His anxieties aboard the ship had revolved around finding a way to get into her room at night and the fear that he would accidentally call her Ilsa instead of “Ingrid.” He almost slipped once as they were making love, but he swallowed the sound at the last instant. Not listening carefully, she missed it.
He had coated his hands with a thin layer of wax hours before the crucial evening to obscure his fingerprints. Pretending to acquiesce to Ingrid’s insistence, which she took for thoughtfulness, he had worn a condom. It captured bodily fluids that could easily be used for DNA analysis by whoever investigated the death. He had flushed it down the toilet before leaving Ilsa’s stateroom.
Feeling proud but exhausted after the adrenaline surge of the last forty-eight hours and a little woozy from the drink, he lay down for a moment, subconsciously fearing a policeman’s knock on his door in the night. But rationally, he felt confident no one could track him down.
The only knock on his door was the maid in the morning, and Mark did not answer. The local coroner ruled his death natural, from heart failure, never thinking to test for exotic poisons. His belongings showed no sign of illegal drugs or the presence of any visitors to his suite. Mark Miller never knew the worldwide consequences of his murderous act.
Chapter 2
Ystad
Dr. Ilsa Hartquist, deceased at age forty-seven, was born and raised in the tiny medieval fishing village of Ystad, Sweden. Her parents taught math and science in the upper school. At home, they devoted their energies to supplemental education of their four children. Ilsa was the eldest and by far the most talented. Her parents did everything they could to advance her knowledge and academic skills as she rapidly progressed.
Ystad is the site of author Henning Mankell’s novels about detective Kurt Wallander, later made famous by the BBC television series based on his stories. Tourists come from around the world to take “conceptual guided tours,” following the rugged policeman’s imaginary footsteps along the town’s cobblestone streets.
Ilsa’s early exposure to the impact of media on her hometown, combined with her wide-ranging knowledge of science, social studies, and the humanities, set her on the path to prominence. After earning a PhD in Climate Science from Harvard University in 2000, followed by post-graduate training at MIT, she joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in 2006.
She immediately became an active climate research scholar and an active participant in the deliberations of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the committee that speaks most authoritatively on the global scientific consensus about the dangers created by the changing climate.
For several years, she had argued vigorously for prompt, effective regulatory action to reduce methane emissions along with carbon dioxide emissions. This advocacy made her a leader and the hero of environmental activists. The US EPA adopted methane rules as part of its program to satisfy US commitments under the 2015 Paris Accords.
In September 2017, Dr. Hartquist presented a pathbreaking paper to the IPCC that stressed the unacceptably high risk of immediate, irreversible consequences from climate change. The paper gained wide notoriety beyond the climate science community.
Shortly thereafter, Judy Woodmont, a nationally-known TV anchor, interviewed Ilsa on her nightly news program. Transcript excerpts went viral on the social networks interested in climate issues.
Woodmont: Dr. Hartquist, thank you for joining us this evening. I’d like to talk with you about your recent presentation to the IPCC. Your paper seems to be quite critical of the IPCC’s climate change modeling. What is wrong with their models?
Hartquist: It isn’t that the IPCC modeling is wrong. The problem is that it is overlooking the most dangerous, immediate threat from global warming. The IPCC’s one hundred-year horizon models project a smooth increase in earth’s temperature caused by carbon dioxide emissions that will eventually have a catastrophic effect on all life on earth.
But the IPCC has not given sufficient attention to the immediate effects of other, more potent but short-lived greenhouse gasses, particularly methane and HCFCs, a gas used in air conditioners around the world.
Woodmont: My understanding is that methane and HCFCs are included in the IPCC’s models. The IPCC hasn’t ignored them. What exactly is the error you see?
Hartquist: The IPCC does recognize that the Global Warming Potential, or GWP, for methane is twenty-eight times that of carbon dioxide over one hundred years. And the IPCC climate models use that GWP ratio for predicting global conditions in 2100. But the one hundred-year model assumes that methane’s effects will emerge smoothly over that time period.
That assumption disregards the fact that methane only stays in the atmosphere about twelve years on average. Most of that “28 times more potent” GWP occurs in those first twelve years. Before the methane dissipates, its global warming effect is over 8 times the one hundred-year average, or 224 times the GWP of carbon dioxide. The effects of increased methane emissions are front-loaded. In other words, their most powerful impact occurs in the first few years of their presence in the atmosphere.
HCFCs have an even shorter lifespan in the atmosphere, but they have a far stronger GWP, so their effects are even more front-loaded than methane.
Woodmont: But if the effect of these emissions averages out over the century, do the short-term effects really matter?
Hartquist: Yes, the short-term effects do matter. The fundamental conclusion of my analysis is that the IPCC needs to reverse its focus on the one hundred-year term. It won’t matter what the one hundred-year effect of carbon dioxide is, if civilization has already been drastically undermined in 2040 or 2060 by the disruptive effects of increased emissions of methane and HCFCs.
Human civilization as we know it may implode long before we reach the 70 Fahrenheit increase by 2100 that the IPCC is warning us about.
Woodmont: I’m not sure I understand how that would happen. Aren’t the long-term consequences the most important consideration?
Hartquist: Critical in the long term, but not the most urgent danger. Yes, we must stop emitting carbon dioxide long before 2100, if we are to preserve the planet as we know it. And substantial reductions in methane and HCFC emissions starting now would significantly reduce the one hundred-year average temperature increase, as the models illustrate.
But methane emissions are now 150% above 19th Century levels, and they have risen quite sharply in the last twenty years, as more natural gas wells and pipelines leak methane into the atmosphere. This increase doesn’t include the unmeasured emissions from oil fields damaged during the two Iraqi wars and various terrorist attacks on oil industry infrastructure.
I believe this front-loading of additional methane and HCFCs is what is causing the current unpredicted spike in global average temperatures. The world has set new temperature records almost every year since 2000, and that trend will continue as methane and HCFC emissions grow.
This effect is a much more immediate threat than the one hundred-year average. The current spike in earth’s temperature is already destroying vital features of our global ecosystem. That damage may be irreversible right now or in the near future if we don’t act.
Woodmont: What kinds of effects from this small temperature change, which currently amounts to less than 20 Fahrenheit, are you seeing?
Hartquist: The effects are showing up in scientific research results in many fields, from agronomy to oceanography to geology. The current and potential disruptions are of two kinds—secondary effects, and nonlinear irreversible impacts.
The secondary effects are evident everywhere. The current small average global temperature increase is much more extreme in the polar regions, causing the ongoing destruction of the polar ice caps. That loss is causing significant changes in weather and ocean patterns around the world.
We have recently seen the destruction caused by more frequent and more powerful hurricanes and forest fires. Less dramatic