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Himani PatelAssignment 1 Draft 2

Documentary: Chasing Ice

Description of the Location:

This documentary takes place in western Greenland, mainly in the small town of Ilulissat, with population of about 4,500, which overlooks the Disko Bay. Disko Bay is the opening for the Jakobshvan glacier and is littered with icebergs due to constant calving of the glacier. It is a wide open area of water and is surrounded by the glacier on 3 sides. The glacier is massive and covers most of the western Greenland area. With the exception of sea gulls, there are no other animals found or seen in the area.

Figured World: It is a large community with specialized groups within it. It consists of actors, artifacts and discourse communities.

Rules and Conventions:

The Extreme Ice survey was a very dangerous expedition and therefore, safety is the biggest priority. To participate in this figured world, you need to have a strong background in Meteorology and Climate change patterns. There is a strict policy on what you should wear when you are walking across the glacier. You are expected to wear multiple layers of clothing instead of one heavy coat, ice boots, a head gear, and a muffler, to keep you warm and a backpack with your essentials. The backpack should not be too heavy that it wears you out, but it should also have all the things you might need in case of an accident or emergency such as food, tents, water purifier, etc. Another important rule is not to take unnecessary risks such as go too close to the edge of the ice cliff overlooking a huge, bottomless ditch. An unspoken rule is that if one of the team members is hurt or injured, you try to get a helicopter there but keep moving and leave him behind. This happened when the lead, James Balog, hurt his knee and the team just left him in a tent and kept going. Since the journey is being recorded and going to be viewed by audience of all ages, you cannot use foul language no matter how harsh the weather gets. You cannot joke around (horseplay and such) on the field of study (the glacier) because it is a very sensitive place and any anyone could very easily fall and die.

Actors: The people who populate the figured world. The follow the rules and conventions and are expected to behave a certain way.

Dr. Jacob Box: Dr. Box in a Nobel Peace Prize winning scientist. He has made sixteen expeditions to the Greenland ice sheet since 1994 and his time on the inland ice exceeds 1 year. He was awarded a NASA grant to support the installation and maintenance of Greenland Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) cameras. Dr. Box is active in Greenland field work for EIS and is using EIS photos from Greenland to measure glacier speed changes, putting precise numbers on glacier flow sensitivity to climate.

James Balog: The lead field expert and photographer from National Geographic. He is an avid mountaineer knows the rough terrain of Greenland and how to navigate through it. To reveal the



impact of climate change, James founded the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most wide-ranging, ground-based, photographic study of glaciers ever conducted.

Dr. Tad Pfeffer: A glaciologist at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Pfeffer is also known for photography and photogrammetry of glaciers and landscapes.

Svavar Jonatansson: He is Balog’s photography assistant. Svavar was born and raised in Iceland.

Artifacts: objects, emotions or ideas that hold a meaning for a group of people.

The Cameras – They are the reason the first trip to Greenland happened. They are significant because they will help the team get data and result they need to prove how much climate change is influencing the polar ice caps.

Fear – This is a unified emotion for the team because it is very windy and there are too many ridges and cracks in the glaciers. It is exemplified when the lead James Balog, who is supposed to be used to the terrain, gets hurt to the point where they have to send for a helicopter.

Discourse community: a group of people within a figured world who share certain goals and work together to achieve them.

Camera set-up crew – This discourse community consists of James Orlowski and Dr. Jacob Box. Their shared goal is to set up cameras across the glacier and Disko Bay. The overcome many obstacles and work hard together to achieve their goal.

Literacy Practices: a form of communication used by the actors of the figured world.

Radio – The field team communicated with the research team in the lab using radios if they needed anything. Also in case something happened and they needed to bring the helicopter in.

Observation notes (Assume 8:00 am to 8:45 am)

8:00 AM: James explains how they are taking 36 cameras, the most sensitive technology, and will be putting them all over the Jakobshvan glacier, the harshest conditions, for the next 6 months. He and Dr. Box start packing the cameras and realize they’ll have to take an extra bag each because they still need to take the hiking gear. After they are done packing their backpacks, they weigh them and find out they will each be carrying 20 pounds.

