Tag: earth

A Bright Climate Future Shines in ‘What’s Possible’

Created specifically for, and presented to world leaders at the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit in New York, this cool short film portrays climate change as a challenging, but solvable problem. Written by Scott Z. Burns, and produced by Lyn Davis Lear, it features the narration of none other than Morgan Freeman and stirring music by composer Hans Zimmer. Its hopeful tone reminds me of the reboot of Cosmos which recently aired on FOX which also dealt in-part with global warming.

By itself, ‘What’s Possible’ is just a single, small step on our journey to dealing with man-made climate change. Hopefully, the world leaders who experienced it, understood its message and what it means for future generations. Time is growing ever-shorter to deal with climate change which will surely be humanity’s defining challenge for the next 50 years. As Carl Sagan said in his famous essay The Pale Blue Dot:

“The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.”

Will our species stand up as Carl said, or will we continue to be consumed with short-term monitory greed and political posturing? I prefer to think we’ll come to our senses and do, not only what’s possible, but what’s right.

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Greenland’s Disappearing Ice Lakes

While the battle rages between climate deniers and the consensus of the scientific community, strange things are afoot in Greenland. The PBS series NOVA documents the country’s rapidly changing landscape with the help of survey photographer James Balog. Extreme Ice is broken into six parts but the most ominous segment deals with Greenland’s strange disappearing lakes.

In recent years the summer melt season in Greenland has grown hotter and now lasts two weeks longer than it did only a decade ago. This has resulted in huge, fresh water lakes forming on the ice sheet surface. Some of these lakes are miles in diameter and up to 50 feet deep. Although these melt lakes contain hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, satellite imagery has recorded their disappearances in just the span of a few hours. Years ago it was believed the water was simply re-absorbed into the surrounding ice, but recent surveys have discovered something more dangerous. The water is boring down through the ice to the bedrock below and lubricating the entire ice sheet of Greenland. The implications of this, if true, are staggering.

One such amazing lake event was witnessed first hand by the NOVA team and documented for the special. The entire 60 minute broadcast is available on the PBS website and is worth your time. Watching these incredible frozen landscape melt away is strangely beautiful but deeply unsettling. As climate skeptics dominate the media and introduce measures in government bent on denying action to stop the effects of man-made warming, Greenland is slowly but surely slipping away. The debate about what’s causing climate change may never end, but the real question now is what are we doing to prepare for the coming disaster?