Photographer James Balog went from being a climate-change skeptic to documenting our planet's rapidly melting glaciers. In the 2012 film"Chasing Ice" he gathers irrefutable evidence that climate change is real.
Until recently, Balog thought climate change was only based on computer models and hyperbole. "I didn't think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet," he said in the film. "It didn't seem probable, it didn't seem possible."
The turning point came when Balog was sent to the Arctic on an assignment for National Geographic to capture the Earth's changing landscape. This spawned a bigger project — the Expedition Ice Survey — where Balog and his team used time-lapse cameras pointed at glaciers in Europe and North America to document the effects of climate change.
The pictures are gorgeous, but the outlook is bleak: Glaciers are consistently receding every year, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. The film convinced Balog — and many viewers— that humans are largely to blame for rising temperatures.
You can watch the video online through Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes or checkout the highlights in our slideshow version.
Nature photographer James Balog used to be a climate-change skeptic. He is now convinced that global warming is a true crisis.
The turning point came when Balog was assigned to photograph several glaciers for the National Geographic's June 2007 cover story "The Big Thaw."
Glaciers naturally melt and retreat in the summer, and advance again in the winter. But most of the world's glaciers are steadily shrinking.
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