Ice Core Man

Yesterday I attended a talk by Lonnie Thompson, Ohia State University prof and paleoclimatologist. He was the guy in Inconvenient Truth (one of many Gore talked about as “my friend [name]” who was extracting ice cores to measure changes in climate over thousands of years – that famous moment in the movie with the long graph and the hydraulic lift was based on data from his work.
In amongst some fun stories about yak-based transport systems, the message was sobering. Thompson focused his talk on glacial retreat, explaining that glaciers are the “canaries in the coal mine” for climate change because they are so sensitive to all the indices of climate. Most of his talk was a series of before and after photos of glaciers, all around the world, thinning and retreating and turning into lakes. The image that sticks in my memory is a flower bulb kicked out of a melting glacier that was frozen 5200 years ago – so we know that that particular glacier has never retreated this far in that period. (Mention was also made of Otzi the iceman who also was frozen 5200 years ago – turns out there was an unprecedented cold snap around that time).
The overall message was both clear and familiar: global climate is changing, rapidly, as a result of human activity; we are heading for a tipping point after which change will drive itself and we’ll be helpless to pull it back; if we don’t achieve massive changes swiftly then we are in big, big trouble.
And this on the same day that the wind farm opponents celebrated keeping their pristine views of unblemished hillsides.
Like Stephen, I am not exactly bursting with optimism today.
Related: leader of NZ’s free-market party, ACT, declares himself a climate change sceptic