Chasing Ice

Since hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern seaboard of the US several weeks ago, the theme of resilient communities has been at the forefront. Coupled with resiliency the impact of climate change has been the underlying theme. One of the greatest challenges of understanding climate change is seeing the connections of episodic weather patterns over time. In addition, witnessing the changes on our planet has been difficult to grasp.

The movie Chasing Ice, Directed and Produced by Jeff Orlowski and featuring the stunning photography of James Balog provides a stunning record of the impact of climate change as reflected on the vanishing ice around the globe. The film conveys the beauty and horror of witnessing melting glaciers in Alaska, Greenland, Iceland among other locations. We learn about Balog's and his team's determination to document the vanishing ice while photographing the melting ice under very harsh conditions over several years.

The melting ice caps and calving glaciers provide a visible and powerful way of seeing how rapidly our planet is changing. And we see how real these changes are and what actions we must take. The website provides useful resources on how to support the scientific work and how to get involved.

Similar to Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, which elevated the climate crisis to a global level, Chasing Ice will likely follow suit in alerting us about the incredible impacts of our fast changing climate as seen through the melting of glaciers. The movie succeeds in illustrating the passion of James Balog in his quest to tell the story of the vanishing ice, and why we all should wake up and do what we can to reduce the impact of the climate crisis.