The Quest for Core Truth

Long before Al Gore won the Nobel Prize and an Oscar with his global-warming PowerPoint presentation, and decades before LED lights were on anyone’s shopping list, scientist Paul Mayewski, PhD, was digging for the truth about climate change.

The director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, Professor Mayewski is one of the world’s foremost researchers on the topic, with dozens of expeditions to the coldest and most remote parts of the world to his credit, including a three-and-a-half-month traverse of Antarctica this winter.

Mayewski’s work centers on ice cores, long tubes of ice drilled out of the earth’s surface. He and his colleagues collect these cores—typically two to five inches in diameter and 100 meters long—from polar and high-altitude regions of the world and ship them in pieces back to Maine, where they are stored in Orono and Bangor. The cores can be sliced up, melted, and studied. Layer by layer, UMaine scientists and students reconstruct weather and climate from year to year, season to season, even storm to storm.

These cores give these researchers a record of past temperatures, precipitation, storm patterns, the chemistry of the atmosphere, the extent of sea ice, biological and volcanic activity, and much more. Some of these records go back 500,000 years or more. Mayewski’s ice cores, which he describes as time machines, have led to a record of Antarctica’s climate stretching back 110,000 years.

“Depending on how far we drill, we can go down 200 years or one million years,” says Mayewski, who came to UMaine in 2000 after 25 years in a similar post at the University of New Hampshire. “We’re going to places in the past, places people have never been before. We’re feeling storms that have never been felt by people before. We’re getting to touch or sample precipitation that fell thousands of years ago. In that way, what we do is exploration both physically and scientifically.”

His conclusion from his research, stemming back to 1968, is that climate change is real, accelerated by man, and is definitely worth worrying about.
When he’s not on an expedition, Mayewski lives in Castine with his wife, Lyn, a silversmith and watercolor artist. As of this writing, the Scotland native is in Antarctica, serving as a leader of the International Trans Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE). Mayewski cofounded ITASE, which now includes 21 nations, in 1990. The expedition is slated to conclude this spring, after covering more than 8,000 miles over six different seasons. The goal is to reconstruct the climate of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean over the last 200 to 1,000 years. Most climate records rely on data recorded by humans, meaning they don’t often reach back even 100 years. Charting the pace of climate change requires data over a much longer period, and Mayewski has made collecting and analyzing that data his life’s work.

Bangor Metro spoke with Mayewski before he left for Antarctica this fall. Word was he and the expedition reached South Pole Station just in time for Christmas dinner.

How did you get into this line of work, and the polar regions?
I’d always been interested in remote places, as a very young child in Scotland. I was brought up in a landscape that was up in the mountains, a little cool, very similar to Maine. I’d always been intrigued by National Geographic. Growing up in New York City, my parents took me to the American Museum of Natural History. Then, when I was in college in 1966 and saw a picture of Antarctica shot by a professor there, I was fascinated. I went to him and asked him what it was like, would it be possible one day to go?

You’ve been many times now. What’s it like to be an explorer?
It’s an amazing feeling. I have gone to many places, and led the first expeditions into vast portions of Antarctica, and the exciting feeling is that when I get over the next hill, I’m going to be the first person to ever see something. There might be some great opportunity that opens up. The ice cores are the same thing: a process of discovery.

Your ice core work has led you to the conclusion that climate change is not only real, it has been accelerated by man. How?
The ice cores tell us that greenhouse gases have been on the rise since the industrial revolution, about 150 years ago. The last few decades of Earth’s history, in particular, are truly remarkable. Carbon dioxide is 30% higher than at any time in the last several million years. The increase is 100 times faster than anything we’ve seen in at least 850,000 years. That alone is pretty startling. We’ve had unparalleled increase above natural levels of many chemicals, plus introduction of humanly engineered chemicals. Essentially, the atmosphere has never been through something like this. The surprising thing is that the temperature change hasn’t been greater already. Everything predicts it will be much greater. There is a lag, but it won’t last forever.

What do you think mankind has done that is causing an acceleration of climate change?
The most definitive thing to say about human impact on the climate system is that there are a whole range of human influences and therefore a whole range of impacts—not just greenhouse gases, but also industrial pollutions, sulfuric acid, increased levels of dust from the paving of cities and our agricultural practices, the list goes on. They are changing things. We’ve made the climate system less stable, and more prone to abrupt climate change.

What is abrupt climate change?
It’s rapid change over a period as short as a few years to a decade. It might be a 10° centigrade shift in the Arctic, or a shift in moisture-bearing winds near a desert. That’s a big deal if you live in these places. Your life changes. Take polar bears. Some animals can migrate or change their patterns in response to climate change. Polar bears have nowhere else to go. It’s not just some gradual change that we can adapt to. In the past, these changes have been enough to seriously disrupt and destroy civilizations.

How long ago are we talking about, civilizations being destroyed?
Around 4,200 years ago, the Mesopotamian empire, in modern-day Syria, was severely impacted by drought: If you’re on the edge of a desert and suddenly you’re in the desert, you’re toast. The next would be the collapse of the Mayan civilization in Central America around 900 AD, when a change in atmospheric circulation systems suddenly took the Mayans from sufficient water to not enough. The last one was in 1400 AD, the collapse of the Norse colonies. The Vikings lived in a moderate climate in Greenland about 1000 AD. By 1400 AD, there was much more sea ice, though the temperature change was only about 1° centigrade. That was enough that supply ships from Europe couldn’t get through, enough to make the growing season too short. They died out, and there’s evidence of widespread starvation. So they went from building a culture along the coast of Greenland in which they had cathedrals and sheep farms to gone.

