Uncovering Climate Mysteries with Lonnie Thompson

Wild Ideas Worth Living

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Renowned paleoclimatologist Dr. Lonnie Thompson has been on over 60 expeditions to collect ice core samples from glaciers around the world. These samples hold precious clues to understand human-caused climate change.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I was actually at Bird Station in February when I got a tell-ex from the program manager
0:06.9	that said, I have funded all of my real science projects and I have $7,000 left.
0:15.0	What could you do in that tropical glacier with $7,000?
0:18.4	And I thought about it and I said, well, I think we could get there.
0:26.7	In the 1970s, geology, glaciology, and climate science research had some revolutionary breakthroughs.
0:33.9	A scientist in Europe discovered that taking small samples of polar glaciers could tell us
0:38.7	a lot about temperature history at the north and south poles.
0:42.9	Lonnie Thompson was a university student at the time and he was obsessed with this research.
0:48.3	He wanted to be on the front lines, gathering samples from glaciers, but technology and funding
0:53.4	were limited.
0:54.8	So Lonnie came up with a wild idea that greatly impacted the field of climate science.
1:00.4	I'm Shelby Stanger and this is wild ideas worth living, an REI co-op studios production.
1:11.1	Lonnie Thompson has been described as the Indiana Jones of climate science.
1:15.6	He's gone in more than 60 expeditions all over the world to take samples of glaciers.
1:20.9	Those samples have provided unique data on temperature and precipitation change.
1:26.2	For his work, he's received several prestigious awards, including the 2005 National Medal
1:32.8	of Science.
1:34.4	In the early 2000s, Lonnie was a prominent voice in Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth.
1:41.1	In that documentary, there was a famous picture of Mount Kilimanjaro that showed how much
1:45.8	the mountain was changing due to global warming.
1:49.1	That was Lonnie's picture.
1:51.3	In an age where climate change has become such a political issue, for Lonnie, it's pure
	...

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