The conclusion of this two day meeting finds us with a very great deal on which we may congratulate ourselves. In the first place there is the extremely large attendance, embracing scientists of all ages, and graced and illuminated by the attendance of many overseas colleagues of experience and distinction. In the second place we have the great range of scientific disciplines that are now applied to our field of study, many now extremely sophisticated, and the corresponding extension of Quaternary Studies into fields of evidence not hitherto exploited. In the early days of palynology of laminated lake sediments one could write of deciphering the ‘annals of the lakes’, but beginning by reading the record of lakes, peat bogs, coastal, fluviatile, glacial and periglacial geology, we have progressed to translating the long and detailed records of the deep oceans, and now the encapsulated history of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets. We have been introduced to the marvellous potential of the great CLIMAP Project, and all [biologists in the British Isles at least will now have to consider whether their hypotheses of past biotic history satisfy the new principle that we can all see emerging as ‘McIntyre’s Gate’.
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets under 1.5 °C global warming