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00:00:00Oh
00:00:30It's hard not to be impressed when you see entire houses being swept away by floodwaters in the West
00:00:51Fires stretch from one end of Texas to the other
00:00:55Tornadoes, a dozen tornadoes have already been spotted
00:00:58Liberals will say, well, if it's cold, it's global warming
00:01:01If it's snowing, it's global warming
00:01:03If it's hot, it's global warming
00:01:04There's nothing that doesn't prove that it's global warming
00:01:07The latest estimates for rebuilding from Irene, already $7 billion
00:01:112011 is now on track to be the most expensive year ever for weather-related damage
00:01:18A drought of historic proportions has hit Nepal
00:01:21The horror of raging wildfires has again returned to Russia
00:01:25They say it was like nothing they've ever seen before
00:01:2816 of the last 20 years are the hottest on record
00:01:34The science is not in
00:01:35It is in
00:01:36Stuart, quit saying that
00:01:38The debate is not over
00:01:39The globe is actually cooling and has been cooling since 2002
00:01:43The consensus is that there is no consensus
00:01:46I mean, how do you not?
00:01:48Global warming is real
00:01:50You're about to self-implode
00:01:52The ice caps, the poles, are not going to melt
00:01:55The oceans are not going to flood the coast
00:01:56I promise you, 20 years from today, I'll be the one that's laughing
00:02:00The worst that would happen is I'd just get really wet if I just stood in a place
00:02:22No, you fall, you try to run, you bang your knee on a piece of ice
00:02:26And you bust your knee
00:02:28I just, I have to get this picture
00:02:30The first time I worked with James, it was obvious how he goes about things, you know
00:02:37All right, quickly
00:02:38This, this light won't last forever
00:02:41He pushes it, he's looking for something
00:02:44You do have rope in the car
00:02:45Yeah
00:02:46Go back and get whatever you have
00:02:48Okay
00:02:48All right, I'm, I'm almost certain to get wet, okay
00:02:53In fact, I think I'm so certain to get wet, I'll take my boots off
00:02:59And it was very interesting because it was his first real encounter at looking at ice in that way
00:03:07He really did fall in love with it
00:03:14There's this limitless universe of forms out there
00:03:41That is just surreal, otherworldly
00:03:46Sculptural, architectural
00:03:50Insanely, ridiculously beautiful
00:03:55And that's when I thought, okay, the story is in the ice
00:04:00Somehow
00:04:02I was about 25 or so, I guess
00:04:27And I was finishing my master's degree in geomorphology
00:04:30And I loved the science
00:04:34But I wasn't interested in being a scientist
00:04:37The modern world of science was all about statistics and computer modeling
00:04:42And that just wasn't me
00:04:43I had no contacts in the photo world
00:04:49I had no knowledge of the photo worlds
00:04:51But youthful brashness can take you a long way
00:04:53Make things happen
00:04:54So that's how it worked
00:04:56I had this idea that the most powerful issue of our time was the interaction of humans and nature
00:05:08One of the subjects I started to look at involved people hunting
00:05:13But they were bloody, gory, horrific pictures
00:05:17Hard to look at
00:05:18Hard for me to look at even today
00:05:19And so when I had this idea to look at endangered wildlife
00:05:25I realized that I needed to show these things in a more seductive fashion
00:05:29I had to look at it in ways that would engage people, pull them in
00:05:34He's always taken the big view
00:05:39You know, he's not looking at this little micro slice
00:05:42He's really looking at what humanity is doing from a very large perspective
00:05:46His books, they force you to regard nature in a way that you're not accustomed to looking at them
00:05:52He's forcing you to think, he's forcing me to think
00:05:56And that's what I love about James' work
00:05:58You know, Ansel Adams was the father of all landscape photography
00:06:03And he created a movement around wilderness that only images could do
00:06:07And now you have James with that same kind of eye
00:06:11But being able to do more with the technology
00:06:14It isn't just the drive to climb mountains and hang off cliffs
00:06:19He has the ability to capture it in a way and communicate it
00:06:23Observing it and knowing it is one thing
00:06:26Sharing it and sharing it effectively can change the world
00:06:30I did a couple years of research on the climate change story
00:06:35Trying to find what you could photograph about climate change
00:06:39That would make interesting photographs
00:06:40And I eventually realized that the only thing that to me sounded right was ice
00:06:46He came to us with a proposal to do a profile of one glacier in Iceland
00:06:54We essentially countered to him
00:06:56He said, well look, why don't we just do a bigger story
00:06:57It was on the cover of the magazine
00:07:00Most popular, most well-read story in the last five years
00:07:03As I was shooting that story
00:07:10I started to get the very strong sense
00:07:12That this was a scouting mission
00:07:14For something much bigger and much longer term
00:07:17That was about to unfold
00:07:19The Solheim Glacier, the Sunhouse Glacier in translation
00:07:25Is where I really first got it
00:07:27That glacier had been receding several hundred feet a year
00:07:32Which is a lot
00:07:33You normally have a little bit of advance in the wintertime
00:07:38And a little bit of retreat in the summertime
00:07:40But when you see huge amounts of change
00:07:42That's outside normal behavior
00:07:45There was a real sense of the glacier just coming to an end
00:07:52And like this old, decrepit man
00:07:55And just, you know, falling into the earth and dying
00:07:58It was very evocative, very emotional
00:08:06As a guy who's been mountaineering for basically my whole adult life
00:08:10Someone who's trained in earth sciences
00:08:12I never imagined that you could see features this big
00:08:16Disappearing in such a short period of time
00:08:22But when I did, when I saw that, I realized
00:08:25My God, there's a powerful piece of history that's unfolding in these pictures
00:08:30And I have to go back to those same spots
00:08:32So I set up a whole bunch of camera positions around that glacier
00:08:38Where I would just go back and shoot a single frame
00:08:40You know, one in April, one in October
00:08:43And we would just see how the glacier changed in six months
00:08:45That glacier had changed so much
00:09:03That, I'm not kidding, for like three hours
00:09:06We stood there looking at the prints of six months ago
00:09:09Looking at the glacier going
00:09:10We must be wrong, we can't be in the right places
00:09:12I appear to be from over there
00:09:42And when I saw those, the lights went off for me
00:09:52I realized the public doesn't want to hear about more statistical studies
00:09:57More computer models, more projections
00:09:59What they need is a believable, understandable piece of visual evidence
00:10:05Something that grabs them in the gut
00:10:07So I created this project called the Extreme Ice Survey, or EIS
00:10:16The initial goal was to put out 25 cameras for three years
00:10:21And they would shoot every hour as long as it was daylight
00:10:23We would download the cameras every so often
00:10:27And turn those individual frames into video clips
00:10:30That would show you how the landscape was changing
00:10:33I thought that basically you could just buy all this time-lapse equipment off the shelf
00:10:39Slam it together and put it out there
00:10:42I was so naive about that
00:10:44There was a custom computer that needed to be built
00:10:47And there were a thousand little engineering details that needed to be worked out
00:10:52And a lot of trial and error because people hadn't built this stuff before
00:10:55And it was clear to me it would have to be a team effort
00:10:59I wasn't that into photography
00:11:06But I talked him into letting me come up here and have a look at the system
00:11:09Because I was curious
00:11:10And I really wanted to do whatever I could to get my foot in the door
00:11:14Spav is the field assistant in Iceland
00:11:17You ready?
