Climate Change, Incorporated: A New Environmental Thriller

By Darcy S. Law

When Petra Sands takes a job with Climate Change, Incorporated, she assumes it will be low stress, low responsibility - just what she wants after being let go from a stressful job. After all, how hard can it be to give weather reports when the weather has already been planned? Soon she will find herself having the most responsibility of anyone in modern society - if it lasts. As the multi-national company releases a device between the earth and sun to regulate climate, all seems to be running perfectly: global temperatures cool, tornados and hurricanes are un-wound before they can form into destructive storms, droughts and flooding become things of the past - Technology has successfully taken over climate control from Mother Nature, or so it seems. This short thriller has a long reach. Whether you are a firm believer in climate change, or if you believe it is all a hoax, this smart, thought-provoking fast read of a novel will give you a new perspective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Apr 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781483497044

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Law

Copyright © 2019 Darcy S. Law.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9705-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9704-4 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 03/19/2019

Oh! Speculators on things, boast not of knowing the things that nature ordinarily brings about; but rejoice if you know the end of those things which you yourself devise.

—Leonardo da Vinci

Press Release

World Nations Climate Commission Deploys Global Sun Shield in Attempt to Reverse Global Warming Trends

New York, NY—The World Nations Climate Commission and the International Space Technology Agency announced today that a global sun shield to control the earth’s climate has been deployed in space between the earth and sun and will be fully operational on March 4. The device, known as the incident sunlight manipulation system, or ISMS, was built, and will be operated, by Climate Change Incorporated (C2I), a multinational firm specializing in climate modeling and space-based probes and monitors. The designer of the ISMS, reclusive engineer Mel Sirus, was not available for comment.

Climate Change Incorporated released a statement saying, Through technology we will put Mother Nature back in balance because right now she’s just not up to the task, and we have to let her go. C2I’s president and CEO stated, The idea behind the ISMS is quite simple: The reason it’s colder in winter is that less sunlight strikes the earth directly at that time of year when the earth is tilted away from the sun, and the reason it’s hot in summer is that more sunlight strikes the earth directly when it is tilted toward the sun. With the ISMS we have devised a means to control that amount of sunlight by using this smart venetian blind in space. Summer too hot and dry? We can change that. Maybe we can’t make Fargo warmer in winter, but we sure as heck will be able to make it cooler in summer. For farmers this is good news, as we can now regulate rainfall amounts—virtually no more droughts. We will be able to unwind hurricane and tornado environments, stopping these once-devastating storm events before they have a chance to completely form, thereby saving countless lives and billions in reconstruction costs.

The ISMS operating costs will be funded by annual sunlight user fees, or SUFs, that will be charged to each person for each day of their lives while the ISMS is in operation. Countries will pay for the ISMS operating costs based on population. Other service fees will apply to the responsible entities for geographic areas in which specific weather events require immediate control or intervention. C2I upper management states, This is a small price to pay for living on a planet with a controlled climate. We plan to make it fair to everyone; those who cannot pay will have a ten-year grace period and pay when they can. With the ISMS controlling climate, we will no longer have to fear increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, natural or otherwise. When more heat is trapped, we simply will throttle back incident sunlight and cool to a comfortable temperature. Asked why the general public could not weigh in on the use of this device, C2I’s legal department said that the doctrines of imminent domain and avoidable consequences apply in this situation.

C2I computer climate models predict that within months of the sun shield’s operation, ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean will return to year-round coverage, and Greenland and Antarctic glacial melting rates will be reversed. This will halt the rising sea level of the world ocean from those and other sources of ice melt. While C2I has stated, Polar bears love us—we’re bringing back their icy habitat, several lawsuits have been filed by shipping companies that have begun construction on ports built on speculation that melting arctic ice would open up year-round shipping lanes, based on earlier warming trends before the ISMS deployment.

C2I’s announcement comes after several embarrassing losses of its climate probes that were sent to Venus to study its climatic history. The cause of the disappearance of the probes remains a mystery.

Chapter 1 (Present day)

PETRA SANDS WAS breaking her own rule: no electronic devices allowed at the cabin. This had been a good intention when she was visualizing the cabin in the North Carolina woods as an escape from modern society—for a few days a year at least. Although she upheld the rule during her visits over the past three years, this retreat to the cabin brought the weight of a recent job loss and a recent breakup. The two events intertwined so closely that she could not tell the difference in feeling downhearted about one or the other. At twenty-seven, she felt as if she were in midair after letting go of a trapeze and not knowing if the next trapeze bar would show up in time to prevent a fall-—with no net.

Petra was breaking her no-electronic-devices rule to watch a news conference but not about any local issue, such as the proposed highway bypass for Route 1 from Cameron to Pinehurst. This news conference was promoted as the most important announcement for the public—ever. Whether it was that billing or the chance to forget her troubles for a few moments, Petra found tuning in irresistible and a justifiable excuse to break her rule, or so she had convinced herself. The news conference was set for 7:00 p.m. eastern standard time, which was fine with Petra. At least the Carolina heat might dissipate somewhat by then. It was hot, over one hundred degrees, in the cabin, and sweat dripped from Petra’s brow, but it was hotter out in the sun. The cabin’s tin roof made it seem as if she were in an oven, on broil. She remembered December in North Carolina as being pleasantly cool like it had been when she visited as a child, but that was twenty-five years ago. She even recalled winters with an occasional dusting of snow out in the sand hills where she had ultimately built the cabin. That memory of snow from her youth had faded over the last few years. The snow had been a fine sight—large, fluffy white flakes lightly falling on the tall pines. But recent years seemed to only get hotter, and December brought no relief.

There had been no snow during most Carolina winters since she had built the cabin—or, more accurately, had it constructed by a local builder. Initially she had been thrilled with the builder, who at first bent over backward for her, even going the extra mile with touches to the cabin. After a year or two, when the final tasks seemed to drag on too long, Petra realized the builder was delaying completion of the cabin so he could hunt freely on her land when she wasn’t around.

The cabin was built on land that had been in the family for generations. Petra had always heard that her grandmother had wanted to build a cabin in the woods, and that stuck in Petra’s mind as a great idea, one that deserved to be realized even if it fell to another generation. After finding the well that had been dug in the 1930s as Grandma’s first step in building that cabin, before life got in the way, Petra had finally made it happen. It had been easier than she thought, as if Grandma was helping out along the way. She had arranged with the forester to have sixty logs of adequate diameter and length stockpiled for the cabin when the first thinning of the woods occurred. The thinning, the forester had explained, was to get the dead and diseased trees out of the way to let in more sun so the healthy trees could grow to their full potential—another great idea, Petra noted, somewhat easier for trees to accomplish than humans evidently. The wood from the thinning would be sold as pulp and made into paper. Later, the final harvest of trees