Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Who was the American Geology Professor Fredrik Thwaites (1883-1961) and why was the Thwaites Glacier named by ACAN for him?

"If there is going to be a climate catastrophe, it's probably going to start at Thwaites."

-- Professor Ian Howat, OSU glaciologist in Ohio

RE: the late professor Fredrik Turville Thwaites, for whom the glacier was named for.

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READ THIS IMPORTANT ''THWAITES'' POST TOO, WITH MORE DETAILS:
''TIME THWAITES FOR NO ONE''
https://cli-fi-books.blogspot.com/2019/03/time-thwaites-for-no-one-back-story-of.html

Thwaites, at this point in time, is one of the most famous surnames in the Anthropocene Era.

Why? BECAUSE....... (read on, below)

A headline in the May 2017 issue of Rolling Stone magazine called it ''The Doomsday Glacier," over a byline by climate beat reporter Jeff Goodell and his 2,500-word longform article about the Thwaites Glacier in Antartica.

The sub-headline doesn't mince words either: "In the farthest reaches of Antarctica, a nightmare scenario of crumbling ice -- and rapidly rising seas -- could spell disaster for a warming planet."

This was back in May of 2017, almost two years ago, and this spring of 2019 a major scientific expedition funded by British and American govenments and supported by a team of over 50 scientists, reporters, and staff aboard a solidly-built research ship have been cruisiing in waters close to the gigantic glacier, stuyding it for clues to what the future might hold for the prospects of runaway global warming within the next 30 generations of humankind.


There have been over 100 media reports about the 50-day expedition, both before and during and after, and not one newspaper or magazine report bothered to explain to readers why the glacier is named ''Thwaites'' or who is named for.

Well. you came to the right place, because this blog is about to explain to readers worldwide -- for the first time -- that the glacier was named for the American geologist Fredrik Thwaites (1883-1961) whose British grandfather emigrated with his wife to Boston in 1850.

So now you know: the Doomsday Glacier was named for an American college professor in Wisconsin who carried British ancestry and a surname minted in England. There's even a famous Thwaites Brewery in the UK that is known far and wide for the suds it sells, but that beer palance has nothing to do with the glacier.

There's more, but first read this quote from Ohio State University glaciologist Ian Howat who told the Rolling Stone reporter in the above-mentioned article in 2017: "If there is going to be a climate catastrophe, it's probably going to start at Thwaites."

So yes, the Thwaites, and the name itself, at this point in time, is one of the most famous surnames in the Anthropocene Era.

Why?

Because scientists from several nations are right now studying and researching Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, as hundreds of news accounts confirm.

Let's now meet the late American Professor Fredrik Turville Thwaites for whom the glacier was named for:

He was born in 1883 in America and passed away in 1961. His paternal grandparents Mr and Mrs Thwaites were born in England and emigrated to the USA by ship in 1850, first to Boston and then moving on later to Wisconsin. So the surname Thwaites can reliably be said to be a British surname, as several people named Thwaites in Britain, Australia and America can confirm.

Professor Thwaites was only son of the Anerican historian Reuben Gold Thwaites and his wife Jessie Turville Thwaites. The Thwaites glacier was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN) after Thwaites, who was a glacial geologist, a geomorphologist and a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

A friend of mine, a writer who teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University in Rhode Island was aboard the government-funded research ship plying the icy waters around the Thwaites, and she, along with 50 climate change scientists on the expedition was able from time to time to tweet from their ship cabins and work spaces about this scientific adventure of a lifetime.

More than adventure. A very important expedition that will hopefully shed light on the future of humankind within the next 30 generations of man, that is to say, the next 500 years or so -- if indeed humanity is fated to exist that long.

Most likely we humans will continue on this Earth, our home planet, on and on, for much longer than 500 years. Then again, there are some alarmist voices online and on TV saying our days are numbered, from 12 years to 100 years to 300 years or so.

Me, I take the long view and see humans living on for another 1,000 years and more. Color me ''eternal optimist.''

