Glacier photos illustrate climate change

Climate is changing—there should be zero doubt about this circa 2017. The outstanding issue for the geoscience community has been how we best portray to this to the public. In their GSA Today article, a team of experts in the field—Patrick Burkhart, Richard Alley, Lonnie. Thompson, James Balog, Paul E. Baldauf, and Gregory S. Baker—present an exceptional example.

Retreat of the Columbia Glacier, Alaska, USA, by ~6.5 km between 2009 and 2015
[Credit: James Balog and the Extreme Ice Survey]

With contrasting photographs, they document the loss of ice across Earth's surface, an almost assured consequence of anthropogenic carbon emissions. One cannot dismiss it—the photographs don't lie. The real problem for geoscientists is what we are going to do about, when much of our science and society lies intertwined with fossil fuels.

Source: Geological Society of America [March 30, 2017]