8:07 AM: The two decide to start near base of the glacier. They are walking along its side when they reach a point where they can climb it easily. James exclaims how beautiful the side sectioning is and it’s a pity that Jakobshvan won’t be here for his grandchildren to see.



8:15 AM: James and Dr. Box are seen trekking half a mile to get to the middle of the glacier. They place their first camera there but in order to keep it safe, they need a small tower to stabilize it over. They call their team for help and a red helicopter comes by and drops off a steady, iron tower where the fix the camera in a plastic box to protect it from the weather.

8:20 AM: Dr. Box hopes the camera survives 6 months because it is at a critical point. He also tells us that the camera will be shot with a laser by the team soon to determine its co-ordinates. James only hopes he is still alive after placing 35 more cameras.

8:30 AM: The scene jumps to James and Box already having placed 27 cameras across the southern Greenland. They are now climbing an ice cliff to place one on top. It ends up being way more difficult than either of them thought it would be. Dr. Box almost loses his footing and slips off. When they finally get to the top, they are exhausted and out of breath. While James is setting up the tent, Dr. Box is sitting nearby repacking the hiking gear and states he never thought he would say this but he misses his desk job.

8:37 AM: They explore the top of the cliff which seems never ending and turns out to be a part of the glacier. It becomes tricky to navigate because there are a lot of deep ridges scattered across the terrain.

8:45 AM: They come across an ice canyon which is deep but is filled with shallow, crystal clear water and it is the most breath taking scene ever. James cannot seem to get over how beautiful it is and mentions, “how was I to know… the world isn’t supposed to look like this.” They walk onwards and place five more cameras at a one and a half mile radius from each other before calling it a day.

Observation notes (The crew returns to collect ice samples 1 month later) (Assume 8:00 – 8:45 am)

8:00 AM: This time, there are two more members added to the crew: Dr. Pfeffer and Svavar Jonatansson. The four trek over to the first site and prepare the ice digging tools. Svavar and Pfeffer joke about how they will probably die (due to the horrible weather conditions) but they are glad they came to Greenland with Dr. Box and James.

8:10 AM: They dig up a sample of ice and secure it in a box to send it over to research lab. Dr. Dr. Pfeffer Box explains how the story is in the ice just like the tree rings. The snow builds up and as more pressure builds up at the top, it turns to ice. The ice holds air bubbles that tell us about the environment and weather conditions at the time it formed.

8:15 AM: While the team is out getting more samples, we are taken to the lab where Dr. Pfeffer is dissecting the ice sample. He uses several machines and microscopes to get out the air bubbles



and separate the Carbon dioxide from other gases in the sample. He spends a long time doing the analysis and extrapolating data.

8:25 AM: Meanwhile, the team has collected 5 more samples along the glacier. They walk towards the edge of the glacier near a camera they placed earlier and James and Box realize it is nowhere near any ice. James says how there used to be ice where Svavar is standing and boom; now it’s gone.

8:35 AM: Dr. Box explains the science behind the receding of glaciers. He tells us how water is one of the fewest chemicals which are denser in liquid state than solid. Hence, as water melts, it sinks underneath a glacier and starts flowing towards the ocean, moving the glacier along with it. Water trying to seep through the ice also creates pressure and splits large chunks of glacier apart. This makes them less viscous (more likely to flow away from the main glacier).

8:45 AM: As the team gets closer to the end of the glacier bay, they witness a huge chunk of glacier calve off. James ends the scene by stating, “You know, they [the glaciers] came from a great, impassive place, and now they're just, they're crumbling into these tiny little blocks of ice going off into the ocean. It's crazy.”

Observation notes (The crew returns to collect photographic samples 3 months later) (Assume 8:00 – 8:45 am)

8:00 AM: The crew is returning for the third time. As they start their trek, James says, “About 20 years ago, I was a skeptic about climate change. I thought it was based on computer models, I thought maybe there was a lot of hyperbole that was turning this into an activist cause.” But most importantly, James states how he didn't think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire huge planet.

