A Nobel Prize winning geologist named Martin Sorenson noted that if he’d used the term “global climate change” instead of “global warming” he’d have been taken more seriously and not set a program to combat the problem back many years.
In any event, and regardless of who was right and who was wrong, the earth was indeed changing.
The rising of ocean waters, which all reputable scientists agreed would be a major problem, would happen gradually.
There was plenty of time for seaside communities to build sea walls or elevate homes close to the water.
The climate itself would also change slowly, allowing human beings a chance to adjust.
In short, there was no real need to panic.
Everybody agreed that clean air was important, and the world community continued to work to that end. But the “sky is falling” attitude some had was largely unfounded.
Dr. Sorenson also famously stated, “We’ll just have to get used to harsher winters and more hurricanes and tornados. But mankind will adjust, just as it always has.”
Dr. Sorenson maintained that, although some might die from stronger hurricanes and tornados, no one would die as a direct result of climate change itself.
So followed many years of climate change occasionally making headlines, but largely being placed in the back of one’s mind.
Meanwhile, the ice packs started to shrink.
The thaw in Antarctica wasn’t a problem to the global community.
And least not in ways that would be noticeable.
The polar bears and sea lions in the area had to change their migration and mating habits, and some had to relocate to colder locales.
But none of that affected Juan Sebastian in Spain or John Smith in Pittsburgh so it wasn’t given much thought.
The real problem was in the Arctic.
Specifically in northern Greenland and Siberia. And at various other places north of the Arctic Circle.
Ice there was melting at more or less the same rate as the Antarctic, but there was a difference.
A difference a few scientists and geologists had always warned might be a problem, but which was largely ignored.
With the thaw, more and more of the permafrost was seeing sunlight for the first time in hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years.
For the first time in recorded history spores and allergens once thought to be extinct were being exposed to the open air.
But not just any spores and allergens.
Some were super spores and allergens, having gone dormant before man’s very existence.
Spores and allergens which man had never been exposed to before.
Never grown accustomed to.
Never formed a resistance to.
Spores and allergens which were deadly to man.
The ice pack slowly receded, exposing more and more greenery beneath it.
The greenery felt the warmth of the sun for the first time in forever, it seemed.
It slowly dried out, and occasional wind gusts carried it away.
Some of it made its way into the winds which periodically whipped across the ice pack and was driven south from the Arctic, north from the Antarctic.
In northern Alaska, a couple hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, an Inuit tribe lived the way their ancestors lived for centuries.
Each year the spring thaw came. The snow melted, the earth grew green with life.
The villagers immediately started preparing… for the next winter.
It was the way of the Inuit, for the season of the thaw was short-lived and labor intensive.
And if they failed to gather enough provisions to get them through the following winter they’d have to leave their home and scavenge from other villages farther south.
Villages which had done a better job of preparing.
This tiny village didn’t even have a name, but its members were a proud people. The elders remembered a time several years before when the green season was far too short, the winter came much too early.
And the winter was particularly brutal that year.
They’d run out of seal and muktuk completely. The caribou was down to just a few pounds. They were in danger of starving to death and there was no sign the thaw was coming anytime soon.
They’d had to dispatch two strong men to another village twenty kilometers away. It was a treacherous journey in near-whiteout conditions. But they were able to return with two hundred pounds of whale. Enough to sustain them until the ice finally melted.
It was a humbling and humiliating experience, and one which the elders didn’t want to repeat.
And so it was they drove their people hard to collect the berries. To cast their nets and capture as many hundreds of fish as they could.
To take not seven caribou, but eight or nine if they could find them.
It was a lot of work and they had a limited amount of time to complete it before the first freeze.
But this was life in northern Alaska.
And pride in one’s abilities to survive… and the blow to their collective pride when forced to beg for food from others… was strong.
They’d do whatever it took, work as many hours as it took, to prevent that humiliation from happening again.
Table of Contents
The Story Thus Far…
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53