Before and after pictures of glaciers around the world drew gasps from an audience of about 250, including the Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, at Southwestern Oregon Community College Saturday night.

Ohio State University Geologist Dr. Lonnie Thompson, wasn’t surprised.

He said, in his three decades of experience, facts and figures aren’t what strike home with people when it comes to believing in global warming.

But photos are.

Evidence of melting ice was visible in photos of diminishing ice caps and glaciers in countries like Africa, Peru, Nepal, Switzerland and the U.S., as well as the Arctic and Antarctic, showing what Thompson referred to as “a clear and present danger.”

“I’m sometimes really surprised at changes in the last couple of years,” Thompson said. “Where we see it, we believe it.”

The crowd, consisting of mostly middle-aged people, attended one in more than 30 lectures Thompson has given in countries all over the world since January 2006, including one in China this past summer. Thompson came to North Bend upon invitation by Southwestern geology professor Ron Metzger, who has arranged five geology lectures this year. Metzger said the average attendance was about 200 people at each of the lectures. This lecture, “Understanding Climate Change,” had one of the largest audiences in spite of the rain and hail outside.

Skepticism

Thompson, a research scientist in the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State, who recently was a consultant for Al Gore’s global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” said reactions in the Bay Area were much the same as in other countries.

“Concerned people are concerned people,” he said, adding that the problem with getting people to believe in the global warming crisis is related to money.

“There are so many people whose bottom line is making money,” he said. “If you can demonstrate you can make money, it will change like that.”

For example, he said, someone could get in the business of converting houses to solar power. He could see in the future that every house could have solar panels on its roof.

“I can see a world like that,” he said. “It would be a very clean world.”

Thompson blamed human nature on not doing something about the climate changes earlier. He compared the current crisis to when the U.S. Surgeon General announced that there is a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

“For 20 years, doctors denied that link existed,” Thompson said. “And like back then, right now there are a lot of skeptics out there. Yet, none of them will be held accountable 20 years from now when people are dying.”

But he said lately there has been a higher attendance at his lectures, “especially with people reading the paper or hearing on the news almost every night how things are happening in some part of the world.”

Thompson said he’s taken some flack for working with Gore on the film, but feels it was necessary.

“Some of my scientific colleagues ask, “Why are you working with a politician” Thompson said. “My answer is, people won’t listen to a scientist, but they’ll listen to a celebrity.”

Canaries in the      coal mines

Thompson said the warmest year on record was in 2005, but the warmest winter in the Northern Hemisphere was this year.

Although scientists haven’t completely ruled out other natural causes, such as changes in the sun, contributing to global warming, since the advent of the industrial revolution, rising concentrations of carbon dioxide mostly are at blame for global warming.

“Pre-industrial revolution carbon dioxide concentrations were 280 parts per million by volume,” Thompson said. “Now there are 383 parts per million by volume. Eighty percent of this is caused from the use of gas, oil and coal. Twenty percent is from biomass burning in the tropical rain forest.”

Scientific facts such as Montana’s Glacier National Park going from 100 glaciers in 1910, to 23 this year, and 80 percent of Mount Kilimanjaro’s ice disappearing from 1912-2000, drew gasps and wows from the audience.

Thompson said Mount Kilimanjaro lost 22 percent of snow and ice from its peak between 2000 and 2006.

“Sometime around 2020, all the ice fields will disappear on Kilimanjaro,” he said.

“What really stands out in these records is the last 80 years,” he said, adding that the glaciers are global warming indicators to scientists, the same as the “canaries in the coal mines.”

Conservative estimates

Bradbury asked Thompson why the most recent report in November by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected sea levels rising 3.1 millimeters a year, higher than previously predicted.

“There seems to be a lot more uncertainty now,” Bradbury said.

Thompson admitted earlier reports were conservative.

“I think all of us who have observed these changes have been surprised by the rate of change,” Thompson said.

Another member of the audience asked why changes in the sun have been ruled out as a cause of global warming.

Scientists are only 90 percent sure of the cause of global warming, according to Thompson. But they looked at factors such as changes in the sun and discounted them because of evidence like temperatures rising more during the nighttime and more in winter than in summer, and higher latitudes (farther away from the sun) warming more than lower latitudes.

Another audience member asked how people are supposed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions the 60 to 80 percent determined necessary by the Intergovernmental Panel to stabilize global warming by 2050.

“It’s hard for me to imagine what my lifestyle would be like,” she said.

Thompson pointed out that Salt Lake City, Utah, has had a 30 percent reduction in emissions since implementing energy-saving measures such as light rail, hours of less energy use and driving more hybrid cars. (See sidebar for other ways to save.)

North Bend resident Bob Schalck said energy consumption can be cut just by using LED Christmas lights. He has attended most of the SWOCC lectures.

“I like to hear it straight from the source,” Schalck said.

Kelly Gallagher, 49, of Coos Bay, said the lecture only confirmed Gore’s movie, which he has seen a couple of times.

“And it kind of confirmed global warming,” Gallagher said, adding that he has a unique perspective on climate cycles.

“Maybe global warming could be used for the good,” he said. “If we could learn to conserve now and keep fossil fuels, we could use them in a next ice age.”

Thompson said society has three options: prevention, adaptation or suffering. He said with 6.7 billion people in the world now, people in the areas that are hit first by disasters related to global warming will have no place to go.

“We won’t have that safety valve we’ve had in the past,” Thompson said. “Who are we going to displace

“If we wait, as we have in the past, for that crisis to come, we’re going to end up with a series of crises.

“The problem with global warming is nature is the time keeper and none of us can see that clock.”