A Crack in the Sky (44 page)

The fiction:
In Eli’s fictional future the situation is so dire that the amount of excess carbon in the atmosphere measures a whopping 980 CO
₂
-equivalent units per million (let’s call that parts per million, or ppm). By way of comparison, today, as I write this, it’s at about 385 ppm. It appears that at 450 ppm, major habitat loss may be inevitable, but questions of exactly what might happen to our environment at specific CO
₂
concentrations are hotly debated. In any case, saturating our atmosphere to the level described in Eli’s story would require about three hundred years of today’s emissions, or one hundred years if our emissions continue to grow at the current rate.

WARMING CLIMATE

The truth:
The Earth is billions of years old, and climate change—including periods of warming and cooling—is a natural part of its history. The concern of many scientists today isn’t that climate change is happening, it’s the rate at which it seems to be happening
now. Global temperature records show that the Earth has warmed, on average, by more than half a degree centigrade over the past century. That might not seem like much, but even a small change in average temperature can have a big impact on things like biodiversity, agriculture, and the oceans. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the rate of warming since the 1970s has been about three times greater than the rate over the last hundred years. Seven of the eight warmest years on record (since 1850) have happened since 2001. Many of the world’s leading climatologists think this rise in temperature has been caused in large part by man-made greenhouse gases, like CO
₂
, in the atmosphere.

The fiction:
In the future imagined in this story, the Earth has warmed to a drastic degree. The polar ice caps have melted, entire ecosystems have collapsed, previously fertile land has turned to desert, and the remaining resources are dwindling away. While it would be difficult to predict the real distribution of warm and cool geographical zones, Eli’s world has clearly undergone a sweeping transformation, an overall warming well beyond what is currently predicted for the near future.

RISING SEA LEVELS

The truth:
Sea levels rise because of two things—water warming, which causes the oceans to swell and expand onto land, and melting of ice from landmasses. Using current information to estimate future CO
₂
emissions, many scientists—including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—are predicting that the oceans could rise by three to six feet by 2100, which would potentially displace tens of millions of people and cost trillions of U.S. dollars in damage. There is evidence to suggest that sea levels could rise faster, perhaps ten or fifteen feet by 2100, because more land-based glaciers seem to be melting than we once realized.

The fiction:
In
A Crack in the Sky
, ocean levels have risen by about sixty meters, an increase that could theoretically result from a melt
that included all of the mountain glaciers worldwide, all of Greenland, all the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and about half of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. That rise would completely submerge Florida, much of the Mississippi River Valley, the central valley in California, and many coastal cities. This is an extreme scenario, highly unlikely in the next hundred years, and has not happened, as far as we can tell, in the last thirty million years of Earth’s history.

ACIDIFICATION OF THE OCEAN

The truth:
CO
₂
that enters the atmosphere and is absorbed by the ocean becomes carbonic acid, which in turn lowers the pH, meaning that the ocean becomes more acidic. Over the last century, the average pH of the surface of the ocean has dropped measurably. There is evidence that acidification may already be negatively affecting the way some animals make their shells, including microscopic animals (zooplankton like foraminifera) at the base of the food chain, coral (which are both food and habitat), and others (like cuttlefish) that are the staple diet of many large marine animals. If acidification continues, by 2050 key components of the marine food chain may be permanently lost.

The fiction:
For my novel I took this idea and amped it way up. The Gulf of Mexico over which Eli and Tabitha find themselves is an ocean that smells bad and is tinged with red due to the proliferation of algae. This would indicate a sea destroyed, a far-flung, grim depiction of acidification and deoxygenation combined.

SICKNESS AND MASS EXTINCTIONS

The truth:
Climate change threatens the existence of thousands of species when environments change too swiftly for them to adapt. Polar bears are often cited as examples of animals struggling to survive as the Arctic ice melts, but there are many other species all around the world that could potentially die off with the loss of their habitats, food, or water. Others could perish as higher temperatures
give rise to destructive parasites such as the mountain pine beetle. Pine beetle infestations have been increasing dramatically in recent years and have already resulted in the destruction of millions of acres of forest in western parts of the United States and Canada. Warming temperatures may also increase the ranges of infectious diseases such as yellow fever, malaria, West Nile virus, and Lyme disease.

The fiction:
My novel describes an imaginary future in which this destructive potential is played out to the max. Most of the human population has been killed off by a fast-moving, deadly illness—the Great Sickness. The remaining Outsiders live in a desolate wilderness that has suffered mass extinctions of much of its plant and animal life. Add this to the violent hurricanes, heat, floods, and droughts, and you end up with a harsh landscape indeed, a wasteland where only the strong and resourceful survive.

