The Ministry for the Future

44

The part of Antarctica that holds its ice the longest is near the middle, between the Transantarctics and an ice-submerged mountain range called the Gamburtsev Mountains. The Gamburtsevs are almost as high as the Alps, yet still completely buried by ice; they were only discovered by overflights using ice-penetrating radar. Between this newly discovered range and the Transantarctics there’s a flat plain, surrounded by mountains in such a way that scientists estimate the ice sitting on it won’t reach the coast for at least five thousand years. In other areas of the continent ice will get to the sea in the next couple of decades. So it’s another case of location, location, location.

Naturally this Point of Maximum Ice Sequestration is a long way from the sea, and the polar ice cap there is ten thousand feet thick, meaning about that high above sea level, as the bedrock under all that ice lies just slightly below sea level. So if you were thinking of pumping seawater up onto this part of the ice cap to keep sea level from rising, it was going to take a lot of energy. And a lot of pipeline too. Run the numbers and you can see: not going to happen.

Still there were people who wanted to try it. Non-quantitative people, it would seem, and yet rich despite that. Chief among these curious people was a Russian billionaire from Silicon Valley, who felt Antarctica as a place to dump seawater just had to be tested, so much so that he was willing to fund the test. And you take grant money where you can find it, when it comes to getting to Antarctica. At least that’s been my working method.

So an austral spring came when a fleet of private planes flew south from Cape Town, South Africa, where there’s a permanent gate at the airport that says ANTARCTICA (I love that) and we landed on the Ronne Ice Shelf, overlooking the frozen Weddell Sea. There we unloaded and set up a village of yurts, Jamesways, and tents, which looked small in the vast expanse of ice, because it was. Even the tourist villages at Pioneer Hills and under the Queen Astrid Range were larger. But this one served as the drop site for an ever-growing collection of specialized equipment, some of it lent to the operation by Transneft, the Russian state-owned oil pipeline corporation. The biggest piece of equipment was brought to the edge of the Ronne Ice Shelf by a massive Russian icebreaker, and unloaded in a tricky operation: a giant pump. Intake pipes were punched through the sea ice, and a transport pipeline was attached to the pump and run inland, across the Ronne Ice Shelf and up to the polar cap, past the South Pole to Dome Argus, the highest point on the Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet. Because it was higher, this was felt to be the energy equivalent of the even more distant Gamburtsevs.

The power for the pumping, also the heating of the pipeline to keep the water liquid in the pipes, was provided by a nuclear submarine reactor donated for the occasion by the Russian navy. If it turned out to be feasible, the billionaire had explained to people back in Russia, this operation might turn into one of the biggest industries in the world. And save St. Petersburg from drowning. The fact that this supposed industry would require the power of about ten thousand nuclear subs was apparently left out of the discussion. But okay, an experiment in method, sure. Why not.

All the ice melting around the world was now raising sea level at a rate of some 5 millimeters a year, which did not sound too bad until one remembered that it had been 3 millimeters a year just twenty years before, and this rapid rate of increase was also itself speeding up. If the current rate doubled every year, then very quickly the sea would be rising so quickly that the coastlines of the world would be inundated, and that catastrophe would greatly complicate an already tricky ecological situation.

Many had pointed out that if sea level rise did increase in speed in any significant way, it would overwhelm any possible attempt to pump that water back up onto Antarctica or anywhere else. If it got as bad as even a centimeter a year, which could easily happen if things went south, ha ha, the amount of water in that rise would equal a cube roughly the size of the District of Columbia at its base, thus twice as tall as Everest. And moving that would take far more pipe than ever made in all history.

But since the rate of future sea level rise was unknown, it was felt by many, or at least by the billionaire in question, to be worth looking into. It would provide some real costs to check against the modeling exercises, and also would test what happens to seawater when released high on the polar cap. How far would it spread, how it would affect the ice already up there, and so on.

When we got the first line attached to the pump and started running it south, we took helos inland to get to the front edge of the operation. A longer flight every week. Looking down we could see the pipeline below us, like a black thread on white cloth.

It’s like sucking up the ocean in a drinking straw, I said, and spitting your mouthfuls onto shore.

It’s true, someone replied. But if you had ten million straws…

No, I said. It’s stupid, this notion. But it’s gotten us down here this year, and we might learn something useful from it.

So keep quiet about how stupid it is!

I will. My lips are sealed. I never said a thing. And if I did, I didn’t mean it.

Griffen, you are such a smartass.

Hey! I said. Another great day in Antarctica!