Glacier Time Lapse Video Reveals 'Epochal Change' Captured By Extreme Ice Survey (VIDEO)

Anyone with doubts about the legitimacy of climate change need only glance at James Balog's time lapse footage of Alaska's Columbia Glacier.

Captured between May 2007 and September 2011, by the photographer and his team, the stunning images show the the alarming rate at which the world is losing its precious glaciers.

Balog is the founder of the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most wide-ranging photographic study of glaciers ever conducted.

So far, the EIS team has installed 27 time lapse cameras at 15 sites in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and in the Rocky Mountains.

Now Balog is planning to expand EIS to British Colombia, Canada, CBC reports.

Once a climate change skeptic himself, Balog believes our actions are dangerously accelerating global warming.

"Shrinking glaciers are the canary in the global coal mine," Balog told the Idaho Press. "They are the most visible, tangible manifestations of climate change on the planet today."

On their website, the Extreme Ice Survey explains the effects of melting glaciers on the global climate.

The melting fresh water from glaciers alters the ocean, not only by directly contributing to the global sea level rise, but also because it pushes down the heavier salt water, thereby changing what scientists call the THC, or Thermo (heat) Haline (salt) Circulation, meaning currents in the ocean. This has an immediate effect on the near region, such as the north Atlantic off the coast of Greenland, but ultimately the impacts can ripple far beyond the immediate area and climate.

If you like James Balog's time lapse video, you won't want to miss "Chasing Ice", a film documenting the pioneering climate change work of Extreme Ice Survey, which will premiere Jan. 21 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Comments

[OhManOhMan]

01:52 PM on 01/17/2012

Time to get a house boat.

[sunsetter]

01:29 PM on 01/17/2012

This story is too funny - making its rounds on all the AGW proponent sites. You have all been duped by 4 years of data. If you present 10 years worth of cooling the AGW crowd says it is not enough data.

How's this for some historical perspective Glacier Bay Alaska - been retreating for 250 years.

Don't believe me check for yourself.
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/fieldwork2.html

[alteredstory]

10:20 AM on 01/18/2012

You're lying, actually.

We're not objecting to ten years of cooling - it's 10 years of "cooling" that were carefully selected to ignore the years before and after that show it's been warming.

Also, AGW theory has almost 200 years of data. http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate_science_history.php

[XanS]

08:29 AM on 01/17/2012

I think the problem with glaciers is in dissecting the natural climate signal (internal variability) from the anthropogenic signal. This is what's tough. However, saying that you can't dispute the physics of global warming!

[gallon]

08:59 AM on 01/17/2012

Filtering out the natural signal is what Foster and Rahmsdorf attempt in a recent study.
Their conclusion is that warming has been constant throughout.


Foster, Grant, and Stefan Rahmstorf, Global Temperature Evolution 1979–2010, Environ.
Res. Lett., vol. 6, p. 044022, October-December 2011
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022

[milty]

10:32 PM on 01/16/2012

Been there, done that.

http://www.real-science.com/new-giss-data-set-heating-arctic

[doriath22]

08:31 PM on 01/16/2012

No doubt the trolls will find a way to explain this away,as well

[sunsetter]

01:31 PM on 01/17/2012

No, we will let the USGS do it for us.
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/fieldwork2.html

Notice that glacier bay has been in retreat for over 200+ years. This guys video mixes seasons and is just 4 years - not enough time to determine a climate effect - just weather.

[doriath22]

06:02 PM on 01/17/2012

How convenient

[Jeremyewilliams]

07:11 PM on 01/16/2012

Remember, the glaciers are in the the conspiracy too!!!

[MelanieHill]

03:09 PM on 01/16/2012

"Chasing Ice" premiere date was changed to Monday, January 23rd!

[jonoruf]

11:48 AM on 01/16/2012

Vast methane plumes found in arctic sea:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vast-methane-plumes-seen-in-arctic-ocean-as-sea-ice-retreats-6276278.html

[sunsetter]

01:32 PM on 01/17/2012

Funny, the arctic sea is presently covered in ice.

[ILoveFiction]

04:54 AM on 01/18/2012

That happens sometimes in winter.

[Richard Lanum]

11:30 AM on 01/16/2012

The active carbon cycle, for a long long time, has not included the carbon that has been stored as oil, coal and natural gas. When fossil fuel is burnt, the carbon enters the active carbon cycle. That is not mother nature or natural. We have altered the carbon cycle and that is part of the global warming problem.

[greenearthman]

10:38 AM on 01/16/2012

I know climate change is real and am convinced that we are responsible for it but this video is not one I would show to someone who is unconvinced. It's not that good.

