March 22, 2009
The Cold Facts Of A Melting Arctic
Time-Lapse Pictures Show The Speed of Our Changing Climate And Its Effects On The Earth's Northern Landscape
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The Jakobshavns Isbrae (Jakobshaven Ice Stream) calved these icebergs into the waters surrounding Greenland. According to Geophysical Institute Quarterly, Jakobshavns Isbrae is the fastest glacier in the world, pumping more than 50 billion tons of ice into the ocean every year. (Extreme Ice Survey)
To the human eye, the stark Arctic landscape appears frozen in time. But this environment is actually changing. Through time-lapse photography, one can see the landscape disappear …
Time-lapse pictures, in some sense, are redefining that term "glacial pace," according to photographer James Balog.
"Glacial pace is actually an incorrect concept," he said. "The glaciers move a lot faster and they react a lot faster than people imagine."
Balog is attempting to do what no one else has done before - capture climate change on film as it's happening.
"We have cameras, time lapse cameras, shooting every hour around the clock, as long as it's daylight, in Greenland, Iceland, Montana and Alaska," he said. "Twenty-seven cameras are out there as we speak, and we take all of these images."
That's approximately 4,000 images per camera per year. Putting those pictures together into a time lapse video, Balog says, "shows you what's happening to the glaciers."
Take a walk with him on the ice, and you get a sense he sees things a bit differently.
"There's something peaceful about ice, in some ways," said Sieberg.
"Yeah, it's very serene," Balog said. "You know, it's poised here, just doing its thing. The interaction between temperature and water. And it forms pretty unique patterns. I've never seen anything quite like this actually."
Sieberg caught up with him near his home in Boulder, Colorado, the surrounding terrain itself shaped by the last Ice Age.
"You know, we humans are programmed to think that big changes on the Earth happened a long time ago, or will happen a long time in the future," Balog said. "What we don't realize is that they actually can happen right now. Right here, right now, while we're alive, in our own hours and days and months and years. And that's what this climate change story tells you."
It's a story etched in ice and documented in a new National Geographic book and an upcoming "Nova" special on PBS.
Jim White, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, studies ice in a room that, Sieberg notes, is not that cold.
"No!" White laughed. "No, as a matter of fact, there's a lot of equipment in here and it heats up."
White says some of the best clues of the Earth's past climate are trapped in the Arctic ice … tiny bubbles of atmospheric gases, hundreds of thousands of years old.
"Is it too simplistic to say that the study of ice is similar to looking at the rings of a tree?" Sieberg asked.
"No, that's actually a pretty apt analogy in itself," White said. "Tree rings, year by year, ice cores, year by year. And there are ice cores where you can actually see those layers. You can pull the ice core up, take a look at it and say, 'Yeah, I can see year by year what's going on here.'"
One of White's most startling findings was discovering a period about 20,000 years ago when the Earth's temperature jumped by about 18 degrees over just 50 years. The cause is still unknown.
He said the implications of that change are "like going from Miami to Montreal in a human lifetime."
It's a climate change 100 times faster than what we've seen in the last 100 years.
While today's pace of climate change isn't happening as fast, according to scientists like White it is accelerating, meaning Balog only has a limited window of time before he's walking on thin ice.
"In the ice you have an understandable, visual, visible evidence of climate change," he said. "And when ice melts, people get that. It's not about computer models. It's not about projections or statistics. Every human being on the planet, all six billion of us, 'get' what melting ice means. So, that's what makes this so powerful."
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- problem09: The historical changes you talk about were on scales of tens of thousands to millions of years. This is happening in decades. In fact, if you plot the current changes on the time scale you refer to, they don't look like a hockey stick, they look like a brick wall we're running into.
And, for what it's worth, a previous ice age appears to have nearly wiped us out (down to about 5,000 people on the planet). While that was a bout with global cooling, are you suggesting we shouldn't worry about a similar catastrophe with global warming? Just because the human species survived ice ages, the black death, and several other horrible episodes doesn't mean we should be cavalier about future threats. - Reply to this comment
- The ice up there has melted and refroze countless times over the course of history. So this is no new thing. How do you think the Ice Ages ended? If we didn't have these periods of warming and cooling this planet would be much different than it is today. I'm not saying we dont hurt the planet in some way with the use of fossil fuels either. I'm saying that our involvement with GW is not proven or disproven. By the way where did you read that GW causes more earthquakes? I'd like to see what kind of information they give on that.
