Lonnie Thompson On Rapid Glacier Loss: "Do You Think They're Just Going To Sit There And Starve?"

[hatrack]

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He did this year after year. For many researchers, one such expedition would satisfy their curiosity with scientific grist for years. But Thompson kept going up mountains, documenting the changes and drilling deeper in 58 expeditions. He retrieved ice laid down 1,500 years ago on his first drilling expedition in Peru in 1983, and has drilled in China, South America, Tibet, the Russia Arctic, the Alps, New Guinea, Alaska, and on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania – a total of 16 countries. He has now obtained ice hundreds of thousands of years old that can be analyzed to give up ancient snapshots of temperature, carbon and even life.He often worked atop glaciers at the same time that his spouse, renowned scientist Ellen Mosley-Thompson, did the same work in Antarctica. They would retreat between expeditions to their home in Columbus, Ohio, where both taught at Ohio State and where they built a super freezer to hold their ice cores for analysis.

Separately, together, and with a small-but-growing band of other researchers, the Thompsons have filled the holes in a history of the climate. They have given lie to the arguments of those who insist the climate is in a benign and routine oscillation. They have shown how extraordinary is the warming that man is now forcing on the earth's fragile cocoon.

Thompson understands these findings are not just the stuff of academic debate. The world's great glaciers – atop the Andes, the Himalayas, the Rockies – are fast disappearing. In a frozen tent 17,000 feet high at the edge of the Quelccaya Glacier in Peru, Thompson posed to me a few simple questions that pierced to the heart of the dangers of climate change.

"What do you think all the farmers who rely on the melt-water from this glacier are going to do when it runs out?" he asked, as we huddled over the steam from our cups of propane-stove coffee. "Do you think they are going to just sit there and starve?"

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http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/04/lonnie-thompson-climate-ice

[Nihil]

1. K&R for a fascinating profile of a dedicated scientist. (n/t)

[Mojorabbit]

2. marking to read later! nt

[phantom power]

3. They won't just sit there, but they may very well starve.

Along with a whole lot of other people.

[CRH]

4. K&R ... for incredible dedication, ...

and incredible knowledge retrieved from the past, before it has melted.

Humility knows no bounds, when a person gives of their self, for a peek at knowledge not yet found. Humble is he, for the sacrifice, with no reward expected, and seldom received.

K&R.