In James Balog’s “Extreme Ice Survey,” begun in 2006, cameras are positioned in remote arctic and alpine areas, automatically photographing the melting of the ice to help calculate precisely the impact of global warming,. According to the Extreme Ice website at the time: “Currently, 34 cameras are deployed at 16 glaciers in Greenlad, Iceland, the Nepalese Himalaya, Alaska and the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. These cameras record changes in the glaciers every half hour, year-round during daylight, yielding approximately 8,000 frames per camera per year.” And the glaciers are quite alive. “Everybody thinks that glaciers are these big, dead, static objects where nothing happens,” Balog remarked. “Well, guess what? . . . they’re reacting to climate all the time. The smaller the glacier, the faster it reacts to the local climate, sometimes in weeks or months.” As a human being and as a father of two girls, he says, “I just can’t stand the thought that it could be our generation that leaves this planet in disastrously damaged condition.” But he believes that there is a crucial role for him and for others: “Dealing with climate change is certainly an economic problem, and it’s certainly a technological problem and a policy problem. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the bigger problem is perceptual and psychological…I want to use the camera as a vehicle for changing perception, […and to keep people] from avoiding responsibility, and keep them from being complacent.”
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