Another wave of laughter made the rounds. The irony of a hearing on sea-level rise taking place amid flash flood warnings had escaped no one.
The speaker was unmoved. “Our models suggest that given an increase in ground temperatures—”
“Your models have been tested on a computer,” Austin replied. “I’ve been out there checking and rechecking, digging under glaciers, walking on the ice sheets, taking core samples, with other members of NUMA’s science teams. We’ve spent months comparing satellite images with direct on-site observations of glacial retreat rates, snow depths and actual runoff data in the streams below the glaciers. We’ve been looking everywhere for signs of unprecedented melting and we just haven’t found it. I hate to burst your bubble but the glaciers and ice caps are vanishing no faster, and no slower, than they have been over the last ten years. Which means whatever is going on here, it’s not related to global warming.”
“Then what is the cause?”
“I wish I knew,” Kurt said. “But if your acceleration numbers are correct, we’d better find out in a hurry or start building large boats made of gopher wood.”
Only half the crowd got the reference to Noah’s Ark, but the senator from Florida was one of them.
“Two by two isn’t going to help us,” the senator said. “My apologies for reprimanding you, Mr. Austin. Your contributions have been invaluable. I ask you all to forward the data you’ve collected to all groups for st
udy. We’ll meet again in two weeks. But if we don’t have an answer soon, this information will have to be shared with the public. I don’t have to tell you what that means.”
Politics and spin doctors and public hysteria, Joe thought. All of which would make it near impossible to get anything done.
The meeting adjourned. Joe stood up and made his way to Kurt. “Nice entrance. I suggest a fog machine and lasers to make it more dramatic next time.”
“Been in fog all day,” Kurt said. “Seems like we all have. We need to find answers to this mystery and we need to find them fast.”
4
NUMA HEADQUARTERS
5:30 P.M.
KURT FLICKED ON the lights in the NUMA conference room. Joe, Paul and Gamay filed in behind him.
“Better get the coffee going,” Kurt said. “It’s going to be a long night.”
They’d left Capitol Hill at the end of the hearing, driven across town as everyone else was leaving Washington. By six p.m. on a Friday, D.C. was a ghost town. A wet, soggy ghost town.
Joe set up the coffeemaker while Paul and Gamay put their binderfuls of notes down on the table.
“I can’t believe we’re back to square one,” Gamay said. “Are you sure there’s no ice melt going on? Not even in the Southern Hemisphere?”
“It’s still winter in the Southern Hemisphere,” Kurt said. “Trust me, nothing is melting in Antarctica at negative fifty degrees. And before you say it, I checked with our friends at McMurdo Station just to be sure.”
“Well, I don’t see how we can work on a solution if we don’t know what’s causing the problem,” she replied.
“We can’t,” Kurt said. “Which is why we’re going to stay in this room until we come up with another possibility for the root cause.”
“Even if we find the cause, we might be unable to stop it,” Joe pointed out. “It might also stabilize on its own.”
“Agreed,” Kurt said. “But let’s not count on that.”
With this directive, a brainstorming session began that would have made any group of thriller authors proud. One after another, various methods of drowning the planet poured forth.
“What about increased volcanic activity?” Kurt suggested. “Water vapor is known to be a large component of any eruption.”
“Checked on that while you were in Greenland,” Paul said. “On a worldwide basis, volcanic activity is down thirty percent over the last twelve months.”
“What about increased rainfall?” Joe suggested. “We’ve had floods in the south and out west this year. And if it keeps raining here, the Potomac is going to overflow in the next few days. What if we’re dealing with a similar situation worldwide, a forty days and forty nights kind of thing?”
Kurt glanced over at Joe to see if he was serious.
“What?” Joe said. “You’re the one that mentioned gopher wood.”