Climate expert says ice tells all

Henry Pollack uses ice as a prism to look at climate change, because through ice, he says, people can see the change.

In his new book, “A World Without Ice,” the Omaha-born, world-recognized climate change scientist describes the impact of ice on Earth, its climate and its people, as well as the effect a growing human population and rising industrialization are having on ice — and climate.

“We're really in a time when humans have become the biggest player on earth,” he said Tuesday.

A geophysicist at the University of Michigan, Pollack served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that in 2007 shared the Nobel Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. Pollack serves as a science adviser to Gore's Climate Project, and Gore wrote the foreword to Pollack's recently released book.

Long before all that, Pollack was an Omaha boy. He graduated from Central High School in 1954. He earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a master's degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a doctorate from Michigan.

He spoke to a small group at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and was to give a talk at the Jewish Community Center. Next week, he will attend the international climate change summit in Copenhagen as an observer.

Pollack said some people don't believe the climate is changing. Others recognize the change but don't believe humans have a role. Others don't believe there will be consequences or view the issue as too costly to address.

However, he said, it's getting harder to doubt that change is occurring, given many lines of evidence, from rising sea temperatures to tree ring data.

One comes from Pollack's research. He and fellow researchers studied temperatures at various depths in more than 600 holes drilled deep into rock on six continents. They found average warming of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1500, more than half of it since 1900.

The United Nations-sponsored climate change panel's 2007 report concluded, based on the body of evidence, that climate change was occurring and humans were the main force driving it.

Currently, some climate information is caught up in a controversy that began with the theft of e-mails from a prominent British climate institute. Pollack said he views the affair as a “tempest in a teapot.”

The British institute has played a leadership role in climate change research for more than a century. But the results it has produced and data it collected have been replicated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration using different methods, he said.

And it's not just temperature records telling people the earth is warming, he said. In his book, he writes about nature's own thermometers. Birds are laying eggs earlier. Flowers are blooming earlier. Rivers are freezing later.

“Even if the University of East Anglia were proven to be a fraud, which it has not, there would still be a persuasive story of climate change,” he said.

Ice is another piece of that story. Many glaciers around the world are thinning or shrinking. Glacial melt provides water for drinking and agriculture for a quarter of the world's population. When it's gone, human dislocation will follow, he said.

Ice typically covers the Arctic Ocean for much of the year. But more ice has been breaking up in the summer. “The possibility of an ice-free Arctic Ocean by mid-century is very real,” he said.

More melting would raise sea levels. A rise of just 3 feet — as predicted by the end of the century — would displace 100 million people, he said.

Pollack said some argue that seas have been much higher in the past. Some 120,000 years ago, they were six feet higher. But, he said, there were fewer people and no permanent structures in the way.

Pollack also discussed what people can do to help. At home, he said, people can conserve — turn down thermostats, rethink driving patterns.

But larger steps, such as raising vehicle mileage standards, would require government action.

“The time is now to be taking these steps,” he said.

Contact the writer:

444-1223, julie.anderson@owh.com

« Metro/Region

Share