by Irene Warner

Created on: December 27, 2009

        Kristoff has written assessments for dozens of funding committees. The pay was good, it was easy work, and it came with all the perks of a government job: minus the messy decisions. It was always the same. A mad scientist drafting up a long-winded proposal, submitting it in a timely fashion, and then squawking until his or her funding is renewed. Kristoff finds the process entertaining. He edits the proposal drafts for a substantial fee.

Martel isn’t like the other scientists. Kristoff realizes that halfway through his first ice proposal. Martel is a legend among the directors; his funding is always renewed. Kristoff can understand why.

Martel speaks quietly, in a polite and dignified way. He didn’t seem very scientific at all, “When the human population swelled to six hundred million, the ice caps began to melt.” His shoulders are down and his face is relaxed.

“We don’t know why they are melting.” Martel continues. “We only have speculation—nothing definitive. Without a specific cause, how can anyone determine the effects?” Martel pauses and Kristoff sat there waiting. The silence allows Kristoff time to look at the diagram on the plasma screen. Martel’s charts and diagrams are clear and easy to read. He has chronologically documented each major global-warming event for the last two centuries. They play across the screen like a silent motion picture.

Martel ticked them off on his fingers, “The ice has thinned in the Glacier National Park, heat waves sweep from Kansas to New England, the dry conditions spawn fires that consume acres of land each year in California, floods along the Ohio River caused five hundred million dollars in property damage, and we all remember the damages caused by hurricanes Floyd and Katrina.

“Nature is suffering too—the Pacific Salmon are dying because their waters are too warm, polar bears are having fewer cubs, and the coral reefs are bleaching. The sea levels are already rising—the lighthouse in Cape Hatteras had to be relocated. Forts built on the southwest Pacific Ocean are now awash at high tide, Florida farms inland from Biscayne Bay are being infiltrated with salt water. The land has become too toxic for crops and salt water is already nibbling at the farms along the eastern shore of Maryland.”

“The secret to stopping global warming lies across the Baffin and Hudson Bay,” Martel

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