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

him about the coming of the Swimming Tigers. He nodded and took off again with his account. She
heaved a great sigh of relief, took a sip of the beer. Another day flown past like a dream.



ANOTHER HEAT wave struck, the worst so far. People had thought it was hot before, but now it was
July, and one day the temperature in the metropolitan area climbed to 105 degrees, with the humidity
over ninety percent. The combination had all the Indians in town waxing nostalgic about Uttar Pradesh
just before the monsoon broke, тАЬOh very much yes, just like this in Delhi, actually it would be a blessing
if it were to be like this in Delhi, it would be a great improvement over what they have now, third year of
drought you see, they are needing the monsoon to be coming very badly.тАЭ

The morningPost included an article informing Charlie that a chunk of the Ross Ice Shelf had broken off,
a chunk more than half the size of France. The news was buried in the last pages of the international
section. So many pieces of Antarctica had fallen off that it wasnтАЩt big news anymore.

It wasnтАЩt big news, but it was a big iceberg. Researchers joked about moving onto it and declaring it a
new nation. It contained more fresh water than all the Great Lakes combined. It had come off near a
Roosevelt Island, a low black rock that had been buried under the ice and known only to radar probes,
and so was exposed to the air for the first time in either two or fifteen million years, depending on which
research team you believed. Although it might not be exposed for long; pouring down toward it,
researchers said, was the rapid ice of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, unimpeded now that the Ross Shelf
in that region had embarked, and therefore moving faster than ever.

This accelerated flow of ice toward the sea had big ramifications. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet was
much bigger than the Ross Ice Shelf, and had been resting on ground that was below sea level but that
held the ice much higher than it would have been if it had been floating freely in the ocean. So when it
broke up and sailed away, it would displace more ocean water than it had before.

Charlie read on, feeling somewhat amazed that he was learning this in the back pages of thePost. How
fast could this happen? The researchers didnтАЩt appear to know. As the sheet broke away, they said,
seawater was lifting the edges of the ice still resting on the bottom, deeper and deeper at every tide,
tugging with every current, and thus beginning to tear the sheet apart in big vertical cracks, and launch it
out to sea.

Charlie checked this on the web, and watched one trio of researchers explain on camera that it could
become an accelerating process, their words likewise accelerating a bit, as if to illustrate how it would go.
Modeling inconclusive because the sea bottom under the grounded ice irregular, they said, with active
volcanoes under it, so who knew? But it very well might happen fast.

Charlie heard in their voices the kind of repressed delirium of scientific excitement that he had heard
once or twice when listening to Anna talk about some extraordinary thing in statistics that he had not even
been able to understand. This, however, he understood. They were saying that the possibility was very
real that the whole mass of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would break apart and float away, each giant
piece of it then sinking more deeply into the water, thus displacing more water than it had when grounded
in placeтАФso much more that sea level worldwide could rise by an eventual total of about seven meters.
тАЬThis could happen fast,тАЭ one glaciologist emphasized, тАЬand IтАЩm not talking geology fast here, IтАЩm talking
tide fast. A matter of several years in some simulations.тАЭ The hard thing to pinpoint was whether it would
start to accelerate or not. It depended on variables programmed into the modelsтАФon they went, the
usual kind of scientist talk.