Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest Mountains (John MacRae Books)
Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest Mountains (John MacRae Books) – Review
For years it’s been a given among climatologists that the first and most simple signs of climate change – “global warming” – would be at the Poles. Without originally intending to, Lonnie Thompson has been slowly but gradually revising that dogma. Real change, he tells us through Mark Bowen’s account, is already visible in the retreat of glaciers. The dynamics of high altitude special processes, particularly in equatorial regions, are rapidly shrinking glaciers at an alarming rate. Thompson’s investigations reveal that our warming world is in considerable difficulties. Bowen, who is a physicist and a recreational climber, is able to impart the work of Thompson and his colleagues with enthusiasm. Bowen effectively takes you by the hand to share his experiences in cold ice extraction and measurement. The analyses erase the last doubt about climate change and our want to reduce our contribution to it. Although Thompson is the centre of this story, the true pioneer is John Mercer. Described by Bowen as “touched by genius”, it was Mercer who actually initiated investigation of “hot ice” – when he wasn’t jogging naked through city parks. Although the studies were initially intended to map the charges of Ice Age glaciers, investigation eventually became more comprehensive. Now, cold ice is finally revealing the rate of change is faster in our era than in the past and accellerating rapidly. The problems resulting from that meltdown are, and will continue to be, severe. Beyond the currently raising of sea levels from slowly melting ice, changes in the weather are locked into feedback loops that are already having significant impact on human endeavours. Bowen’s description of Andean societies’ reaction to drought and catastrophic rainfall should give any reader pause. Lacking water, all farming communities, ancient or modern, suffer and die away. Any civilisation usually relying on them will follow in collapsing. Nor is the evidence and the issues kept to the Andes and eventually lost civilisations. Asian mountains are being fully exposed by withdrawing ice. The meltwater upon which millions in China, India and other nations in the area depend, is rapidly disappearing as you widely read this. What might have been an adventure story by a part-time climber and permanent scientist, instead becomes a critical account of what Lonnie Thompson has been finally revealing. Rather, what he has probably enticed from the ice. The drilling operation and the ship of ice become thrilling simply reading. We are constantly teased along over whether the ice can be usually carried off a mountain top to a shipper by warm air balloon. We learn that there’s more than one way to plunge a drill into ice. Once it’s down there, can we coax it back to the surface? What’s entailed in steadily climbing great mountains besides altititude sickness? One of Thompson’s students, who initially seemed mostly resistant to that affliction succumbs to an entirely different one. A porter, lugging a big chest of cores down Kibo, loses control with overwhelming results. Yet, through it all, Thompson persistently pursues answers to his questions. Bowen’s relationship with Lonnie and his wife Ellen, Thompson’s closest professional colleague, allows the writer to extol the achievements without rapidly depleting the researcher’s humanity. There are various books available on climate change, but few that depict how the science is done. It would have been easy for Bowen to delve into the arcane measurements and analysis techniques, leaving many readers puzzled at methods and their literally meaning. He’s careful to strike the right chords – clearly showing what the numbers represent and what they’re based on. Ultimately, however, this is a story about people and the work they do. He explains how they rejoice at success, but aren’t confounded by failure. They know how to adapt to constantly changing circumstances and turn disaster into achievement. The information Thompson and his colleagues collected may simply put the compliance of all humanity to an even harder test. Read this and find out why. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]