[sunsetter]

01:33 PM on 01/17/2012

Then show them this -
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/fieldwork2.html

Glaciers in retreat for 200+ years (perhaps cars were actually invented in 1750).

[Llib Noswad]

09:40 AM on 01/16/2012

Mother nature at work.

[Jeremyewilliams]

07:14 PM on 01/16/2012

...what?

[No Dogma Freedom]

01:35 AM on 01/16/2012

The debate here about Co2 and Methane: is away in part to forget the whole:

Climate Change is interrelated -

Man's is forcing a change- faster then can be found at anytime outside say a asteroid hitting the earth

The domino effect from Co2 is extreme - all natives and nature born people are reporting major changes and so are all scientists: 9 out of 10 - Man made, and the ones that do not - work for oil and gas companies.

Global Warming 101

What is global warming? Think of a blanket, covering the Earth.
When CO2 and other heat-trapping emissions are released into the air, they act like a blanket, holding heat in our atmosphere and warming the planet.

Overloading our atmosphere with carbon has far-reaching effects for people all around the world—more extreme storms, more severe droughts, deadly heat waves, rising sea levels, and more acidic oceans, which can affect the very base of the food chain.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/global_warming_101/

[carolineeaton]

01:59 AM on 01/16/2012

Hi "No Dogma Freedom":). I never forget the Earth. I have a deep abiding love for her. We are in a normal global warming trend, but we are experiencing climate change because we above what normal warming would be because of the excess of green house gases, caused by deforestation (normally would rid us of even excess CO2), and pollutants (CO2 and methane: produced by fossil fuels, coal, cows, landfills, improper use of resources with overpopulation, etc.), which in turn affect the tides and weather. Normal global warming is part of the earth's process, but further warming is not, and the increased warming acts as a catalyst to produce more methane, which is about 23X more potent than CO2 as a dangerous green house gas. Our forests have declined to a critical point, and those left are affected by the warming trend. In the planetary cycles of warming and ice ages, we are also at a stage of depletion in our minerals, which also affects our forests. There is not doubt, not if people consult the facts. We have gone past the point of denial that we are pushing the limits with deforestation and pollution. It is no longer even an option.

[Jeremy Bursac]

12:33 AM on 01/16/2012

So the maker of this time lapse was recently a climate change denier? An explanation of what he was thinking during that time might be illuminating, or at least funny, you know, like asking a newly out Republican closet case with a long history of homophobia what he was thinking while in the closet.

[Conservative666]

12:00 AM on 01/16/2012

Climate Changes, duh. That is why they change the scared tactic from "global warming," because the only constant is change.

BTW, did you see the story that it would be more economical to focus on methane and soot to slow down "AGW" than C02?

[carolineeaton]

12:35 AM on 01/16/2012

CO2 is still the greatest problem.

[Jeremy Bursac]

12:40 AM on 01/16/2012

I would say methane is the more "impactful" of the two on a relative parts per million basis. Whether there will be a comparable amount of methane released as there is co2 generated probably depends on Siberia's tundra, so this quibbling might be semantic only.

[No Dogma Freedom]

01:53 AM on 01/16/2012

Here are two neat links and C Miller in Sustaining the Earth gives you the big Picture

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/global_warming_101/

http://www.nyas.org/Topic.aspx?tid=4abf83fb-600c-40ee-ad11-6d49e64cb34d

[Jeremy Bursac]

12:37 AM on 01/16/2012

The warming is not consistent over the globe equally. It's warming more at the poles. Along the way there will be (are) more weather extremes, including more snow or monsoons in some places at some times. Climate change is more accurate - not that you care.

Methane is a more dangerous greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide, but all these greenhouse gases - do you believe in a greenhouse effect from such gases at all? - emanate principally from the same fossil fuel dynamic. So you're not making a point - not that you care.

[carolineeaton]

01:08 AM on 01/16/2012

I think people that don't understand it as climate change also don't understand that deforestation is a big factor, too.

[makoce]

10:16 PM on 01/15/2012

Anomalocaris is the mightiest creature Jesus ever placed on the face of the ocean. I bite my thumb at your evolutionary predictions. Age of the fishes, BAH!! Those who do not remember the Ediacaran are doomed to repeat it. That's the one thing we know for certain.

[TeebagsKiLLingAMERICA]

02:27 AM on 01/16/2012

Boy that Paleozoic Era was a hoot too, but now is now and we cannot recreate an era or even avoid a similar or worse one either.