For those who would like to get the Richard Alley lecture straight from the source, the American Geophysical Union, here's the video. It's forty-two minutes long, but not a bit boring. Alley has a unique ability to explain complex topics in simple language.
Here's an example of his clarity, from Alley's excellent book The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future.
In the passage Alley is explaining why ice, which to most of us civilians appears to be cold and solid, is to physicists a hot substance, "one of the hottest natural solids around."
"Hot ice" may seem strange to anyone who has ever sat on a snowdrift on an outhouse seat, but it is true. In discussing how materials behave, a "cold" solid is one that is far below its melting point, and a "hot" solid is one that is close to the melting point. In a freezer, an iron horseshoe and a chocolate bar are both stiff and brittle, and neither will flow. In your back pocket, though, the horseshoe will remains stiff and brittle, but the chocolate bar will "smoosh" as it warms near its melting point. Have a blacksmith heat the horseshoe white-hot, almost to melting, and the horseshoe will become nearly as soft as the pocketed chocolate bar. Because ice is typically within a few degrees or tens of degrees of melting, it is more like white-hot iron or a pocketed chocolate bar…ice can flow. The flow of ice isn't fast, but it happens.
And here's a picture of Dr. Alley from his university, Penn State. Could the outfit be a hint?
Kit Stolz 
