Man, I am toasted from the motion over the weekend that saw Pete haul my sorry butt across southwest Virginia, into the Volunteer State and north to Kentucky and the charming little college town at Berea. And then back the next day. Sandwiched in there was the first Presidential debate, and so I think you can tell that there is still a lot of information to process and internalize.
I am not going to do that, though. We will know the fate of the Republic in about five weeks, so why worry about what is going to happen until then?
Anyway, I was up early to deal with a meeting about team-building with one of the large firms in town, so I was processing the morning traffic with alacrity. And I ran across one of those Narrative things. You know, stories that confirm the fact that awful things are going to happen if we don’t act RIGHT NOW and do a bunch of really expensive and possibly counter-productive things.
See, it appears that in the narrative this morning the sins of our Fathers is going to be visited upon us for our failure to maintain a tidy, sustainable world.
I have learned enough to know that when someone starts a conversation with the words “sustainable,” the following narrative is gong to be one that involves my wallet and absolutely no fun whatsoever. The one this morning was really cool. In fact, totally chill.
“A secret abandoned nuclear base is likely to be revealed by the melting of a large icecap in Greenland due to Global Warming, experts have warned.”
That key bullet was run as the lead to a story in the Independent, one of the Brit tabloids. I was looking for something not involving the election to be alarmed about, and this seemed like a good one.
Toxic waste is expected to leak into the sea if the ice continues to melt around Camp Century, a research facility decommissioned by the US military at the height of the Cold War in 1967.
The base became home to the world’s first mobile nuclear generator when it opened its doors to 200 soldiers in 1959, and included a network of tunnels buried within the icecap that stretch for nearly a mile and a half, and which contained berthing, dining halls and a movie theater. The story was sensationalized in a crappy suspense movie called “Ice Station ZEBRA,” based on the novel by Scottish writer Alistair McLain. The acting in the film was about as welcoming as the ice that covers the former base, which was abandoned years ago.
However, even the government of Denmark – which owned the site at the time – was not informed of the true purpose of the facility: Project ICEWORM, the purpose of which was to give the capability to launch ICBMs again targets in the Soviet Union.
The cover tory was that the facility was a scientific station called Camp CENTURY that would actually be home to 600 missiles capable of attacking Moscow at a moment’s notice. That bit is from the Guardian newspaper, also of the UK. It is a Fleet Street favorite that that provides secure employment for a variety of committed Narrative writers. They claim that ICEWORM was abandoned due to the instability of the ice- think about that for a moment- and subsequently closed down. The portable reactor was hauled away, but nearly 10,000 tons of chemical waste were left behind.
When Global Warming kicks in, those chemicals could be released into the melt water in as little as 75 years. The contaminates are currently buried under about 120 feet of snow and ice, according to a recent study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
I already had my calendar marked. The Arctic was supposed to be ice free this year, or some year, and the Antarctic is in big trouble, with the Ross Ice Shelf about to drop into the sea in as little as 700 years. Naturally, I am alarmed. Should I live as long as Methuselah, this could be a personal big deal. Or maybe to my great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren’s great grandchildren, should the predictions be accurate.
In the nearer term, I will be 140 years old the year that ICEWORM threatens, so naturally I am on the edge of my seat – but approximately 9,200 tons of chemical waste is thought to remain under the ice to this day.
The narrative is compelling, and one thing I know is that the climate changes over time. So these stories are important to keep everyone alert and ready to accept guidance on how to better live our lives in a sustainable manner.
So you cannot imagine the sigh of relief that came with the realization that we are already experiencing some climate change that should come as good news, if the next Ice Age is what everyone was hoping for.
No one could quite explain why the Arctic was losing ice while the Southern Polar region was actually expanding. That does not comport with the theory so earnestly embraced by the policy-making class. So I will leave it to you. Here is the other side to this morning’s narrative:
I am not sure if this is actually good news. I am inclined to think that modestly warmer temperature is actually pretty nice. I can feel the edge of the impending Fall in the clammy chill rain that is falling on the patio this morning.
So, am I supposed to be happy that the ice covering the places that were buried to fight an ancient and implacable evil may not actually melt any time soon? Or should I become even more suspicious that the alleged experts don’t know their asses from a hole in the ice?
Thank goodness the science is settled, you know?
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com