"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

you know, go on from there with our best ideas. ThatтАЩs why weтАЩve focused on the HDL upgrade. With
this targeted delivery, it could be worth billions.тАЭ

тАЬAnd the HDL upgradeтАжтАЭ

тАЬWe havenтАЩt published yet. WeтАЩre still looking into the patent situation there.тАЭ

LeoтАЩs stomach tightened, but he kept his face blank.

Bannet was even blanker; still friendly and sympathetic enough, but with that piercing eye. тАЬSend me the
rest of your business plan, and all the scientific publications that relate to this. All the data. IтАЩll discuss it
with some of my partners here. It seems like the kind of thing that IтАЩd like to get my partnersтАЩ inputs on.
ThatтАЩs not unusual, itтАЩs just that itтАЩs bigger than what I usually do on my own. And some of my colleagues
are into agropharmacy stuff.тАЭ

тАЬSure,тАЭ Derek said, handing over a glossy folder of material he had already prepared. тАЬI understand. We
can come back and talk to them too if you like, answer any questions.тАЭ

тАЬThatтАЩs good, thanks.тАЭ Bannet put the folder on the table. With a few more pleasantries and a round of
handshaking, Derek and Leo were ushered out.

Leo found he had no idea whether the meeting had gone well or poorly. And would that be a good sign
or a bad one?
 T
he EarthтАЩs atmosphere now contains a percentage of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that is
higher than it has been since the end of the Cretaceous. This means more heat from the sun is being
trapped in our air, and the high-pressure cells we saw this year are bigger, warmer, and loft higher in the
tropical atmosphere. Many common jet-stream patterns have been disrupted, and the storms spiraling
out of the Tropics have gained in both frequency and intensity. The hurricane season in the Atlantic ran
from April to November, and there were eight hurricanes and six tropical storms. Typhoons in the East
Pacific happened all year, twenty-two all told. Mass flooding resulted, but it should be noted that in other
regions droughts have been breaking records.

So the effects have been various, but the changes are general and pervasive, and the damage for the year
was recently estimated at six hundred billion dollars, with deaths in the thousands. So far the United
States has escaped major catastrophe, and attention to the problem has not been one of the
administrationтАЩs central concerns. тАЬIn a healthy economy the weather isnтАЩt important,тАЭ the President
remarked. But the possibility is there that the added energy in the atmosphere could trigger what
climatologists call abrupt climate change. How that might begin, no one can be sure.




ANNA FLEW through the blur of a midweek day. Up and off, Metro to the office; pound the keys,
wrestling with some faulty data from an NSF educational outreach program, the spreadsheet work eating
up hours like minutes. Stop to pump, then to eat at her desk (it felt a little too weird to eat and pump at
the same time), all the while data wrangling. Then a look at an e-mail from Drepung and Sucandra about
their grant proposals.

Anna had helped them to write a small raft of proposals, and it had indeed been a pleasure, as they did