Jackson smiled, opened the bottle, and brought two glasses out of a drawer. “A pleasure to meet you, Dr. Lindsey.”
“Maggie,” I said. “Nobody calls me doctor.” I accepted a glass of bourbon and sat across the desk from him. We engaged in the usual small talk of the Arctic, discussing the weather, the state of the sea ice, my good luck in getting in before the wind picked up. At that moment the wind was blasting the triple-paned office window with ice crystals and making the station vibrate with a steady hum.
Jackson sipped his bourbon, then told me they’d been having problems with polar bears of late. That led to a story about a grad student who had come to the station to study the population decline of polar bears. “He thought they were cute until he got trapped in a remote observation blind for three days when a couple of young bears decided he’d make a good snack. After that, he switched to studying the decline of the parrotfish population in coral reefs off the coast of the Yucatan.”
“He could have switched to Arctic foxes,” I suggested. “They’re plenty cute and not at all menacing unless you’re a lemming.”
Jackson shook his head. “He’s better off in the tropics. He didn’t belong up here.”
“So you condemned him to sweltering on the beach and watching the sea level rise.”
“Drinking warm beer because there’s no ice. Battening down for hurricanes. Battling giant tropical spiders.”
We lifted our glasses and toasted the guy who couldn’t cut it in our environment of choice.
“When I found out you were coming to the station, I asked a few sources of my own about you,” he told me.
“Find out anything interesting?”
“The station manager at McMurdo says you passed his test, and that’s good.”
When I was in grad school, I’d spent a summer at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, helping with a study of the microbiome of Antarctic soils.
“What test was that?” I asked. I didn’t remember a test.
“He watches what people do in the cafeteria. He looks for people who are just as comfortable in a group discussion as they are sitting by themselves. You passed.”
I nodded. “I get along with people,” I said. “And I can get along alone.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying me. “Tell me – why did you leave the university? You were teaching, doing research, on a tenure track.”
“One too many committee meetings,” I said lightly. He laughed, and I added, “I like to get things done.”
“I can understand that,” he said. “So tell me about this methane sequestering mat of yours. Or do you prefer ‘fart catcher’?”
I shrugged. “Either one.” Since Jackson was a biologist, I launched into an explanation of the biology of the system. “The mat’s made of carbon fiber tubes, but what makes it work is the colony of bacteria in those tubes.”
It turned out that Jackson knew quite a bit about Methylomirabilis oxyfera, thebacteria that made the mat work. Amazing critters those – they thrive in stinking black mud without light or oxygen, digesting methane and nitrogen oxides for their energy. In the tubes of the mat, they consumed enough methane to create a concentration gradient that kept the methane flowing into the tubes and rising into a storage tank.
“A biological methane pump?” he said. “That’s clever. And you want to cover a square mile with this fart catcher? That’s ambitious.”
“A square mile is just a start. We have to move fast, you know. With the current rate of methane emission...”
He held up a hand to stop me. “Hold on. I don’t need to hear another manifesto on Arctic warming. I live here, remember?”
“Sorry.”
“Having that lake blow up gave your permafrost research quite a boost, didn’t it?”
“I suppose it did.”
“I can understand the motives of whoever did it. No one pays any attention to what happens up here unless it’s involves something cataclysmic or cute. Polar bears get press; permafrost usually doesn’t.”
I didn’t say anything. I just waited.
He studied me, then smiled, ever so slightly. “I assume that safety protocols will ensure that there will be no explosions associated with your project.”
I nodded quickly. “I can assure you of that.”
He poured another glass. “I’ll give you a crew to lay out this fart catcher of yours. I trust you’ll supervise the work.”
I DID MORE than supervise. I worked alongside the crew that rolled out the fart catcher. It was nasty tedious work. The crew described it as hellacious, and I had to agree.
My test plot in Ivvavik National Park had been a flat grassy area. It had been easy to push the carbon tubes down so they made contact with the soil. On the coastal plain surrounding Franklin Station, the land was flat, but the vegetation was less cooperative. The fart catcher had to lie flat against the soil, so we had to clear away tough shrubs – willow and Labrador tea. We had to pound down dense tussocks formed by sedges and grasses. In a month and a half, we managed to install less than a quarter of the projected area.
I contacted some friends about the problem. It takes a team to save the world, after all. I had many friends and they had friends and their friends had friends. Social media was wonderful that way. My friends (and their friends) often had creative solutions. Some people talk about thinking outside the box. Many of my friends had never seen the box. They were unaware that the box existed. I sent out the word and waited to see what would happen.
A month later, as the crew and I were clearing yet another patch of willow, I heard someone call to me. I looked up to see a herd of shaggy beasts lumbering over the tundra toward us.
Muskoxen – Pleistocene megafauna at its most charismatic. They’re called oxen, but they’re actually more closely related to goats. Their ancestors had survived the mass extinction event that occurred during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. The herd stopped at the edge of the carbon tube carpet, eying me myopically as they stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to dispatch any predator with their large pointy horns.
