Fifty Degrees Below

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “Big profits in global cooling,” Edgardo said.

  “Perturbation.” Anna liked the sound of the word and the concept. “It’s a network, and we perturb it in ways that stimulate harmonics.” She thought the math describing this system’s behavior was more interesting than the cascade theories, which always went back to chaos theory. Her urge to orderliness made her extremely interested in chaos theory, but the math itself was not as appealing to her as the stuff on harmonics in a network, which tended to describe stabilities rather than breakdowns. Just neater somehow.

  “Like cat’s cradle,” Diane said once, looking at a diagram on Frank’s screen.

  “I wish,” Anna said. “If only we could just stick in some fingers and lift it out into something entirely new! Something simpler. Release a few complications—that used to be a cool move in cat’s cradle when I was a girl. . . .”

  But the truth was, the interlocking networks of human institutions were woven into such a tight mesh that it was hard to get any wave functions or simplifications going. They were tied down like Gulliver by all their rules and regulations. Only the violence of the original perturbation—the flood in Washington—was getting them as much flex as they were seeing; that and the hard winter. Any more than that they were going to have to create by lots of small actions, repeated many times.

  So their work went on, under the radar for the most part, unreported in the news. The only exceptions were the most visible and large-scale of the weather projects. For these the public scrutiny was intense, the reaction all over the map. Most of the projects proposed had broad public support. Even the more blatant interventions, like bioengineered bacteria or lichen, had the support of an admittedly smaller majority, like sixty percent. People were ready to try things. The traffic jams and empty stores were getting to them in ways that news reports of distant storms had not.

  Phil Chase was noticing that on the campaign trail. “People are fed up with the disruptions,” he said to his staff. “Listen to what they’re telling us. Too many hassles when things break down. Try anything you can think of, they’re saying, to get levels of service and convenience back to what they used to be.” In his speeches he continued to say something FDR had said back in the 1930s: “The solution is to be found in a program of bold and persistent experimentation.”

  As a scientist Anna had to like that. They were designing, funding, and executing experiments. Compiling a hypothetical candidate’s most scientifically defensible positions was just one experiment among all the rest of them. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t, but they would learn something from it either way. She even began to see what she thought might be ripples caused by her perturbations, cascading through the global scientific network of institutions, the agencies and companies and academies and labs—the scientific polyarchy, from individual scientists up to labs, institutions, corporations, and countries. Tugging on the cat’s cradle, stomping on the dog’s tail.

  She would go to Frank to talk about amplifying some of these perturbations, also about ways Frank’s new projects could sometimes be executed by the already-existing scientific network. Then to Charlie she would talk about what Phil should be proposing in his campaign. Phil was certainly making climate change a major issue—a calculated risk for sure, given the American penchant for denial, particularly of problems caused by Americans. The president himself constantly urged denial as a kind of virtue, and denounced the climate issue as a universal downer—which it was—although he was no longer trying to claim that it was a nonexistent problem.

  Phil Chase was not hesitant in bringing up the subject, or in proposing to tackle the problem. Charlie wrote parts of speeches, fed Roy facts and ideas, and discussed strategy on a daily basis. At night he would sit with Anna and watch Phil say things like, “Climate change is obviously real, and byproducts of our economy have had a role in this global warming. Republicans by denying this have compounded the problem, and lost our descendants hundreds of fellow species, and decades of work. Now it’s time to do something about it, and I’m the one with the will to do it. We’re going to need to work at this, it needs to become a big part of the national project, the focus of our economy. In that sense it is actually an incredible opportunity for new industries. We’re on the verge of a truly life-affirming and sustainable global economy, based on justice and nurturing the biosphere, rather than strip-mining and fouling it. I’m ready to lead the way in starting to treat this planet like our home.”

  Anna could always tell when Charlie had written what Phil was saying, because Charlie would hold his breath for however long it took Phil to say it. “Whew! Am I crazy?” he would gasp afterward. “I must be crazy! Why is Phil trusting me? He’s freaking me out here!”