Can that sort of thing happen now?
We’ve had abrupt climate change events. The advent of Lyme tick disease in Maine, which was barely existent not long ago, is sort of an abrupt climate change event in disease. It’s important to note that abrupt climate change doesn’t have to be a 10° centigrade shift in temperature. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, 1° or a 10% reduction in moisture can make all the difference. In Maine, we’re susceptible to increased levels of storm activity, we’re susceptible to small changes in temperature, because it could change the type of forest cover. It could change how long disease can be sustained in ecosystems and what sorts of disease-bearing creatures can live in Maine. It can impact where wildlife go, what’s in our ocean.

We don’t necessarily realize the very delicate balance that we live in. We require minimum amounts of moisture and certain temperature ranges to sustain life the way we want it. Our expectations would be different if we were used to Florida weather, but that’s not the way we live here. Part of it is comfort, but it’s also quality of life and the way you’re able to live your life. You may expect to do the things that you thought you’d be doing for the next 10 or 20 years, but that could change.

There’s been talk that Maine’s beloved moose could leave for more northern climes, or even be wiped out by ticks, which have spread north. Is that the kind of thing we should be aware of?
That’s one of the unfortunate consequences of climate change, right now. Actually, large parts of Maine have shifted at least one growing zone south. In that process, parts of Maine become better environments for some insects. The more we see of these examples, the clearer it is that we have to act, globally and locally.

You’ve been quoted as predicting that Maine will feature warmer winters, less snow cover, and more rain and sleet. You’ve said the climate here will become much more like Massachusetts. When do you think that will be?
Near the end of the century, Maine might have a climate that’s closer to West Virginia. It may not be exactly like West Virginia because we’ll still have the Gulf of Maine, with its impact on coastal Maine and Maine’s mountains. But in general, the expectation is a growing season the length of West Virginia, ecosystems and plants and animals that would be more like those in West Virginia today.

The bottom line is that the trend we’re going toward is one that isn’t going to change. Even if we reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which we need to do, we will still have to live with some of the consequences for many decades, if not centuries. Cutting emissions will simply mean that we may not have as dramatic a change. But we’re on track for warming based on all evidence. That’s the depressing part of the story: We can reduce the change that occurs, but we cannot change the trend.
But here’s a hopeful part of the story: The environmental change created by humans is not just greenhouse gases, but increased levels of acids, of toxic elements like lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic. By regulating the emissions of these things, we could get very rapid cleaning up of the environment. We could see a dramatic cleanup of the air, and shortly after that, the water—if we make changes.

Are you optimistic about the political and regulatory future?
Yes, I am. I’m far more optimistic in the last couple of years than I was before. You can start to see commercials that are demonstrating that various groups are doing something about the situation. The free-market system can help, given the right situation, which might mean some tax incentives. But the most important thing would be benchmark goals for emissions and overall support for the idea from the people, which is coming, I think. If we all get behind the idea, the market system will force out organizations, institutions, and companies that are inefficient. Who wouldn’t want to have a healthier environment? Who wouldn’t want to save money? Who wouldn’t want to decrease our dependency on oil? I think it will happen.

What can we do in the voting booth?
I’d endorse whoever comes up with a strong environmental policy. The danger is that over the years, in the initial stages of campaigns, there’s a lot of discussion about the environment, and then it drops along the wayside. I don’t deny that homeland security, health care, and other issues are crucial. But it can’t be denied that the environment is vitally important, too. It has to be an important part of not just the presidency, but at all federal, state, and local levels. They all have an impact. In Maine, we have a governor and congressional delegation who are significantly involved, and truly forward-thinking, but we all need to act. Greenhouse gases are a global issue. Maine is downwind from all of North America—that’s why Acadia is the most polluted national park, though we’re far from the biggest polluter. We have a great deal to gain by having all of North America be as pollution free as possible.

Tell me about the event you’re planning for this coming October, “Climate Change for the 21st Century.”
It will be held at UMaine, Orono, and it will be open to the public. It’s essentially a symposium on climate change, and people should be able to gain a real understanding of why we believe it is real, what will happen in the future, and the information they’ll need to truly evaluate what we need to do as a society—and what they might be able to do themselves. We’re going to have featured speakers, town meeting-style sessions. We hope to have businesses, government organizations, private groups, and students to showcase green ideas and industries, ways to save energy, and things people can do to try to slow this trend.

What can Mainers do in their everyday lives?
There are a lot of simple things. People know about shutting off lights. People tend to leave their cars running in winter, when they go into stores, thinking that it’s more economical. It’s not. And, it gives off tremendous pollutants that are now at ground level, trapped by the cold air. You can carry it further. It makes sense to buy local products to conserve energy in transport and reduce preservatives.

The best way to look at it is as a decision that you want to save money and live in a cleaner environment, then figure out how you’re going to do it, personally. It becomes a positive idea, because who doesn’t want to save money? When people take on that attitude, they come up with better and better ideas, ways to do things, and they share those ideas.

The goal is to take it beyond compact fluorescent lightbulbs and shutting off the lights?
Yes. Buying new products like that because it will help, that’s wonderful. Still, one needs to be very careful about buying something because it’s energy efficient. You have to make sure that it also can be recycled. Don’t just ask if it’s efficient. Can it be recycled? How long will it last? Where do I recycle it? The solution is not simple. We’ve got to change the way people think.