glaciers

A Glimpse Of Our Future (Warning: Not For The Faint Of Heart)

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More footage from Chasing Ice, this time an astonishing clip of the largest iceberg calving ever recorded. Arctic sea ice levels this summer hit a record low; according to the U.S. National Snow & Ice Data Centre in September, more than 600,000 square kilometres more ice had melted in 2012 than was ever recorded by satellites before. We are indeed melting our children’s future, and apparently many of us are too busy to hold our governments to account for their lack of action.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YoA_Z7y8f6Q]

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Does it all seem a little far away? After all, most of us don’t live anywhere near the Arctic. “Total Devastation” is a perspective from the U.S. East Coast post Hurricane Sandy:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xQI0dhGMWw&feature=player_embedded]

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More links:

ClimateStories.us

Arctic Sea Ice Levels Hit Record Low, Scientists Say We’re ‘Running Out of Time’

Arctic Sea Ice Falls Below 4 Million Square Kilometers

Chasing Ice: Fox News Fan Discovers Bill O’Reilly Lies About Climate Change

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Here’s a video that’s going viral. When I first watched it on Tuesday, it had just over 3,000 views. Late on Tuesday it was posted on DeSmogBlog.com , and when I saw it there yesterday it was up to 18,000. This morning it’s up to 44,571. So if you’re interested in what a diehard Bill O’Reilly fan has to say after watching the documentary Chasing Ice, check out this video and then share it yourself:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzw1dZNWiL8&feature=player_embedded]

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Here’s the trailer for Chasing Ice. It is now showing in major cities across North America – go to their website, ChasingIce.com for details. For those of us who don’t live in any of those cities, I guess we’ll have to wait for the DVD. The film synopsis is:

Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of climate change. Using time-lapse cameras, his videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/eIZTMVNBjc4]

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Why Are Taxpayers Subsidizing A Business Model That Is Destroying the Planet?

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from the good folks over at 350.org

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In case you missed the news of the huge Greenland melt this week, you can read Climate Progress’s post on it, ABC News On Greenland Ice Melt: Scientists Say They’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before. Here’s some pictures that give an idea of the immensity of what’s happening up there, because of our carbon emissions down here:

*Thanks to Sharon for sharing this with me *

Over at Watching The Deniers, Mike’s headline read Greenland Melt Question: “On A Scale of Zero To Ten, How Serious Is This Melt Issue?”Answer: Eleven.

I’m reposting the video Mike included in that article. Keep in mind this is from January of this year, before the latest unprecedented melt:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4QjyrGkaUg&feature=player_embedded]

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More links:

Carbon: The Biggest Overlooked Fossil Fuel Subsidy

Climate Action Network: End Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Chasing Ice: A Treasure Worth Saving

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CHASING ICE is a feature-length film that follows Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey, a historic documentation of retreating glaciers in some of the most remote regions on the planet. Balog and his team have devised revolutionary time-lapse systems to capture monumental geological transformations in action. Their cameras compress years into seconds to show landscapes disappearing at a breathtaking rate.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/8107060]

*via Climate Denial Crockof the week*


More links:

Extreme Ice Survey.com: Seeing is Believing

See James Balog’s 2011 TED talk

Images of Change: Retreating Imja Glacier in Himalayas

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From NASA:
Imja Glacier in the Himalayas, as seen from a point above Amphu Lake and from the upper slopes of Island Peak.
Left: Autumn, circa 1956.
Right: October 18, 2007.
The latter image shows pronounced retreat and collapse of the lower tongue of the glacier and the formation of new melt ponds. 
Credit: 1956 picture taken Erwin Schneider; courtesy of the Association for Comparative Alpine Research, Munich.
2007 photo taken by Alton Byers; courtesy of the Archives of Alton Byers and the Mountain Institute.

It’s Time For A Radical Tactical Shift To Ensure Our Children And Grandchildren Live In a Secure, Sustainable World

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Pushing his body through epic cold-water swims, Lewis Gordon Pugh wants to draw attention to our global climate. He’s just back from swimming in a meltwater lake on the slopes of Mount Everest, a journey that taught him a radical new way to approach swimming and think about climate change. Here is what he had to say at the recent TED talks in London:

…Just because we have lived the way we have lived for so long, just because we have consumed the way we have for so long, and populated the world the way we have for so long, doesn’t mean we can continue…What radical tactical shift can you take in your relationship to the environment that will ensure that our children and grandchildren live in a safe world, in a secure world, and most importantly in a sustainable world…Because very very few things are impossible to achieve if we put our whole minds to it.

[ted id=928]

Global Warming: Is It True?

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Via Climate Progress, a new video by James Powell, Executive Director of the National Physical Science Consortium, which summarizes the evidence for anthropogenic global warming: “everything you wanted to know about climate science under 10 minutes.”

Powell is a former college and museum president.  President Reagan and later, President George H. W. Bush, both appointed Powell to the National Science Board, where he served for 12 years.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfG2VIKvieM&feature=player_embedded]

I am away this week on a low-carbon canoe trip in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park. Enjoy the video!

Glacier National Park Turns 100, Will Soon Need New Name

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From the Seattle Times, May 11, 2010:

The gorgeous million-acre park in northwestern Montana celebrated its 100th birthday Tuesday. But many of its glaciers have melted, and scientists predict the rest may not last another decade.

The forests are drier and disease-ridden, leading to bigger wildfires. Climate change is forcing animals that feed off plants to adapt.

Many experts consider Glacier Park a harbinger of Earth’s future, a lab where changes in the environment will likely show up first.

Average temperatures have risen in the park 1.8 times faster than the global average, said Dan Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist.

The change is visible to the naked eye, with the vast moraines left behind as the giant glaciers melt away. Climate change is blamed for the increasing size and frequency of wildfires, and lower stream flows in summer.

St. Mary Lake, Glacier National Park, photo by Ken Thomas

Click here to read the full story on The Seattle Times.