Global warming in the frame

DRAMATIC CAPTURE: The cameras shot every half-hour during daylight.

There is a dwindling band of people who claim they do not believe in climate change. Some just want to be ornery, some because it is a nice little earner on the speaking circuit (Lord Monkton springs to mind), and a few scientists who claim, with some justification, that much of the earlier evidence consisted of computer models, statistics and projections, which can be subject to many variables, and finally, how could a (relatively) huge planet such as ours be affected by our (relatively) slight foothold and influence?

These sceptics are getting fewer as more and more evidence comes in. The trouble is that climate change, though extremely rapid by geologic criteria, is still slow, and difficult to separate out from weather.

However, things are changing, and harder evidence is coming to light.

James Balog, an American professional photographer and previous self-confessed sceptic, has been studying the effect of climate change on the world's glaciers. He realised that people didn't want graphs and charts, they wanted understandable, visual evidence, and he thought extending his pilot glacier study might provide this. He is conducting a survey of glaciers across the Northern Hemisphere by setting up time-lapse surveillance cameras in 43 locations in Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Canada, the Nepalese Himalayas by Mount Everest, and the US Rocky Mountains. The cameras shoot every half-hour during daylight. This study has been going on since 2007, and is apparently still active. Nearly a million time-lapse images show the dramatic retreat of the glaciers and ice sheets, contracting by up to 100 feet vertically in only a few years.

Balog has made several films of his work. The one I have seen is the 75-minute Chasing the Ice and it is stunning. The ice itself is ridiculously photogenic, but the main event is the incredible retreat of the glaciers, both during the study itself and from previous, longer-term levels which can easily be identified. Making the film was not straightforward. The cameras had to be visited at frequent intervals. Early cameras malfunctioned, some were damaged or were displaced. Balog himself had to interrupt the study for knee surgery.

The photographs are breath-taking - and frightening, as changes are taking place at such a rate that they will soon threaten our way of life in ways we cannot yet measure. As Balog says, his worry was that his daughters would ask him, in 25 years' time, what he did to avert this catastrophe, as he knew what was happening. He will be able to say that he did everything he knew how to do.

I think there are many people who do believe in climate change, but feel passive about it, possibly because it has not had any obvious effect on us here yet. But we are not powerless, and if you believe Balog's material, something awesome and terrible is going on and showing no signs of abating. We cannot keep polluting the planet, and politicians worldwide must be forced to take the lead in counteracting climate change.

- Ian Sutherland is a retired pathologist who has lived and worked in many, predominantly warm countries and has always had an interest in conservation and environmental matters.