"Ninety five percent of the glaciers in the world are retreating or shrinking... there is no scientific dispute about that"


Photographer James Balog shares new image sequences from the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2009, July 2009 in Oxford, England. Duration: 19:22)

James Balog and the Extreme Ice Survey were featured in a one-hour documentary on NOVA/PBS on March 24, 2009. The film follow[ed] James as he photographs spectacular landscapes in Alaska, Greenland, and Iceland and, with his team, collects images from his time-lapse cameras.

A huge chunk of ice has broken off a glacier bordering Greenland in what scientists are calling the biggest event in the Arctic in nearly half a century.

The chunk is now headed for the Nares Strait, the shipping waterway between Greenland and Canada, where it could fuse to nearby land.

While thousands of icebergs calve off Greenland's glaciers annually, the rare size of this one has left scientists scrambling to understand the implications.

Al Jazeera's Charlie Angela reports.

Originally published at TomDispatch.com

After a week away, here’s my advice: in news terms, you can afford to take a vacation.  When I came back last Sunday, New Orleans was bracing for tough times (again).  BP, a drill-baby-drill oil company that made $6.1 billion in the first quarter of this year and lobbied against “new, stricter safety rules” for offshore drilling, had experienced an offshore disaster for which ordinary Americans are going to pay through the nose (again).  News photographers were gearing up for the usual shots of oil-covered wildlife (again).  A White House -- admittedly Democratic, not Republican -- had deferred to an energy company’s needs, accepted its PR and lies, and then moved too slowly when disaster struck (again).

Okay, it may not be an exact repeat. Think of it instead as history on cocaine.  The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, already the size of the state of Delaware, may end up larger than the disastrous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, and could prove more devastating than Hurricane Katrina.  Anyway, take my word for it, returning to our world from a few days offline and cell phone-less, I experienced an unsettling déjà-vu-all-over-again feeling.  What had happened was startling and horrifying -- but also eerily expectable, if not predictable.

And, of course, when it came to our frontier wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- you remember them, don’t you? -- repetition has long been the name of the game, though few here seem to notice.  With an immigration crisis, Tea Partying, that massive oil spill, and a crude, ineptly made car bomb in Times Square, there’s already enough to worry about.  Isn’t there? 

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Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world's weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating

Satellite images of polar ice sheets taken in July 2006 and July 2007 showing the retreating ice during the summer.
[View larger image]

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For years as the planet warms the arctic icecap has been melting and retreating.

Many of us have long known that arctic wildlife like polar bears, gray whales, killer whales, narwhals, seals, and arctic fish and bird populations, as well as arctic coastal human settlements, are in danger of eventual extinction as their natural habitat has been retreating, but what most of us haven't known is the extent and speed of the retreat.

Because of recent ice loss, Arctic surface air temperatures are warmer than normal, and much warmer than scientists expected to find.

As the ice has been melting the growing spans of open water absorb more sunlight than the ice previously did, so as more open water becomes uncovered, the remaining ice will melt more quickly. This will itself accelerate the rate of warming and lead to more ice loss. In addition, global climate change is likely to drive warmer ocean currents into the Arctic region.

You get the picture. What has developed is a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic, and for the rest of the planet, and for all life on Earth. It's been nice knowing you.

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