Chasing Ice Page #2

frames into video clips

that would show you how

the landscape was changing.

I thought that basically,

you could just buy all this time

lapse equipment off the shelf,

slam it together and put it out there.

I was so naive about that.

Uh, there was a custom

computer that needed to be built

and there were a thousand little

engineering details that needed

to be worked out and

a lot of trial and error,

because people hadn't

built this stuff before.

And it was clear to me, it

would have to be a team effort.

I wasn't

that into photography,

but I talked him into me coming

up here and having a look.

Cause I was curious and I really

wanted to do whatever I could

to get my foot in the door.

Svav is the

field assistant in Iceland.

You ready?

As ready as I can be.

These

are more attractive

because I think they're more pictureeqse,

and they're still big glaciers.

Jason has a

deep, deep well of experience

about Greenland's glaciers,

about Greenland logistics,

about what the glaciers were doing.

Tad's a glaciologist he's

really the grandfather,

the Godfather the knowledge base

about those glaciers in Alaska.

The scope

and the scale of EIS is bigger

than any other project since I've known him.

They would work all day, in our little,

what used to be our garage,

turned into a workshop...

until sometimes, 11, 12 o'clock at night.

James sent

me a gear list of things

that I had never heard... I

mean Ice axes and crampons...

all of this technical climbing gear

that I had never used before.

I remember thinking that I

never want to do ice climbing

or ice related stuff, it's

dangerous, I'm gonna die,

but of course, I still

went with James to Iceland.

Jeez...

What?

I'm

just saying Jesus Christ.

I'm

just emphasizing how bad the

weather is.

Yeah,

I don't need it.

I get it.

The essence

of the camera systems is based

on putting really delicate electronics

in the harshest conditions on the planet.

They have to

withstand hurricane force winds.

Negative

40 degree temperatures.

It's

not the nicest environment

for technology to be sitting out in.

Whatever the

dangers of that boulder are,

that's a better spot than this is.

Well we found a place to hide the camera;

that's the good news.

The bad news is we've got a

major engineering project to try

and get that thing anchored and supported.

This thing is loose.

Look how soft this stuff is.

Yeah it's gotta be this section right here.

Uh... The other way around.

Rock! This is fantastic.

Look at this.

It's exactly what we wanted.

Okay.. Well, here we go.

The first eyeballs on

the glacier... finally.

Let's uh, see what a

couple years brings to us.

We

installed five cameras

in total on that trip.

After that, we went on to Greenland.

When glaciers

break these gigantic icebergs

off into the ocean it's

called calving c-a-l-v-i-n-g.

Ever since glaciers have entered

the ocean, hundreds of thousands

of years ago, ice has always calved off.

But what we're seeing now is the

Greenland ice sheet thinning out

and dumping out ever more

ice and water into the ocean.

and dumping out ever more

ice and water into the ocean.

Okay good.

Yep. Right up here.

JAMES BALOG:

It's sort of like doing

a portrait of people.

You know, uh, Richard Avendan

and Irving Penn spent their

entire careers doing portraits

of faces essential, and

found endless variation

and endless beauty and endless

magic in those faces and for me,

that's the same thing

as what's going on here.

You know you feel this

tension between this huge,

enduring power of these

glaciers and their fragility.

You know, they came from

a great, impassive place,

and they're just, they're crumbling

into these tiny little blocks

of ice going off into the ocean.

It's crazy.

My first trip

to Greenland, We were setting

up one of the cameras at Store Glacier.

We got there, we saw this really,

bizarre looking peninsula.

Just kind of perched out at the

front of this... the calving face

of the glacier, where the glacier ends.

This thing is gonna

break off all summer long man.

Look at this.

Those peninsulas are, are

just a matter of days...

at most, a couple weeks.

It was huge.

It was five football fields

long... 1,500 feet long.

And about 300 feet above

the surface of the water.

As we're setting up the cameras,

we also set up a video camera,

and had it pointed right

there, at that peninsula,

and we just had it rolling.

Just in case.

Oh my God,

a giant crack just formed.

See that whole island, it's going away.

There it goes man.

We were there

for just a one hour period of time.

And, absurdly, somehow

fortunately captured an event

that seldom is caught on film.

There is this

really big stuff happening right

under our noses, happening right now.

But I feel like time is clicking, you know.

And we need to get these cameras out here.

Okay.

Onward.

The logistics

of things are just like, crazy.

It reminds you how far he's

willing to take an idea.

Heads up!

Heads up!

Tight, tight tight.

This

is tonight's dinner,

I just found out.

Eight.

Seven. Six, Five.

Ah!

This is the way to travel, my friend.

We ended up installing about

a dozen cameras in Greenland,

five in Iceland, five in

Alaska and two in Montana.

Frankly, I can't believe we actually managed

to pull this off.

You know, about 20 years ago,

I was a skeptic about climate change.

I thought is was based on computer models,

I thought maybe there was a lot of hyperbole

that was turning this

into an activist cause.

But most importantly, I didn't

think that humans were capable

of changing the basic physics and chemistry

of this entire huge planet.

It didn't seem probable,

it didn't seem possible.

And then I learned about the

record that's in the ice cores.

The history of ancient climate

that was embedded in those cores.

And the story that

the glaciers were telling.

The Greenland

and Antarctic ice sheets

are these giant domes of ice

that preserve climate records,

very much like tree rings.

Snow is added to the top, turns into ice,

and ice core scientist can drill

holes through the ice sheets

and pull out a core and

examine, not only the ice,

but also bubbles of ancient air

that are trapped in the ice.

By looking at the chemistry

of the ice, we can learn

about past temperature,

and by looking at the air,

we can actually measure

the carbon dioxide content.

One of the things that we

learn, is that past temperature

and carbon dioxide vary together.

They go up together, they go down together.

And over the last 800,000 years or so,

atmospheric carbon dioxide was never higher

that about 280 parts per million.

Until we started adding carbon

dioxide to the atmosphere.

And now it's about 390 parts per million.

And that's about 40 percent

higher than it was

when carbon dioxide was only

varying for natural reasons.

But now we're heading for 500

parts per million or more.

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