The debate over climate change is an issue of perception, not of facts and figures. This is the argument made by James Balog, a climate scientist and longtime nature photographer. There’s a flawed sense that climate change simply doesn’t exist because you can’t see it, he explains.
“Chasing Ice” is a documentary about perception and about images. It’s a gorgeous looking overview of nature at the top of the world and a new, practical way of viewing science and global warming threats that skeptics for years have dared to ignore.
Two years since this film has been released, Balog may view the climate change debate as less of one of perception and more of sheer insolence and extreme partisan politics, but this film holds up as very hard to argue with.
Balog took a team of photographers and scientists to capture photos of deteriorating glaciers (“retreating” is the official term) every hour of every day. They installed automated cameras on computerized timers in cases made to withstand harsh weather conditions beside glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and Montana. Balog then used those images in a time-lapse video to demonstrate how rapidly these glaciers are disappearing before our eyes.
It’s stark visual evidence in a way rarely demonstrated. One glacier had the icy portion melt the vertical height of the Empire State Building. Another camera captured a glacier “calving” off a jagged ice peninsula the size of Manhattan. Glaciers to many may just be ice, but they’re mountains of nature that are vanishing into our oceans and threatening to envelop our coastlines.
What’s more depressing is to see the sheer architectural beauty of the Arctic glaciers being lost to human conditions. Balog’s photography is remarkable, and “Chasing Ice” is as much a film about appreciating sights as it is about social change. Director Jeff Orlowski embodies the film with engaging details about the craft and production challenges behind a project of this magnitude, and he amplifies their struggle to get the material they need with daredevil suspense of scientists repelling down glacier sides into bottomless cravasses.
“Chasing Ice” becomes a story of determination and chilly commitments to preserve the beauty seen in every moment of this film. What we see in this documentary from Orlowski and Balog is an urgent need for change. It’s hard to imagine a climate denier even bothering to watch this film, but then convincing everyone is just a matter of perception.