00:11:18As ready as I can be
00:11:19These are just really attractive because I think they're more picturesque
00:11:22And they're still big glaciers
00:11:24Jason had a deep, deep well of experience about Greenland's glaciers
00:11:29About Greenland logistics, about what the glaciers were doing
00:11:32Tad's a glaciologist
00:11:34He's the grandfather, the godfather of the knowledge base about those glaciers in Alaska
00:11:39The scope and the scale of EIS is bigger than any other project since I've known him
00:11:45They would work all day in our little, used to be our garage, turned into a workshop
00:11:50Until sometimes 11, 12 o'clock at night
00:11:52James sent me a gear list of things that I had never heard
00:11:57I mean ice axes and crampons
00:11:58All of this technical climbing gear that I had never used before
00:12:01I remembered thinking I never want to do ice climbing or ice related stuff
00:12:07It's dangerous, I'm going to die
00:12:09But of course I still went with James to Iceland
00:12:12I'm just saying Jesus Christ
00:12:26I'm just emphasizing how bad the weather is
00:12:30Yeah, I don't need it
00:12:32I get it
00:12:35The essence of the camera systems is based on putting really delicate electronics in the harshest conditions on the planet
00:12:45They have to withstand hurricane force winds
00:12:48Negative 40 degree temperatures
00:12:50It's not the nicest environment for technology to be sitting out
00:12:55써 became shirt and coviner arms
00:13:06I'll just treat him
00:13:07I got them
00:13:09I got them
00:13:10I got them
00:13:11I got them
00:13:16I got them
00:13:17I got them
00:13:18I got them
00:13:20I got them
00:13:20I got them
00:13:21I got to
00:13:22I got them
00:13:23Whatever the dangers of that boulder are, that's a better spot than this is.
00:13:30But we found a place to hide the camera. That's the good news.
00:13:33The bad news is, we've got a major engineering project to try and get that thing anchored and supported.
00:13:38This thing is loose. Look how soft this stuff is.
00:13:42Yeah, it's got to be this action right here.
00:13:46Uh, the other way around.
00:13:57Rock.
00:13:59This is fantastic. Look at this.
00:14:02It's exactly what we wanted.
00:14:04Okay.
00:14:07Well, here we go. The first eyeballs on the glacier, finally.
00:14:12Let's see what a couple years brings to us.
00:14:16We installed five cameras in total on that trip.
00:14:24After that, we went on to Greenland.
00:14:27The second mile here is, again, a small hill.
00:14:36Let's say anything else.
00:14:39And now it's time to go around here.
00:14:42As far as the statute of human su appetizers and constantly rehearsed in a new mountain,
00:14:47it's very difficult.
00:14:49It's wonderful.
00:14:50When glaciers break these gigantic icebergs off into the ocean it's called calving, C-A-L-V-I-N-G.
00:15:09Ever since glaciers have entered the ocean hundreds of thousands of years ago, ice has
00:15:14always calved off, but what we're seeing now is the Greenland ice sheet thinning out and
00:15:22dumping ever more ice and water into the ocean.
00:15:29Okay, good, yup, right up here.
00:15:42It's sort of like doing a portrait of people.
00:15:59You know, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn spent their entire careers doing portraits of faces
00:16:06essentially and found endless variation and endless beauty and endless magic in those faces.
00:16:11And for me that's the same thing as what's going on here.
00:16:18You know, you feel this tension between this huge enduring power of these glaciers and their
00:16:25fragility.
00:16:27You know, they came from a great and impassive place and now they're just, they're crumbling
00:16:32into these tiny little blocks of ice going off into the ocean.
00:16:36It's crazy.
00:16:38When I first trip to Greenland, we were setting up one of the cameras at Storr Glacier.
00:16:52When we got there, we saw this really bizarre looking peninsula just kind of perched out at
00:16:58the front of this, the calving face of the glacier where the glacier ends.
00:17:01This thing is going to break off all summer long, man, look at this.
00:17:05Those peninsulas are just a matter of days, at most a couple of weeks.
00:17:10It was huge.
00:17:11It was five football fields long, 1500 feet long and about 300 feet above the surface of
00:17:16the water.
