Koni Steffen’s Moving Message from Greenland
Some of you likely heard about Konrad “Koni” Steffen’s tragic death at his research station on the Greenland Ice Sheet last week. It received global recognition with full feature obituaries including the New York Times and the Washington Post. They described the tragic circumstance and gave a good sense of the man who was a friend and inspiration to so many — me included. He had great enthusiasm for his work and was a top-notch scientist. Born in Switzerland, he ran a program out of Boulder, Colorado for many years and became a dual citizen. But his “territory” was Greenland. For a glaciologist, that was ground zero…and the key to sea level rise. Dr. Jason Box, one of his closest colleagues and friends was there at the scene of the accident at “Swiss Camp” last week. Yesterday, Jason urged me to watch this short video message that NASA produced a year ago. I find it to be a powerful message, and hope you will take a moment to watch. In this short message, he expresses real concern about where the climate crisis is headed. The voice is Koni’s – crisp, with a Swiss accent.
Listen for his forecast that sea level will eventually rise five meters…that’s sixteen feet, possibly in the next 50-100 years.
Koni and I had been in touch several times over the last few months. In fact, I was supposed to be on the Greenland Ice Sheet the week of the accident, with one of our Institute’s Fact-Finding Expeditions. I was scheduled to visit Swiss Camp the site of the tragedy. (Our trip was cancelled this year due to Covid-19.) As Koni had not expected to be there this month, he asked me to take some photos. Ironically, some extremely unusual weather patterns lured him back there ten days ago, setting the stage for his death falling into the ice-cold water of a deep crevasse.
I find Koni’s video message moving, haunting, and inspiring, all at once. Dr. Jason Box recalled a quote from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address that sounded a good note: “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
Amen.