English Bonus: "The Human Footprint of Earth"

Dr. Lonnie Thompson of The Ohio State University presented his speech “The Human Footprint of Earth” to Ohio University on the evening of March 9th, 2009. His presentation was based on his studies of ice core drillings in the past 30 years from some of the highest altitudes in the world. His research proves the world has recently seen some of its most intense warming over the past 800,000 years. Therefore, Dr Lonnie Thompson’s objective was to inform his audience of the factual evidence he and his team has discovered about global warming.

I found Dr. Lonnie Thompson’s studies on Earth’s climate history to be very factual and informative. As a paleoclimatologist, Dr. Thompson spoke of the temperatures around the world and how they are currently rising. His studies have led him to over 50 expeditions that involved destinations such as Tibet, Peru, The Andes, The Himalayas, Antarctica, Alaska, and Mt. Kilimanjaro. He stated that out of the past 12 years, 11 have been the highest recorded temperatures the world has ever seen. Temperatures are warming not only higher in the day and summer, but in the winter and night as well. Temperatures across the different oceans have even seen warmer temperatures. His research also proves a parallel warming of temperatures over both land and ocean. Over the last 50 years, the Antarctica peninsula has warmed over two and a half degrees Celsius. Some glaciers have even thinned by as much as 40 meters in height and are now flowing 3 to 8 times faster because of the melting underlying ice. Thompson even showed a pictures of Mt. Kilimanjaro in which it has been discovered that 85% of the ice has disappeared from the top of the Mountain.

Dr. Lonnie Thompson’s research is all based on ice core readings that he recovers from all over the world. According to Thompson, much work is needed to get all the drilling equipment up to the high altitudes. But, the use of yaks has allowed for the easy transport of the ice cores from down atop the mountains. This was the case when his crew drilled in Tibet. The ice cores were then flown to China after being transported by the yaks and then onto Chicago where they were placed in a freezer truck and drove to The Ohio State University. While doing their research, Dr. Thompson’s crew came across 5000 year old plants. Carbon dating was used to determine their age, but that was not the big deal. It was that these plants have been frozen solid for over 5000 years and they were perfectly intact. This meant that a big snow storm had hit the area which buried the plants. But since then, they have gone undisturbed which means temperatures have not been this warm for at least 5000 years. The same was said to be true about “Otzi”, the 5000 year old man discovered that had been shot in the back by an arrow. The area in which he died had not been that warm for at least 5000 years because he was perfectly intact and not eroded.

To end his speech, Dr. Thompson stated that society has three major options. The first being prevention. This means reducing green house gases and further developing our geo-engineering. The second was adaptation. This involves changing agriculture, the way we eat, and possibly building more dams. The last major option society has is to suffer and to keep suffering. To wrap the speech up, Dr. Thompson wanted to leave the audience with three major facts that he believes are indisputable. They were that the 20th Century has been the warmest the world has seen in 2000 years, that 2-3 billion people will be affected by global melting, and the world has seen its highest emissions of carbon in the past couple of years.

I personally enjoyed Dr. Thompson’s speech on global melting. I believe this was due to Dr. Thompson’s ability to back his speech up with diagrams and pictures. One can show an audience a slide show presentation full of data and graphs that proves his/ her point, but pictures add that extra dimension that allows the audience to see real life instances. It was also enjoyable to hear his stories as a world traveler and his research from ice cores. I was unaware of the research into ice cores and how much they can actually tell about earth’s climatic history. All in all, it was a great presentation and I was glad that I went.