End of the Beginning: Chapters 34 & 35
Chapter 34: November 30th
Longyearbyen, Svalbard, The Norwegian Arctic
A cold rain fell from the skies, thudding heavily onto the roof of the university and the sodden ground that surrounded it. It had been falling for days, a time that now felt like an eternity. In the blackness of the daylong night the sound of the rain hammered into the soul, driving the mind in a tumultuous dance that swayed between resignation, despair and anger. Only within a small area illuminated by the lights of the university could the otherwise invisible pounding of the rain be seen. Olga had insulated herself against the sound of the rain, standing in the doorway with the beautiful sounds of Tchaikovsky bathing ears that were safely ensconced in the stylish headphones that adorned her head. After the hours of briefing on the changing Arctic, she had needed the time by herself to settle her mind.
She felt the presence of another next to her and turned to see the friendly face of Anders, the leader of the Norwegian team. Wrapping her headphones around her neck, she explained “sometimes I just need to listen to music for a while to help me gather my thoughts”.
Anders nodded with a look that showed a deep understanding “excuse me for interrupting, but I thought that you might like some Glogg, we just made a new batch”, as he held out a steaming mug of dark liquid.
“Not at all, thank you” she replied as she grasped the mug and took an exploratory sip of the aromatic liquid. The warmth travelled down her throat and seemed to radiate a goodness throughout her body, “that is very good, you will have to give me the recipe” she exclaimed.
“One of the secrets to surviving the northern winters” he smiled. It was a warm smile, matching the warm friendliness of his eyes. The friendly giant she thought to herself.
“This is the new Arctic, raining at the end of November and no ice for fifty miles offshore. To think that the North Pole is only 650 miles away, just incredible”, Anders said as he gazed off into the darkness, taking a sip of Glogg before continuing, “The increasing cloudiness in the Autumn traps the heat that the open waters take in from the Sun during the Summer. Then to make matters worse, storms keep coming up from the south carrying more heat while breaking up any ice before it can thicken.” He paused for a moment. “The research work that Erik is doing is the most troubling though” his voice trailing off as he uttered the last word.
Olga thought for a second “The change in ocean stratification?” she asked.
Erik nodded, “yes, previously the warm Atlantic current would travel well beneath the surface so that its’ heat would not reach the ice above. That thick ice stabilized the water column by protecting it from the wind and waves, in effect protecting itself from the warmer waters below. With so much more open water and thin ice, the increasing storms can get at the ocean waters and churn them up. The warm layer gets mixed with the colder surface layer, bringing a lot of extra heat to the surface. That makes it impossible to form new ice and the heat attacks any ice that has formed. Then less ice to start the next summer heating season, less ice at the end of that season and more heat taken up by the open waters. Then more clouds, more storms, more ocean mixing, and the ice death spiral continues.”
Olga asked the question that had been forming in her mind over the past few hours, “there doesn’t seem to be much of an increase in cloudiness in the summer to offset the darker ocean. That makes for a huge amount of extra heat taken up by the ocean, by some calculations more than that trapped by all the human climate emissions.”
Erik’s face took on a resigned expression, “Yes, that’s why we are seeing the warming of the Arctic accelerate so fast – and that’s with a lot of the extra energy being trapped in the ocean. With less and less ice forming during the winter, there is more open water to take up the Sun early in the summer season. The rate of change is accelerating toward the point where the ice will be gone during June, when the Sun is at its highest; probably within a few years, a possibility that I would have found crazy not that long ago. We have to fix this and fix it fast before things get beyond the point where we can’t do anything about it. I hope that we are not already too late.” They both gazed off into the darkness, alone with their thoughts.
“All we can do is to enjoy every day that we have” Dmitry had told her when she had become overwhelmed with dark premonitions about what the future held and the grief that hid just below the surface. If only she still had Natalya to share her thoughts and fears with.
Chapter 35: January 11th, 2033
Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica (8am local time)
Deep below the surface of the ocean, a wide river of warm water flowed toward the continent as it passed under a fleet of icebergs floating majestically on the surface. The river of water surged upwards as it met an underwater ridge, reached the peak and then charged down the other side and onwards toward another ridge, over that ridge and down toward the bottom of a deep valley, beneath the weight of the waters above. Ahead lay the 75-mile long base of the glacier sitting half a mile under the ocean’s surface, against which the never-ending warm river of water would grind away day in and day out, like a dog biting away at a giant’s ankles; forcing a deepening wedge beneath the mass of the ice above. The glacier towered hundreds of feet above the waves, with a twenty-mile tongue stuck out above the ever-growing wedge beneath. The more the warm waters ate into its base, the longer that tongue became and the harder for the glacier to hold on. It creaked and groaned like an old arthritic man struggling to hold a weight at arms-length. Melt waters pooled on its surface, forcing cracks through its body as they drained away.
