The Glaciers
Posted: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 1:35 PM by Samuel Singal
Filed Under:
Notes from the field, Environment
By Anne Thompson, NBC News Chief Environmental Affairs Correspondent
After two days camping on Greenland's ice sheet, exploring melt rivers and peering into a giant moulin, I thought nothing else on this island could amaze me. And then we went with photographer Jim Balog to check his time lapse cameras at 4 glaciers.
It was a trip every bit as breathtaking and fascinating as our time on the ice sheet. Much of that has to do with the passion Balog has for his work. This photographer with a masters in geomorphology (land movement) says he was one of the initial doubters about global warming. But as the science moved from climate models to hard evidence he became persuaded. Now his mission is to record what he believes is an important moment in the history of the earth. He is doing that with time lapse cameras placed at glaciers in Alaska, the Alps, Iceland and Greenland. The project is dubbed "Extreme Ice Survey" but as you will see tonight, it looks more like an episode of the reality show "The Amazing Race."
We set out by chopper to visit the cameras. It is a dangerous trip over the ocean and in between mountains. Often our chopper was pushed around by swirling winds. At the insistance of his insurance company and wife, Jim travelled in a yellow neoprene survival suit. No one insisted Mario, Bruce, Curt or I wear such gear. Hmmmmm.
In Greenland, fuel and pilot time are expensive and limited, so you have to move fast to make the most of both. Our first stop was 60 miles north of the island town of Uummannaq, at the Umiamako glacier. The five of us jumped out of the chopper and ran up a mountain then down a mountain to check the cameras. It was exhilirating and frightening all at once. None of us wanted to miss a moment and we all wanted to see what the cameras caught. As we trekked back to the chopper, I couldn't help but think of the final scene in "The Sound of Music" when the Von Trapp family climbs over the Alps to escape the Nazis.
Our next stop was the Rink glacier. Landing a chopper on a mountain is a tricky thing. You need to find a level spot to do it. On our first attempt, we bounced right off the mountain. We tried a couple of more times, but had to give up. This was not an assignment for the faint of heart.
We also visited the Storr and Jakobshavn glacier. Though much of the global warming science involves statistics and climate models, Balog says they are not for him. He loves the land and wants to interact with it. Tonight on Nightly News, you can see what that interaction has produced.
