Rachel and I were discussing the reemergence of the speakeasy during the Trump administration, but instead of alcohol, the illicit material being bootlegged is climate science data. Underground communities of scientists meeting in smoky jazz joints to discuss CO2 emissions over stiff sidecars, miniature flash drives loaded with forbidden EPA data passed between folded napkins, scientific equipment hidden in saxophone cases. Ask the bartender for a ‘Pine Island melt’ and he’ll hook you up with some Antarctic temperature readings.
When the joint gets busted by the fuzz, the table displaying ozone graphs flips over to become a roulette table. No science happening here, officers. Just gambling.
If you’re a slick-talker, lovely Louisa will give you a wink over her long cigarette and lead you by the hand into a back room. She’ll slip into a lab coat and some close-toed shoes and show you some water samples. Then she’ll ask you for help – someone has stolen her diploma in biochemistry and has been blackmailing her with it. She wants you to get it back before word gets out that she has a Ph. D.
I was looking at another hockey-stick graph with a lot of correlations when she walked in; two, maybe three standard deviations above average height, and hotter than last year’s climate figures.
“I have a problem,” she said.
“We all have problems. The whales have problems. The frogs have problems. Even the rice has problems. So what’s yours?” I took a pull from the bottle of filtered tap water I kept in the bottom drawer. Dehydration’s a bastard.
“I’ve got a diploma. Biochemistry. PhD; thesis on alkaline adaptivity in specialized coral populations. And someone’s gotten their hands on it and they’re threatening to expose me.”
The look she gave me could stop a glacier from calving. “You have any leads? Anyone with the means or the motive?”
“Too many.”
“That’s a problem.”
“Put it on my tab with the rest of them.”
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