By the way, if you want to learn more, there's even a hashtag for the Thwaites expedition in Antarctica, three in fact  -- #Thwaites and #TheThwaites and #ThwaitesGlacier -- and it's possible for people around the world to follow the scientists and reports on board the research vessel as it navigates the frigid waters near the imposing glacier.

Go and take a look. Just go to Twitter and click on either of the three hashtags above, and you will be able to see photos and videos taken by expedition members and the reporters and environmental writers accompanying them.

Meanwhile, thanks to the magic of the internet, I met a British man who lives and works in Washington DC, and at this point in time, he has one of the most famous surnames in the Anthropocene Era: ''Thwaites.''

Why is the name so famous now? Because scientists from several nations are right now studying and researching Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, as many news accounts confirm here and here and here.


And especially here and here and here and here.


So meet the late Professor Fredrik Turville Thwaites:
(1883 - 1961)

He was born in 1883 in America and passed away in 1961.

Any relation to Joe Thwaites, our online British acquaintance in Washington?



 In the Wisconsin Academy Review, a UW retiremnt profile by Vivien Hone notes that
              the American geologist FREDERICK T. THWAITES (also FREDRIK)
              taught for 38
               years at UW and served a long curator-ship
               of the UW Geology Museum. [QUESTION FOR BLOG FOLLOWERS HERE: Where do you think the ''Thwaites'' name orignates from? Denmark, Germany, Holland, the UK? Any idea?]

Professor Thwaites of Wisconsin was only son of the historian Mr Reuben Gold
Thwaites and Mrs Jessie Turville Thwaites. (His paternal grandfather, Reuben's father, came to America from England in 1850.) He took his elementary
and high school instruction in Madison schools; spent his
early summers at the Turville homestead on Lake Monona and
later, for many years, dwelled permanently there. Trips
across the Atlantic were made more than once with his
parents, Thwaites recalled, but what seemed more mem-
orable to him was is a 1894 rowboat journey down the Ohio River. With his
social historian father. As a boy Frederick also retraced the
river routes of the early French missionary priests.



           

 The Thwaites was named by ACAN[2] after Fredrik T. Thwaites, a glacial geologist, geomorphologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison[3 in the USA.

When this blogger discovered Joe Thwaites on Twitter by complete chance the other day [and I don't even remember exactly how his name popped up into my online surfing, but pop up it did, and it caught my eye.]

Joe Thwaites: Nice guy, unassuming, modest guy, British chap, enjoying his life and work in Washington, and while he has never taken advantage of the publicity surrounding the scientific cruise to Thwaites glacier in 2019 year to claim he has any relation to the glacier itself -- he doesn't -- he has at the same time told this blogger (when I asked) that yes, since the news about Thwaites and the scientists studying it went viral on a variety of websites in dozens of langauges, he has received a few curious remarks about his last name from colleagues at work and and friends online and from a few inquiring reporters and bloggers.

When this blog asked Joe if he had been getting any inquiries from the media about his possible link via surnme to the Thwaites glacier, he replied in internet time in a very friendly way:'

"Hey! Thanks, Dan, for your interest in my glacial namesake! Feel free to send over questions and I'll have a think. Mostly it's been friends and colleagues emailing me whenever it's in the news; it's become a bit of a running joke. The occasional journalist who I've talked to in the course of my work has also asked if there's a connection. [The news could be seen as being a bit] ominous in the sense that the glacier is a bit of a canary in the coal mine."

''Yeah I've been getting questions about it much more frequently, which is both funny and ominous," Joe had told me in tweet, so I had asked him what he meant by ominous.

When I asked if he might be RELATED to the man the Thwaites Glacier was named for, Joe replied in internet tine: ''Haha. I've been getting asked that a fair bit in recent years. Not that I know of!''

As for the origin of the Thwaites surname, Joe told me: ''By the way, I'm British, which perhaps explains the name better!''

