| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 12/09/2012 : 00:05:12
I don't care if you're a climate change skeptic. In fact, James Balog was, too. Once. He's the National Geographic photographer at the heart of this [pun coming up] chilling documentary of his incontrovertible evidence and implications of no less than the destruction of the planet as we know it.
With the help of various engineers, academics, and glaciologists, Balog set up The Extreme Ice Survey - a long-term project to accumulate time-lapse photographs over several years at various locations in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, and Montana. He and his team, often at great personal risk, recorded the changes in the melt rate of Arctic and other glaciers.
It happens right there in front of your eyes. This is not a film dependent on statistics or graphs or footage that could have been faked. It's the story of a reknown photographer gathering evidence.
Personally I need no convincing. But if you have even the least little hang-nail of doubt about what's been happening to the planet over the past few hundred years, look no further than Chasing Ice.
What you won't get is polemic about whether the change is man-made or not. That's no longer the issue. It's happening. Yes, the world's gone through some bad shit and morphed out to create something else. Many times. That's not the point.
It's the speed of change.
There, in front of your eyes, Balog captures the speed of change. And, yes, that IS down to us. Cockroaches ain't doing it. Orchids ain't doing it. Moss and pelicans and dalmatians ain't doing it. We are.
So, what haunts me is why are there still so many doubters. What is it they actually gain by trying to deflect the truth? What's their real motive to yell the loudest even as they scream the biggest bullshit?
So, it's gotta be cash, doesn't it? It's gotta be some vested interest, whether direct or otherwise, that money must continue to fund the industries that drive their lives of luxury. Or comparative luxury.
So they try to paint the people who are searching for the truth as liars, reds under the bed, pawns of the devil. Whatever.
When, one wonders, when exactly will they accept reality?
Balog includes a powerful image of a peninsula of ice breaking off from a glacier, starting its journey to the ocean, where its melting point will contribute to the rise in global sea levels. Powerful, yes.
Then you learn the big berg is about the size of Manhattan, and its high points are about double the height of the Empire State Building.
This is not a right wing/left wing thing.
Let's face it - if we destroy the world, it will recover. Probably without us, but it will. It may already be too late - who knows? But judging from the idiocy and inaction coming out of the climate change conferences, we're shuffling like zombies to doom.
I hope you won't ignore this film. Click here for more.
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| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| randall |
Posted - 12/12/2012 : 21:36:07
Saw it at Sundance last Jan. Absolutely mind-shattering. My capsule take back then:
CHASING ICE***** (Excellence In Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary) National Geographic photographer James Balog�s cover story on glaciers � one of the most popular ever run in the magazine � inspired him to find a way to literally photograph climate change. For his Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), Balog�s team places thirty cameras in three continents around the Arctic ice shelf and sets them for periodic exposures. It isn�t easy, and in fact a hardware design failure in Balog�s first effort reduces him to tears when the team comes back to check the ruined equipment. Another try meets with success, and even Balog is astonished by what he sees. Ice melts off naturally every summer, then returns with cold weather. But the EIS photos prove that there is no regeneration: the ice shelf is melting out of existence. The EIS crew camps and wait for days to witness the largest glacial �calving� ever recorded: the chunk that falls into the sea is the size of lower Manhattan Island. To Balog�s horror, it doesn�t take years to see the ice pack receding, just months. Some global warming skeptics claim this is a natural geological phenomenon, and for them Balog shows a startling chart. Ice core samples that measure the quality of trapped air can give us readings as far back as 800,000 years. These samples show that though the earth does indeed go through long warming and cooling periods, the amount of carbon dioxide in the Arctic atmosphere has shot off the charts in the last century, and the pace is accelerating. There are two physical wonderments in this film: the dangerous physical effort required by EIS (the obsessed Balog himself has had several knee operations, but continues to rappel like a 20-year-old), and the majestic sights caught by director Jeff Orlowski�s unseen film crew, which is of course undergoing the same trials. The jaw-dropping glory of this gorgeous but forbidding land is disappearing, a rebuke to the foolish talking heads which are seen (and in Rush Limbaugh�s case, heard) in two quick wraparound segments. At least in the Arctic, climate change is real, mankind is almost certainly responsible, and the pace is quickening. This powerful film provides the visual proof. |
| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 12/12/2012 : 11:50:22
I sure hope that this comes here. Sounds amazing! |
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