The awareness of the vulnerability of mankind is growing apace.
Last Thursday, I wrote a piece called The year of separation.
Photograph: James Balog/Extreme Ice Survey
When researching material for that article, I came across the official trailer for the film Chasing Ice. The fact that this film is being shown in cinemas and movie theaters across the world is highly relevant.
Because it demonstrates that there is a public appetite for such a film otherwise it would never had made it as a film project.
But not only that, read some of the reviews mentioned on the Chasing Ice website.
From The Guardian newspaper:
- The Guardian, Thursday 13 December 2012 17.20 EST
Jeff Orlowski’s documentary begins as a straightforward biographical profile, before shifting up into something more urgent, impassioned and compelling. Its subject, James Balog, is a photographer who goes to extremes to prove the existence of global warming: his latest expedition involves descending Arctic cliff faces to fit time-lapse cameras with which to monitor glacial erosion.
The review concludes, thus:
If any film can convert the climate-change sceptics, Chasing Ice would be it: here, seeing really is believing.
Then there is the review in The Observer newspaper:
The Observer, Saturday 15 December 2012
Jeff Orlowski’s first-rate documentary begins with complacently smug anti-global-warming clips from Fox News and from the owner of America’s weather channel. It then introduces the persuasive environmentalist James Balog, a celebrated photographer working for National Geographic, who became fascinated with what glaciers can teach us about our changing planet.
In 2007 he set up the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), a well-funded project to monitor glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Montana, the Alps, Canada and Bolivia, and the results – photographed using state-of-the-art time-lapse cameras – are sensational in their beauty, terror and the irrefutable evidence they provide of the rapidity with which age-old ice packs are melting away. It’s like watching our world disappear.
Let’s come this side of the ‘Pond’. Here’s a review in The Kansas City Star:
BY MICHAEL O’SULLIVAN
The Washington Post
“Chasing Ice” aims to accomplish, with pictures, what all the hot air that has been generated on the subject of global warming hasn’t been able to do: make a difference.
The documentary by Jeff Orlowski follows nature photographer James Balog as he documents melting glaciers, beginning in 2007, in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland and Montana. Called the Extreme Ice Survey, the project works like this: Balog sets up still cameras that have been programmed to take a picture, once every hour, for three years, of the same glacier from a fixed spot.
Concluding:
“Chasing Ice” will make an impact, that’s for sure. Whether it can be said to have been effective remains to be seen. This portrait of a man on a mission moves us, not by showing us what we’ve already lost, but what’s still at stake.
My final dip into the review pot is from America Magazine – The National Catholic Review.
The Cold Hard Truth
The bracing ‘Chasing Ice’
Anyone with a desire to preserve our planet has no choice but to see Chasing Ice, the gorgeous, inventive documentary released last month. As of this writing it has been shown to selected audiences but has yet to reach the popularity of a film like “An Inconvenient Truth.” Give it time, however, and hopefully further promotion, because it is truly revelatory. Produced by Paula DuPré Pesmen and Jerry Aronson and directed by Jeff Orlowski, the film is a unique pictorial about global warming, which left me impressed, thoughtful and sad.
Wil Lepkowski closes with these words,
Take the time to see “Chasing Ice,” even if it is not the type of film you would typically see. These are not typical times. We must begin to act. In the wake of a devastating hurricane on the East Coast of the United States, the United States may finally be taking steps to address climate change. Ordinary citizens must take on a greater role too. We cannot dwell on our sadness, but work to provide hope for our children, who will suffer the most if we continue to ignore the disaster on the horizon.
So you get the message!
Here’s that film trailer. And make a note to go to the website of the Extreme Ice Survey and ponder on what you can do to make a difference. That’s the broad ‘you’ by the way. The one that includes you and me and all those on this planet that want to make a difference.
Learning from Dogs 
some people even feel that this melting of ice will open up shipping route in the Artic Region and probably good for agriculture in nearby region, just have to weight the pros and cons of the melting ice !
