She nodded slowly. Looking at him closely.
He said, "You, too?"
She continued to nod.
They lunched at the same Mexican restaurant as before. It was almost empty, as before; the same Sony film editors laughing at the corner table. They must come here every day, Evans thought.
But somehow everything was different, and not just because his body ached and he was on the verge of falling asleep any moment. Evans felt as if he had become a different person. And their relationship was different, too.
Jennifer ate quietly, not saying much. Evans had the sense she was waiting for him.
After a while, he said, "You know, it would be crazy to imagine that global warming wasn't a real phenomenon."
"Crazy," she said, nodding.
"I mean, the whole world believes it."
"Yes," she said. "The whole world does. But in that war room, we think only about the jury. And the defense will have a field day with the jury."
"You mean, the example you told me?"
"Oh, it's much worse than that. We expect the defense to argue like this: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you've all heard the claim that something called 'global warming' is occurring because of an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But what you haven't been told is that carbon dioxide has increased by only a tiny amount. They'll show you a graph of increasing carbon dioxide that looks like the slope of Mount Everest. But here's the reality. Carbon dioxide has increased from 316 parts per million to 376 parts per million. Sixty parts per million is the total increase. Now, that's such a small change in our entire atmosphere that it is hard to imagine. How can we visualize that?"
Jennifer sat back, swung her hand wide. "Next, they'll bring out a chart showing a football field. And they'll say, Imagine the composition of the Earth's atmosphere as a football field. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen. So, starting from the goal line, nitrogen takes you all the way to the seventy-eight-yard line. And most of what's left is oxygen. Oxygen takes you to the ninety-nine-yard line. Only one yard to go. But most of what remains is the inert gas argon. Argon brings you within three and a half inches of the goal line. That's pretty much the thickness of the chalk stripe, folks. And how much of that remaining three inches is carbon dioxide? One inch. That's how much CO2we have in our atmosphere. One inch in a hundred-yard football field."
She paused dramatically, then continued. "Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury," she said, "you are told that carbon dioxide has increased in the last fifty years. Do you know how much it has increased, on our football field? It has increased by three-eighths of an inch--less than the thickness of a pencil. It's a lot more carbon dioxide, but it's a minuscule change in our total atmosphere. Yet you are asked to believe that this tiny change has driven the entire planet into a dangerous warming pattern."
Evans said, "But that's easily answered--"
"Wait," she said. "They're not done. First, raise doubts. Then, offer alternative explanations. So, now they take out that temperature chart for New York City that you saw before. A five-degree increase since 1815. And they say, back in 1815 the population of New York was a hundred twenty thousand. Today it's eight million. The city has grown bysix thousand percent. To say nothing of all those skyscrapers and air-conditioning and concrete. Now, I ask you. Is it reasonable to believe that a city that has grown by six thousand percent is hotter because of atiny increase in little old carbon dioxide around the world? Or is it hotter because it is now much, much bigger?"
She sat back in her chair.
"But it's easy to counter that argument," Evans said. "There are many examples of small things that produce big effects. A trigger represents a small part of a gun, but it's enough to fire it. And anyway, the preponderance of the evidence--"
"Peter," she said, shaking her head. "If you were on the jury and you were asked that question about New York City, what would you conclude? Global warming or too much concrete? Whatdo you think, anyway?"
"I think it's probably hotter because it's a big city."
"Right."
"But you still have the sea-level argument."
"Unfortunately," she said, "the sea levels at Vanutu are not significantly elevated. Depending on the database, either they're flat or they've increased by forty millimeters. Half an inch in thirty years. Almost nothing."
"Then you can't possibly win this case," Evans said.
"Exactly," she said. "Although I have to say your trigger argument is a nice one."