00:17:17As we're setting up the cameras, we also set up a video camera and had it pointed right
00:17:22there at that peninsula and we just, we just had it rolling just in case.
00:17:33Oh my God.
00:17:34Giant crack just formed.
00:17:35See that, that whole island is going away.
00:17:40There it goes, man.
00:17:44There it goes, man.
00:17:52There it goes, man.
00:18:02There it goes, man.
00:18:07We were there for just a one hour period of time and absurdly somehow, fortunately, captured
00:18:25an event that seldom is caught on film.
00:18:32This is really big stuff happening right under our noses right now.
00:18:37And I feel like time is clicking, you know, and we need to get these cameras out here.
00:19:07Okay, onward.
00:19:12The logistics of things are just, like, crazy.
00:19:16It reminds you how far he's willing to take an idea.
00:19:22Tight, tight, tight.
00:19:29Tight, tight, tight.
00:19:31Tight, tight, tight.
00:19:36Tight, tight.
00:19:48Tight, tight.
00:20:01This is tonight's dinner I just found out.
00:20:13Eight, seven, six, five.
00:20:31Oh, this is the way to travel, my friend.
00:20:41We ended up installing about a dozen cameras in Greenland, five in Iceland, five in Alaska, and two in Montana.
00:21:02Frankly, I can't believe that we actually managed to pull this off.
00:21:14You know, about 20 years ago, I was a skeptic about climate change.
00:21:19I thought it was based on computer models.
00:21:21I thought maybe there was a lot of hyperbole that was turning this into an activist cause.
00:21:26And, but most importantly, I didn't think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire huge planet.
00:21:37It didn't seem probable. It didn't seem possible.
00:21:44And then I learned about the record that's in the ice cores.
00:21:47The history of ancient climate that was embedded in those cores.
00:21:51And the story that the glaciers were telling.
00:21:56The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are these giant domes of ice that preserve climate records very much like tree rings.
00:22:05Snow is added to the top, turns into ice, and ice core scientists 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.
00:22:22By looking at the chemistry of the ice, we can learn about past temperature.
00:22:26And by looking at the air, we can actually measure the carbon dioxide content.
00:22:30And one of the things that we learn is that past temperature and carbon dioxide vary together.
00:22:35They go up together, they go down together.
00:22:37And over the last 800,000 years or so, atmospheric carbon dioxide was never higher than about 280 parts per million.
00:22:48Until we started adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
00:22:53And now it's about 390 parts per million.
00:22:56And that's about 40% higher than it was when carbon dioxide was only varying for natural reasons.
00:23:01But now we're headed for 500 parts per million or more.
00:23:06That pace is a hundred to a thousand times greater than the pace at which things have changed by themselves naturally.
00:23:13The amazing thing to me is that we're already seeing impacts because the change already has been so small, right?
00:23:18It's been 0.8 degrees C, about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1850 or so.
00:23:24And yet we've seen so much stuff, crazy stuff going on already.
00:23:28What counts to me more than the notion of climate changing is that the air is changing.
00:23:39The air that we live in, the air that sustains us, the basic physics and chemistry of that air is changing.
00:23:48This is about the stuff that you and I breathe.
00:23:51And that affects everything in the agriculture and the water supply and the biology of all the plants and animals around us.
00:23:56Plants and animals are already going extinct.
00:24:00They're going extinct a hundred times faster now than they did a thousand years ago.
00:24:04And as the climate continues to warm, we're going to lose more and more and more species because we're going to have more surprises happening.
00:24:11We are going to have a mass extinction event that could happen within the next 200 to 300 years.
00:24:17Mass extinction event means that we lose half or maybe three quarters of the number of species that we have on the planet.
00:24:23Are we going to be losing the plants that clean our water, the plants that clean our air?
00:24:30If there's no pollinators out there to pollinate, then we're going to have to do it by hand.
00:24:35And they're already doing that in China, having to go out and pollinate the crops by hand.
00:24:38In the last 20 years, we've lost close to 20% of the forest area in Arizona, New Mexico, and that's high mortality in those forest areas.
00:24:53We have seen increasing in the length of the fire season by more than two months.
00:25:00Larger fires in the western United States in the last 20 years.
00:25:04And we've seen hotter fires, more extreme fires burning.
00:25:08It's not just by chance that I'm seeing many rare events happening all in sequence.
00:25:13You know, there's a reason for that. We're seeing extraordinary changes in our environment.
00:25:24Munich Re is the world's largest reinsurer, reinsurance company, and our business model is to provide insurance for the insurance companies.
00:25:33As Munich Re is a major reinsurer for natural perils, natural catastrophes, we need to know the risks as best as we can.
00:25:46We have discovered some trends in the number and in the losses natural perils have caused.
00:25:54And interestingly, for the weather-related events, our activities, primarily greenhouse gas emissions,
00:26:00are already contributing to more intense and more events.
00:26:05It cannot be explained by just better reporting. It has to be explained by changes in the atmospheric conditions.
00:26:15Imagine a baseball player on steroids who steps up to the plate and hits home run.
00:26:21Can you attribute that home run to his taking steroids?
00:26:25Well, steroids occur naturally in very small amounts in your system.
00:26:27But by adding just a little bit to those steroids, you can change your background physical state
00:26:32and increase your chances for enhanced performance, and that's exactly what happens in the climate system.
00:26:36Greenhouse gases occur in very small amounts, but by increasing that just a little bit,
00:26:40you change the background state of the system and make it much more susceptible to increased extremes.
00:26:45If you had an abscess in your tooth, would you keep going to dentist after dentist until you found a dentist who said,
00:26:56ah, don't worry about it, leave that rotten tooth in?
00:26:59Or would you pull it out because most of the other dentists told you you had a problem?
