CHAPTER 9
Disasters Natural and Unnatural
Founded in 1870, Hunter College on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan was the second oldest CUNY college. Situated in a recently rejuvenated up-scale neighborhood only a third of a mile from placid Central Park, it seemed a peaceful, secure, and unlikely place to be an academic center devoted to the study of potential catastrophic disasters, both those natural and those not so natural.
The visitors were introduced to key researchers, including several from nearby Rockefeller University and Marymount Manhattan College. Ed, Mary, and Driscal of course silently busied themselves with what by now had become their routine process of checking out the attendees. In particular they searched in vain for any signs of Egborg. Their task was made easier by the fact that the auditorium was half empty: in light of the UN attack and City emergency many local Omega members had wisely not shown up.
"If course we all now accept that climate change is really happening, but we still don't fully understand how fast or far it will go," said the first speaker. "For example early researchers underestimated the impact of thawing permafrost due to subsequent release of millions of tons of methane and carbon dioxide. Also the rate of melting in Western Antarctica and Greenland was significantly underestimated.
"Eastern Antarctica ice is also decreasing in volume now as it melts, especially at its edges. Now even far from its edges hundreds of surface and subsurface melt-water lakes and rivers are already carving it apart more rapidly than originally estimated.
"Also it soon became very apparent that the ice doesn't have to be melted to contribute to sea-level rise. There were several mile-thick ice sheets the size of Rhode Island that slid into the ocean decades earlier than initially expected. It will take them many decades to fully melt, but they contributed immediately to sea-rise and are floating about the world in ocean currents, bringing a touch more climate chaos with them.
"On the positive side most modals optimistically predict that after only another century the local New England/Eastern Canada ice-sheets will start to recede, though the bad news of that good news story is that it means that most Northern Hemisphere ice will be melted and will no longer help slow the warming. However, optimistically within two centuries world-wide actions to reverse greenhouse gas increase will begin to dominate and greenhouse gasses will actually start to decrease. In four centuries temperatures will peak and level-off at perhaps a net 5 to 6 degree centigrade average increase. But in five centuries all the Earth except for the highest mountain peaks will lack 'permanent' ice and the Quaternion Ice Age and corresponding geologic period that has persisted for over two and a half million years will officially finally end.
"Of course as a side note the International Commission on Stratigraphy decades ago already perhaps prematurely declared that the Holocene epoch has ended and the Anthropocene has begun, but now the Quaternary period that contains it is itself ending. And we can't have an epoch straddling multiple periods, can we? That would be ridiculous! What a mess in terminology for the ICS to untangle!"
"Who gives a damn what it's called?" muttered Driscal too loudly to be ignored.
"Exactly, sir," responded the lecturer. "Who indeed? By then we will have all painfully adjusted to a new 'normal' climate and coastlines. In the meantime it will have to be decided what to do with Earth's longer-term climate and we must make adjustments to policy and actions to achieve the decided goal. Should we try to cool Earth and return it to something close to what it had been over most of our recent past human history? Or should we stop the heating trend but maintain it at its peak and avoid cooling? Most researchers feel that abruptly returning to so-called historic temperatures would yet again seriously disrupt the ecological environment and human civilization even further.
"On the other hand that question becomes mute if society fails and we either lack the ability to influence climate or again lack control of our influence on climate. Human mega-societies have failed before. Recall for example the Romans and half a dozen other great civilizations that eventually fell apart, largely because of internal mistakes and weaknesses. So far the UN, the Stone-Coats, the jants, and the promise of the Space Program have helped hold things together, and world-trade has partly recovered to also help bind us. But will that last? Or will we slip into another dark age of chaos and reduced standards of living? If so perhaps at that point the term Anthropocene will become wholly inappropriate. What a terminology mess!"
Ed and Driscal exchanged knowing glances but managed to stay silent. This lecturer seemed to be nearly as concerned with the classification of geological time periods as he was with describing the emerging disaster that plagued all humanity and life on Earth.
Next a time-lapse video showed a map of the projected United States coastline for the next five centuries, though it had doubtlessly been seen many times before by everyone in the room. Over the next century many coastal areas would continue to flood at a faster pace. Cities already severely threatened such as New Orleans and Miami Beach will soon have to be completely abandoned, followed by the Miami, Jacksonville, the Norfolk area, low-lying coastal towns and islands, the Florida Everglades, and major portions of numerous coastal cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
"Eventual additional sea rise will be approximately two-hundred feet but there are uncertainties in that estimate, despite all known factors being taken into account."
"For example in Greenland much ice is already below sea-level and will subtract somewhat the sea level gain due to its reduced volume as liquid water. And of course water expands slightly with temperature increase, and our estimates of course take that into account also. However in any case huge portions of Eastern and Southern coastal states will be gone."
"Greenland and Antarctica crustal plates will of course rebound by perhaps several hundred feet when relieved of the weight of their permanent ice sheets, and that will also contribute to additional serious sea-rise that we can only roughly estimate. Far worse, though less likely, that activity could trigger mega earthquakes: tectonic crustal movement events and associated earthquakes and volcanism, much like the several events in the distant past that caused planet-wide mass-extinctions, including the worst 'great dying' event approximately 252 million years ago, prior to the rise of the dinosaurs. The worst case would include floods of molten basalt that cover nation-sized areas, accompanied by an atmosphere choked by dust and particulate aerosols, acid rain, and massive volcanic CO2 releases, which produce rapid fluctuations of hot and cold climates much worse than the current climate change event.
