The Coolest Library on Earth

I didn’t know what to expect, but I love libraries, so I clicked the link. Those who are not interested in reading about a traditional library might also like this article, as it’s not about a traditional library. The subhead is “At the University of Copenhagen, researchers store ice cores that hold the keys to Earth’s climate past and future.”

It starts with:

In a narrow aisle of shelves packed with cardboard boxes, Jørgen Peder Steffensen grins like a mischievous child unwrapping a holiday present as he pulls out a plastic-wrapped hunk of ice from a box marked Keep Frozen.

The bag of ice contains the transition from 1 BCE to 1 CE, he says. “That means we have the real Christmas snow.”

>>> But melting ice in the world at large drives researchers like Steffensen to continue the arduous work of both drilling ice and investigating what secrets lie within. With global average temperatures climbing toward 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels in the next decade, melting polar ice caps and resultant sea level rise will unleash a cascade of catastrophic effects that threaten to upend ecosystems, economies, and livelihoods.

Jørgen Peder Steffensen aka "the librarian": Temperature has increased, but the problem is that we have started to measure it in the lowest point we have had in that last ten thousand years, so it will very hard to tell whether this increase in man-made or natural [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE0zHZPQJzA

As a library lover I couldn't click fast enough on the article and wasn't disappointed. Like the Svalbard seed bank, I admire the heck out of these folks who preserve critical legacies against all odds, not to mention the weather.

Dr. Steffensen reminded me of Mr. Atoz from the old Star Trek - the librarian who could send you anywhere into the past.