TED Blog » James Balog

On our must-see list: James Balog’s “Chasing Ice”

Kate Torgovnick — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:30:09 +0000

Photographer James Balog grew up skeptical about climate change. But in 2005, he headed to Iceland on assignment for National Geographic and found himself captivated by the spectacular beauty of the icy landscape and devastated by how it was quickly changing before his eyes. Balog had an idea: the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of 25 time-lapse cameras that would document Arctic glaciers as they melted over a period of three years.

At TEDGlobal 2009, Balog shared images from the survey. He explained what led him — an artist — to capture one of the most moving pieces of physical evidence pointing to climate change. He also shared that the project was being expanded, with 33 cameras continuing to capture the damage for a longer period of time.

In the new documentary, Chasing Ice, Balog gives far more of the story than he could in his 18-minute talk. The soaring footage — from the producer of The Cove — shows Balog and his team risking life and limb to set up their cameras, and reveals how they weather-proofed the equipment and made decisions about which scenes to capture. Overall, the film depicts a man on a mission to make everyone on the planet more aware of the irreversible effects of their choices.

Chasing Ice premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and is currently playing in select cities. (See showtimes here.) If it’s not yet in your area, you fill out a petition to get the film in your local theater, or sign up to host your own screening. See Balog’s powerful TED Talk below.

New-wave campaigning for climate change

Jenny Zurawell — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:00:36 +0000

On Saturday, October 17, president Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives will conduct his national cabinet meeting … 20 feet beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. The president and his ministers will carry out the full monty under the sea with wetsuits, compressed-air tanks and even waterproof pens and paperwork to persuade world leaders of the impending danger of global climate change and the necessity of carbon emissions cuts.

Rising sea levels threaten to submerge the Maldives, an archipelago with an average elevation of 2 meters and a population of 396,000, within this century. For more on the risks of rising sea levels, watch James Balog’s talk on extreme ice loss and Lewis Pugh’s talk on swimming the North Pole. And at TEDIndia in Mysore, we’ll hear from Charles Anderson, a marine biologist who studies ocean life in the Maldives.

Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss: James Balog on TED.com

Emily McManus — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Photographer James Balog shares new image sequences from the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2009, July 2009 in Oxford, England. Duration: 19:22)

Watch James Balog’s talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 500+ TEDTalks.

Get TED delivered:
Subscribe to the TEDTalks video podcast via RSS >>
Subscribe to the iTunes video podcast
Subscribe to the iTunes audio podcast
Get updates via Twitter >>
Join our Facebook fan page >>

Subscribe to the TED Blog >>