Climate researcher: – “Humanity is better positioned than ever before”

“Kron”: Mrs Fischer, what is so fascinating about ice cream?
Andrea Fischer: I have always liked mountain climbing. The hostile environment and the variety are exciting for me. As a physicist, ice is an interesting medium and the calculation models for it are diverse. Global climate change makes it extremely topical; a lot is happening right now. I also find it exciting what the ice tells us about the past.

An example?
For example, the ice age in the Alps 18,000 years ago, when the great foothills of the Alps were filled with ice. The ice then disappeared very quickly and the Inn Valley was filled up to 600 meters. That was a stream that flowed down there. The melting of the ice created large lakes, such as the Chiemsee. 9,000 years ago the glaciers were considerably smaller than today, and the tree line was higher. The glaciers then reformed again. The ice that is now melting was formed 6,000 years ago. We had the highest temperatures in the warm period from 9,000 to 6,000 years ago, when it was just as warm as it is today. The problem we have today is that we have not yet reached the maximum level of man-made warming, and we don’t know how hot it will get – and it has never been this hot in human history.

It sounds like you’re reading the ice cream like a book. What’s in there?
Through ice cores we look back 6,000 years into the past: we learn about the times of precipitation, Saharan dust, volcanic eruptions, Föhn events, forest fires – but also when people did mining work. Everything that was in the air can be found in the ice. That’s why the measurements are important: if the climate is changing, we want to have local data, because there are discrepancies between global and local data.

You look at ice from a scientific perspective, but does global climate change also have an emotional impact on you? Does the melting of glaciers make you sad?
I probably feel like a doctor who doesn’t go home completely exhausted every day, even though he treats sick people. I can do something good. And it’s incredibly exciting because there are processes in motion that have never been seen before. We can observe something new that interests many people. This knowledge helps us plan better, because climate change is now coming. And we can now decide: how do we want to move into the future? The worst would be if we do nothing, and then something just happens. The great thing is that we are not flying blind; humanity is better positioned than ever before in its history.

You sound optimistic.
We are in a much better position than people in the past. Let’s take the Little Ice Age: people had no idea what to do; they burned women as witches and conducted processions to prevent glaciers from advancing. People were completely at the mercy of it. By comparison, we are in good hands today: we have science and the media to help us form opinions. And that’s why I have confidence in it, even though political processes are needed. In any case, it should not be the case that anyone is left behind. That is why I am critical of taking harsh measures that cause great resentment among people. They also have other problems, such as great social inequality, which continues to grow. We must address the concerns of young people.

They cite science as a reason to be optimistic about the future. But especially in Austria there seems to be great skepticism about the science.
I do not experience scientific skepticism in this way, on the contrary: many people are interested in our measurements. The people in the valleys and the Alps also help us with the measurements.