  And yet all this seemed to be part of what was helping Phil’s numbers; maybe even the main part. He had always polled highest the more he ignored conventional inside-the-Beltway political wisdom. As a California politician this was more or less a traditional tactic, reinforced by each subsequent success, as with their recent grandstanding governor. Just go for it, baby! Washington punditry was for girlie men!

  Thus now, when Phil was asked about the “Virtual Scientist Candidate,” he would smile his glorious smile. “In Europe a candidate like that is called a shadow candidate. I take the people inventing this candidate to be our allies, because if you judge the effect of your vote by rational scientific criteria, then you will never throw it away on a splinter party that doesn’t have a chance in our winner-take-all system. You vote for the potential winner most likely to express something like your views, and at this moment I’m that man. So the science guy is my shadow.”

  His numbers rose again. It seemed to Anna that it was going to be a really close election; so close she could hardly stand to contemplate it.

  Edgardo agreed. “People like it that way. Seesaw back and forth, try to get it perfectly level for election day. Confound the polls by sitting inside their margins of error. That way the day itself will bring a surprise. A bit of drama, just for its own sake. Policy has nothing to do with it, life and death have nothing to do with it. People just like a good race. They like their little surprises.”

  “They may get a big surprise this time,” Anna said.

  “They don’t like big surprises. Only little surprises will do.”

  On it went. The summer passed, giving them several weeks in a row of weather so cool and pleasant that abrupt climate change began to seem like a blessing. During that time several of the FCCSET programs were linked, and suddenly Department of Energy was on their side—it was actually unnerving—and they were in hot pursuit of what looked like a really powerful photovoltaic cell. Previously the polymers in plastic solar cells had absorbed only visible light, converting about six percent of the sun’s energy to electrical power; now researchers were mixing semiconducting nanoparticles called quantum dots into one of the layers, which absorbed infrared light and generated electricity as well. A layering of both yielded an efficiency of thirty percent, and now the mythical ten-by-ten mile array of cells, set somewhere in New Mexico and powering the whole country, was beginning to look like an actual possibility.

  Anna went on to her other work, feeling pleased. Perturbation of the network! Cat’s cradle, slip and pull! When she went home she would be able to sit there and listen to Charlie’s talk about the campaign without getting as anxious and irritated as before—knowing, as she watched the news sprawl across the screen like a giant Jerry Springer show they could not escape, that always underneath it the great work rolled on.

  ANNA’S GREAT WORK, HOWEVER, WAS BASICALLY a linear process; and it existed in a world with some important nonlinear components, acting in different realms. One morning at home with Joe, Charlie got a call from Roy Anastophoulus. “Roy!”

  “Charlie are you sitting down?”

  “I am not sitting down, I never sit down, but nothing you can tell me will need me sitting down!”

  “That’s what you think! Charlie I’
ve got Wade Norton on the other line and I’m going to patch him in. Wade? Can you still hear me?”

  A second or two of satellite time, and then Charlie heard Wade, speaking from Antarctica: “I can still hear you. Hi Charlie, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, Wade,” resisting the urge to speak louder so that Wade could still hear him down there at the bottom of the world. “What’s happening?”

  “I’m on a flight over the Ross Sea, and I’m looking at a big tabular berg that’s just come off from the coastline. Really really really big. It’ll be on the news soon, but I wanted to call you guys and tell you. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has started to come off big time.”

  “Oh my God. You’re looking at a piece of it already off?”

  “Yes. It’s about a hundred miles long, the pilot says.”

  “My God. So sea level has already gone up a foot?”

  “You got it Charlie! I was trying to tell Roy.”

  “That’s why I told you to sit down,” Roy put in.

  “I had better sit down,” Charlie admitted, feeling a little wobble, as for instance the axis of the Earth. “Any guesses by the scientists down there as to how fast the rest will come off?”

  “They don’t know. It’s happening faster than they expected. Some of them are running a pool now, and the bets range from a decade to a century. Apparently the goo underneath the ice is the consistency of toothpaste. It lets the ice slide, and the tides tug at it, and there’s an active volcano down underneath there too.”

