"da Cruz, Daniel - Republic of Texas 02 - Texas on the Rocks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)
22 FEBRUARY 2005
OUTSIDE THE HALLS OF CONGRESS THE AIR WAS COLD and dry, but inside, in the House Interior and Insular Affairs committee room, the atmosphere was hot and
steamy, charged with the sweat and exhalations of some two hundred press and television reporters. Since 8 P.M. they had been jostling and shoving to get vantage points for Congressman Castle's press conference, which would be heard and seen by an estimated 145 million Americans.
At two minutes before nine, Congressman David D. Castle made his entrance and mounted the podium. He was dressed in black, and his expression was grave. He was alone and without notes.
At exactly nine o'clock, the red on-the-air lights blinked on above the lenses of a dozen television cameras, and the sober countenance of the representative from California's Sixth District appeared on 50 million screens.
"Fellow Americans," he began in a warm conversational tone, "on the way home at night after work I often stopped for a hamburger. No more. Why not? Well, in the hearings I have conducted during the past two months I have learned many things. I learned, for instance, that in addition to the flour that makes the bun, it takes nearly a bushel of wheat to produce the meat that goes into the hamburger itself. Some fanner in the Midwest expended twenty-two minutes to harvest that wheat, along with 655 grams of fertilizer and 15,000 gallons of water from aquifers that will not be replenished for another 10 million years. In effect, I was consuming a bushel of wheat and 15,000 gallons of water to wash it down. It was too much. I lost my appetite for hamburger.
"The hearings have been about our waste of water. There's a shortage. It is real, it is serious, and it is upon us. Solutions were proposed. They include conservation and redistribution of our present supplies and the creation of new sources through seawater distillation, reverse osmosis, reversing the flow of Arctic rivers, seeding the clouds with iodine crystals, and so on. All involve enormous expenditures and frightening environmental risks. We cannot afford to experiment with these new monsters, for experience proves they are more likely to destroy than to serve us.
"One solution remains. It is untried, but it is wholly feasible. It will provide the purest water in the world in unlimited quantities. It will be costly, but the cost is but
a fraction of that of such environmental calamities as the North American Water and Power Alliance scheme and negligible compared with the alternative: chronic thirst, economic disaster, defenselessness against foreign aggression, and massive suffering.
"That solution is icebergs."
A murmur of surprise and disappointment rose from the assembled press. The iceberg idea had been kicking around since the 1970s, when Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohammed Feisal had launched a company to bring Antarctic icebergs to his waterless kingdom. But the scheme had foundered on the rocks of primitive technology, poor administration, and inadequate financing.
"The Antarctic is the world's fifth largest continent, at 5.5 million square miles almost double the size of the United States. It's a vast plateau averaging 7,500 feet above sea level. The uppermost 6,500 feet, containing seven million cubic miles, is almost solid ice. If melted, the water would equal the flow of the Mississippi for 46,000 years. If melted, it could provide the United States with water everlasting.
"But how do we get it here to melt? The answer is, we tow it, one iceberg at a time, as we tow a river barge. But before we hitch it to our tugboat, let's go back to the Antarctic uplands where those icebergs are born for a closer look.
"There, little snow falls. It amounts to only two inches a year, barely a third the precipitation that falls on, for example, Phoenix, Arizona. Compacted by its own weight over the years, the slow accumulation of snow turns to ice in temperatures that go down to more than -120 degrees Fahrenheit. Almost imperceptibly, sometimes at a rate of only inches per year, the huge mass flows downhill toward the sea as a river of ice. The glacier's journey to the sea may take up to 20,000 years. Along the way, high-velocity winds smooth its irregularities and plane it
flat. It moves out inexorably across the face of the sea, until at last the wave motion of the turbulent sea boiling beneath it breaks off chunks of ice, and the new-born icebergs float away.
"They can be huge. In the late 1970s a 768-square-mile iceberg was sighted off the tip of South America. On November 12, 1956, the U.S.S. Glacier spotted a berg west of Scott Island in the Pacific; its area was an estimated 12,000 square miles, twice the size of Massachusetts. Ten thousand icebergs a year calve from five main ice shelves. Caught in the cold Circumpolar Current, they may survive for up to seven years, until warmer water melts them away, their superlatively pure water lost to the salty sea.
"Science can save these icebergs for us, bring them to our shores, and revitalize America. A single iceberg of optimum transportable size, that is, two kilometers long by one kilometer wide and one-fifth of a kilometer thick, contains a billion tons of water. That amount would supply every inhabitant of Manhattan, for instance, with water for his domestic needs for six years. Icebergs brought to our shores on a continuous basis would revive American agriculture and industry and lead us into a new era of national prosperity."
Castle paused and looked around the room at a sea of disbelieving faces. Somewhere a snicker was heard, then a cynical chuckle. Laughter rippled through the room.
Castle colored but managed to maintain his aplomb. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.
"I, too, was a skeptic," he said when the laughter subsided. "But once it was made clear to me that there was no other alternative, I consulted leading authorities around the world: glaciologists, computer experts, ocean engineers, mathematicians, mechanical engineers, ship masters, hydrologists, and experts from dozens of other disciplines. They have provided evidence--incontrovertible evidence--that iceberg transport from the Antarctic to America is not only possible but practical. Furthermore, it will be economically feasible once the iceberg pipeline is filled, compared with the present costs of irrigation and industrial water--water which, I need not remind you, is scarcer, more polluted, and more costly every day."
He paused and looked out beyond the glaring lights into the phalanx of unconvinced reporters in the crowded chamber.
"This conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, is the verdict of science, based on some seven weeks of hearings by this committee. I know you will have some questions. I shall do my best to answer them."
A babel of shouting rose from the floor.
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