Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

He walked to the back of the plane.

"Better eat," Sarah said, "we land in an hour."

They stepped out onto the runway of Marso del Mar, shivering in the chill wind that whipped in off the ocean. The land around them was low, green, marshy, and cold. In the distance Evans saw the jagged, snow-covered spires of the El Fogara range of southern Chile.

"I thought this was summer," he said.

"It is," Kenner said. "Late spring, anyway."

The airfield consisted of a small wooden terminal, and a row of corrugated steel hangars, like oversize Quonset huts. There were seven or eight other aircraft on the field, all four-engine prop planes. Some had skis that were retracted above the landing wheels.

"Right on time," Kenner said, pointing to the hills beyond the airport. A Land Rover was bouncing toward them. "Let's go."

Inside the little terminal, which was little more than a single large room, its walls covered with faded, stained air charts, the group tried on parkas, boots, and other gear brought by the Land Rover. The parkas were all bright red or orange. "I tried to get everybody's size right," Kenner said. "Make sure you take long johns and microfleece, too."

Evans glanced at Sarah. She was sitting on the floor, pulling on heavy socks and boots. Then she unselfconsciously stripped down to her bra, and pulled a fleece top over her head. Her movements were quick, businesslike. She didn't look at any of the men.

Sanjong was staring at the charts on the wall, and seemed particularly interested in one. Evans went over. "What is it?"

Punta Arenas 18882004 "It's the record from the weather station at Punta Arenas, near here. It's the closest city to Antarctica in the world." He tapped the chart and laughed. "There's your global warming."

Evans frowned at the chart.

"Finish up, everybody," Kenner said, glancing at his watch. "Our plane leaves in ten minutes."

Evans said, "Where exactly are we going?"

"To the base nearest Mount Terror. It's called Weddell Station. Run by New Zealanders."

"What's there?"

"Not much, mate," the Land Rover driver said, and he laughed. "But the way the weather's been lately, you'll be lucky if you can get there at all."

Evans stared out the narrow window of the Hercules. The vibration of the props made him sleepy, but he was fascinated by what he saw beneath himmile after mile of gray ice, a vista broken by intermittent fog, and the occasional outcrop of black rock. It was a monochromatic, sunless world. And it was huge.

"Enormous," Kenner said. "People have no perspective on Antarctica, because it appears as a fringe at the bottom of most maps. But in fact, Antarctica is a major feature on the Earth's surface, and a major factor in our climate. It's a big continent, one and a half times the size of either Europe or the United States, and it holds ninety percent of all the ice on the planet."

"Ninety percent?" Sarah said. "You mean there's only ten percent in the rest of the world?"

"Actually, since Greenland has four percent, all the other glaciers in the worldKilimanjaro, the Alps, the Himalaya, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Siberiathey all account for six percent of the planet's ice. The overwhelming majority of the frozen water of our planet is in the continent of Antarctica. In many places the ice is five or six miles thick."

"No wonder they're concerned that the ice here is melting," Evans said.

Kenner said nothing.

Sanjong was shaking his head.

Evans said, "Come on, guys. Antarctica is melting."

"Actually, it's not," Sanjong said. "I can give you the references, if you like."

Kenner said, "While you were asleep, Sanjong and I were talking about how to clarify things for you, since you seem to be so ill-informed."

"Ill-informed?" Evans said, stiffening.

"I don't know what else one would call it," Kenner said. "Your heart may be in the right place, Peter, but you simply don't know what you're talking about."

"Hey," he said, controlling his anger. "Antarctica is melting."

"You think repetition makes something true? The data show that one relatively small area called the Antarctic Peninsula is melting and calving huge icebergs. That's what gets reported year after year. But the continent as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker."

"Antarctica is getting colder?"

Sanjong had taken out a laptop and was hooking it up to a small portable bubble jet printer. He flipped open his laptop screen.

"What we decided," Kenner said, "is that we're going to give you references from now on. Because it's too boring to try and explain everything to you."

A sheet of paper began to buzz out of the printer. Sanjong passed it to Evans.

Doran, P. T., Priscu, J. C., Lyons, W. B., Walsh, J. E., Fountain, A. G., McKnight, D. M., Moorhead,D. L., Virginia, R. A., Wall, D. H., Clow, G. D., Fritsen, C. H., McKay, C. P., and Parsons, A. N., 2002, "Antarctic climate cooling and terrestrial ecosystem response," Nature 415: 51720.

From 1986 to 2000 central Antarctic valleys cooled.7є C per decade with serious ecosystem damage from cold.

Comiso, J. C., 2000, "Variability and trends in Antarctic surface temperatures from in situand satellite infrared measurements," Journal of Climate 13: 167496.

Both satellite data and ground stations show slight cooling over the last 20 years.

Joughin, I., and Tulaczyk, S., 2002, "Positive mass balance of the Ross Ice Streams, West Antarctica," Science 295: 47680.

Side-looking radar measurements show West Antarctic ice is increasing at 26.8 gigatons/yr. Reversing the melting trend of the last 6,000 years.

Thompson, D. W. J., and Solomon, S., 2002, "Interpretation of recent Southern Hemisphere climate change," Science 296: 89599.

Antarctic peninsula has warmed several degrees while interior has cooled somewhat. Ice shelves have retreated but sea ice has increased.

Petit, J. R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N. I., Barnola, J.-M., Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V. M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, V. Y., Lorius, C., Pepin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E., and Stievenard, M., 1999, "Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica," Nature 399: 42936.

During the last four interglacials, going back 420,000 years, the Earth was warmer than it is today.

Anderson, J. B., and Andrews, J. T., 1999, "Radiocarbon constraints on ice sheet advance and retreat in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica," Geology 27: 17982.

Less Antarctic ice has melted today than occurred during the last interglacial.

Liu, J., Curry, J. A., and Martinson, D. G., 2004, "Interpretation of recent Antarctic sea ice variability," Geophysical Research Letters 31: 10.1029/2003 GL018732.

Antarctic sea ice has increased since 1979.

Vyas, N. K., Dash, M. K., Bhandari, S. M., Khare, N., Mitra, A., and Pandey, P. C., 2003, "On the secular trends in sea ice extent over the antarctic region based on OCEANSAT-1 MSMR observations," International Journal of Remote Sensing 24: 227787.

Trend toward more sea ice may be accelerating.

Parkinson, C. L., 2002, "Trends in the length of the southern Ocean sea-ice season, 197999," Annals of Glaciology 34: 43540.

The greater part of Antarctica experiences a longer sea-ice season, lasting 21 days longer than it did in 1979.

"Okay, well, I see slight cooling referred to here," Evans said. "I also see warming of the peninsula of several degrees. That certainly seems more significant. And that peninsula's a pretty big part of the continent, isn't it?" He tossed the paper aside. "Frankly, I'm not impressed."

Sanjong said, "The peninsula is two percent of the continent. And frankly, I am surprised that you did not comment on the most significant fact in the data you were given."