00:27:02That's sort of what we're doing with climate change.
00:27:08We'll be arguing about this for centuries.
00:27:11We're still arguing about a minor thing called evolution,
00:27:15a minor thing about whether man actually walked on the moon.
00:27:18We don't have time.
00:27:20I don't have time.
00:27:21We have a low operation engine number two, so I'm just not engine number two.
00:27:48We cannot power with one engine.
00:27:58You look out that window at that seawater with icebergs floating around in there and you realize,
00:28:04we go in there, we'll have five minutes of physical function and in ten minutes we're dead.
00:28:12The fire brigade will be on standby in case we need their help.
00:28:16The one in Delta on the ground, I can see the coming with the vehicle.
00:28:21I'm looking at the vehicle, I'm looking at the vehicle.
00:28:23I'm looking at the vehicle.
00:28:24All okay.
00:28:25He needs to do his adventures, and that's what makes him who he is.
00:28:54That's who the man is, that's who I love, that's who I married.
00:28:58Do I wish sometimes that it was closer and he would come home at night at 5 o'clock?
00:29:04As a wife, yes. As a human being, it needs to continue.
00:29:13He's on this never-ending quest for something.
00:29:18He's just going and hoping that something that he's doing is taking him in the right direction,
00:29:25and I think that EIS is it.
00:29:29He's looking to make a global, worldwide impact.
00:29:35I've never seen him so passionate about a project before.
00:29:42It's my job to go out there every couple of months to visit the cameras, to go over if everything is okay.
00:29:51There was always a possibility that this would happen.
00:29:58This just, this whole piece must have cracked off in one part, flew off into whoever knows where.
00:30:05The rock obviously did not read our warning.
00:30:08It's only shot eight pictures in the past 24 hours, which is somewhat weird.
00:30:14Yeah, in fact, it's very weird.
00:30:15It could still shoot.
00:30:16Come on please, please work.
00:30:17It's dead.
00:30:18It has to be dead.
00:30:19Okay, so...
00:30:20The rock obviously did not read our warning.
00:30:24It's only shot eight pictures in the past 24 hours,
00:30:28which is somewhat weird.
00:30:32Yeah, in fact, it's very weird.
00:30:36It could still shoot. Come on, please.
00:30:40Please work. It's dead. Has to be dead.
00:30:44So everything we're trying is
00:30:48is getting thwarted.
00:30:52Zebras.
00:30:56We're getting the zebras again.
00:31:00Oh.
00:31:02We've had numerous, numerous
00:31:04timer failures.
00:31:06We've had cameras
00:31:08buried under 15 or 20 feet of snow.
00:31:12Oh, my.
00:31:14We've had plexiglass windows
00:31:16sandblasted.
00:31:18We've had batteries explode inside the camera boxes.
00:31:20I think it's a bird just kind of pecking away at it.
00:31:24This is what a fox does
00:31:26to your cables when you're not looking.
00:31:28He had spent a lot of money,
00:31:30from grants, personal money,
00:31:32getting to Alaska, getting to Greenland.
00:31:34And when you go out there, you want it to work.
00:31:36You feel so far from anything
00:31:38and anyone that can help you?
00:31:40I think
00:31:42it's in that voltage regulator.
00:31:44All of that obsession means absolutely nothing
00:31:54if a little electronic piece that big doesn't work.
00:31:58If I don't have pictures, I don't have anything.
00:32:02You know, everything is a failure.
00:32:04No, it's dead.
00:32:06It's not working.
00:32:08Period, flat out, just dead.
00:32:10It's dead.
00:32:12God, after all this,
00:32:14after all this, I just,
00:32:16it makes me insane.
00:32:18It makes me fucking insane.
00:32:20It's so disappointing.
00:32:32It's hard to see somebody that you love
00:32:34chase after something that might not ever happen.
00:32:50You see that white dot down there?
00:33:18There's a white dot on the...
00:33:22Something's happening inside the timer.
00:33:26After months of troubleshooting,
00:33:28we realized that the core problem
00:33:30was in the voltage regulator
00:33:32and in this little computer timer,
00:33:34this custom-made computer,
00:33:36that told the cameras when to fire.
00:33:38We worked with these guys at National Geographic
00:33:40and we sat down and redesigned the controllers.
00:33:42We switched to an entirely different kind of a circuit
00:33:46to use less power is a lot more reliable
00:33:48because it has a simpler electronic circuitry inside it.
00:33:52That was the turning point for the whole system.
00:33:56We had to replace all the old timers
00:33:59and had to wait for a whole season
00:34:01to check on them again
00:34:03and make sure that they were working.
00:34:05the top of the stage
00:34:17needn't change.
00:34:18Get in there!
00:34:19Come re?
00:34:20Whatever it needs!
00:34:21We can do that the smart problem
00:34:23and hold the time to do that
00:34:25you can do not know the engine
00:34:27to do that.
00:34:28We gotta be getting close.
00:34:58We'll be able to see it from up here.
00:35:03Ah, yeah.
00:35:07Okay.
00:35:12Alright, this is a big one.
00:35:23Okay, here goes.
00:35:24Playback.
00:35:27March 11th, 2008.
00:35:33It just shot.
00:35:35It's been working all winter.
00:35:38Yee-hoo-hoo!
00:35:41Oh, man.
00:35:43Hell well.
00:35:44I can't believe that word.
00:35:46Really?
00:35:47Do you know how cold it's been out here?
00:35:48For how long?
00:35:49I'm unbelievably surprised.
00:35:51We have over 2300 frames.
00:35:55Since June.
00:35:57And everything's working.
00:35:59It's been shooting the entire time.
00:36:09Fantastic.
00:36:10Here's the memory of the camera and this is actually, that's an interesting thought.
00:36:22This is the memory of the landscape.