  “Shit.”

  “So we’re talking sea-level rise?” Roy asked, trying to get confirmation.

  “Yes,” Wade said. “Hey boys I’ve got to go, I just wanted to let someone know. I’ll talk to you more soon.”

  He got off and Charlie then explained the situation to Roy. Giant ice sheet, warming, cracking—sliding off its underwater perch—floating away in chunks, displacing more water than it had when perched. If the whole thing came off, sea level up seven meters. A quarter of the world’s population affected, perhaps fifty trillion dollars in human and natural capital at risk. Conservatively.

  Roy said, “Okay Charlie. I get the point. It sounds like it will help Phil in the campaign.”

  “Roy, please. Not funny.”

  “I’m not being funny.” Although he was laughing like a loon. “I’m talking about addressing the problem! If Phil doesn’t win, what do you think will happen?”

  “Okay okay. Shit. My God.” Everything Anna and her colleagues had been doing to restart the Gulf Stream was as nothing to this news. Changing currents, maybe—but sea level? “The stakes just keep getting higher, don’t they?”

  “Yes they do.”

  X

  PRIMAVERA PORTEÑO

  Kenzo had run the numbers and found that most seasonal weather manifestations varied by about eight percent, year to year—temperature, precipitation, wind speeds, and so on. Now all that was over. They had passed the point of criticality, they had tipped over the tipping point in the same way a kid running up a seesaw will get past the axis and somewhere beyond and above it plummet down on the falling board. They were in the next mode, and coming into the second winter of abrupt climate change.

  The president announced on the campaign trail that he had inherited this problem from his Democratic predecessors, particularly Bill Clinton, and that only free markets and a strong national defense could battle this new threat, which he continued to call climactic terrorism. “Why, you can’t be sure you won’t wake up someday to find the world spitting in your face. It’s not okay, and I’m going to do something about it. My administration has been studying the problem and getting recommendations from our scientists, and I’m proud to say that on my watch the National Science Foundation initiated this great counterterrorist operation in the North Atlantic, which will soon restore the Gulf Stream to its rightful flow, and show how American knowhow and technology is a match for anything.”

  This played well, like most things the president did. He visited NSF for half an hour, and later appeared on the news in a briefing with Diane Chang, the heads of NOAA and the EPA, and his science advisor, Dr. Strengloft. The president got a great deal of credit for taking on the weather in such a forceful and market-based manner, bypassing the scientists and liberals and striking a blow for freedom and the salt industry. Anna, watching the TV news, hissed like a tea kettle; Charlie threw Joe’s dinosaurs at the radiator. The president’s numbers went up. Only Diane was calm. She said, “Don’t worry. It only means we’re winning. They’re all trying to get on our side now. So science is getting some leverage on the situation.”

  And Phil Chase blew through all the president’s claims with a laugh. “The salt fleet is an international project, coordinated through the UN. The part of it we’re paying for comes from an appropriation Congress made because of a bill I wrote. The president tried to hamstring this great project up and down the line. Come on! You all know which candidate will work to protect the environment, and it’s me, me and my party. Let’s turn it into a big party. We can make things better for our kids, and that’ll be our fun. That’s the way it’s always been until now, so you can’t let the fear and greed guys scare you ’til you cut and run. The new climate is an opportunity. We needed to change, and now we will, because we have to. What could be more convenient?”

  This played well too, much to the pundits’ private surprise (in public they always knew everything), and now Phil’s numbers went up. He was polling neck and neck with the president, and doing particularly well among the boomers and their children the echo boomers, the two biggest demographics.

  The president’s team continued to transpose what was working for Chase into the president’s campaign. They began to proclaim the bad weather to be an economic opportunity of the first order. New businesses, even entire new industries, were there for the making! The bad weather was obviously another economic opportunity for market-driven reforms.

