Book #10: Thin Ice
Unlocking our planet's climate past with ice cores and the stories of the scientists who risked their lives to get them.
Hi friends! This is Book Club for the Planet, an online community for us to read about the climate crisis in community.
Meeting for this book is Sunday, February 20 at 1 pm EST.
We owe much of our knowledge of the changing climate to Dr. Lonnie Thompson, one of the world’s most famous climate scientists, who has spent more time in the high altitude “death zone”—above 18,000 feet—than any other person who’s ever lived, all to gather critical data about our planet’s history of warming.
This article from REI, written by Mary Anne Potts and published in 2020, says it perfectly:
Thompson is among the most prominent of the generation of climate scientists who essentially discovered climate change, and his body of work—more than 7,000 meters of mountain ice cores in the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at the Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus—is literally frozen records of Earth’s history and the data that can be extracted from them. Ice cores are like time lines showing thousands of years of weather, drought, fires, volcanic ash, greenhouse gases, frozen insects and now even bacteria and viruses. The cores are transported and stored in segments about a meter long and 11 centimeters in diameter; collecting them required 74 field expeditions in 11 countries. Thompson estimates that he has spent four years of his life above 18,000 feet, in the “death zone” where the human body struggles to function in the thin air.”
And you can watch Lonnie talk about his life’s work in this short and sweet TED Talk:
I’m already 50 pages in to our book, Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains by Mark Bowen, and can’t put it down. The extent to which Lonnie’s team and the local porters go to drill and transport ice cores before it’s too late (for the melting glaciers and for the scientists’ health) is harrowing and remarkable.
As for our book club meet-ups, everyone is welcome to join, whether you’ve finished the book or not, and to engage in whatever way feels right to you. Maybe you’re coming to connect with others and work through these questions with a sympathetic sounding board, or maybe you’re coming to learn in a listen-only mode. You are welcome here! Our meetings last for about 90 minutes, but it’s totally ok to come for the first 45 minutes or an hour if that works for you.
For those who are new to our meetings, here’s how it works:
A few days before our meeting, I send out a separate Mailchimp newsletter with a Zoom registration link. Please register so I can plan appropriately for the size of our expected group. If you have unsubscribed to that newsletter (life happens and my email inbox perpetually has over 5,000 unread emails in it, so I get it!), please also make sure to unsubscribe to this Substack as well so I don’t accidentally re-subscribe you to the Mailchimp newsletter when I’m updating the lists every other month.
That’s it, for now! Happy reading!