00:36:23That landscape is gone.
00:36:24It may never be seen again in the history of civilization.
00:36:28And it's stored right here.
00:36:29In 1984, the glacier was down there, 11 miles away.
00:36:30In 1984, the glacier was down there, 11 miles away.
00:36:35And today, it's back here.
00:36:36It receded 11 miles.
00:36:38The glacier's retreating, but it's also thinning at the same time.
00:36:42It's like an old glacier.
00:36:43It's deep and wet.
00:36:44It's deep and wet.
00:36:45And it's deep.
00:36:46It's deep.
00:36:47There's deep, deep and wet.
00:36:48And it's deep.
00:36:49The landscape is gone.
00:36:50It may never be seen again in the history of civilization, and it's stored right here.
00:36:52In 1984, the glacier was down there, 11 miles away.
00:36:59And today, it's back here.
00:37:02Receded 11 miles.
00:37:03The glacier's retreating, but it's also thinning at the same time.
00:37:07same time. It's like air being let out of a balloon. You can see what's called the
00:37:12trim line. It's the high water mark of the glacier in 1984. That vertical change is the
00:37:20height of the Empire State Building.
00:37:23You know we're really in the midst of geologic scale change. You know our brains are programmed to think that geology is something that happened a long time ago or will happen a long time in the future and we don't think that that can happen during these little years that we each live on this planet.
00:37:53But the reality is that it does. That things can happen very very very quickly.
00:37:59We're living through one of those moments of epochal geologic change right now. And we humans are causing it.
00:38:23Up and down the edges of the ice sheet there's this zone called the melt zone. This is where the sheet is melting and that stored water from the ice sheet is running out to sea.
00:38:29Up and down the edges of the ice sheet there's this zone called the melt zone. This is where the sheet is melting and that stored water from the ice sheet is running out to sea.
00:38:39Up and down the edges of the ice sheet there's this zone called the melt zone. This is where the sheet is melting and that stored water from the ice sheet is running out to sea.
00:38:52I have to wrap my knees for the day's festivities. This knee has had two surgeries on it already and it really could use a third.
00:39:10Looks like the surface of the moon. Look at those holes.
00:39:17Oh my gosh, look at this stuff. I had no idea it was so thick in here. This stuff, this cryoconite, it's made from a combination of natural dust that blows in from the deserts of Central Asia.
00:39:32Mixed with little flakes of fine particles of soot particles of soot that come from wildfires, diesel exhausts and coal-fired power plants and on top of it there's algae that grows out here.
00:39:53diesel exhaust and coal-fired power plants, and on top of it, there's algae that grows
00:39:57out here, and all of that stuff accumulates in these little holes, and because it's black,
00:40:02it absorbs the sun's heat more than the surrounding ice does.
00:40:06And all over the surface of the ice sheet, there's literally billions of these little
00:40:11cryoconite holes melting away and filling up with water.
00:40:15And when you look down on those holes, you can actually see these little bubbles of ancient
00:40:21air being released as the ice sheet melts.
00:40:32The part of Greenland that's melting is out on the edges of the ice sheet, and that area
00:40:37is growing, and it's moving higher up onto the ice sheet as the climate changes in that
00:40:42part of the world.
00:40:45You see all this water melting down through these Swiss cheese holes, and you see it melting
00:40:49down through the channels.
00:40:51It goes from little channels into big channels, and eventually, everything drops vertically
00:40:56down through these big Mulan caverns, goes down to the bottom of the ice sheet, and out
00:41:01to the ocean.
00:41:02Ordinarily, if you make climate a little warmer, the glacier shrinks a little bit.
00:41:10If you make climate a little colder, the glacier grows a little bit.
00:41:13Those two things kind of work to maintain a balance.
00:41:17But if it gets too warm and the ice gets too thin, it doesn't respond just a little bit.
00:41:22The volume drops.
00:41:24You cross that tipping point, climate no longer matters.
00:41:27It's irreversible.
00:41:28It's just going to keep going.
00:41:30The sea level rise that will happen in my daughter's lifetimes will be somewhere between
00:41:35a foot and a half and three feet, minimum.
00:41:37That doesn't sound like a lot if you live up in the Rocky Mountains.
00:41:42But if you live down in Chesapeake Bay, along the Gulf Coast of the United States, in the
00:41:46Ganges flood plain, that matters a lot.
00:41:49It matters in China.
00:41:50It matters in Indonesia.
00:41:51A minimum of 150 million people will be displaced.
00:41:56That's like approximately half the size of the United States.
00:41:59All those people are going to be flushed out and have to move somewhere else.
00:42:04It also intensifies the impact of hurricanes and typhoons.
00:42:08It means that there's a lot more high water along the coastline.
00:42:12So when these big storms come, it pushes that much more water that much further inland.
00:42:19That's where our story of Greenland climate change is expressed.
00:42:22It's in that meltwater rushing out to the ocean.
00:42:25That's what we're photographing.
00:42:27That's what I've been up there trying to document.
00:42:34What we're protesting there is no laughing at.
00:42:51What is strange?
00:42:54Not even near therollees of New York.
00:42:56I'm almost jealous of what we have here.
00:43:02You know, I've seen this thing from your photos and sat pictures, but to be here is incredible.
00:43:09It's all becoming a little more real.
00:43:12While we're heading over, why don't I walk over there and give you some scale?
00:43:17Sure. Just be careful. Don't get too close to the edge, alright?
00:43:21Stay up where it's flat.
00:43:25This is really something.
00:43:28This is terrifying.
00:43:31This isn't a ten-foot little hole in the ground, it's a hundred feet deep into an abyss.
00:43:37And if you don't have that little dot of a person for scale, then it's lost.
00:43:43That is fabulous.
00:43:45This is a reasonable route right here.
00:43:48Look at that.
