Share & Voice: "Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Opinions"

Lonnie G. Thompson - Ohio State University

Climate Change Lecture

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture entitled, "Climate Change:  The Evidence and Our Opinions."  This presentation was given by Lonnie G. Thompson (left) who is a professor at Ohio State University.  Thompson's talk revolved around his studies of tropical glaciers and the evidence that they are able to show us about climate change.  He has been going on expeditions for over 20 years and has accumulated over 7,000 meters of drilled ice.  In these samples taken from all over the globe, he found some pretty shocking results.

Ice Cores and Expeditions

Ice Core 

  Thompson discussed how glaciers are excellent recorders of climate change in that they preserve long, high-resolution histories of our planet.  This is because ice preserves nearly everything that is in it.  Ice tells us a history of temperature change, vegetation, the atmosphere, volcanic history, and more.  These ice cores even contain entrapped microorganisms and plants that are over 5,200 years old.  In the picture to the left, you can see that the ice core has lines in it, much like tree rings.  These lines indicate one year each.  This means, that without a microscope, you can plainly see how much ice has built up year to year and how quickly we are losing our glaciers and ice caps.  Another indicator of climate change/global warming was bubbles in the ice.  In earlier time periods, you can see nice round bubbles.  However, once you look at more recent history, the bubbles become elongated.  This shows that the ice has melted and then re-froze.  So, why are we losing glaciers?  Thompson points out that besides natural mechanisms, there are non-natural mechanisms that WE as humans are creating that are causing 95% of our glaciers to retreat.  These mechanisms include greenhouse gases, burning fossil fuels, and more.

Solar-powered ice drill

Thompson pointed out another fact that was shocking to me.  He said that of the 6.8 billion people on earth, 1.6 billion do NOT have electricity.  That being said, he also pointed out that of the world's electricity, 65% comes from fossil fuels.  This is quite scary because we are using up our resources much faster than we should be.

Thompson went a bit over my head when he started showing an endless number of charts and graphs and data to go along with them.  But, his main point was this:  Global warming is happening and the percentage of ice loss is rapidly accelerating in the tropics.  We are causing this and need to realize that it is real.

Global Warming Does Not Exist You Say?

For those who say that global warming does not exist, Thompson had a few answers.  He kindly replied that 98% of science agrees that global warming exists and that it is cause for alarm.  He also says that some studies are only looking at satellite data and points out that this is flawed because they are not able to see the melting that is taking place from the top down.  That is why the ice cores are so crucial to our understanding of climate change.

What Does This Mean for Us?

According to Thompson, society has 3 options:

1. Prevention - we can take measures to reduce changes and educate others
2. Adaptation - we can take measure to reduce the impacts of global warming on human well being
3. Suffer - we can suffer from global warming and eventually destruct our planet Earth

Conclusions

This presentation was definitely eye opening and unexpectedly interesting.  I had never heard of ice cores before and did not realize how much information they could provide us with.  It is clear that we need to take preventative measures if we want to see a change.  If we don't, we may lose our planet.  

**All images are from the website:  http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/

A map of the Ice Core Sites