian civilization on an Earth-like planet dealing with climate change—that had potential. A runaway Venus effect on home planet should catch the human imagination. The Venus effect could be easily imagined, just like snowball Earth but in temperature reverse. In that younger solar system the Venusian civilization may have even visited an uninhabited glittering snowball Earth. Snowball Earth—he loved the feel of that phase, along with the shimmer of terror brought on knowing geoengineering could cause the same by mistake or design. Too much terror, he needed tone back. How about translating the boring chemistry of weathering terrestrial rock that normally stores carbon in carbonates on the ocean floor into a tale of how that little snowball planet had warmed up again. That would be a based-on-truth story according to science theory. Would a children’s type story be noticed? Maybe partially. What would the politicians pick up on?
Past apex, and reaching his arc’s end point at the edge of the lighted grounds, he strolled back under a parasol to one table and placed his jPad before him.
What was the true story back home? So much global outlook had come out through his project research. With crisis evidence scattered around the globe, simple deduction told you not only the Sahel would be having situational issues. He had come upon enough to deep down suspect he needed first to rewrite the Alberta story. With investigative eyes, you didn’t need to look far to uncover a different truth.
Local news always covered the weather, yet media back-story was editor chosen. Checking southern Alberta weather records, he found a recent trend towards stronger winds. Gusts began to blow the roofs off buildings. Howling downtown Calgary winds brought out emergency fire ladders to rescue window cleaners. Newsworthy events, these had been reported yet with no inference to climate change. Selecting a guide nudged to source the alternate, he found an infogram recasting news stories to count climate associated deaths. Fatal incidents always caught the public attention, and the guide took him back to the first likely. During a ‘freak’ Calgary storm, reports said then, naturally caused and not to bring any extra concern, an older fellow drowned under his car. Along 4th street north west; Vince vaguely recalled that local torrential rain event. That poor fellow would be the first climate fatality in Calgary, with all the missed potential of an iconic hero cast as a warning.
Three years after that storm, came that extensively covered southern Alberta flood. A significant rush of river and rain had flushed right into downtown Calgary. The guide revealed how the media cast the event as a hundred year flood. No reference was made at the time to the probability increase due to climate change. Displaced residents were never referred to as Calgary climate refugees. Of course not Vince thought. That term would only be used for faraway places. Adaptation became the only Alberta buzz word he ever heard. The province built a diversion channel around that regional town to the south and that super reservoir drain right under the city to the Bow River downstream. The next flood tested those new flood mitigation efforts to their limits—the year Annalise was born. Local flood mitigation, local media reported, with little mention of the cause behind the floods. Or what really needed to be done—the climate change words were never spoken. All part of that politically touted adaptation strategy.
He glanced away from the jPad.
He’d noticed a couple things back home now that he thought about it all. Migratory crows hadn’t returned to Calgary in January because
they were lost. They came to nest early. Could be they instinctively recalled shortening winters at the end of the last Ice Age. Those early September snowstorms that broke so many urban tree branches still green with leaves had happened more than once now. A climate change aware person would think that could very well be due to a destabilized polar vortex. You could call it a freak storm if you wanted to stay unaware. Most people preferred to keep pretending, or stay in denial altogether, that’s what Jeri said.
Good old Alberta, and the Alberta tradition. With an oilfield mentality wrapped around tar sands and frac jobs the province was determined to squeeze the last drops of oil from the ground. Even when prolific and globally restated assertions came out that four fifths of proven reserves had to stay in the reservoir to keep below that two degree line. That being true, why would any fossil fuel company have an exploration department? But they did, based on their traditional business model—a reserves to production ratio to keep them solvent in the eyes of investors. The business model required continuous atmospheric carbon dumping. How would a story converting displaced residents into climate refugees ever fly in a backdrop of politically touted adaptation strategy and Alberta culture? Tough hard working frontier cowboys worked everything out with a gunfight at the southern Alberta corral.
What corral? The frontier was long gone, replace by a new challenge. An alternate outlook infogram compared historical tradition of Genghis Khan and his horse-riding invaders. After the atrocities of their conquest, even those riders had to eventually join the settled. There wasn’t enough hay growing room to feed all those horses and that rider mentality. Not in that historical setting nor would there be in a climate changed world.
Feeling his eyes droop, he pushed to read on.
The guide took him to an infogram revealing an early century peak oil prediction equating to peak economic growth. Naturally running out of oil would solve the climate problem it had been assumed then. But horizontal drilling and fracking had thrown a wrench into that version of peak oil. All that happened when the need for emissions to peak no later than 2020 became a globally known fact. Much better that they peak in 2015. The budget approach gained some carbon accounting attention. People had room for a trillion tons of carbon in their atmosphere to stay below the 2 degree danger line. The two critical parameters were the peak date and the rate of emissions decline after the peak. The super steep decline rate now required suggested that information had been ignored. With required crisis not arising then to stimulate action, the schedule needed to keep within that budget now called for a scrambled approach. Where had people been? Playing the fiddle as the Titanic went down.
A nonsensical laugh escaped his exhausted lips as he pictured those making music on a sinking ship. He could appeal to peoples’ daring childish side a giddy thought told him.
He had his analogy of Russian roulette. So first the children played a game with one blank shell, then more daunting came a game with a rubber bullet—now that would hurt, and now, now after a few more taunts across the sandbox, at least one chamber out of the six was loaded. With a real live climate change shell. Click, click, another click, then bang—statistically the most likely sequence. But keep statistics out, this needed story appeal. Anyone could figure you get a bang with the first trigger pull. Just the ensuing brains-on-the-wall scene was not for children, and neither did adults like that image. He wanted to cry.
He put his hand to his mouth, unable to hold back his yawn.
The global picture was a no brainer when you thought for a minute, one climate, one planet. But that one planet came with these people, and their behavior. People, who waited for a crisis, and then even if they caused it, wanted only to adapt. Or try to. All of Tami’s talk on how that global mitigation agreement failed year after year. She now put higher odds on a five degree planetary shift to be the new stabilized climate. That British Gaia scientist may have predicted correctly. Five degrees would be five shells in the six shooter.
He fumbled with his jPad and headed back to the hotel.
Fractal math, calculated in the hollow inner clutching of his heart. He could tell a climate change story, anything from a Christmas tree, to a death count, to a six shooter bullet. But who would want to hear? Where would he get an audience? Back in Alberta? Wherever, he had to find and accept his own path. Like Tami, to make some hard decisions, take some losses, but reap the rewards as well.
He walked back into his room, smiling groggily. He saw them again, though he knew them so briefly. Keith and Sanoo, doing exactly what he was, one minute there, and the next exploded away. Brad’s infectious upbeat grin cut hard to harsh pain yet now ingrained into him. He rubbed at emerging grin lines, facial pain subsided, yet screaming the bridge fractals message. Do something!
All he could do at the moment was sleep, mind filtering switched on. He’ll talk to that Tamanna again, and gather more data beyond, far beyond his father’s engineering. Ambling over to the bed, last thought promising to take action, he drifted off exhausted.