Years before an ice shelf had buttressed the weight of the ice sheet, but that was now gone – exposing the massive cliffs behind that strained under their own weight. Underneath the ice sheet was a large valley, with the sides descending towards the interior where the bottom of the valley was more than a mile and a half beneath the ocean’s surface. Once the glacier lost its battle to keep hold of its long tongue, higher and higher cliffs behind would be exposed. One cliff face after another would collapse under its own weight, driving a wedge deeper and deeper into the ice shelf. Once that tongue was gone, and the ice-cliffs started to collapse, there would be no stopping the eventual destruction of the ice sheet. The only question would be how long it would take for the huge amounts of frozen water stored in it to become part of the oceans; raising them by ten feet; perhaps a foot per decade. Just from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, not from the much bigger East Antarctic Ice Sheet or from Greenland far to the north.
Roksana stopped the drill as she felt the ice sheet shudder beneath her, looking at her colleagues to confirm what she had felt. It was not the first shudder that she had felt that day, and they were getting stronger.
“Time to get out of here I think, Eddie you call in the helicopter and we better pack this up fast. We should have the ‘copter standby in case we need to make a run for it and leave the equipment.” Research on the ice sheets was becoming riskier and riskier, and she did not want to start the New Year by adding to the growing body count. It would take them hours to disassemble the drill, as the glacier creaked and groaned, and she could hear the sound of trickling water beneath her feet. In the blazing sun it was going to be hot and sweaty work.
High in the sky above them the sunlight glinted off the wings of a plane. Behind the plane stretched long trails of specially engineered particles that spread out, mixed with the air, and reflected part of the Sun’s energy back out to space. They would only stay in the atmosphere for a week or so before falling to Earth, so many such planes flew around the clock to coat the sky in the protective veil. At the other end of the planet, in the never-ending darkness of the winter, the planes had moved to a new role; there was no energy from the Sun to be reflected. They now spread chemicals in an attempt to stop clouds forming; the kind of clouds that would reflect back the heat given out by the open waters as they cooled. At the poles, cloudy skies may be best in the summer but not in the winter. In those dark winter days clear skies were best, so that nothing would stand in the way of to stop the heat from the land and sea escaping the Earth and travelling out into the void beyond.
Reykjavik, Iceland (2pm local time)
They made for an odd-looking foursome to the average Icelander, as they huddled in the corner of the bar; a Russian, Chinese, Australian and American.
“So much for us being inconspicuous” Olga noted with a wry smile “then again, the multinational bodyguard doesn’t help”. Two of the muscular dark suits sat at the table next to them, while others roamed outside and manned the obligatory menacing SUV’s; battery powered of course. The seemingly unlimited amounts of energy available from the heat beneath this volcanic island had made it easy to move to a fossil-fuel free world.
They had spent the day grinding through the physics and mechanics of ice sheet collapse; not a heartening subject given the increasingly bad news.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire” Thomas had quipped as the reality of at least an extra foot of sea level rise by mid-century had worked its way through their joint consciousness; and it wouldn’t stop there, with perhaps another foot the following decade, and more than a foot the following decade … “shit” had stumbled out of his mouth as he thought about the impact upon the world’s shorelines.
Zhaohui had summed it up well, “we certainly do seem doomed to live in interesting times”. After such a day they had needed a drink, so here they were huddled in the corner of a bar in downtown Reykjavik. How would they explain this to their politicians, would they be unable to raise themselves yet again to deal with what felt like an endless list of challenges after the momentous events of the previous year?
“I wish that Venkata could have been here, I still cannot quite believe that he is no longer with us. There has been far too much death in the past year”, Olga said as her voice tailed off into an uncomfortable silence.
“Jim, your shoulder still seems to be giving you some trouble?” Xiaohui asked in an attempt to stave of the advancing melancholy.
“The physio is helping a lot, but it is still a bit stiff and it starts to throb a little after too long at the computer. I certainly won’t be lifting heavy weights any time soon” he replied.
“How’s Kelly?” Olga asked as she pulled herself out of the darkness.
“She’s good, a little overwhelmed by the sheer scale of everything, but really enjoying the challenges. Always a problem aligning the calendars, so we catch the time together that we can. How’s Dmitry?” Jim tossed back.
“Dmitry is Dmitry, nothing ever seems to be too much for him. Lost quite a lot of weight with all the bicycle riding and walking that he is doing nowadays. Just shows that you can be climate-friendly and healthier at the same time!”
Zhaohui could not hold back an impudent response, “Seems he is also doing a fair bit of disciplining of the less sustainable elements as well. Perhaps we should be setting up special courts for those that have ‘unsustainable thoughts’. We could send them to Siberia for reeducation in the middle of the melting permafrost. The mere threat of such things may keep the over-consumers in line. One of our own billionaires already offered up his yacht to be converted to a research vessel, seems even his own daughter couldn’t stand such a waste of the Earth’s resources. Amazing how fast a culture can be changed when we put our minds, and the might of the state, to it.”
