[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
I was on this assignment and I had been
knocking around glaciers in ice sheets
for a long time and I knew that they
were being affected by climate change
but it wasn’t until this story that I
really understood how much they were I
was trained actually in the science of
glacial geology and natural hazards way
back in graduate school long time ago
I’ve been climbing on mountains for 40
years and I’ve seen a lot of them in the
course of different assignments but
until I went on this trip I didn’t
realize quite how rapidly things were
changing this is up on the Greenland ice
sheet this is from another story we did
a few years ago huge meltwater rivers
eroding through the Greenland ice sheet
the ice of course breaks off out in the
ocean and turns into icebergs floating
out to sea and block-by-block
molecule by molecule this becomes part
of global sea level rise that you see
here in Chesapeake Bay that you see on
the coast of New Jersey whatever this
this actually connects right to our
lives here we call these ice diamonds
these are the last surviving fragments
of glaciers that are going away and
going into the ocean as part of the sea
level rise process so having seen all
this and really got my head turned
around by this assignment I started this
extreme ice survey craziness and it
occurred to me that just going out and
photographing for a day an hour a week a
month at a certain site wasn’t good
enough that I needed to leave my eyes
behind and that’s what these time-lapse
cameras are and so in the spring of 2007
I built this whole network of cameras in
my garage basically they’re mounted in
these Pelican housings that we custom
modify with glass on the front powered
by solar panels there’s a custom
computer inside that tells the camera
when went to fire nikon cameras clicking
away in the spring of seven we deployed
25 of these things and since then we’ve
had double that amount out in the field
we you know I’m here as the
representative of a very very large team
there’s about 15 of
who work on this with a with a
significant degree of regularity another
15 who have a lot of passion and
involvement in this as well we have
cameras in by Mount Everest in Greenland
and Iceland in northern Canada Alaska
Montana and Antarctica and we’re about
to put 10 more cameras in Antarctica in
about three months we’re hoping to get
into Patagonia in about a year funding
permitting so the cameras are out there
our little robot eyes clicking the way
watching the world while I’m in here
talking to you and here’s an example of
one of the things that the cameras see
we’re up in Greenland’s now west central
Greenland at a glacier called the
elusive glacier and this thing is the
primary conveyor belts pouring ice into
the ocean from the interior of Greenland
and making its contribution to global
sea level rise global sea level by the
way is going up up about an eighth of an
inch per year right now at the current
rate of ice loss and we had cameras
turned on one night in May of 2008 and
over the course of 75 minutes this is
what the cameras saw there was this
enormous what’s called a calving event
it’s a break off event for this ice
sheet these Berg’s that you’re seeing
above the water level are 30 to 40
stories tall and they go ten times that
height down inside the water and so this
is you’re about to see the volume of ice
that breaks off but this this is the
source of the icebergs that apparently
sank sank the Titanic by the odds of
where the ice comes from in Greenland
that’s a pretty good bet it’s a it was a
vast event the largest calving event
ever put on film and to give you a sense
of scale because it’s very hard I’ll do
something that no self-respecting
photographer would ever do and put
cheesy illustrations over his pictures
but it’s a big chunk a mile by three
miles by three-fifths of the mile deep
and here if you put two Golden Gate
bridges across it that would be the span
of the block but even more pertinent to
Washington the question of how many US
Capitol buildings would it take to fill
up that block of ice and dump it out to
sea and the answer is it’s 3,000 US
Capitol buildings large that’s a lot of
ice big chunk of ice there’s so it’s
it’s so hard to get your head around
this even when you spend a lot of time
out there but this is what we have to do
to give it scale long story short we we
wound up carrying on the extreme ice
survey it started in o-5 it’s still
going on right now seventh year and this
story that’s in the current issue of the
magazine is the third story for the
magazine that’s come out of the project
and you know it’s got these various
facets to it there’s the question of
time lapse and the repeat photography
but there’s also the question of the
aesthetics of this amazing protein
substance called frozen water ice
you know it’s wild stuff and it’s
insanely ridiculously beautiful in
captivating here’s what we call a repeat
pair an aerial on the left side
photographed of the Columbia glacier in
Alaska in 2006 and on the right side
what that glacier looked like just about
a year ago at this time and now I’m
going to show you a time-lapse camera
installed up on what would be the left
side of these frames shooting and
looking at the Columbia as it recedes
you of course can’t see any of this with
your eye human Ives can’t record change
but cameras can that’s why we leave the
cameras out there because you’re
watching a historical process that you
can’t otherwise comprehend all this
stuff would be gone the memory would be
completely lost without the camera there
to record it
in this glacier is about to go back up
into the picture another three to five
