Extreme Ice

A truly frightening video produced by courageous people
This is a truly frightening video. I saw it on PBS. It shows the actual melting of ice on both the northern and southern ends of our planet. The people who made this film truly had courage. There is an element of horror watching a man lower himself into a giant hole in the ice hundreds of feet deep. The footage from Greenland was particularly disturbing, showing how holes in the ice are now opening up inland as the ice melts and water pours from under the ice to the sea. The staff of this show deserves a lot of credit for the courage they showed in going out and getting this footage for us.

Our Ice "in extremis"
This recent documentary has many aspects to recommend it. For one thing, the film footage is beautiful and breathtaking. For another, the film's message is extremely urgent: the effect of today's global warming specifically on the world's ice.

In a nice personal touch, the film follows one particular athlete-photographer as he travels the world to shoot footage of "extreme ice." The title makes it sound like some extreme sport, and indeed it is for him, as he performs daring feats in his noble quest to photograph the "inside story" of global warming processes.

For example, the documentary features close-up footage of bright blue rivers of meltwater racing over Greenland's glaciers under the summer sun. The rivers are absolutely gorgeous. But then we see their horrible fate, as they plunge into gaping holes in the glacial surface and tumble into seemingly bottomless caverns. The photographer actually dangles down into one of them, trying in vain to see any...

Seeing is believing
The combination of art and science is powerful in portraying the most important phenomena of our time, the disappearance of the arctic ice, the canary in the global warming coal mine. The art is grand. The science validates the story. Together they make a gripping drama that today seems far away but in reality is on a fast track to tarnish and threaten our lives.

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