Happening in Antarctica : Looking Forward to Seeing "Bubbles" in Auckland

Global Warming? Be serious. A correspondent takes a ride to Antarctica. Neat trip. I wonder what he is going to report on. Let's see. We could show him the old fish and relate the anti-freeze story. We sure got alot of mileage out of that one. We find another reporter falling for the same old fish routine. What next? Maybe send him on a trip the pole, and talk to Ken the driller man. Who's paying for this anyway? (see here).

CBS reporter talks to Ken Taylor. Ken is stuck out in the cold, drilling ice cores. He is an easy target for the correspondent. Ken winces. He is caught banging on his computer with his fist. Damed LINUX system will not boot properly. Ken and equipment do not always get along, but as Ken says "I never lose." If it doesn't work, Ken usually hammers it. Correspondent asks Ken about the cores. Now realize, Ken is a little frustrated, he has no library out here, and his computer will not boot, and so he mentions bubbles. Actually Ken uses bubbly ice in his Kahlua and Drambuie, but he knows better than to mention that. How about Global Warming Ken? Well, he says, "It is bad, and the CO2 is all from mankind. It shows up in the bubbles." Ken drills it. He acts like he must get back to his important work, and so the reporter leaves.

Actually CO2 levels for the past 1000 years have fluctuated slightly between 270-290 ppmv. At 4,700 years before present there was a peak at 315 ppmv. Current levels are at 360 ppmv. Anthropogenic CO2 is at least an order of magmitude less than natural sources which include oceans, vegetation, soils, and detritus.

Ken is Chief scientist of of the National Science Foundation's West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) Ice Core Project, a team of scientists, engineers, technicians, and students from multiple U.S. institutions. It sounds like Ken has his mind made up, even before he places the cores into their boxes for transport back to the states in Colorado.

There Richard Alley will have a chance to practice making measurements on them. His dissertation talk was entitled "The Defense that Melted", because often this is what happens to these cores if no precautions are taken - they melt. And so we were disappointed. Not even any firn density measurements from his firn cores. Shouldn't he have to do something for his degree? The Danes had a better system but it requires people to make core measurements on the ice sheet and these guys do not like the cold, and do not like to travel! Really! Alley says his wife Cindy really does not like him to travel. Where have we heard that one before? As a graduate student Richard only went to Antarctica once, and then for only 2 days. Seems like a waste for only two days, to travel all that distance, doesn't it? Richard would tell you they only count the number of times you have been there, not how long you have been there. It's like publications. On the bright side, I do not think Richard has ever despoiled the Antarctic continent, never having gone to the bathroom south of 60 degrees. Must be nice.

So the cores are placed into refrigerators and hopefully they will not suffer catastrophic melting again. They will suffer from serious thermal re-equilibration, and all the attendent metamorphoses of the cores. But so what? Details, details.