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- "....1) Start with an ideological position. Example: humans are responsible for everything that goes wrong on the planet...." Posted by louiville2 at 10:09 PM : Mar 23, 2009
Nope, not quite. We "bedwetting libs" do not necessarily believe that humanity is responsible for all that goes wrong with the planet. For example, given my vitriolic disapproval of Bush and everything he is and does, even I don't blame the Sumatran quake and tsunami on him and his neo-con cadre. No...if our "ideological position" includes holding humans liable it is because there are so many of us.
We wouldn't even be having this conversation if we had a population of one billion or less instead of seven billion we have now.
Given that we can not implement a death rate solution to this problem and given that birth rate solutions are difficult at best, it behooves us to be very careful about how we use what resources we have left.
This is why I do not have an opinion of the reality of GW. I don't know whether it is man caused or not; whether it is even happening or not. My position on the extraction and use of fossil fuel and the resulting effluents do not require me to know - or care. My position on the use of any hard or impossible to renew resource is independant of any belief or ideological position I take with respect to "Global Warming".
As "nomealaska" says, this is not necessarily a left/right thing. Even if more "looney lefties" subscribe to the possibility of AGW than "radical righties" it does not necessarily follow we all march in lockstep to the beat of that drummer. In any case an "ideological" position is not always a liability - depending on the position and even the ideology...And even firm ones can be subject to alteration.
If we all take the effort to live more simple lifestyles as I suggested in an earlier post, and reduce our resource footprint, the problem of AGW - it it exists - will be well on its way to solving itself. - Reply to this comment
- Why gives a damn? I couldn't care less if all the ice in the world melts. Cold sucks, heat rules. To those living along the coast -----Move inland or drown! No one's forciing you all to live there. You got the right to pick up and move anytime. If you're too stupid to figure out how to get on your own two feet and walk towards higher ground, then tough crap! To those whining about drought and high temps, shut up and move to Canada----or Russia! It's not that hard, there's hardly any people up there, and there's more land than what's in the U.S. So get moving. Oh wait, Canada and commie land are still frigid wastelands, aren't they? Well, I guess this global warming talk is just a myth then, isn't it? Blah.....blah.....blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Get a life, people!
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- I'm looking at the frozen Bering Sea right now and see it freezing later and melting earlier each year. It isn't a right-wing or left-wing thing. It just is....
Whether the problem is global or local, it is a problem. Some say it is great to see new species of fish migrate into our local rivers, but our ecosystems are being disrupted also. My house sits on permafrost and has since 1903. It has sunk in quite a bit as the permafrost melts under the soil. When people go hunting, the travel out in the country is more dangerous because of poor sea ice and river ice conditions. I saw grasshoppers and lots of bees last summer. What's next - snakes? The Arctic is melting..... : ( - Reply to this comment
- I like my walk to work, Leo! I don't care if it is slippery or what. How did you get that Lisa Murkoski sign up in the defunct movie theater?
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- nomealaska,
Surely you don't expect the entire world to change so that your drive to work is less slippery, right? - Reply to this comment
- Posted by louiville2 at 9:52 AM : Mar 23, 2009
Posted by louiville2 at 10:17 AM : Mar 23, 2009
Yeah, I'm kind of interested to see the source for that little tidbit, too.
Whether recharging oil and gas reserves has any element of truth or not is, like the truth/non-truth of "Global Warming", completely irrelevant.
Americans, and residents of the rest of the developed world, are living "too large". Other than the most destitute 10 or so percent of us, the American, European, Australian, Japanese and other "first world" nation's lifestyles are unsustainable. Our dependance on and profligate use of the hydrocarbon economy is only one aspect of humanity outstripping its resource base. We will have to cut back on our energy usage as well as generally restricting our access to what we have accustomed ourselves as a "good life". Do take note I don't advocate impoverishing ourselvs. We do not have to do that, but nearly all of us can live more simply, or at least more efficiently. Some of us can easily live a great deal more simply.
Using "Global Warming" as a club to encourage or compel us to stop using so much fossil fuel (and generating the resultant CO2 and whatnot) is only as good as the truth of the concept.
My premise, as it has been from the begining, is that it doesn't matter a tinker's curse whether global warming is the absolute gospel (jimsmename, ubrew2) or an utter hoax(yourself, hawksprings). Our extraction of oil and gas is ecologically and economically unsustainable and the air pollution generated from the combustion or other rendering of same is unhealthy; and for far more reasons than simply as a cause for climate change. - Reply to this comment
- Hey BSRASMUS ! - Leo, you are a fool!
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- I care if the Arctic ice melts. The ice affects my life and those around me quite dramatically. The changing climate affects the ability of people to hunt seals and whales and has also affected fish populations that depend on seasonal algae growth. It makes winter travel more dangerous as the ice is less stable.
I care. - Reply to this comment
Author Thomas Friedman on Obama's Afghanistan plan and the war on terror.