00:43:49Oh, yeah.
00:43:50That's like a gift.
00:43:51This is the dangerous spot.
00:43:52Yeah.
00:43:53For sure.
00:43:54Well, and then the other danger is that the whole thing suddenly implodes and the entire thing collapses, but I don't think that's very likely.
00:44:01This Mulan is one of thousands of Mulans all over the melt zone in Greenland.
00:44:07And every day, the ice is cooking down and water is pouring into the ice sheet.
00:44:12It's enormous.
00:44:13You can't wrap your head around how much water is coming off of this place.
00:44:19We got it.
00:44:20Adam, have you ever done something like this before?
00:44:33No.
00:44:34Not at all.
00:44:35It's all calculated risk.
00:44:49It's not like we're just going out there and playing Russian Roulette.
00:45:00Piece of cake.
00:45:02Oh, there's all sorts of curious crinkling and crunching effects in my knee.
00:45:15It's not what the doctor ordered.
00:45:19Look down.
00:45:20Look down.
00:45:21Look down?
00:45:22Look down.
00:45:23It's just bottomless.
00:45:24Oh, my God.
00:45:26I do not want to go any lower than this.
00:45:32I'm going out here on this broken fin, okay?
00:45:33And I assume it won't collapse.
00:45:37Oh, my God.
00:45:38Oh, my God.
00:45:39Oh, my God.
00:45:40Oh, my God.
00:45:42Oh, my God.
00:45:43I do not want to go any lower than this.
00:45:45I'm going out here on this broken fin, okay?
00:45:48And I don't...
00:45:49I assume it won't collapse.
00:45:50Okay.
00:45:51Look.
00:45:52All done.
00:45:53Oh, thank God.
00:45:54Fantastic.
00:45:55Okay.
00:45:56Look.
00:45:57All done.
00:45:58Oh, thank God.
00:45:59Fantastic.
00:46:00Oh, my God.
00:46:01Okay.
00:46:02Look.
00:46:03All done.
00:46:04Oh, thank God.
00:46:05Fantastic.
00:46:06Oh, my God.
00:46:07Oh, my God.
00:46:08Oh, my God.
00:46:09Oh, my God.
00:46:10Oh, my God.
00:46:11Oh, my God.
00:46:12Oh, my God.
00:46:13Oh, my God.
00:46:27Oh, my God.
00:46:31There were audible chunks of gravel-like substances that I could feel rolling around in there.
00:46:35Bionic men.
00:46:37I was covering up the soreness with anti-inflammatories and painkillers
00:46:41so that I could function in the field.
00:46:43And I would think, oh, that's pretty good, not so bad.
00:46:46But the drugs were masking the symptoms way more than I had realized.
00:46:52Come find you.
00:46:53Bye-bye.
00:46:54Love you.
00:46:55Love you too.
00:47:07Bye-bye.
00:47:37Oh, jeez.
00:47:40Jim was told after his surgery that hiking is not a form of exercise
00:47:44that they want him to pursue anymore.
00:47:48I'm not sure that's sunken in quite yet.
00:47:59I think when we started out, the glacier was approximately right here.
00:48:02It might have been there.
00:48:03It might have been here.
00:48:05But it's in this zone somewhere.
00:48:07Look, look at this.
00:48:14In 2005, you couldn't even look into the canyon back there.
00:48:18Look, it was all filled up to that point.
00:48:21And look how low it is now.
00:48:23And that's 2007.
00:48:40That isn't even 2005.
00:48:42In 2007, just two years ago, you couldn't see any of that mountain ridge over there.
00:48:50The thing has deflated tremendously.
00:48:53I mean, I don't know what the number of feet is, but it's a lot.
00:48:56If I hadn't seen it in the pictures, I wouldn't believe it at all.
00:49:02When I saw that glacier dying, it was like, wow.
00:49:15You know, if a glacier that's been here for 30,000 years or 100,000 years is literally dying in front of my eyes.
00:49:28You know, if a glacier that's been here for 30,000 years or 100,000 years is literally dying in front of my eyes.
00:49:37You know, sometimes you're very aware of the fact that, you know, sometime you go out over the horizon and you don't come back.
00:49:54James is now doing exactly what his doctor said he shouldn't be doing.
00:50:15I'm going to go out over the horizon.
00:50:22Lower.
00:50:31Oh, man.
00:50:32Okay.
00:50:33A little more.
00:50:35Okay.
00:50:37Yes, there you go.
00:50:43It feels worse this morning than it has any day since the surgery.
00:51:02It felt better the three days after the surgery than it feels right now.
00:51:06I think the best that can be said about this is I'm a safety liability.
00:51:14No, I mean, you can maybe limp your way up, but you can't go down that.
00:51:20Unless you're in a wheelchair.
00:51:22I mean, we need to go up there, check on the camera and all that, but you don't necessarily need to do it.
00:51:29I mean, that's more of a climb than we did in the past two days.
00:51:33I had a hard time letting ideas go, you know.
00:51:36But here's another.
00:51:37Here's another.
00:51:38That's why your knee's like this.
00:51:41Okay.
00:51:42You guys should at least go and look at one of the cameras, get it downloaded, get the computer changed today, okay?
00:51:47Yep.
00:51:48All right, enough.
00:51:51See the route?
00:52:12Okay.
00:52:13Hold on.
00:52:18Let's get out of here.
00:52:39Every once in a while, I get this thing in the back of my head saying, what were you thinking?
00:52:44Maybe that, maybe that office job wasn't so bad.
00:52:49What?
00:52:50The sandwich isn't better here.
00:52:52After the sandwich, I'm totally happy to be here.
00:52:55All right, this project is, now we're two years in, you have like hundreds of thousands of images.
