We can talk about warmer and wetter winters, chronic and worsening droughts, and we can discuss how extreme hurricanes and forest fires are the “new normal.” We can look at the statistics and read the reports in Nature and idly imagine how terrible climate change is going to be.
But sometimes you just need to get slapped in the face with a giant glacier come tumbling apart in epic HD. And we have a brand new one to watch, in this segment from photographer James Balog’s documentary Chasing Ice (read our interview with him here).
Videos by VICE
Via the Guardian:
It’s like watching ‘Manhattan breaking apart in front of your eyes’, says filmmaker James Balog. He’s describing the largest iceberg calving ever filmed, as featured in his movie, Chasing Ice. After weeks of waiting, the filmakers witnessed 7.4 cubic km of ice crashing off the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland.
The footage is remarkable, and stands out even from the vast archive of viral glacier-melt porn. Calving glaciers, along with polar bears, comprise the ultimate iconic symbology of global warming–at least until Sandy came along. A bunch of these videos of melting glaciers have hundreds of thousands of views, and, like airplane ballet, almost comprises its own subgenre on YouTube. Watch a couple, and you’ll see why.
Here’s the Holgate Glacier calving, in May 2010, with 1.2+ million:
A quick collapse:
Two big chunks calve off in this one:
Then there’s this one, ostensibly the largest calving at Hubbard glacier, which is notable for the unrestrained glee of the onlookers. They sound like they’re cheering on the hometown football team as the massive swaths of ice falls away.
Watch a chunk of glacier the size of Manhattan break off and float away:
This one’s in New Zealand:
You get the picture. Not all of these are necessarily spurred on by global warming specifically, but many are. And in the world of global warming media, little that hits harder than watching these towering frozen monuments come apart at the seams.
