“Interesting,” he said. “But do they have a budget? I mean, do they fund research?”
“No.”
He left his point unsaid: money was government, here as elsewhere.
She walked him over to the big wall map of Antarctica. “Here are all the field camps deployed this year—the blue pins—and all the trekking groups, the green pins. And I’ve marked the location of all the non-Treaty camps that we’re aware of as well, with the red pins.”
“Are these all that there are?”
“All that we can confirm,” she prevaricated.
He nodded, staring at the map. There were perhaps ten red pins, some around the Weddell Sea, some here in the Ross Sea region, some on the polar cap. “And the yellow pins?”
“Those represent odd sightings on satellite photos, for the most part. Things or shapes, or mostly heat signals from the IR. We don’t have the resources here to investigate all of these sightings, I must admit, and those we have looked into have not revealed anything on the ground. So we mark them, and look at especially interesting ones, but we don’t know what they mean.”
“I see.”
He stared at the map, looking puzzled; perhaps at what he should do next. Sylvia suggested what was in effect a short version of the DV tour, designed to show distinguished visitors exceptionally scenic places in the hope of making them Antarctic advocates when they went home. It very often worked like a charm. “Perhaps the Dry Valleys, and South Pole Station of course, and up onto Mount Erebus,” pointing at the map.
“That would be great,” he said agreeably. “But what about visiting these oil explorations? What they’re doing complicates the Treaty ratification process a good deal. Can you tell me more about them, and perhaps arrange a meeting with one of them?”
Sylvia waggled a hand. “We can ask, of course, to visit one of their stations. But we’ve done that already, and so far they’ve not answered. We could do a Greenpeace on them, I suppose, and drop in uninvited. But the diplomatic repercussions of that might be more than you want. The Southern Club Antarctic Group is a very mixed bag of countries.”
“Yes, I take your point. But how serious are they? Do we know how much oil might be out there, or how much methane hydrate?”
“There are estimates, but the drilling they’re doing now is exploratory only, as I understand it.”
“But they’re pretty sure oil is there.”
“Some oil. There are no supergiant fields, but a few suspected giant fields, and many smaller ones. The old USGS estimate is fifty to a hundred billion barrels. As compared to the eight billion that were under Alaska’s North Slope, or the five million sequestered under the Arctic National Park. But spread around the continent inconveniently, you see. It’s not certain that even in the current state of the global inventory it will be economically viable to mine them. You’d think the new photovoltaics would be supplanting the need for fossil fuels pretty effectively.”
“Capitalization troubles. Besides I’ve heard talk about how important the remaining oil is going to be for its nonfuel uses.”
“Yes, there is that.”
“Is there someone I could talk to who would know how realistic these estimates are? And can tell me more about the methane hydrate situation under the ice cap?”
Sylvia thought it over. “Yes, there are several people, I suppose. Geoff Michelson would be good, I think. He’s been coming down here for a long time and knows the geology of Antarctica very well. He’s also very high up in SCAR, part of their policy-making echelon. So you could kill two birds with one scientist.”
“Where is he?”
“They’re out in the Dry Valleys this season.” She pointed to the spot on the map. “They’re spending a very short time in the Barwick Valley, which is an SSSI, a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Essentially it’s a valley closed to human presence, to keep it as free of contamination as possible. So theirs is an unusual visit. In fact we wouldn’t be able to fly you in there, because overflights by helo are forbidden. You could perhaps walk in with one of the groups we have touring the Dry Valleys.”
He was frowning; not a hiker, perhaps. Or perhaps he was only thinking of the time he had.
“You’d like to talk to him quickly.”
“Yes.”
“Well.” Sylvia thought about it. “We might be able to send you out with one of our mountaineers, if one is free. We could drop you at their helo rendezvous, and you could walk in with the mountaineer.”
“That would be great.”
Sylvia called Joyce. “Joyce, is there a mountaineer free to take Mr. Norton out to S-375 in the Barwick Valley? They’ll just need a day or two there?” She looked at Wade, who was nodding confirmation. “Okay, that’s fine. When does the Amundsen leave? Yes, we can get them back in time for that. Thanks, Joyce.”
She hung up.
Norton said, “What are these trekking groups about? Don’t they infringe on the Treaty as well?”
“Well, the Treaty promised free access to everyone. Not that NSF encouraged tourism before, of course. But it’s a matter of coping with the reality in the field. On the one hand there were more and more private adventure travel companies bringing expeditions down here, flying them in little old planes from Chile into Patriot Hills and other private camps. Then they were skiing or hiking or climbing about. And the Russians were coming down to the Dry Valleys in old Arctic icebreakers and dropping off big groups. Really, they were going everywhere. And the environment down here is very delicate because of the cold; a campsite that leaves behind refuse or human waste will have it here for centuries. You can still find all the depots of the first expeditions down here, it’s quite amazing. But it’s an archeological site when Amundsen or Scott’s people did it, whereas when it’s an expedition from last week, it’s just trash. So that was a problem which NSF was helpless to prevent, because no one owns Antarctica, as you know.”
Norton nodded. “It’s a bizarre situation.”
“Yes. And with Congress asking NSF to run a full program down here on a smaller and smaller budget, it’s gotten quite difficult. The Pole Station had to be finished for it to be occupied at all, and everything else was pinched by that effort. So about ten years ago NSF decided to try a plan whereby we offered carefully designed trekking expeditions through our own private contractor for services, ASL. That way the expeditions could be kept to certain areas and routes, and kept also to very high standards of cleanliness and environmental accountability. We even added a certain amount of data collection to some of the treks, modeling them on the Earthwatch expeditions. So we gave it a try, and our operation here is so big compared to any of the private firms that had been coming down, that the expeditions we offered could be that much better.”
“So you can offer better tours, and presumably at less expense.”
“Well, we charge top rates. But the expeditions are better in every way. And cleaner.”
“And has this in fact cut off the proliferation of small companies?”
“Yes, it’s worked very well. We have to offer the same kind of small groups and adventurous itineraries, of course, or else the industry niche wouldn’t be filled, so to speak. But ASL has done pretty well that way, and I’d say we have ninety percent of the business now. It’s kept the environment cleaner, and it adds a bit to the operating budget down here as well, so it’s a winner both ways. Of course there are those who object to bringing so many people down here at all, but the truth is it’s no more people than would have come anyway, and this way we have a chance to control the conditions of their visit.”