00:53:03It feels like, yeah, he goes, he goes to that point where he can't anymore and sometimes you even feel he's going further.
00:53:08Yeah, you hear how he speaks about, he says, well, so I'll just do a fourth knee surgery, you know, like, how many, however many it takes to keep him going.
00:53:16Like, most people say, I'm going to get knee surgery to fix me, you know, kind of, to make it better.
00:53:21But for him, it's to make it better so that he can keep on pushing it, destroying it, basically.
00:53:27And then maybe he'll just have to do it again.
00:53:45Okay, Slav, you ready for another exposure?
00:53:47Do it exactly as you just did it, okay?
00:53:49You're ready?
00:53:50Okay.
00:53:51Low beam.
00:53:52So as quick as I can, I cover it.
00:53:54Cover it.
00:53:55That's right.
00:53:56Way back early in my career, I discovered that there was really something special about photographing at night that places your mind on the surface of a planet.
00:54:13You're no longer just a human being walking around in the regular world, you're a human animal striding around on the surface of a planet that's out in the middle of a galaxy.
00:54:24We, as a culture, we're forgetting that we are actually natural organisms and that we have this very, very deep connection and contact with nature.
00:54:38You can't divorce civilization from nature.
00:54:41We totally depend on it.
00:54:43So as recently, really, what can I do when there are you to teach a place or morte we're just lets you look at it.
00:54:44On me, I'm seeing you in love, that I'm many people like both of myrylic, even thousands of animals and people, others.
00:54:45And I believe it's good in nature.
00:54:46The insurance and just where I think we are all the headlines, are never allowing people to recognize that we make it easier.
00:54:47We may not make it easier for anymore, but alwaysole and natural somebody that's not too much.
00:54:48Probably a good thing to tell people all about the beaches.
00:54:49I have another couple of beaches.
00:54:50Maybe it's them that white poop says it comes out Aí清's ―
00:54:52If we are Josh herumtyaplyn, how do you to meet and for water, you'll put everything there?
00:54:53More hidden matters, all the beaches in the construction Mess,
00:55:24Shortly after that, he sent us on this month-long, massive trip to a place that's really hard to get to, to get a shot that is just, it was such a shot in the dark.
00:55:37The idea spawned from this one glacier called Storr.
00:55:42That event was so spectacular, we decided, okay, we got to go back and go to the big glacier, Lulissette Glacier, and sit and wait.
00:55:52I'm going to try to catch some big calving events, you know, kilometer-wide pieces of ice coming off of this massive, massive glacier.
00:56:05The Lulissette Glacier is kind of like the mother of all glaciers in Greenland.
00:56:11It is the most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere.
00:56:15It's rumored that this is a glacier that put out the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
00:56:19It flows at 130 feet every day.
00:56:27This is a really, really huge fjord of ice, and it's about five miles wide.
00:56:33That is massive.
00:56:46I totally lost him.
00:56:48You see him still?
00:56:49He's going, he's about to turn and go in front of the peninsula that we think's going to go.
00:56:53Oh, I see.
00:56:54He's at the base of it.
00:56:55What's up?
00:57:06My boots are frozen.
00:57:08And I'm really tired.
00:57:12And nothing happens for days and days and days.
00:57:15We call it a glacier watching.
00:57:20Because literally it was just me and Adam for three weeks watching ice.
00:57:25Photography for me has been, as much as anything, about a raising of awareness.
00:57:46Through that camera, you know, we become vehicles to raise awareness outside my own experience.
00:57:52And in this case, we are the messengers.
00:58:11He is a visionary, and his works are like sacred objects.
00:58:16I present James Balog.
00:58:18Well, thank you so much.
00:58:19Can we dim the house lights a little bit more?
00:58:24That's better.
00:58:25Okay.
00:58:26What I'm here to do tonight is bring to you tangible, visual evidence of the immediacy of climate change itself.
00:58:34Glaciers matter because they're the canary in the global coal mine.
00:58:38It's the place where you can see climate change happening.
00:58:41Without further ado, let me tell you what we've been seeing out there.
00:58:45This is a glacier called the Solheim Glacier.
00:58:47We're looking down on it.
00:58:50Now we turn on our time lapse.
00:59:01You can see the terminus retreating.
00:59:03You can see this river being formed.
00:59:05You can see it deflating.
00:59:06Go back a couple years in time.
00:59:11That's where it started.
00:59:14That's where it ended a few months ago.
00:59:16Now down onto the side of the glacier, looking across the terminus, this is what we see.
00:59:25Look at this.
00:59:26You'll see deflation happening here as the heat takes away the surface of the glacier and the surface drops.
00:59:32At the same time, the stream is undercutting it from a glacier that's melting faster up valley, washing this thing away.
00:59:38The vast majority of glaciers in the world are retreating.
00:59:53Glacier National Park Montana will need a new name.
00:59:56We'll be calling it Glacier-less National Park by the middle of the century because all the glaciers will be gone.
01:00:02There's such a strange, bizarre fascination in seeing these things you don't normally get to see come alive.
01:00:09We're up at the Columbia Glacier in Alaska.
01:00:20This is a view of what's called the calving face.
01:00:23This is what one of our cameras saw over the course of a few months.
01:00:32The action at Columbia is in part due to local glacier dynamics and in part due to climate change.
01:00:39Here's another time-lapse shot of Columbia.
01:00:43And everybody says, well, don't they advance in the wintertime?
01:00:46No, it was retreating through the winter because it's an unhealthy glacier.
01:00:51We realized it was retreating so far, we had to turn the camera upstream to follow the retreat.
01:00:56Then we had to pivot it again.
01:01:14And then, when we went back this past August, it was so far out of frame, we had to turn the camera one more time so we could still see the glacier.
01:01:21So that's where we started three years ago, way out on the left, that's where we were a few months ago, last time we were into Columbia.