miles and we haven’t been in there since
May but there’s good reason to believe
that it’s pulled back a good deal from
where you see it already and if it has
and it’s pulled off the land that’s on
the right it will go into a very very
fast retreat over these next few years
so we put Humpty Dumpty back together
again that’s where it started
and we go forward and that’s where it
was in May
okay last visual chasing ice I didn’t
make the film I’m the the trained monkey
that’s in the film it was made by a
filmmaking team led by a young director
named Jeff Orlowski and it documented
the project I of course was responsible
for for getting the team out in the
field
developing the time-lapse and we’re
happy to say it’s been widely widely
received and it’s really helped to shift
the debate on climate change it’s been
shown in the British House of Commons
the UN the White House many policy areas
lots of corporations and the film just
in case you’re interested has is
finished more or less with its
international theatrical run but it’s
available on Netflix on iTunes and and
it’s been it’s on the National
Geographic Channel in heavy rotation
started in April but it’s it’s going
around the world quite a bit hundred and
71 countries so here’s a trailer that
shows you the film and gives you a taste
of what it’s all about here we go
I’m on the phone with Jim on one of our
regular check-ins Jim nothing’s
happening it’s starting at him I think
part of it started
it all started in Iceland think I’m so
certain to get what I’ll take my boots
off I never imagined that you could see
glaciers this big disappearing in such a
short time there’s a powerful piece of
history that’s unfolding in these
pictures and I have to go back the
initial goal was to put out 25 cameras
for three years shoot every hour as long
as it was daylight that would show you
how the landscape was changing this is
the way to travel my friend putting
really delicate electronics in the
harshest conditions on the planet it’s
not the nicest environment for
technology I do not want to go any lower
than this
it’s just bottomless I’m going out here
on this broken fin and I assume it won’t
collapse
every once in a while you get saying oh
thank you
maybe that office job wasn’t so bad this
thing is rock it’s not working
all of that obsession means nothing if
it doesn’t work it’s be careful don’t
get too close to the edge all right
it’s terrifying
miss Tia said two surgeries it really
could use a surge you goes to that point
where he can’t anymore and sometimes
he’s going further we have no one reason
engine number two this is a big stuff
happening right now okay
[Music]
this is the memory of the landscape that
landscape is gone and may never be seen
again in the history of civilization and
it’s stored right here
[Applause]
[Music]
you
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
I was on this assignment and I had been
knocking around glaciers in ice sheets
for a long time and I knew that they
were being affected by climate change
but it wasn’t until this story that I
really understood how much they were I
was trained actually in the science of
glacial geology and natural hazards way
back in graduate school long time ago
I’ve been climbing on mountains for 40
years and I’ve seen a lot of them in the
course of different assignments but
until I went on this trip I didn’t
realize quite how rapidly things were
changing this is up on the Greenland ice
sheet this is from another story we did
a few years ago huge meltwater rivers
eroding through the Greenland ice sheet
the ice of course breaks off out in the
ocean and turns into icebergs floating
out to sea and block-by-block
molecule by molecule this becomes part
of global sea level rise that you see
here in Chesapeake Bay that you see on
the coast of New Jersey whatever this
this actually connects right to our
lives here we call these ice diamonds
these are the last surviving fragments
of glaciers that are going away and
going into the ocean as part of the sea
level rise process so having seen all
this and really got my head turned
around by this assignment I started this
extreme ice survey craziness and it
occurred to me that just going out and
photographing for a day an hour a week a
month at a certain site wasn’t good
enough that I needed to leave my eyes
behind and that’s what these time-lapse
cameras are and so in the spring of 2007
I built this whole network of cameras in
my garage basically they’re mounted in
these Pelican housings that we custom
modify with glass on the front powered
by solar panels there’s a custom
computer inside that tells the camera
when went to fire nikon cameras clicking
away in the spring of seven we deployed
25 of these things and since then we’ve
had double that amount out in the field
we you know I’m here as the
representative of a very very large team
there’s about 15 of
who work on this with a with a
significant degree of regularity another
15 who have a lot of passion and
involvement in this as well we have
cameras in by Mount Everest in Greenland
and Iceland in northern Canada Alaska
Montana and Antarctica and we’re about
to put 10 more cameras in Antarctica in
about three months we’re hoping to get
into Patagonia in about a year funding
permitting so the cameras are out there
our little robot eyes clicking the way
watching the world while I’m in here
talking to you and here’s an example of
one of the things that the cameras see
we’re up in Greenland’s now west central
Greenland at a glacier called the
elusive glacier and this thing is the
primary conveyor belts pouring ice into
the ocean from the interior of Greenland
and making its contribution to global