The others nodded in agreement.
Thomas shared his thoughts, “All of those years that we pushed for change in the face of such intransigent opposition, and all those groups talking about what was ‘politically possible’ versus what was actually needed. It was all just self-serving business as usual bullshit. Most people I deal with feel a sense of relief that at last we are coming together to deal with the challenges. Also, there is a new sense of community spirit and togetherness that we have not had for a very long time. Yes, there are challenges, but in many ways dealing with those challenges has brought people together and given them a new sense of being part of a greater whole. Sharing your car, taking public transport, and even walking may not be as easy but does connect people with their community and their surroundings. It also brings back a sense of human time, rather than the constant squeezing of time that we had before.”
Jim was a little skeptical of such positivity, “Let’s not forget all the people and whole communities that have lost their livelihoods. The travel and tourism industry is devastated, and it won’t be coming back. No more cheap trips to far away places to sit on a beach or ski down a mountainside, many less international business meetings, and a lot less get-togethers of far-flung families. Such an incredible waste of resources and people’s lives, when we knew that it could come to this. Think of all that energy and time just to build one of those airports, all those hotels, and train all of those people in now-useless roles. Completely wasted, instead of going into stuff we so desperately need now. They are monuments to the utter stupidity and short sightedness of the business as usual crowd. I understand the need for national unity and such, but it does really annoy me that those intransigents are not being held accountable for their actions.”
“Didn’t one of those oil executives nearly get lynched last week, he was only just saved in the nick of time by the police?” asked Olga, “seems that there is a fair degree of accountability falling upon their heads from the general public. Your President is playing a dangerous game in not quite fully cracking down on them. Perhaps a few disciplinary examples to show the options available to those that would get in his way, but such things can easily get out of hand”, she continued.
Jim smiled, showing a level of both respect and agreement for his President’s actions, “yes, ‘me or the pitchforks’, seems to be his message and it’s certainly working. As you say though, he has to be careful to keep control of things. It feels to me that we are on the edge right now, between doing what’s necessary to deal with the climate and not completely upending society. It’s a very careful balance that could slip out of our leader’s hands. Hopefully, the climate doesn’t provide any more nasty surprises.”
Thomas agreed, “Amen to that, and I’m an atheist.”
Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica (10am local time)
They had been at it for two hours and had still not been able to fully dismantle the drill and get it onto the helicopter. Roksana felt a shudder go through the ice shelf beneath them, a shudder that seemed to travel through her whole body and into the depths of her mind, screaming “Get Out!” She looked up and exchanged scared looks with her colleagues; then they ran. The helicopter was not far away, hovering just above the ice, but it felt like an eternity before she was able to thrust her body upwards and into its safety. With all on board and strapped in, the helicopter took off nearly vertically into the sky. With the headset on she did not hear the massive roar beneath her, but as she casually looked over the edge of the helicopter, she saw the ice shelf rolling over, with its edge rising up to meet the helicopter.
Transfixed, she watched the huge mass reaching up into the sky to take them back down into the waters with it. Compared to the slab of ice reaching higher and higher into the sky the helicopter was like a tiny fly frantically trying to escape from being swatted.
No, no, no! repeated in her mind, increasing in intensity as she stared helplessly at the nemesis rising toward her. The massive slab of ice reached out to crush the helicopter but fell mercifully just short. It flung itself just underneath them, creating an up draught of air that flung the helicopter higher into the sky; pinning Roksana into her seat. Then, as the up draught receded, she was thrown forward as the helicopter lurched downwards as if it was riding a roller coaster. Then complete chaos as it took on the persona of a bucking bronco, trying to throw its passengers out into the sky as the pilot fought to regain control. Emergency lights flashed with a manic intensity, as the curses of the pilot rang in Roksana’s ears and the world spun crazily outside the open door next to her.
Suddenly the air was full of water as the huge slab of ice splashed back down into the ocean beneath, with both Roksana and the helicopter coughing on the frothy mix of saltwater and air. The mid-air exertions became even more frenzied; spinning, rolling, falling, and rising. Part of her felt that it would be better just to die than having to continue this terrifying and sickening dance. Then, the danger was gone as fast as it had arisen. The sky was quiet, and the ocean rumbled safely below them, and the helicopter leveled out. Was it a terrifying dream, or had it really happened? Roksana looked around to check with the others, once more able to consider things outside her own survival. With a sinking feeling, she noticed that one of the seats that had been occupied was now empty. The sad faces of her colleagues confirmed the loss as the man sat next to the empty seat sat quietly in shock staring open-mouthed into space.
She fought the sadness and grief that threatened to overwhelm her as she tried to comprehend what had just happened. A brutal realization coalesced in her mind. The door to the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet had been thrown open, and it could not be closed.