Abrupt Climate Change, Past, Present, and Future

Dr. Lonnie Thompson of THE Ohio State University spoke at Union Wednesday night as part of the Environmental Studies Seminar Series on Abrupt Climate Change. Dr Thompson is an eminent climate scientist, and has spent thirty-ish years doing research on glaciers around the world, and what I learned from his talk is that I'll never make it as a single-issue blogger.

His talk was basically an overview of what we can learn from ice cores, taken from a variety of palces all around the world, and what we learn is that the 20^th century was a pretty unique time, climate-wise. There were lots and lots of graphs, all showing the temperature spiking upwards very rapidly, and various greenhouse gas levels spiking up very rapidly. There were lots and lots of pictures of retreating glaciers, many of them quite dramatic, and detailed descriptions of the likely bad effects of all this.

And about two-thirds of the way through, there was a brief discussion of the various things uncovered by retreating glaciers, most notably the iceman from the alps. Most of these things turn out to be about 5,200 years old, and he put up a couple of graphs showing that the same glaciers that are retreating today all leaped forward very rapidly about 5,200 years ago.

He went back to the Al Gore material immediately after that, but all I wanted to know was "What happened 5,200 years ago?"

It's not that there was anything wrong with the rest of his talk. He made a very convincing case that the planet is getting warmer, that greenhouse gases are to blame, that ice is melting all over the world, and that this is a Bad Thing. The thing is, though, I don't need any more convincing. I already know all that stuff, and find it tremendously depressing. The one thing I hadn't heard before was this stuff from 5,200 years ago.

Of course, the question period was dominated by people wanting more details about how we're all going to die. I did finally get a chance to ask what happened 5,200 years ago, and the answer just made me want to know more-- basically, this is a really recent discovery, and people have only just started to look into the question. He listed a whole bunch of really interesting things that happened around that time that might be related: shifts from hunting and gathering to more settled lifestyles in the Middle East and New England and South America (the start date for the Mayan calendar is apparently 5,100 years ago-- August 11, 3114 BCE, according to Wikipedia-- suggesting that soemthing important happened then), and a giant tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Nobody's really sure what happened then, but there seems to have been some sort of dramatic shift, and a bunch of people are currently trying to figure it out.

And, really, that's vastly more interesting to me than yet another recitation of the whole story of global warming. I've heard about it, I believe the evidence, and there's not a lot more to say. But giant asteroid impacts leading to the birth of human civilizations-- that's cool.

I realize this probably makes me a Bad Person. Also, I have the attention span of a mayfly. I've got enough depressing stuff in my life, though, such as Thurday morning's lab, and the lab reports that will result from it, and-- ooh! Shiny thing!