After watching Chasing Ice in class this week I can say without a doubt that
Global Warming is real world problem and is something that we, the human race,
needs to consider heavily if we are to continue to have a future on this
planet. The film traces the landscape photography of James Balog (once a
climate change skeptic) and his “Extreme Ice Survey” project; using time-lapse
film Balog was able to trace the erosion of a number of the world’s glaciers,
as they broke down and melted into the surrounding ocean waters. This added
material has the potential to sink island nations and displace countless other
peoples who live along coasts with rising sea levels and also makes the ocean
water much more acidic as well. The environmental consequence of our
exceedingly destructive human practices is something that needs to change,
however it seems that the powers that be are entirely unwilling to alter their
course or recognize the negative impact that they are having on our global
environment. Through the film Chasing Ice
Balog hopes to illustrate this point for these corporations and politicians who
are essentially signing away the future of our natural environment.
By making the changes that are happening to our planet indelibly visible through photography, Balog and other environmental activists are hoping to convey the immediacy of the situation to the widest audience possible. The major problem with the whole Global Warming theory is that it is more of an economic and political issue than an ecological one, directly because it is theoretical and therefore unproven. Big oil and the companies behind the multitude of new fossil fuel refining technologies, as well as the politicians that support them, claim that Global Warming is a hoax; they understand it as a form of fear mongering to push the world towards renewable energies, definitely out of line with their agendas. However with the kind of information gathering and eventual proof that Chasing Ice presents, it is becoming increasingly difficult to simply dismiss the problem and the culprits behind it. Even in the more popular media that I experience on a daily basis, although usually through social media, outlets like National Public Radio and other new sources I follow are beginning to report much more consistently on the climate change problem, even if this information is often indirectly related to the issue.
Friday I read an article from NPR online entitled "Telltale Rainbow Sheens Show Thousands Of Spills Across the Gulf" by Bob Marshall, concerning the massive amounts of oil that is leaking into the Gulf from shoddy pipelines and spills of BP and various other big oil companies. It details how Jonathan Henderson of the Gulf Restoration Network is flying all over the Louisiana coast looking for these spills in an attempt to make the mammoth matter of climate change public knowledge and expose the economic atrocities these corporations are committing against our natural environment. Although this article does not directly relate to climate change, it illustrates how our current practices and the lack of restrictions on them are destroying the natural landscape we are exploiting. On NPR I also came across an article detailing how an "Ancient Landscape Is Found Under 2 Miles Of Ice In Greenland" by Bill Chappel published on the same day (4/19/14). These new findings not only fall in line with those of Balog in Chasing Ice but also concludes with a warning "that the ice sheet's survival of earlier periods of global warming doesn't necessarily mean it can survive the current warming trend in global temperatures... If we keep our current trajectory, the ice sheet will not survive. And once you clear it off, it's really hard to put it back on" (Chappel). We know the damage that we have and continue to cause to this planet. The problem right now is making people care enough to want to change things.
Follow these links to National Public Radio online to read or listen to the articles I mentioned in this post (for some reason I can't get hyperlinks to work so please copy and paste these links into your browser URL):
www.npr.org/2014/04/19/304707516/telltale-rainbow-sheens-show-thousands-of-spills-across-the-gulf?
www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/19/304914190/ancient-landscape-is-found-under-two-miles-of-ice-in-greenland?
By making the changes that are happening to our planet indelibly visible through photography, Balog and other environmental activists are hoping to convey the immediacy of the situation to the widest audience possible. The major problem with the whole Global Warming theory is that it is more of an economic and political issue than an ecological one, directly because it is theoretical and therefore unproven. Big oil and the companies behind the multitude of new fossil fuel refining technologies, as well as the politicians that support them, claim that Global Warming is a hoax; they understand it as a form of fear mongering to push the world towards renewable energies, definitely out of line with their agendas. However with the kind of information gathering and eventual proof that Chasing Ice presents, it is becoming increasingly difficult to simply dismiss the problem and the culprits behind it. Even in the more popular media that I experience on a daily basis, although usually through social media, outlets like National Public Radio and other new sources I follow are beginning to report much more consistently on the climate change problem, even if this information is often indirectly related to the issue.
Friday I read an article from NPR online entitled "Telltale Rainbow Sheens Show Thousands Of Spills Across the Gulf" by Bob Marshall, concerning the massive amounts of oil that is leaking into the Gulf from shoddy pipelines and spills of BP and various other big oil companies. It details how Jonathan Henderson of the Gulf Restoration Network is flying all over the Louisiana coast looking for these spills in an attempt to make the mammoth matter of climate change public knowledge and expose the economic atrocities these corporations are committing against our natural environment. Although this article does not directly relate to climate change, it illustrates how our current practices and the lack of restrictions on them are destroying the natural landscape we are exploiting. On NPR I also came across an article detailing how an "Ancient Landscape Is Found Under 2 Miles Of Ice In Greenland" by Bill Chappel published on the same day (4/19/14). These new findings not only fall in line with those of Balog in Chasing Ice but also concludes with a warning "that the ice sheet's survival of earlier periods of global warming doesn't necessarily mean it can survive the current warming trend in global temperatures... If we keep our current trajectory, the ice sheet will not survive. And once you clear it off, it's really hard to put it back on" (Chappel). We know the damage that we have and continue to cause to this planet. The problem right now is making people care enough to want to change things.
Follow these links to National Public Radio online to read or listen to the articles I mentioned in this post (for some reason I can't get hyperlinks to work so please copy and paste these links into your browser URL):
www.npr.org/2014/04/19/304707516/telltale-rainbow-sheens-show-thousands-of-spills-across-the-gulf?
www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/19/304914190/ancient-landscape-is-found-under-two-miles-of-ice-in-greenland?
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