So here’s the thing: while some elements of
A Crack in the Sky
were inspired by actual science and current theories, in the end it’s a work of fiction, and many of the details of Eli’s world came wholly from my imagination. The lumbering mutant that Marilyn stumbles across near a lake of toxic ooze, for example, is based on no climate change science I’m aware of. I just thought it would be creepy. As far as I know, there exist no imminent plans to build protective domes that enclose entire cities. I just like domes. And finally, as far as I know, animal neurobiologists are not, at this moment, secretly working on ways to boost the brains of small carnivorous mammals.

But then, you never know.

Here are some of the sources I used to learn about the climate change topics discussed here. For a more complete list of sources, check out my Web site at
www.markpeterhughes.com
.

BOOKS

Berne, Emma Carlson.
Global Warming and Climate Change
(Compact Research Series). San Diego: Referencepoint Press, 2007.

Henson, Robert.
The Rough Guide to Climate Change, 2nd Edition
. London: Rough Guides, 2008.

Lynas, Mark.
High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis
. New York: Picador, 2004.

Speth, James Gustave.
Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment, Second Edition
. New Haven: Yale Nota Bene, 2005.

INTERNET RESEARCH

“Climate Change—Science, State of Knowledge: What’s Known, What’s Very Likely, What’s Not Certain.” United States Environmental Protection Agency.
http://epa.gov/climatechange/science/stateofknowledge.html

“Global Warming: Frequently Asked Questions.” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

“IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html

“Ocean Acidification: The
Other
CO
₂
Problem.” Henderson, Caspar. August 5, 2006. NewScientist.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19125631.200

INTERVIEW

Dr. Julio Friedmann, PhD, Carbon Management Program Leader, Energy & Environmental Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Cherry, Lynne, and Braasch, Gary.
How We Know What We Know
About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global
Warming
. Nevada City, CA: Dawn Publications, 2008.

David, Laurie, and Gordon, Cambria.
Down-to-Earth Guide to
Global Warming
. New York: Orchard Books, 2007.

Evans, Kate.
Weird Weather: Everything You Didn’t Want to Know
About Climate Change but Probably Should Find Out
. Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2007.

Flannery, Tim, adapted by Sally M. Walker.
We Are the Weather
Makers: The History of Climate Change
. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2009.

Gore, Al.
An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming
. New York: Viking Children’s Books, 2007.

Haugen, David; Musser, Sandra; Lovelace, Kacy, eds.
Global
Warming (Opposing Viewpoints)
. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2010.

Nardo, Don.
Climate Crisis: The Science of Global Warming
(Headline Science)
. Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books, 2008.

Sommers, Michael, A.
Antarctic Melting: The Disappearing
Antarctic Ice Cap
. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2007.

For even more information about the science of climate change, check out these Web sites:

epa.gov/climatechange/kids/index.html

Climate change information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

climate.nasa.gov/ClimateReel/

Videos and visualizations of climate change from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/kidspage.cfm

Information from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

A sincere thank-you goes to my amazing editor, Stephanie Lane Elliott, and to all the people at Random House who helped put this book together, especially Beverly Horowitz, Chip Gibson, Krista Vitola, Trish Parcell, Tamar Schwartz, Natalia Dextre, Colleen Fellingham and Barbara Perris, Katharine Gehron, Emily Pourciau, Annette Szlachta, Per Haagensen, Joe LeMonnier, and all the wonderful people on the sales and marketing team whose early feedback was so helpful. I’m indebted also to the following for their assistance and support: Andy McNicol, the Commando Writers (Michael A. Di Battista, Peter DiIanni, Scott Fitts, Geoffrey H. Goodwin, Dalia Rabinovich, John Smith and Abby Walsh), J. L. Bell, Dr. Jean Brown, Greg R. Fishbone, Susan Green, Michael Healey, Carolyn Hughes, Jennifer Hughes, Shauna Leggat, Kevin McGurn, Tucker Moody, Alison Morris, Claudia Sorsby, John Winnell, Ana Wons, and Janet Zade. My son, Evan, deserves a special thank-you for providing his thoughtful insights. For some of the climate change information used in this book, I am grateful for the assistance of Dr. Julio Friedmann, whose expertise in climate change science helped lay a factual foundation on which I took many liberties to create this work of fiction. For all those liberties, the blame is entirely mine.

Most of all, I want to acknowledge Evan, Lucy, and Zoe, and especially Karen, my first reader and best friend.
Les quiero con todo mi corazón
.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Mark Peter Hughes was born in Liverpool, England, and grew up in Barrington, Rhode Island.

Mark Peter Hughes’s first novel,
I Am the Wallpaper
, was a Children’s Book Sense 76 Summer Pick and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. His second,
Lemonade Mouth
, was a Book Sense Children’s Spring Pick, a Richie’s Pick, a Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of the Year (Outstanding Merit), an ASTAL Rhode Island Book of the Year Award winner, and a Boston Authors Club Award finalist.