“Hello!” Someone in a lavender parka came around the side of the herd and waved to me. “We’re here at last.”
That was Jenna, leader of the muskoxen herders. There were five muskoxen herders, two Royal Canadian Mounties, and a dozen cows and six calves. They had traveled from a muskoxen farm some 150 miles to the south.
I escorted the people and their shaggy charges to Franklin Station. While the ox herders found a patch of good grazing for the beasts, the Mounties met with Jackson and presented him with the official paperwork. Apparently, a Canadian muskoxen farm had donated the animals to Franklin Station – a donation approved by a top level official in the US agency responsible for polar research. It was unclear where the request for this donation had originated.
While Jackson chatted with the Mounties about their journey, I helped his assistant research the situation. The path of official approvals was an insane tangle, involving at least three agencies on the US side and the same number on the Canadian side. But in the end, it didn’t really matter who had approved what. The muskoxen were an official gift from Canada to the US. Officials on the US side made it quite clear that sending the muskoxen away would cause an international incident.
Besides, news of the gift was already trending on all news feeds – it was the warm and fuzzy story of the day. A muskox calf is not nearly as cute as an Arctic fox, but they do have a certain charm. In those days of doom and gloom and climate change, cheery stories associated with polar science were hard to come by.
So Franklin Station gained a herd of muskoxen. Jackson found temporary quarters for the Mounties and the ox herders and arranged for a crew to set up a paddock for the beasts. To help out, I volunteered to take charge of the care of the muskoxen, mentioning that they could be an asset to my project. Muskoxen would happily devour tundra shrubs. Their hooves would break up and flatten the lumps and bumps in the soil, making it easier to rol
l out the fart catcher.
When the visitors headed to their quarters, Jackson asked me to stay. “So tell me,” he said. “How did you make this happen?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t make it happen.” After a moment’s pause, I went on. “I talked about the problems we’ve been having with laying out the fart catcher with a friend who studies muskoxen. He reminded me that large ruminants were great at modifying the environment. I did say that it was a pity I didn’t happen to have any of those. He must have mentioned it to someone who decided to help out.”
Jackson shook his head, looking incredulous.
“I’ve found that if you put the word out to enough people, useful stuff happens. You never know what it’s going to be. But sometimes, it’s just what you need.”
“That’s nuts. That’s no way to manage a project.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “Those beasts will make a big difference to how much mat we can install before winter. And you know this project is important. You’ve seen the changes in the Arctic over the last decade.”
“Of course I have.”
“Reduction in the sea ice. Steadily increasing temperature. Changes in wildlife patterns. Changes in weather patterns. When will the climate reach the tipping point? How long do you think we have? Another decade or two? Then what?”
“You think you’ll save the world with a square mile of fart catcher and a dozen muskoxen?”
I shrugged. “It’s a start. Baby steps, but it’s a beginning. I promise there’ll be no explosions. I’ll take care of the herd. They won’t bother you a bit.”
OVER THE NEXT few weeks I worked with the ox herders to learn the ways of the shaggy beasts. The herd grazed in the area around the station, returning to their paddock at night for special muskox treats – carrots mostly. A muskox will follow you anywhere for a carrot.
The head of PR at the station shot photos and video: muskoxen grazing with the research station in the background, muskoxen in their newly built paddock, muskox calves sleeping by their muskox mamas. It was great PR for the station, and that earned Jackson some points with the administration. All good.
After a couple of weeks, the ox herders headed back to their farm, promising to return in the spring to comb out the qiviut, the muskoxen’s underwool. It was a great cash crop, eight times warmer than wool and softer than cashmere. As a farewell gift, the ox herders gave me a set of long johns knit from qiviut – the warmest, softest, and most expensive underwear I’ve ever owned.
So that was my first summer at the station – laying carpet, bringing in some muskoxen, collecting some 30 metric tons of methane. Calculations for required storage had been spot on – the storage tanks were almost full. It was a good start, but it was time to move on to the next phase, one that was not covered in my grant application: disposing of the methane without adding it to the atmosphere and in the process funding a significant increase in the methane harvest.
IN THE FALL, I left the station to some business done in the lower forty-eight. I presented a paper at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco and met with a few research teams from Siberia, Norway, Greenland, and Canada who were engaged in similar projects. While I was there, I also met with a German research group that was working on methane cracking.
Here’s a quick chemistry lesson. Methane is made of carbon and hydrogen. In methane cracking, hydrogen is separated from carbon to make hydrogen gas and carbon. Hydrogen is a great fuel. Think of the Hindenburg: a big bag of hydrogen and a major explosion. If you burn hydrogen, you get water. No carbon dioxide, no greenhouse gas problem.
And here’s a bonus. What’s left when you take away the hydrogen is pure carbon. Perfect for making more carbon tubes to capture and store methane and valuable on the commodities market for use in manufacturing. Many companies from car makers to aircraft builders were switching from steel to lighter stronger carbon fiber to make their products. You can see why I was interested in methane cracking.