"In summation with Stone-Coat help we have modeled several possibilities and none of them look particularly good. The best case is for gradual climate change effects that drag out for many centuries and prove to be very inconvenient, costly, and dangerous for humans and many other species of life. The worst case is for a triggering of far worse events.
"Returning to near-term practical concerns, the levy efforts that today hold back the current average eight-foot sea level rise will soon become impractical. The cost of levies grows geometrically with their height; a two-hundred foot high levy system would cost perhaps a hundred times more than our current twenty-foot levies. A staggered series of shorter levies to provide stability during our retreat from the sea makes much more sense than levies over two hundred feet tall. Over the next five centuries or so it is inevitable that significant areas of low states such as Florida, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, Rode Island, and New Jersey will be completely lost to the sea.
"At the same time inland areas of drought and flooding will continue to intensify and shift about. Humans and other biological life will struggle to adapt, and to survive the other intensified problems such as political chaos, war, plague, and pollution. You have already doubtlessly heard about human induced dangers such as ignorance, panic-filled hate, pandemics, ecological collapse, society collapse, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, Nanotechnology, and pla
in old bad governance by tyrants and other incompetents.
"Meanwhile other even more catastrophic events remain improbable but still possible. Solar events could cause radical heating or cooling. An asteroid could strike us. A massive geological event such as a super-volcano eruption or worse could happen at any time, even without the expected provocation of melting ice-sheet weight displacement. Such events could wipe out most life on Earth more quickly and decisively than the current climate change is doing. It would be nice if all such things were fiction, but unfortunately they are all very real. However it is believed that all of these events are now somewhat predictable by science. There is no way to stop any of them, but we'll probably see them coming years or at least weeks in advance."
"Peachy," muttered Driscal quietly to Ed. "If I was fully human I'd actually be losing sleep over all this crap. As it is I can't say that I really give a shit."
"The ultimate survival solution is of course to spread ourselves out into space from Earth and avoid having Earth as our single place of habitation and potential extinction," said the lecturer. "The Space Program is actively working towards that goal. Already we have small outposts in space: in orbit around Earth and other planetary bodies, and on several bodies themselves including Earth's Moon, Mars, Planet X, and several moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Some of the outposts are already striving to achieve total physical self-sufficiency within the next few decades. By then a practical means of transport to other nearby solar systems is hoped for. The ultimate goal is long-term survival for humans, Stone-Coats, jants, and as many other species as we can save."
"And then we'll for sure live happily ever after." muttered Driscal, as the lecturer acknowledged applause and sat down. "I'm so relieved. I don't know why the hell anyone was worried."
"And of course less than a decade ago the Stone-Coats formally announced that we are safe from human-caused nuclear disaster," the next lecturer continued. "Stone-Coats each contain radioactive materials as power sources and are relatively resilient at radiation levels that would quickly kill biological life, as they're not dependent on delicate genetic chemistry for their survival. We were overjoyed when decades ago they began consuming our nuclear waste materials. We were astonished but overjoyed when seven years ago a rogue nation's attempted attack on its neighbors using nuclear armed missiles completely failed because the weapons had over the preceding decades been secretly disabled by Stone-Coats. The nuclear warhead plutonium had been replaced by lead and the rocket fuel had been replaced with inert substances.
"The Stone-Coats then soon announced that we were completely safe from nuclear dangers. Indeed, nations world-wide discovered that all human nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction had over many decades secretly been eaten away or otherwise corrupted by the Stone-Coats. They had of course used carbon Nano tube molecular discrimination and transfer techniques. Needless to say, many 'nuclear club' nations including the USA were not altogether pleased.
"Some of us feel that in forcing us to be more adaptive and resilient, Global Warming has forced us to be more survival-ready with regard to any crisis that may come along. As the old saying goes, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Others feel that we have been in some important ways been severely weakened, or changed in ways that we don't fully understand and we don't know what the consequences will end up being in the future."
Mary suddenly stood up, as did the three other Stone-Coats in attendance. All but Mary immediately began to walk towards the exit. The distracted lecturer stopped her lecture and the audience began talking amoungst themselves.
Ed could sense the audience apprehension telepathically, and something else. "What's happening now?" he asked Mary. "I sense coded Stone-Coat messages that I can't decipher."
"Your implant does not deceive you," said Mary. "It lacks the quantum computer abilities necessary to even attempt to break our codes. The messages include calling for an emergency diversion of most City Stone-Coats to two Manhattan locations: the UN, and our final lecture tour destination: the City College of New York in Northern Manhattan. There were earlier calls but this was the last call. I suggest that we leave here at once for City Collage."
"Why do I get the feeling that you know more than you're telling me?" Ed said.
"Ed, I'll always know more than I'm telling you," said Mary enigmatically.
The Hunter College people weren't too disappointed to have their lectures cut short. They were already on edge. There were too many weird things happening today, even for NYC. Students and staff were fleeing the area, spooked mostly by news reporting that said that the nearby UN was under attack. As Ed, Frank, and Mary exited Hunter that rumor was strengthened by a jolting tremor of the Earth under their feet and a thunderous rumble. Earthquake? Unlikely. It had to be an explosion and a big one, somewhere in the City.
"Underground explosion at the UN location, Mary reported. And at least one Stone-Coat dismembering. Numerous Stone-Coats are responding."
At the Humvee the traveling trio was not surprised to discover yet another note with an omega header waiting for them:
'Come to City College to seal your fate and that of those you seek. Egborg.'