the international community quietly agreed with her concise assessment.
Rafan was not among them, ironically enough. He saw that his beautiful island nation was succumbing to the brutalities that had long afflicted the rest of the world, including the erosion of the rule of law. But he had vowed to try to stop the spread of jihad, and imbued with that spirit he visited Dhiggaru one last time. He walked the shore where Parvez’s body had been found, searching for evidence that might have eluded less interested investigators. He found nothing.
His eyes roamed from the ocean to the acres of land that he’d had ravaged for soil, when as minister of dirt he robbed Peter to pay Paul. Then Rafan looked back to the shoreline creeping ever closer, like ecoterrorism in a world slowly engulfed by the sea.
The warm salty water rushed over his bare feet, and when he stepped away the evidence of his presence vanished as easily as might the protective sky that enveloped the Earth and gave it life.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Recently I’ve read a lot about geoengineering and what role scientists might play in finding ways to eliminate or reduce the warming that has been going on around the planet the past twenty years. Is it conceited for mankind to even think it could actually alter the planet’s climate, or could this possibly be a reality? After all, we know that for thousands of years volcanoes have put ash and sulfates into the atmosphere and have altered weather patterns around the world, causing changes that have lasted for years.
Take the volcanic eruption at Tambora in 1815 that created “the summer that never was” in the northeastern United States. In 1816 the ash cloud that circled the globe caused so much atmospheric cooling that snow fell during June and July. So it would be only natural for scientists to theorize that sulfates, artificially placed in the atmosphere, would behave like a volcanic ash cloud. The sulfates would reflect the sun’s rays back into space, cooling the Earth.
So, could some type of geoengineering be the solution to planetary climate change?
The main contributor to global warming is water vapor from the Earth’s oceans. If you could cool the oceans, would that not cool the water vapor, and eventually the planet?
One solution geoengineers have proposed involves the use of iron. Tons of iron oxide dumped into the oceans could significantly lower the Earth’s temperature, counterbalancing the heating going on elsewhere in the world. However, these noble intentions could have a great cost, and all geoengineering theories are essentially untried.
That volcanic eruption in Tambora is actually a classic example of what can go wrong. The ash from the volcano caused worldwide cooling and an abrupt drop in temperature. The result was widespread famine in 1815 and 1816 as crops failed due to lack of sunlight and warmth. Livestock, deprived of hay and feed, starved. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Too much cooling could have just the same effect as too much warming—throwing the planet’s atmospheric engine out of balance. The right amount of iron poured into the oceans may cure global warming, but is the risk worth the reward?
Recent news reports have detailed no overall rise in global temperatures between 1998 and 2008. News accounts suggest that China’s release of sulfates into the atmosphere from coal-burning industrial plants has caused the planet to become cooler.
Iron oxide or sulfates: could they be a geoengineering answer or a planetary nightmare?
ALSO BY BILL EVANS FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES
Category 7 (with Marianna Jameson)
Frozen Fire (with Marianna Jameson)
Dry Ice (with Marianna Jameson)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Evans has won multiple Emmy Awards as senior meteorologist for WABC, where he can be seen every weekday. He can also be seen on ESPN SportsCenter and Good Morning America. Evans can be heard nationally on the ABC Radio Network, Martha Stewart Living Radio, and ESPN Radio, and in the New York metropolitan area on WPLJ.
Evans has written three previous weather-inspired thrillers, including the New York Times bestseller Category 7 (cowritten with Marianna Jameson). He was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in letters of humanity by Dowling College. Evans and his family live in Connecticut.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BLACKMAIL EARTH
Copyright © 2012 by Bill Evans
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
e-ISBN 9781429946506
First Edition: June 2012
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Also by Bill Evans from Tom Doherty Associates
About the Author
Copyright