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There are no ‘pros’ as I’m sure you realise. In fact, the lessening of sunlight reflection from the diminishing white ice will hasten the warming of the polar seas. Already the polar regions are warming much more quickly than the rest of the planet.
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Assuming that this film was out on General Release and I missed it, I would be annoyed that I have just cancelled (or suspended) my LoveFim (DVD’s sent to me by post) account – and that Blockbuster has just gone into administration… However, a quick Google search suggests that maybe it was not ever on General Release – but rather it is being shown where people express a desire to see it so… please excuse me while I go and telephone my local cinemas…
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You are right, Martin. It was not on general release. You have usefully included the link in your comment that details where the film is showing.
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… and I find myself wondering why important films like this aren’t on general release. You have to really dig to find them.
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Like you I, too, wonder about so much these days.
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I had this crazy idea a while back that social change could be effectively promoted by “gifts-with-an-obligation“. My few experiments with the idea suggested that attaching an obligation to the gift changed the way in which the item was perceived, so making the concept counter-productive. Nevertheless, sight unseen, I’ve placed a pre-order with dogwoof for Chasing Ice: not just one copy, but several, so that I can help spread the message.
For those with a flair for organising, Dogwoof’s ‘Popup Cinema‘ concept is worth a look, too…
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Oh just love that link to Popup Cinema from where I find:
So a double thank-you, Mr. P.
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There is a Pop-up Cinema link is on the Chasing Ice webpage. Therefore, I have so far invited 3 local venues to consider applying to be a pop-up cinema.
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Thanks for this posting…this phenomenon is not happening only in the Arctic and Greenland, but all over! I have hiked many times up to Mt.Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada over the years. This past year (2012) in August, Ghost Glacier collapsed causing much damage to the park and hiking trails, fortunately the damage swept over the area at night and not during the busy daytime which would have been more of a disaster. The incredible beauty of this place is vanishing and becoming inaccessible. Tons of ice crashed into the glacial lake and caused a tsunami of mud, ice and water which has wiped out the trails to the meadows and the roads impassable. Unbelievable, because many memories I have are attached to this place…I may never make it to Greenland and the Arctic, but I know this spot and in a very short time it is now gone…
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The incredible beauty of this place is vanishing and becoming inaccessible.
Thanks for sharing that. A while back. a chap (a mathematical genius, I understand) by the name of Ted Kaczynski had a similar experience, and it sent him on a road that ended up with him being universally maligned. Oh, and: imprisoned for life without parole.
Everywhere I look I see us making a wasteland of paradise, and yet we carry on with business as usual.
(Me, just now.)
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To Mr. P and Madam B.
Your comments are powerfully touching. They bring out very mixed emotions in me. Ranging from gratitude that you take the time to visit this place and leave your thoughts. (Gratitude is not the right word but can’t find the perfect word just now – it’s a mix of being inspired by so many comments, sadness about where mankind has got itself, anger that we are all so stupid, a smidgin of hope that we may pull ourselves out, etc, etc.)
Mr. P you write about carrying on with business as usual but I have this scary feeling in my waters that by the time we reach December 31st, 2013 very few will be left who don’t realise that the future, the very near future, is of a world that few of us will find familiar.
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Thank you, Paul, for providing such thought-provoking material!
With reference to the unfamiliar very near future, you’re in good company — Guy McPherson (at about twenty minutes into his talk ‘The Twin Sides of the Fossil Fuel Coin‘) lists many people who anticipate an imminent collapse to the reality we’ve all come to accept as ‘normal’. I, too, feel it’s very close: and yet I still can’t do even the simple things that I think it makes sense to do, such as buy a few clockwork-powered hand torches, and lay in a stock of toilet paper (which may sound nuts, but I have long believed that toilet paper would be as good as currency after collapse). My only explanation for this is that I, too, am still in denial.
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Or buy in a mountain of dog food! We have 10 of these wonderful animals, 3 of whom are asleep on our bed as I write this. Will make a point of listening to that talk.
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