I met the Germans at a restaurant in Drowntown. That was the name San Franciscans had given to the area of downtown that flooded when the tide was high, a result of rising sea levels. It was low tide that evening. The streets were dry, but there was a whiff of salt and seaweed in the air.
The lead German researcher was Katrin, an earnest woman who asked – politely but with a slightly baffled tone – about the American politicians’ continued stress on carbon emission targets. “All research has indicated that stopping emissions will not stop the change in climate,” she said earnestly. “Even if we stopped today, the world’s temperature will continue to increase for half a century. They do not seem to understand that.”
“Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” I said. “It’s a popular pastime in political circles. I’m seen as the voice of doom and gloom because I recognize that the permafrost is melting at an increasing rate and that methane capture should be a top priority.”
“And you are successfully capturing methane. What is your current capture rate?”
We drank beer and made calculations. Katrin estimated expenses on the back of a napkin as we worked out a plan for a pilot project involving methane cracking. During the Arctic summer, I could use solar power to crack the methane, and then cool and compress the hydrogen gas. I hoped to find a manufacturer to process the carbon into more carpet. Katrin had some ideas there – and some excellent contacts in the German manufacturing community.
“I understand that NSF regulations require you to purchase your materials in the US,” she said.
I waved a hand, dismissing the problem. “I have private funding as well,” I explained. The presence of the muskoxen had been an enormous help in crowdfunding efforts. Charismatic megafauna has its uses.
“Very good,” she said. “Then I think I can assist you.”
That was the first stop in a long winter of hunting and gathering. So many technical problems to solve, with little time and not enough money.
The hive mind found me a way to store the hydrogen that my pilot project would produce: a decommissioned tank from NASA, originally built to contain liquid hydrogen fuel for the space shuttle. It had never been used. For decades, it had been stored at NASA’s New Orleans manufacturing facility on the far eastern edge of New Orleans – still above water, but just barely. The facility was being decommissioned – the last hurricane had come close to wiping it out – and they were happy to find a home for the fuel tank.
I set up a relationship with a German manufacturing plant that would make some of my pure carbon into fart catcher carpet and methane hydrate storage. I’d compensate them for their service with the rest of the carbon, which they could use or sell for a fat profit.
The rest of my time was spent retrofitting the hydrogen fuel tank for my needs and arranging for transport. Everywhere I went, I could see the effects of the changing climate. But people were doing what people always do – complaining about the weather and adapting to it where they could. Many politicians still doubted that change was underway even as some religious leaders were preaching about the end times.
I was happy to return to the Arctic for another summer of work. The carpet from the previous year was functioning beautifully. Arctic grasses and other plants were growing through the loose weave of the mat, making it a part of the landscape. Trampling by the muskoxen had smoothed out the cursed tussocks and laying the next section of carpet was considerably easier than the first section had been.
Of course, there were problems. On top of the usual sleet storms and blizzards, we had to be alert to changes caused by warmer temperatures. Whenever we were outside the station, we were armed against starving polar bears that thought Arctic researchers might substitute for their usual diet of walrus and seal. We almost lost part of the carpet-laying crew when a sinkhole opened up in the area where we were working. Fortunately, the fart catcher carpet was strong enough to act as a safety net. It supported us and let us climb back up out of the hole.
I wo
n’t pretend there weren’t difficulties with the hydrogen tank (delivered a month late) and the pilot methane cracker. But we got it all working eventually.
I also expanded the research station’s greenhouse, something that I’d discussed with Oki and kitchen crew the summer before. The original greenhouse was quite small – just big enough to grow a few vegetables. But with the hydrogen I was producing, I had energy to burn – so to speak. In my scavenging at the NASA manufacturing facility in New Orleans, I had run across a prototype greenhouse designed for Mars. The warehouse supervisor gave me a great deal on it. He said it would be abandoned within the month along with anything else left in the facility.
I set the Martian greenhouse up as an extension of the existing greenhouse. A hydrogen-powered heater allowed me to warm the air with no impact on the station energy budget and a cushion of carbon nanotubes insulated the permafrost from the greenhouse and collected the methane that outgassed.
Down in the lower forty-eight, things were getting worse faster than anyone had expected. Changes in polar temperatures had caused perturbations in the polar jet stream that wreaked havoc with global weather patterns. There was drought and wildfire in the western US, severe flooding in the South, historic blizzards along the eastern seaboard, and tornadoes where tornadoes had never been before.
By the end of the summer, I had quadrupled the land covered with fart catcher and I’d made plans to cover ten times that area in the following year. The research teams in Siberia, Greenland, Canada and Norway were also having success.
That winter, my efforts focused on acquiring hydrogen transport and figuring out how to roll out more carpet with the same crew.
Well, not exactly the same crew. I had been in touch with a robotics team that worked in an abandoned warehouse in São Paulo, Brazil.
They called themselves the Ant Factory, a non-profit collective of entrepreneurial engineers. Well... some of them were engineers. Some of them were artists. All of them were scavengers, retrofitters, people who knew how to make do, people who simultaneously thought in the long term and the short term. My kind of people.
Bridging Infinity Page 25
