Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

“Oh, hi there, Tractor Betty! Arr!” Buzz-Cut made a wild pirate’s face and bent his right index finger at the first knuckle, as if it had been cut off.

“Arr!” answered Betty, making the same gesture without changing her almost comatose expression. “I forgot. Is Tractor Waylon coming back tomorrow?”

Buzz-Cut said, “You bet. But as for being a vegetable that didn’t come out of a can… well, maybe Waylon ain’t your man.”

Raucous laughter broke out all around the table. Tractor Betty grabbed a chair from a nearby table and sat down on it backward, leaning her chin on its back. In response to the frivolity, she lifted one corner of her mouth.

Buzz-Cut turned to Valena. “Betty here is a firefighter, and a darned good one. You can measure that by the fact that there are currently no fires.” He put a hand to his chest in mock grandeur. “ I am a pilot. The name is Hugh. Marilyn here is a navigator. Larry is a loadmaster, and these other guys are sorry reprobates. And you are?”

“Valena.”

Hugh drew his brows together to indicate great seriousness and said, “Hey, Valena, here’s a critically important question: do you like tractors?”

Valena looked back and forth between the flyboy and the firefighter. “Sure. My granddad let me drive his Case out on his farm in Idaho during the potato harvest.”

Hugh threw his arms into the air with delight. “We’re in!”

Betty said, “The Tractor Club meets Tuesday evening. Coffee House, seven p.m. Be there.”

Valena managed a wan smile. “Uh, fine. I’m heading out tomorrow morning to Happy Camp, but if I’m back in time, uh… sure… if ah, Major Bentley will be there.”

Hugh said, “He’ll be there if he possibly can. Tractor Waylon is club protocol officer.”

Betty asked, “Why’d he take this mission? I thought he had his time in.”

Buzz-Cut Hugh’s jolly smile faded for a moment, revealing the military officer who dwelled a quarter inch beneath the party boy. “Duty called. You know he was pretty well up past his eye sockets in that situation, finding that evidence and all, so he volunteered to carry the lad north.” He shook his head. “Sad situation.” He took a last draw on his coffee, tossed his silverware into a heap on his tray, and stood up. “I’m on in five. See ya,” he said, and left.

Major Marilyn Wood glanced at her watch. “Yeah! Outta here.” She disappeared the same direction as Major Hugh.

Betty turned her heavy-lidded eyes on Valena. “So. What do you do here?”

What do I do here? Valena wondered. She decided to present the official version. “I’m here to do research for my master’s thesis. Glaciology.”

“Oh. Climate change. Huh.”

“Yeah, climate change.”

“So, is it?”

“Is it what?”

“Changing.”

“Yes, it is changing. Always has, always will. Climates change whether they are perturbed by human activities or not. It’s important to know how they vary and why. And we’re trying to document things like whether or not the amount of carbon dioxide we’ve dumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is indeed unprecedented, and learn how fast this ice might melt, and what additional changes might occur as a result.”

“So you think we’re changing the climate. By driving cars and such.”

Valena took a moment to observe Betty carefully, searching her deadpan expression for clues to where this conversation might be going. Since becoming involved in climate research, she had found herself in this conversation increasingly often. Sometimes it was with colleagues, who liked to engage in rousing debates over the interpretation of data. Sometimes it was with neighbors or family members or strangers in the supermarket. Some people truly wanted to know what she had learned, while others just wanted to argue, suggesting that she was selling lies intended to scare people or upset the economy.

Valena looked around the room. Each and every person present was either doing scientific research or providing the infrastructure that could support that research in this severe climate, but that didn’t mean that those in the latter category believed in what the “beakers” were doing. Was this firefighter looking for information or a fight? And if it was a fight that Betty wanted, just how big a pain in the neck was she prepared to be? As big as the reporter who had bulled his way into Vanderzee’s camp and then had the temerity to die?

I’m getting paranoid , thought Valena. Finally, she decided to answer the question with the kind of precision that usually rocked people back on their heels. “I don’t think we’re changing the climate. That would suggest that it’s just an idea. I’m a scientist, so I think quite a bit, but I make a distinction between thoughts, ideas, hypotheses, theories, and facts. Is it a fact that by burning fossil fuels we’re increasing the amount of CO2in the atmosphere? Yes. Our studies document the fact that levels are higher than they have been in 650,000 years, and data not yet fully analyzed extend that number to 850,000 years. Not only is the level of CO2higher, the rate of increase is greater. Fortunately, the latest studies indicate that we are not near any thresholds, so it is unlikely that the increase in greenhouse gasses will soon lead to an abrupt climate change—huge change that occurs within a decade—but we—the science community—know that the additional CO2has already committed us to a change that will have significant social effects.”

“Your computer model says so.”

“ All of our computer models say so. There’s not just one model. There are about a dozen, and they all agree. Very sophisticated models built by teams of people who know one hell of a lot.”

“And you believe them.”

Valena stared into her plate for a moment. “It’s not a belief thing. Science is not a faith-based endeavor.” She thought a while longer, then added, “Science is a system of observations, predictions, and tests. The models are predictions based on observations. The best way to prove if the models are right is to do an experiment. For that, we’d need two planet earths. On one we don’t change the atmosphere, and on the other we do. Then we wait fifty years and compare the two. The problem is that it’s really hard to get funding for that, let alone find a replicate of planet earth. So we do the next best thing, which is use computer models.

“All of the models agree that climate will get warmer. In some places it’s not the heat that’s going to be the problem as much as the lack of rainfall. Think about the Middle East, southern Europe, North Africa, and the western US with twenty percent less rain. Think about a complete revamping of those agricultural systems and the movements of people that would have to occur. Environmental refugees. The reservoirs on the Colorado River, the lifeblood of states from Colorado to California, are only half full now. We’re already doing the experiment, but we only have one planet.”

Betty asked, “But if climate changes on its own, how do you know what part is our fault?”

“Back to the models. When we model the climate of an earth without humans, we can’t make the climate do what it’s doing now. We have to add anthropogenic greenhouse gasses.”

“You think we should make policy decisions based on a computer model?”

Valena smiled wryly. She liked the astringent intelligence behind Betty’s questions. “These are exactly the questions you should ask. Every major business makes large economic decisions based on computer models; they hire the hottest minds out of computer schools to do exactly that. So then you have to make a choice: you can make your decision based on the best available scientific interpretation of the data, or you can guess. Either way, you have made a decision, so you might as well discuss the science, learn what it means, learn what you can do to cut back on burning of fossil fuels. Maybe you decide the benefits don’t justify the costs in your case, but at least you will have made an informed decision.”