On his Twitter page, Joe writes this as part of his intro: I work on climate policy at a Washington firm. --- And on that Twitter intro he runs this quote: “If there is going to be a climate catastrophe,” says glaciologist Ian Howat, “it's probably going to start at Thwaites.”

Note that Joe is part of an organization working to shift the world’s financial flows to support sustainable development at the institute he works for in DC, so he is aware of the Thwaites expedition, very aware.


What does Wikipedia have to say about the glacier itself? Well,  Thwaites Glacier (75°30′S 106°45′W / 75.500°S 106.750°W / -75.500; -106.750) is an unusually broad and fast Antarctic glacier flowing into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land.[1] Its surface speeds exceed 2 km/yr near its grounding line, and its fastest flowing grounded ice is centred between 50 and 100 km east of Mount Murphy. It was named by ACAN[2] after Fredrik T. Thwaites, a glacial geologist, geomorphologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[3] Thwaites Glacier drains into West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea and is closely watched for its potential to raise sea levels.[4]
Along with Pine Island Glacier, Thwaites Glacier has been described as part of the "weak underbelly" of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, due to its apparent vulnerability to significant retreat. This hypothesis is based on both theoretical studies of the stability of marine ice sheets and recent observations of large changes on both of these glaciers. In recent years, the flow of both of these glaciers has accelerated, their surfaces lowered, and the grounding lines retreated.

 JEFF GOODELL for ROLLING STONE Magazine wrote earlier this winter: ''I’m writing this aboard the R/V Nathaniel Palmer, a 300-foot ocean research vessel. On board the ship [are me and writer Elizabeth Rush and] 26 scientists and 31 crew members and support staff, as well as many millions of dollars worth of scientific equipment. We first made a week-long transit from Chile to the West Coast of Antarctica, where we then spent the next 6 weeks in one of the most remote regions of the most remote continent in the universe.

Btw: Some other Thwaites online:


Because scientists from several nations are right now studying and researching Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, as many news accounts confirm here and here and here.

And especially here and here and here and here.


So meet the late American Professor Fredrik Turville Thwaites for whom the glacier was named for:

He was born in 1883 in America and passed away in 1961. His paternal grandparents Mr and Mrs Thwaites were born in England and emigrated to the USA by ship in 1850, first to Boston and then moving on later to Wisconsin. So the surname Thwaites can reliably be said to be a British surname, as Joe Thwaites, a British man living  in Washington D.C. in 2019
can confirm. There's a famous Thwaites Brewey in the UK, too.




 In the Wisconsin Academy Review, a UW retiremnt profile by Vivien Hone notes that
              the American geologist FREDERICK T. THWAITES (also FREDRIK)
              taught for 38
               years at UW and served a long curator-ship
               of the UW Geology Museum. [QUESTION FOR BLOG FOLLOWERS HERE: Where do you think the ''Thwaites'' name orignates from? Denmark, Germany, Holland, the UK? Any idea?]

Professor Thwaites of Wisconsin was only son of the historian Mr Reuben Gold
Thwaites and Mrs Jessie Turville Thwaites. He took his elementary
and high school instruction in Madison schools; spent his
early summers at the Turville homestead on Lake Monona and
later, for many years, dwelled permanently there. Trips
across the Atlantic were made more than once with his
parents, Thwaites recalled, but what seemed more mem-
orable to him was is a 1894 rowboat journey down the Ohio River. With his
social historian father. As a boy Frederick also retraced the
river routes of the early French missionary priests.



           

 The Thwaites was named by ACAN[2] after Fredrik T. Thwaites, a glacial geologist, geomorphologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison[3 in the USA.

 

A friend of mine is on board a government-funded research ship plying the icy waters around the Thwaites, and she, along with 50 climate change scientists accompanied by a several national news reporters for Rolling Stone magazine and other outlets, have been tweeting from their ship cabins and work spaces about this scientific adventure of a lifetime. More than adventure. A very important expedition that will hopefully shed light on the future of humankind in 30 generations of humans, that is to say the next 500 years or so, if indeed humanity exists for that long. Most likely we will continue on and on. Then again, there are those voices online and on TV saying our days are numbered, from 12 years to 100 years to 300 years or more.

