Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [76]
The NOAA people did their best with these questions. Frank and the others there tried out various back-of-the-envelope calculations, and they talked over what it might take to bring that much salt to bear. It seemed within the industrial and shipping capacities of the advanced nations, at least theoretically—somewhat similar to the numbers involved in oil transport—although there were also questions concerning whether this would be a one-time application, or would have to be an annual thing to offset the Arctic sea ice that would presumably form every winter, break up every spring, and float south every summer.
“We can deal with that issue later,” Diane declared. “Meanwhile I want all the answers here as constrained as possible, so I can take a plan to Congress and the president. Anything we can do that makes the point we are not helpless will be useful on other fronts. So, as far as I can tell, this is as good a place to start as any.”
At lunch he ran with the NSF runners, when he could get away. It was an indulgence but he couldn’t help himself. He justified it by inventing questions he could ask Kenzo about the Arctic climate and so on. That would get Kenzo started on his Master of Disaster shtick, detailing the latest like a curator with an exceptionally good show; but this was likely to happen anyway, for Kenzo never tired of the role, nor seemed to think he was telling the story of the beginning of the end of civilization.
That part was Edgardo’s job. “How are your Khembalis doing, Frank?”
“Well, it’s getting pretty crowded at their house.”
“I can see they’re sleeping in their office too.”
“Yes. I think Immigration is beginning to get on their case. They’re going for some kind of refugee status.”
“They’ll never get that,” Edgardo advised. “They should call themselves Washington’s only Buddhist think tank.”
“Maybe so.”
“They should say they are the embassy from Atlantis.”
“That’ll really help them with access to Congress.”
Edgardo laughed. “It would! They would love it! Atlantis, Shambhala—your guys have to be from somewhere interesting. Do they have lawyers identifying who to sue for compensation?”
“No.”
“Do they have insurance companies ready to back their suit?”
“No! Be quiet and run, will you?”
But Frank couldn’t run fast enough to wind them. They were stronger runners than he was, and so it was talk talk talk, every step of the way. Scientists, bureaucrats—scientific bureaucrats—technocrats—they were all intellectuals to one degree or another. Although of course not therefore all equally talkative, or the same in personality. Frank pounded along behind Edgardo and Kenzo contemplating the different characters in even so homogenous a technocracy as NSF. There were shy types; there were science geeks like Kenzo; then also raving intellectuals like Edgardo; and bluff “simple folk” like Bob or Clark, who weren’t willing to admit to knowing anything or having any opinions except in their areas of expertise, implying that this modesty was the purest form of scientific precision and right action: no opinions, only assert what you think you can prove.
Edgardo was not like that. He had come up with another idea for a popular science bestseller: “I was reading an enormously long paper on hypergraphia when it came to me that the researcher suffered from the disease and that was why he was interested. I wonder how often that