01:01:35We're going to have to collapse it, put rocks over it.
01:01:57It's ripping, too. We've got to collapse it now.
01:02:02James Balog is documenting the melting of glaciers around the world, the most visible manifestations of climate change on the planet.
01:02:17And he's making it possible for scientists to watch, too.
01:02:21James Balog is founder and director of the Extreme Ice Survey.
01:02:24He's joining us now from Denver. James, thanks for being with us.
01:02:26My pleasure. Thank you.
01:02:27And we'll also have more of our special report on a man who lets his pictures do the talking.
01:02:33As a photographer, it's exciting to see this stuff, but as a citizen of the world, you go, this is horrible.
01:02:39And consider who NASA is sending as a delegate to the climate change summit in Copenhagen, Jim Balog, a photographer with the group Extreme Ice Survey.
01:02:47Prior to 2006, the glacier had retreated 10, 11 miles, and now we've added, just in the past few years, another two and a half miles.
01:02:57One of the things you often hear in the debate about glacier change is that there are glaciers around the world which are also getting bigger and advancing.
01:03:04So, how can that be, how can that be a response to a global warming signal?
01:03:10What we've done recently on the Yukon Territory in Canada, where we looked at the change in glacier area from 1958 to 2008.
01:03:17And what we found was that the 1,400 glaciers that were there in 1958, four got bigger.
01:03:24Over 300 disappeared completely, and almost all of the rest got smaller.
01:03:29Yes, there is a component of natural variability in the climate change we observe, but it's not enough to explain the full signal.
01:03:40So, there has to be a greenhouse gas element to it.
01:03:44Up to the Lulisat Glacier calving face, a little helicopter is shown for scale.
01:03:49The Atlantic Ocean is on the left side of the frame, covered with icebergs so thick that you could walk across the ocean and never take it.
01:03:59I'm on the phone with Jim on one of our regular check-ins.
01:04:06Jim, just, nothing's happening.
01:04:09Hey Jim, it's going well.
01:04:12We had some serious bouts of wind, but other than that, things are fairly well set up here.
01:04:18We've got some continuous time lapse.
01:04:20It's starting, Adam, I think.
01:04:22Adam is starting.
01:04:23Oh wait, Jim, Jim.
01:04:25Jim, this is the big piece of starting to cast.
01:04:28Let me call you back.
01:04:29Call you back.
01:04:31Okay, bye.
01:04:34It's still going?
01:04:35Yeah.
01:04:35In that V section right there.
01:04:39Holy shit, look at that big bird rolling.
01:04:43All four running, right?
01:04:44Yeah.
01:04:45Look at that.
01:04:50You see how, look at the whole thing.
01:04:52Look at that.
01:05:07Let's go.
01:06:19The calving face is 300, sometimes 400 feet tall.
01:06:31The only way that you can really try to put it into scale with human reference is if you imagine Manhattan.
01:06:50And all of a sudden, all of those buildings just start to rumble and quake and peel off and just fall over and fall over and roll around.
01:07:00And this whole massive city just breaking apart in front of your eyes.
01:07:06We're just observers.
01:07:18These two little dots on the side of the mountain.
01:07:21We watched and recorded the largest witness calving event ever caught on tape.
01:07:27So how big was this calving event that we just looked at?
01:07:35We'll resort to some illustrations again to give you a sense of scale.
01:07:38It's as if the entire lower tip of Manhattan broke off, except that the thickness, the height of it, is equivalent to buildings that are two and a half or three times higher than they are.
01:07:54That's a magical, miraculous, horrible, scary thing.
01:08:14I don't know that anybody's really seen the miracle and horror of that.
01:08:21It took a hundred years for it to retreat eight miles from 1900 to 2000.
01:08:27From 2000 to 2010, it retreated nine miles.
01:08:31So in 10 years, it retreated more than it had in the previous 100.
01:08:38It's real.
01:08:39The changes are happening.
01:08:41They're very visible.
01:08:42They're photographable.
01:08:44They're measurable.
01:08:45There's no significant scientific dispute about that.
01:08:48And the great irony and tragedy of our time is that a lot of the general public thinks that science is still arguing about that.
01:08:55Science is not arguing about that.
01:08:57One of the really troubling things about climate change is that almost all of the world's prestigious climatologists are much more frightened about all this than the public is.
01:09:08People have a hard time understanding when we talk about climate change.
01:09:14What for me is so powerful and actually unprecedented in the work that he is doing is visualizing the change that allows us to actually see what was and what is becoming.
01:09:27I actually saw his work last spring and that kind of changed my life in the sense that I had to quit what I was doing, which was working for Shell, and get involved in this debate in a much more profound way.
01:09:41The extreme ice survey will go down in history as this is the evidence that we knew what was going on.
01:09:52You can't deny it.
01:09:53We don't have a problem of economics, technology, and public policy.
01:10:04We have a problem of perception because not enough people really get it yet.
01:10:09I believe we have an opportunity right now.
01:10:11We are nearly on the edge of a crisis, but we still have an opportunity to face the greatest challenge of our generation, in fact, of our century.
01:10:52And so, for your opinion, I can only say, five or thirty years from now and say, what were you doing?
01:10:56When global warming was happening, and you guys knew what was coming down the road.
01:11:03I want to be able to say, guys, I was doing everything I knew how to do.
01:12:38I don't want to die home.
01:12:45Way before my time.
01:12:53Keep calm and carry on.
01:13:17No words for the wear.
01:13:25I don't want to die home.
01:13:32I don't want to die home.
01:13:37Way before my time.
01:13:45Is it any wonder?
01:13:55All this empty air.
01:14:04I'm drowning in the laughter.
01:14:08Way before my time has come.
01:14:20Come.
01:14:21Come.
01:14:22.