8:05 AM: James tells us about the data they have found so far from the photogrammetry and the record that's in the ice cores. Dr. Pfeffer explains how there is history of ancient climate that was embedded in the ice cores and what he found was that in the past, temperature and carbon dioxide have a direct relationship: if one goes up, so does the other and vice versa.

8:10 AM: According to Dr. Box, over the last 800,000 years or so, atmospheric carbon dioxide was never higher that about 280 parts per million. Recent anthropogenic causes started adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and now it's about 390 parts per million. We find out that this is about a hundred times faster than the natural pace of global temperature flux.

8:15 AM: It is summer and the team is making progress along the glacier with much more ease than before. They are about halfway and stop at a camera which appears to be broken. While James, Box and Pfeffer try to fix it, Svavar tells us how the study is going successfully and the



cameras are surviving the weather conditions for the most part. He mentions how they received a grant and are extending the EIS time to one year instead of just six months.

8:25 AM: The team continues on to the journey through wonderfully carved icescape of Jakobshvan glacier and streams of freshwater running alongside it. As they are walking, Dr. Box shares his view on impacts of climate change.

8:27 AM: Dr. Box tells us that we're already seeing impacts even with such small changes. The average global temperature has gone up 0.8 degrees C, about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1850 or so. And yet, plants and animals are already going extinct. He gets teary as he says the next part about how as the climate continues to warm, we're going to lose more and more, species because we're going to have more suppresses happening. We're going to have a mass extinction event that could happen within the next 150 to 200 years.

8:35 AM: As their journey draws to a close, there is sad background music playing and they invite several scientists to talk about Global Warming.

8:40 AM: Dr. Terry Root talks about how the plants that clean our air and water are dying out because they are sensitive to change. She also talks about how pollinators are dying and if they go extinct, we are going to have to pollinate our plants by hand. And they are having to do that in China – having to go out and manually pollinate all their crops.

8:45 AM: The last person to talk is Dr. Thomas Swetnam who explains how forest fires are becoming more and more aggressive, the hurricanes are becoming more powerful, floods are occurring more frequently, all due to the rise in global temperatures.

Interview with James Balog:

*Note this is not an actual interview; the answers were fabricated based on James Balog’s background in climate change and how he feels about Global Warming.

1. What motivates you to voluntarily go to these dangerous places and risk your own life for what most people would call "just research samples?"-People need to see that this is more than just “research.” Also, I could just tell them the data and logistics but they will get nothing out of it so I decided to do the documentary to show them how beautiful our world is and how quickly it is falling apart right before our eyes.

2. Do you think the techniques many nations are implementing on reducing the amount of Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will perhaps play a role in slowing the rate of melting polar ice caps?-No, I don’t think it will ever be enough. While these techniques take away a few amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, twice as much is being added by factories around the world. If the



amount of CO2 we put into the atmosphere was a steady number, it would help but every day, there is a new factory opening up somewhere in a third world nation. We value our economy more than our environment. If we shut down coal factories, it would hurt the economy but if we keep them, they only harm the environment…which we live and breathe in.

3. Suppose we are in 2050s and the polar ice caps have reduced by 80 percent, Give me an example of the kind of policies/protection programs you think need to be taken to ensure the welfare of people living along coastal regions? -There are several options but the amounts of money the government will need to put in are going to be unbelievable. It ranges anywhere from building sea walls to avoid flooding to just relocating everyone towards main land.

4. Tell me about what day to day changes will occur regarding the melting of ice caps - I realize the sea levels will rise and our source of drinking water will decrease, but what other things will be altered or caused by it?-Well, first off all, there is definitely going to be a problem decreased water supply but our bio diversity will also decrease. That is because the polar ice caps are an ecosystem by itself and home to many different types of animals that are very slow to adapt to the rapidly occurring changes. We will lose a lot of land, of course, due to the high sea levels and the salinity of the ocean will be altered due to a difference in balance of salt concentrations.

5. What message do you have for people who think global warming is still just a theory?-At this point, if you still don’t believe in global warming, I don’t know what to tell you. It is real, it is happening, and we are all going to be doomed.

Pictures:

Copyright: The Guardian Magazine

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