Climate scientist: Change will have to be led from 'bottom up'

Political leaders not doing enough to address climate change, professor says

Politicians and other societal leaders are not doing enough to address climate change, and any progress will have to be led from the "bottom up," a leading climate scientist recently said.

Lonnie Thompson, an award-winning professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University who has collected ice core samples from glacial-covered mountains around the world for decades, made the remarks via remote video to an audience in Washington, D.C. People gathered at the headquarters of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to view the screening of a documentary on his life's work called Canary during the annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital.

After Thompson testified before the U.S. Senate in 1992, he thought that top public and private officials would spark enough action to help reverse the worldwide melting of glaciers.

"I thought [in the 1990s] that change was going to come from the top down, and it looked very positive. But that's not going to happen," he said. "It's going to [have to] come from the bottom up."

Directors and family members of climate scientist Lonnie Thompson discuss a film on Thompson's work recently in Washington, D.C.Photo byKevin Shay

A risky life collecting ice samples in remote mountains

Since the 1970s, Thompson and his team of colleagues, students, and guides have climbed glaciers in some of the most remote places, including the Himalayas and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. They have spent weeks at a time in extreme weather drilling ice cores with relatively low-tech, solar-powered equipment.

The idea is to collect samples deep inside these mountains to document the history of how the ice masses have changed as temperatures gradually warm.

"One of the reasons I like glaciers is that they have no political agenda," Thompson said. "There's no lobbyists. There's no special interest groups. They just sum up what's going on in their environment, and unfortunately, they're all speaking in one voice. Our planet is getting warmer, and it's getting to where it's actually dangerous because of how rapidly we're losing ice on land. And the rising sea level, you can think of all those implications."

Greenland loses about 270 billion tons of ice mass per year, while Antarctica averages about 150 billion tons of ice mass melting annually, according to NASA. A study released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that sea levels along coastlines will rise by as much as six feet by 2100.

Thompson, who was born in the small coal-mining town of Gassaway, W.V., has probably spent more time "above 18,000 feet than any other person on Earth" to document the changes, Rolling Stone once wrote. Former Vice President Al Gore said that no other scientist has taken "bigger risks," which include falling into dangerous crevasses and developing blood clots during the extended sessions in such altitudes and elements, to help broaden the understanding of climate trends.

For his efforts, Thompson has won numerous awards, including the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, regarded as the environmental science equivalent to the Nobel Prize. Thompson's work "provided some of the clearest evidence yet of the ever growing impact of global climate change," according to officials with the Tyler Prize, which is administered by the University of Southern California. "The collection of these high elevation records is a heroic mountaineering feat that requires courage, daring, and physical endurance comparable to the legendary explorers of yore."

His wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, a geology professor at Ohio State whose honors include being elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, works with him as a research scientist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. That entity was Ohio State's first research center when it opened in 1960.

Surviving heart transplant

Regina Thompson, Ellen and Lonnie Thompson's daughter who is assistant director of the FBI's victim services division, said her father has done well since surviving a heart transplant operation in 2012. Getting him to realize back then that he had to slow down and deal with his health took a lengthy process since he didn't believe at first he had much of a heart problem, she said.

In a way, that health process was similar to people who deny the impact of climate change, she said. "Change is scary," Regina Thompson said. "Managing change is one of the hardest things that we do, whether it's in an organization, whether it's in a field of science, whether it's in a family. "

At age 75, Thompson spends much of his time these days working on a different type of drilling, trying to educate others on climate change. He doesn't get much hate mail these days because of how obvious climate change has become, he said.

That was welcome to hear, his daughter said. "I'm really glad that the death threats have died down. We had a few of those," Regina Thompson said. "One of the first reactions we have when we have denial is we lash out. I saw those emails, those people lashing out [against her father's work]."

Rather than arguing with the relatively few who deny or belittle the impact of climate change, Thompson prefers to focus on reaching students, young people who will have to deal with the fallout that the current generation left behind.

"They're going to be the voters," he noted. "They're the ones that are going to change and have to deal with all of the problems caused by our generation."

The impact of climate change is seen by the melting remains of Byron Glacier near Girdwood, Alaska, in August 2023.Photo byKevin Shay

Surveys show wide support for doing more to address climate change

Two-thirds of U.S. adults agreed that the country should work harder to develop renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, according to a Pew Research Center survey released last year.

While Democrats are overwhelmingly supportive of alternative energy, 75 percent of Republicans older than 64 want to keep prioritizing the expansion of oil, coal, and natural gas. Two-thirds of Republicans younger than 30 would rather move towards renewable energy.

That's in line with who Thompson is trying to reach these days. "Young people are enthusiastic. They are looking for direction," he said. "One of our hopes with this film was to inspire the next generation of young people and to make the point that we can all make a difference. And if we all make a difference, we change the world."