sea level rise global sea level by the
way is going up up about an eighth of an
inch per year right now at the current
rate of ice loss and we had cameras
turned on one night in May of 2008 and
over the course of 75 minutes this is
what the cameras saw there was this
enormous what’s called a calving event
it’s a break off event for this ice
sheet these Berg’s that you’re seeing
above the water level are 30 to 40
stories tall and they go ten times that
height down inside the water and so this
is you’re about to see the volume of ice
that breaks off but this this is the
source of the icebergs that apparently
sank sank the Titanic by the odds of
where the ice comes from in Greenland
that’s a pretty good bet it’s a it was a
vast event the largest calving event
ever put on film and to give you a sense
of scale because it’s very hard I’ll do
something that no self-respecting
photographer would ever do and put
cheesy illustrations over his pictures
but it’s a big chunk a mile by three
miles by three-fifths of the mile deep
and here if you put two Golden Gate
bridges across it that would be the span
of the block but even more pertinent to
Washington the question of how many US
Capitol buildings would it take to fill
up that block of ice and dump it out to
sea and the answer is it’s 3,000 US
Capitol buildings large that’s a lot of
ice big chunk of ice there’s so it’s
it’s so hard to get your head around
this even when you spend a lot of time
out there but this is what we have to do
to give it scale long story short we we
wound up carrying on the extreme ice
survey it started in o-5 it’s still
going on right now seventh year and this
story that’s in the current issue of the
magazine is the third story for the
magazine that’s come out of the project
and you know it’s got these various
facets to it there’s the question of
time lapse and the repeat photography
but there’s also the question of the
aesthetics of this amazing protein
substance called frozen water ice
you know it’s wild stuff and it’s
insanely ridiculously beautiful in
captivating here’s what we call a repeat
pair an aerial on the left side
photographed of the Columbia glacier in
Alaska in 2006 and on the right side
what that glacier looked like just about
a year ago at this time and now I’m
going to show you a time-lapse camera
installed up on what would be the left
side of these frames shooting and
looking at the Columbia as it recedes
you of course can’t see any of this with
your eye human Ives can’t record change
but cameras can that’s why we leave the
cameras out there because you’re
watching a historical process that you
can’t otherwise comprehend all this
stuff would be gone the memory would be
completely lost without the camera there
to record it
in this glacier is about to go back up
into the picture another three to five
miles and we haven’t been in there since
May but there’s good reason to believe
that it’s pulled back a good deal from
where you see it already and if it has
and it’s pulled off the land that’s on
the right it will go into a very very
fast retreat over these next few years
so we put Humpty Dumpty back together
again that’s where it started
and we go forward and that’s where it
was in May
okay last visual chasing ice I didn’t
make the film I’m the the trained monkey
that’s in the film it was made by a
filmmaking team led by a young director
named Jeff Orlowski and it documented
the project I of course was responsible
for for getting the team out in the
field
developing the time-lapse and we’re
happy to say it’s been widely widely
received and it’s really helped to shift
the debate on climate change it’s been
shown in the British House of Commons
the UN the White House many policy areas
lots of corporations and the film just
in case you’re interested has is
finished more or less with its
international theatrical run but it’s
available on Netflix on iTunes and and
it’s been it’s on the National
Geographic Channel in heavy rotation
started in April but it’s it’s going
around the world quite a bit hundred and
71 countries so here’s a trailer that
shows you the film and gives you a taste
of what it’s all about here we go
I’m on the phone with Jim on one of our
regular check-ins Jim nothing’s
happening it’s starting at him I think
part of it started
it all started in Iceland think I’m so
certain to get what I’ll take my boots
off I never imagined that you could see
glaciers this big disappearing in such a
short time there’s a powerful piece of
history that’s unfolding in these
pictures and I have to go back the
initial goal was to put out 25 cameras
for three years shoot every hour as long
as it was daylight that would show you
how the landscape was changing this is
the way to travel my friend putting
really delicate electronics in the
harshest conditions on the planet it’s
not the nicest environment for
technology I do not want to go any lower
than this
it’s just bottomless I’m going out here
on this broken fin and I assume it won’t
collapse
every once in a while you get saying oh
thank you
maybe that office job wasn’t so bad this
thing is rock it’s not working
all of that obsession means nothing if
it doesn’t work it’s be careful don’t
get too close to the edge all right
it’s terrifying
miss Tia said two surgeries it really
could use a surge you goes to that point
where he can’t anymore and sometimes
he’s going further we have no one reason
engine number two this is a big stuff
happening right now okay
[Music]
this is the memory of the landscape that
landscape is gone and may never be seen
again in the history of civilization and
it’s stored right here
[Applause]
[Music]
you
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