There's even a hashtag for the Thwaites expedition going on now in Antarctica  -- #Thwaites and #TheThwaites -- and it's possible for people around the world to follow the scientists and reports on board the research vessel and it navigates the frigid  near the imposing glacier. Go and take a look. Just go to Twitter and click on either of the two hashtags above, and you will be able to see photos and videos taken by expedition members and the reporters and environmental writers accompanying them.


This quote: “If there is going to be a climate catastrophe,” says glaciologist Ian Howat, “it's probably going to start at Thwaites.”





What does Wikipedia have to say about the glacier itself? Well,  Thwaites Glacier (75°30′S 106°45′W / 75.500°S 106.750°W / -75.500; -106.750) is an unusually broad and fast Antarctic glacier flowing into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land.[1] Its surface speeds exceed 2 km/yr near its grounding line, and its fastest flowing grounded ice is centred between 50 and 100 km east of Mount Murphy. It was named by ACAN[2] after Fredrik T. Thwaites, a glacial geologist, geomorphologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[3] Thwaites Glacier drains into West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea and is closely watched for its potential to raise sea levels.[4]
Along with Pine Island Glacier, Thwaites Glacier has been described as part of the "weak underbelly" of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, due to its apparent vulnerability to significant retreat. This hypothesis is based on both theoretical studies of the stability of marine ice sheets and recent observations of large changes on both of these glaciers. In recent years, the flow of both of these glaciers has accelerated, their surfaces lowered, and the grounding lines retreated.

 

 Some other Thwaites online:

=====================

see also another climate expert on board the same ship Jeff Goodell, who will also be writing a book later on about what he saw there....
International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration‏ @GlacierThwaites Jan 31          
Rolling Stone magazine's writes from the U.S. icebreaker R/V Nathaniel Palmer heading to in
Journey to Antarctica: Jeff Goodell Begins His Trip to Thwaites Glacier

Exploring Antarctica to investigate the nightmare scenario of melting ice that could spell disaster for a warming planet

This is the first dispatch in a series from Jeff Goodell, who will be investigating the effect of climate change on Thwaites glacier.
I’m writing this aboard the R/V Nathanial Palmer, a 300-foot ocean research vessel that is, at this moment, tied up at a dock in Punta Arenas, Chile. On board the ship are me and writer Elizabeth Rush and 26 scientists and 31 crew members and support staff, as well as many millions of dollars worth of scientific equipment. We departed for Antarctica two nights ago, but we had to return to port because of a problem with the ship’s rudder. OUCH! Divers are in the water now — presumably it will get fixed shortly and we will depart for a week-long transit to the West Coast of Antarctica, where we will spend the next 6 weeks in one of the most remote regions of the most remote continent in the universe.

