Utopia

“I have a solution,” he said. He reached down, picked up the coin, and placed it in the palm of his hand. “We put the planet in a low-point balance, like this.” He shook his hand back and forth, and jiggled it around vigorously. The coin stayed in his palm. Once or twice, he managed to dislodge it briefly, but then it dropped back into place. “As you can see, it’s much harder to perturb something out of a low-point balance, and it will tend to return to its balance point once a perturbation is removed. Now, a Polar Sea would move the global climate into a stable low-point system that would require massive effort to dislodge into instability.

“As I have said, the problem is the absence of water circulation in the northern hemisphere. If there were a way to let water accumulate in the northern polar regions, while providing inlets and outlets to the Southern Ocean, then warm water could flow north to warm the poles, and cold water could come south to cool the ocean-and the land areas near the coast. That would give us a low-point balance, where the natural force working on the planet would be self-correcting. If things got too hot, the cold polar waters would cool them off. If the temperatures dropped too much, tropical waters would warm them up. We need water over both poles.”

“But there are a number of terraformed planets without water on both poles,” Fredda objected. “And I recall, even Earth had one pole with land on it-and the other with highly restricted water flow. I think the pole with water on it was even frozen over most of the time.”

Lentrall smiled again, and it was not a warm or friendly expression. Rather, it was the debater’s smile of triumph, something close to a condescending sneer. She had fallen into the trap he had laid, and now he could move in for the kill. “I have answers to all that,” he said. “I think you will find that they all strengthen my argument. Regarding the terraformed planets with land-locked poles, I can tell you that all of them have bodies of water that get much closer to the poles than we have on Inferno.”

“What about the examples she cited from Earth?” Kresh asked.

“First, the natural oceans of Earth were far deeper than the artificial oceans of any terraformed planet,” Lentrall said. “Because they were deeper, they held much more water and served as a much more effective heat sink.

“Second, they covered far more of the surface of the planet than on most terraformed worlds. Three-fourths of Earth was water. Slightly less than two-thirds of Inferno’s surface is water, and it has more water coverage than any other wholly terraformed world. The difference between three-fourths and two-thirds may not sound like much, but it is substantial-and, as I have said, measured by volume, and not surface area, Inferno’s oceans are much smaller than Earth’s.

“Third, even if Earth’s oceans did not have free and open access to either pole, once again, they reached close enough to allow substantial heat exchange

“Fourth, the land-locked South Pole of Earth was far colder than the water-covered North Pole, which just goes to show my point that liquid water served to moderate temperatures. While the surface of the Arctic Ocean was frozen over, there were still a lot of water-and a lot of water currents-below the ice.

“Finally, Earth’s climate was remarkable for its instability. It suffered severe ice ages, which were triggered by very small fluctuations in this variable or that. There is substantial evidence that the impeded flow of water over the poles was a major contributing factor to this instability. I would submit that all of these facts regarding Old Earth strengthen, rather than weaken, the argument in favor of a water flow over the North Pole.”

“Hmmph.” Fredda didn’t trust herself to say anything more. The infuriating thing was that the man was right. He did marshal his arguments well. But there was so much in his tone, in his attitude, in his behavior, that made her want to disagree with him, made her want to argue with him, tooth and nail.

“Go on, Dr. Lentrall,” said Alvar, his voice an absolute study in neutrality. “What is your backing for all this?”

“An excellent question, Governor,” Lentrall said, in a tone of voice that made it sound as if he were praising a bright schoolboy. “As you are no doubt aware, the original terraforming plans for Inferno called for the creation of just such a Polar Sea. I have derived most of my information from those old studies.”

“Why did they cancel the plans for the Polar Sea?” Fredda asked.