Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

"Okay amp;"

"So now we're talking about temperature data. It has to be adjusted in all kinds of ways. Not just for urban heat bias. Lots of other things. Stations move. They upgrade, and the new equipment may read hotter or colder than before. The equipment malfunctions and you have to decide whether to throw out certain data. You deal with lots of judgment calls in putting together the temperature record. And that's where the bias creeps in. Possibly."

"Possibly?"

"You don't know," Jennifer said, "but whenever you have one team doing all the jobs, then you're at risk for bias. If one team makes a model and also tests it and also analyzes the results, those results are at risk. They just are."

"So the temperature data are no good?"

"The temperature data are suspect. A decent attorney will tear them apart. To defend them, what we intend to do is"

Abruptly, the camera crew got up and left the room. Jennifer rested her hand on his arm. "Don't worry about any of that, the footage they shot was without sound. I just wanted it to look like a lively discussion."

"I feel foolish."

"You looked good. That's all that matters for TV."

"No," he said, leaning closer to her. "I mean, when I gave those answers, I wasn't saying what I really think. I'm, uh amp;I'm asking someI'm changing my mind about a lot of this stuff."

"Really?"

"Yes," he said, speaking quietly. "Those graphs of temperature, for instance. They raise obvious questions about the validity of global warming."

She nodded slowly. Looking at him closely.

He said, "You, too?"

She continued to nod.

They lunched at the same Mexican restaurant as before. It was almost empty, as before; the same Sony film editors laughing at the corner table. They must come here every day, Evans thought.

But somehow everything was different, and not just because his body ached and he was on the verge of falling asleep any moment. Evans felt as if he had become a different person. And their relationship was different, too.

Jennifer ate quietly, not saying much. Evans had the sense she was waiting for him.

After a while, he said, "You know, it would be crazy to imagine that global warming wasn't a real phenomenon."

"Crazy," she said, nodding.

"I mean, the whole world believes it."

"Yes," she said. "The whole world does. But in that war room, we think only about the jury. And the defense will have a field day with the jury."

"You mean, the example you told me?"

"Oh, it's much worse than that. We expect the defense to argue like this: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you've all heard the claim that something called global warming' is occurring because of an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But what you haven't been told is that carbon dioxide has increased by only a tiny amount. They'll show you a graph of increasing carbon dioxide that looks like the slope of Mount Everest. But here's the reality. Carbon dioxide has increased from 316 parts per million to 376 parts per million. Sixty parts per million is the total increase. Now, that's such a small change in our entire atmosphere that it is hard to imagine. How can we visualize that?"

Jennifer sat back, swung her hand wide. "Next, they'll bring out a chart showing a football field. And they'll say, Imagine the composition of the Earth's atmosphere as a football field. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen. So, starting from the goal line, nitrogen takes you all the way to the seventy-eight-yard line. And most of what's left is oxygen. Oxygen takes you to the ninety-nine-yard line. Only one yard to go. But most of what remains is the inert gas argon. Argon brings you within three and a half inches of the goal line. That's pretty much the thickness of the chalk stripe, folks. And how much of that remaining three inches is carbon dioxide? One inch. That's how much CO2 we have in our atmosphere. One inch in a hundred-yard football field."

She paused dramatically, then continued. "Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury," she said, "you are told that carbon dioxide has increased in the last fifty years. Do you know how much it has increased, on our football field? It has increased by three-eighths of an inchless than the thickness of a pencil. It's a lot more carbon dioxide, but it's a minuscule change in our total atmosphere. Yet you are asked to believe that this tiny change has driven the entire planet into a dangerous warming pattern."

Evans said, "But that's easily answered"

"Wait," she said. "They're not done. First, raise doubts. Then, offer alternative explanations. So, now they take out that temperature chart for New York City that you saw before. A five-degree increase since 1815. And they say, back in 1815 the population of New York was a hundred twenty thousand. Today it's eight million. The city has grown by six thousand percent. To say nothing of all those skyscrapers and air-conditioning and concrete. Now, I ask you. Is it reasonable to believe that a city that has grown by six thousand percent is hotter because of a tiny increase in little old carbon dioxide around the world? Or is it hotter because it is now much, much bigger?"

She sat back in her chair.

"But it's easy to counter that argument," Evans said. "There are many examples of small things that produce big effects. A trigger represents a small part of a gun, but it's enough to fire it. And anyway, the preponderance of the evidence"

"Peter," she said, shaking her head. "If you were on the jury and you were asked that question about New York City, what would you conclude? Global warming or too much concrete? What do you think, anyway?"

"I think it's probably hotter because it's a big city."

"Right."

"But you still have the sea-level argument."

"Unfortunately," she said, "the sea levels at Vanutu are not significantly elevated. Depending on the database, either they're flat or they've increased by forty millimeters. Half an inch in thirty years. Almost nothing."

"Then you can't possibly win this case," Evans said.

"Exactly," she said. "Although I have to say your trigger argument is a nice one."

"If you can't win," Evans said, "then what is this press conference about?"

"Thank you all for coming," John Balder said, stepping up to a cluster of microphones outside the offices. Photographers' strobes flashed. "I am John Balder, and standing with me is Nicholas Drake, the president of the National Environmental Resource Fund. Here also is Jennifer Haynes, my lead counsel, and Peter Evans, of the law firm of Hassle and Black. Together we are announcing that we will be filing a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States on behalf of the island nation of Vanutu, in the Pacific."

Standing in the back, Peter Evans started to bite his lip, then thought better of it. No reason to make a facial expression that might be construed as nervous.

"The impoverished people of Vanutu," Balder said, "stand to become even more impoverished by the greatest environmental threat of our times, global warming, and the danger of abrupt climate changes that will surely follow."

Evans recalled that just a few days before, Drake had called abrupt climate change a possibility on the horizon. Now it had been transformed into a certainty in less than a week.

Balder spoke in vivid terms about how the people of Vanutu were being flooded out of their ancestral homeland, emphasizing the tragedy of young children whose heritage was washing away in raging surf caused by a callous industrial giant to the north.

"It is a matter of justice for the people of Vanutu, and of the future of the entire world now threatened by abrupt weather, that we're announcing this lawsuit today."

Then he opened the floor to questions.

The first one was, "When exactly are you filing this lawsuit?"