  However, since he had been elected with the help of big oil and everything transnationally corporate, and had done more than any previous president to strip-mine the nation and use it as a dumping ground, he did not appear to be as convincing as Phil. It was getting hard to believe his assertions that the invisible hand of the market would solve everything, because, as Phil put it, the invisible hand never picked up the check.

  So the election campaign wallowed along in its falsity and tedium, and surprise surprise, as the summer passed it became an ever-tightening race, just as all media hopeful for interested customers might have wished. These summer months were full enough of new weather anomalies and extreme events to keep Phil in the chase, as he liked to put it.

  So his campaign was doing well, and he kept it up with campaign events all over the world, including a return to the North Pole a year after announcing his candidacy. It was a bit of a throwback to his old World’s Senator mode, but he claimed its effect was good, and his team could only follow his lead. “I have to run on my record, there’s no other way to do it. I am what I am.” He started saying that too. “I am what I am.”

  “And that’s all what I am,” Roy always sang when he said it, “I’m Popeye the sailor man! Toot toot!” Phil was in fact like Popeye in enough important respects that his staff started calling him that.

  And Charlie had to admit that since the climate problem was global, campaigning everywhere made a sort of sense. It made Phil and his career and his campaign all of a piece. Meanwhile the president remained resolutely nationalistic, it was always America this and freedom that, no matter how transnational and oppressive the content of his positions. Patriotism as xenophobia was part of his appeal to his base, and it worked for them. But Phil’s people had a different idea: the world was the world. Everyone was part of it.

  One unexpected problem for his campaign was that the “Scientific Virtual Candidate” was polling pretty well, up to five percent in blue states, despite the fact that the candidate was nonexistent and would not appear on any ballots. A
nd this of course was a problem for Phil. Most of those potential votes came from his natural constituency, and so it was accomplishing the usual third-party disaster of undercutting precisely the major party most closely allied to its views.

  Phil looked to Charlie on this. “Charlie, you have to talk to your wife and her colleagues at NSF about this. I don’t want to be accidentally nadered by these good people. You tell them, whatever they want out of this campaign, I’m their best chance at it.”

  “I don’t want to depress them that much,” Charlie deadpanned, which got a good Phil chuckle, rueful but pleased. His fear that running for president was going to lose him all real human contact (the unconscious goal of many a previous president), was so far proving unfounded. “Thanks for that thrust of rapierlike wit,” he replied. “There aren’t enough people saying deflationary things about me these late days of the campaign. You are indeed a brother, and we are a real foxhole fraternity, shelled daily as we are by Fox. But don’t forget to talk to NSF.” As far as Charlie could tell he was still enjoying himself enormously.

  And Charlie did ask Anna and Frank what the plans were for the candidate experiment. They both shrugged and said it was out of their hands, the genie out of the bottle. At NSF they talked to the SSEEP team, who were of course already aware of the historical precedents and the negative ramifications of any partial real-world success of their hypothetical campaign. Until preferential voting was introduced, third parties could only be spoilers.

  Frank got back to Charlie. “They’re on it.”

  “How so, meaning what?”

  “They’re waiting for their moment.”

  “Ahhhhh.”

  This moment came in late September, when a hurricane veered north at the last minute and hammered New Jersey, New York, Long Island, and Connecticut, and to a lesser extent the rest of New England. These were blue states already, but with big SSEEP numbers as well, so that after the first week of emergencies had passed, and the flooding subsided, a SSEEP conference was held in which representatives of 167 scientific organizations debated what to do in as measured and scientific a manner as they could manage—which in the event meant a perfect storm of statistics, chaos theory, sociology, econometrics, mass psychology, ecology, cascade mathematics, poll theory, historiography, and climate modeling. At the end of which a statement was crafted, approved, and released, informing the public that the “Scientific Virtual Candidate” was withdrawing from all campaigns, and suggesting that any voters who had planned to vote for it consider voting for Phil Chase as being an “electable first approximation of the scientific candidate,” and “best real current choice.” Support for preferential or instant run-off voting method was also strongly recommended, as giving future scientific candidates the chance actually to win representation proportional to the votes they got, improving democracy if judged by representational metrics.