“So fill me in. What’s been happening since I’ve been out.”
“Our garbage run into the science building back at Hardt College has paid off. There was a piece of wax paper in the trash can. We were able to figure out it was once wrapped around something called Sample 681 and that it had something to do with Herbert Hoover. We’re going to call his presidential library in the morning to see if they can shed any more light on the mystery.”
“So no idea what this sample was or how it ties in with Abe and that other professor from Northwestern?”
“Neither school is talking officially,” he told her, “but the rumor mill has it they were working on some cutting-edge climate research.”
“One of my favorite topics,” Jordan confessed. “I wonder what they were doing.”
“I’ve been thinking about that for a while now, and the only reason I can see they were in that mine would have been to do an experiment where cosmic rays and other background radiation sources have been blocked by the earth. I think this dovetails into other work done at CERN to gauge the importance of cosmic rays in cloud formation. This isn’t really my field, but I recall the work may be part of an alternative theory to carbon dioxide being the sole driver of global warming over the past hundred years.”
Jordan’s eyes suddenly narrowed, and she sat up a little straighter on the couch. “No way. I know about that theory and can tell you it has already been debunked. Man-made carbon pollution is causing global warming, and anyone who says otherwise is a climate denier.”
As Mercer had told agent Hepburn earlier, climate change was an emotionally charged subject, and he could see that Jordan Weismann was more passionate than most. What amused him was how activists thought they were defending a scientific theory, when it was actually their own political and philosophical beliefs they fought to protect to the exclusion of all alternatives.
Normally he didn’t engage people in debates about their beliefs, but as a scientist he couldn’t let her last sentence stand without comment. “I don’t really follow the climate debate that closely, but I want to point out something you said that tells me you’re reading propaganda bullet points and not the literature produced by scientists.” Her eyes narrowed even further, and her entire body language became defensive. Mercer plowed on anyway. “Carbon pollution is not a scientific term. Even calling carbon a problem is an attempt to demonize something by association. People hear ‘carbon pollution’ and they think of dirty piles of ash or soot. We are not talking about coal dust or industrial slag. The topic at hand is carbon dioxide, the invisible gas you exhale about twenty-two thousand times a day and your houseplants breathe in. Calling it just carbon or carbon pollution is a PR stunt.
“Your second point of calling someone who questions the theory of global warming a ‘denier’ is disingenuous at best and deceitful at its worst. Most thinking people understand that greenhouse gases will raise the temperature of the planet. That is not really part of the debate. The question is by how much and what do we do about it. By labeling those who question the dogma, you are trying to reframe the topic so as to prove the other lie that gets tossed about all the time — that the science is settled. Science is never settled and anyone who says otherwise is lying.”
“Hold on one sec—”
Mercer cut her off. “Before you say anything, I am not questioning your belief in global warming or climate change or climate disruption or whatever the current name is. You have every right to believe whatever you want. What I don’t like is how some people try to spread the gospel with innuendo, half-truths, and smears.”
Jordan took a couple of calming breaths before she spoke. “Saying you believe in climate change is the same as saying you believe in evolution or that smoking causes cancer. These are scientific facts.”
“Completely true,” Mercer agreed. “The faith I mention comes into play when researchers try to project out a hundred years what the earth will be like. Evolutionary biologists don’t extrapolate the future from the fossil record to convince the public they know how the common gray squirrel will change over the next hundred years. The more activist climate scientists attempt that all the time. And any oncologist worth his salt will tell you they don’t know how the chemical triggers in smoke actually cause lung tissue to turn cancerous, only that they do.
“The earth has been warming since the middle of the Victorian age. That is a fact. How and why are up for debate and what happens in the future is pure guesswork and usually not very educated guesswork at that. A cleaner environment, using less fossil fuel, saving forests, and reducing consumption in general are all noble and lofty goals, but people can’t be guilted or frightened into wanting to realize them. Nor lied to. Groups that think creating ever scarier future scenarios will change society are deluding themselves and ultimately delaying more fundamental and obtainable environmental objectives.”
He could see Jordan’s hard flinty edge beaten dull by his words, and it was his turn to take a breath.
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word to show she recognized she’d hit a nerve. “Why don’t we talk about something less controversial, like the Middle East or abortion?”
He chuckled. “Sorry. Sometimes I get on my soapbox when science is used to push an agenda because then it is no longer science…it’s marketing.”
They sat in silence for a moment, until Jordan finally gave him a mischievous grin and said, “So…Sample 681?”
“Yes,” Mercer replied. “Back to the topic at hand. The Hoover Library. Hopefully there will be something there that lays out exactly what’s going on and what makes Sample 681 worth so many lives.”
“You’re sure you’ve never heard of it?” Jordan asked.
“No. That name sounds like a catalog number from a mineral collection and not a scientific description. I can envision it sitting on a dusty shelf somewhere wedged between Samples 680 and 682.”
“Any idea how Abe came to have it?”
“None. It could have been loaned to him or to Hardt College. It could have been something he brought with him from Carnegie or Penn State. Hell, it could have been something he found in a garage sale two weeks ago. Agent Hepburn is working on subpoenas to look into computer archives. I’ll ask her tomorrow to add information pertaining to Sample 681 to the list. Could be it’s something Dr. Tunis heard about at Northwestern. Then she discovered Abe had it and asked him to bring it to her underground laboratory.”
“I guess there’s no real point in trying to speculate, is there?” Jordan said, a little dejected by the enormity of what they didn’t know.
“We’re just getting started,” Mercer assured her. “That’s the problem with the Internet. People today are used to having their questions answered with the click of a button. We can’t get discouraged yet. It’s still early times.”
She chuckled. “E-mail was too slow growing up, so we started texting and then edited that down to just tweeting. Now a hundred and forty characters are too much so no one looks beyond the hashtag.”
“We were still passing handwritten notes when I was in school, and the only phone anyone had hung on the wall in their kitchen.” Mercer looked at her in the silence that followed and finally said, “I guess I didn’t need to remind you that I grew up in the Dark Ages…I think I’m going to call it a night.”
Jordan got off the couch and met him in the middle of the room. Her eyes were now soft, and she touched his arm with her good hand. “I want to thank you again for taking me in. I remember now that Abe talked about you once or twice, and I can see how you made such a lasting impression on him.” She turned to head to bed but paused and looked at him once more. This time there was an impish lift to her lips. “And trust me when I tell you that there are women out there who kept the notes you gave them as girls, and they wish whatever you wrote on them was still true.”