The mission of this scientific expedition is straightforward: to better understand the risk of catastrophic collapse of Thwaites glacier, one of the largest glaciers in West Antarctica. Thwaites glacier is perhaps the most important tipping point in the Earth’s climate system. Thwaites is the cork in the wine bottle for the entire West Antarctic ice sheet. If it collapses, it could dump enough ice into the ocean to cause seas to rise by 10 feet or more. That would doom Miami, Boston, New York City, London, Shanghai, Jakarta — and virtually every other coastal city in the world. As Thwaites goes, so goes human civilization as we know it.
The trip I’m about to take is the first expedition in a US$25 million, five-year joint research project between the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey. During this 5-year research project, scientists will poke and prod the glacier from every direction, map the ground beneath it, measure changes in ocean currents that are bringing warm water to the base of the glacier, and dig up mud near the front of the glacier to better understand how quickly it has retreated during past warm periods. As Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey who is the chief scientist on the trip, told us during a science meeting aboard the ship last night, “The question we want to answer is, is West Antarctica on the verge of unstoppable collapse?”
But first, of course, we have to get to Antarctica. Right now, as we wait for the rudder to be fixed, everyone is sorting out their gear, meeting their cabin-mates (2 people to a cabin, in small bunk beds with railings that can be installed so you aren’t thrown out of bed during high seas). The ship has 5 decks which are connected through a maze of green steel doors and stairways. Because this is, in part, a USA government sponsored trip, this afternoon we all had to watch videos about environmental rules in Antarctica (which included tips on how to pick seed pods out of the Velcro on your winter jacket so as to not import any invasive species to the continent). We also practiced getting into the lifeboat and donning our bright orange immersion suits, which would, in theory, keep us warm for a few hours if we had to abandon ship in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean. We have learned that everything must be strapped down and have tested sea sickness medications for when the big seas hit as we cross Drake’s Passage, the notoriously treacherous open water between South America and Antarctic.
For the scientists aboard the ship, there is a lot of unpacking and prepping and strategizing happening right now. I’ve spent most of my career as a journalist around scientists, but on a trip like this, you really feel the urgency of their work. To get invited on this cruise, scientists had to submit lengthy proposals about what they hope to discover and why it is important. Selection was highly competitive. The people onboard are the All-Stars of the science world. And there is a lot of pressure to make the most of their time and not to screw anything up. Once we are at sea, work will go on 24 hours a day, every day.
“There is not a moment to waste on a trip like this,” Robert Larter told me while we were standing on the deck of the ship, watching cranes lift containers full of scientific equipment onto the deck. “This ship is very expensive to run” — Larter estimates the Palmer costs US$30 K a day to operate — “and this is your one shot to get to a place like Thwaites glacier. You want to take full advantage of that.”

The Nathaniel B. Palmer in port. Photo courtesy of Jeff Goodell
The Nathaniel B. Palmer in port. Photo courtesy of Jeff Goodell

But there is also the excitement of exploring one of the most remote and consequential regions of the planet. Antarctica is the last uncivilized place on Earth, a vast continent where about 70 percent of the Earth’s fresh water is locked up in ice. For most the 20th century, climate scientists thought Antarctica was a cold and stable place — most of their attention was focused on Greenland, which is melting like a popsicle on a summer sidewalk as the climate warms.
But as it turns out, Antarctica is in trouble, too. But instead of melting from the surface like Greenland, the ice in parts of Antarctica is melting from below, thanks to warmer ocean currents (I’ll talk more about this in future dispatches). The Antarctic lost 40 billion tons of melting ice to the ocean each year from 1979 to 1989. That figure rose to 252 billion tons lost per year beginning in 2009, according to a study published recently by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That means the region is losing six times as much ice as it was 40 years ago, an unprecedented pace in the era of modern measurements. (It takes about 360 billion tons of ice to produce one millimeter of global sea-level rise.)
And nowhere in Antarctica is more unstable than Thwaites glacier. To many climate scientists, this has come as a big surprise. “Until about 25 years ago, we knew virtually nothing about Thwaites glacier,” Larter told me over dinner in the mess hall last night. Even more alarming, this particular glacier is a good example of what scientists call “a threshold system.” That means instead of melting in a fairly predictable way, as the ice sheets in Greenland are doing, it could collapse suddenly (I’ll write more about this in future posts as well). In addition, scientists now understand that Thwaites glacier is like the cork in the bottle for the entire West Antarctic ice sheet — if it goes, the entire ice sheet could collapse into the sea relatively quickly, adding eight, nine, 10 feet to the height of the world’s oceans. As the climate warms, how big is the risk that Thwaites will collapse? How soon could it happen? Those are perhaps the two most important questions in climate science right now, and they are precisely what we will be exploring on this journey to Antarctica.
But first, we have to get the rudder fixed and ride out the rough seas and rogue waves in Drake’s Passage. Talk over breakfast in the mess hall this morning was about a storm brewing just west of the passage. But as Larter, a veteran of many Antarctic crossings put it with a wry smile, “There is always a storm on the way to Antarctica.” 
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