Upworthy's book GOOD PEOPLE, now available - take a look!

Shop
 Explore 

environment energy

Science

The longest — and probably largest — proof of our current climate catastrophe ever caught on camera.

It was the largest such event ever filmed.

Exposure Labs

All GIFs and images via Exposure Labs.

Photographer James Balog and his crew were hanging out near a glacier when their camera captured something extraordinary. They were in Greenland, gathering footage from the time-lapse they'd positioned all around the Arctic Circle for the last several years.

They were also there to shoot scenes for a documentary. And while they were hoping to capture some cool moments on camera, no one expected a huge chunk of a glacier to snap clean off and slide into the ocean right in front of their eyes.

A glacier falls into the sea.

assets.rebelmouse.io

ocean swells, sea level, erosion, going green

Massive swells created by large chunks of glacier falling away.

assets.rebelmouse.io

It was the largest such event ever filmed.

For nearly an hour and 15 minutes, Balog and his crew stood by and watched as a piece of ice the size of lower Manhattan — but with ice-equivalent buildings that were two to three times taller than that — simply melted away.

geological catastrophe, earth, glacier melt

A representation demonstrating the massive size of ice that broke off into the sea.

assets.rebelmouse.io

As far as anyone knows, this was an unprecedented geological catastrophe and they caught the entire thing on tape. It won't be the last time something like this happens either.

But once upon a time, Balog was openly skeptical about that "global warming" thing.

Balog had a reputation since the early 1980s as a conservationist and environmental photographer. And for nearly 20 years, he'd scoffed at the climate change heralds shouting, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

"I didn't think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet. It didn't seem probable, it didn't seem possible," he explained in the 2012 documentary film "Chasing Ice."

There was too much margin of error in the computer simulations, too many other pressing problems to address about our beautiful planet. As far as he was concerned, these melodramatic doomsayers were distracting from the real issues.

That was then.

The glacier ice continues to erode away.

assets.rebelmouse.io

In fact, it wasn't until 2005 that Balog became a believer.

He was sent on a photo expedition of the Arctic by National Geographic, and that first northern trip was more than enough to see the damage for himself.

"It was about actual tangible physical evidence that was preserved in the ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica," he said in a 2012 interview with ThinkProgress. "That was really the smoking gun showing how far outside normal, natural variation the world has become. And that's when I started to really get the message that this was something consequential and serious and needed to be dealt with."

Some of that evidence may have been the fact that more Arctic landmass has melted away in the last 20 years than the previous 10,000 years.

Watch the video of the event of the glacier calving below:

This article originally appeared nine years ago.

From Your Site Articles

Heroes

This thousands-year-old Alaskan whaling ritual still exists … but maybe not much longer.

Each June, the Inupiat community of Barrow, Alaska, kicks off the summer with a harvest festival called Nalukataq.

This annual ceremonial feast is as full of fun as it is reverence. There's singing and dancing and blanket-tossing and plenty of muktuk (fried whale blubber) and other traditional foods, sandwiched between solemn moments of prayer and reflection. People of every age and gender participate, celebrating their culture and showing their appreciation for the hard work that got them through another frigid winter.

But mostly, the festival is about their beloved bowhead whales.

Walrus-skin trampolines at Nalukataq. All GIFs via EchoSpaces/YouTube.

Barrow is the northernmost town in the United States. Which means that everything from Oreos to toilet paper has to be airlifted in.

Even the most well-stocked supermarkets, which do exist, still need to mark up all their merchandise in order to cover the costs of getting things on the shelves in the first place. As a result, the cost of living there is astronomical, even by today's standards.

Put another way: It's actually easier to get a bunch of people from Barrow together to hunt a whale than it is to buy a box of cereal. After all, a single 90-ton bowhead whale can provide a lot of things for a lot of people, if you know how to put all the parts to good use — which the Inupiat community certainly does.

Just a quick bite of muktuk.

The prospect of whaling might not sound ideal. But it's actually been a staple of the Inupiat culture and diet for more than two millennium.

They're not just tracking and killing these majestic leviathans for fun either; they're doing it because it's a necessary part of their lives.

And that's where the religious aspects of the Nalukataq celebration come into play. The Inupiat see the whale as something sacred, and the festival is their way of giving thanks to these mighty creatures.

"Our people are out on the ice providing the nutritious food from the bowhead whale," explained Inupiat activist Rosemary Ahtuangaruak in an interview with The Guardian. "We cannot replace those foods in our diet — not from shop foods out of a box."

An Inupiat whaler from a family of captains.

In fact, there's a special concession in U.S. law that allows for 50 whales to be hunted each year between all of the Inupiat communities — but absolutely none by commercial whalers.

Again: No one is particularly excited about killing any more of these gargantuan sea mammals. We've all seen the "Save the Whales!" campaigns. But those are more of a response to the commercial whaling industry, which was so eager to profit off the slaughter of these beautiful beasts that it drove the population nearly to extinction in just a few hundred years.

By contrast, the Inupiat found a way to make whaling into a sustainable and sacrosanct practice that allowed the whale population to thrive for thousands of years while also providing necessary food and supplies for their people. And that was long before the U.S. government came along to regulate it, too.

Mmmmm. Muktuk.

It's certainly important to protect the whales. But we would also endanger the Inupiat if we completely took away their livelihood — and they're already in enough danger as it is.

A full 25% of Native Americans and Alaskan Natives live in poverty, which means those marked-up grocery store prices in places like Barrow are just the even-more-frustrating icing on the hardship cake. Without their cherished whaling rituals, they'd have even less access to the food and clothing that they need to make it through the hardest seasons.

Oh, and just to make things even worse, a little thing called climate change is now threatening their ability to provide for themselves as well. Rising temperatures and the influx of industrial oil drilling are threatening to disrupt the migratory patterns of whales and other Arctic animals, too. In fact, there are even some Alaskan communities whose towns are actually melting away thanks in no small part to companies like Shell and oil drilling.

"The ecosystem renewal, which is needed for the many different animals that migrate here, is important because we are feeding our families from the ocean. We must keep this environment pristine," explained Rosemary Ahtuangaruak.

C'mon, that's adorable. You don't want to see that kid get hurt, do ya?

While this is about protecting the whales, it's also about cultural preservation and having respect for all living creatures.

Before we go scolding anyone for killing whales, let's consider the fact that conditions for some Indigenous communities are really bad. So the least we can do is help to preserve one of the few thriving communities left. After all, we're the ones who started this whole environmental mess — so it's up to us to get ourselves out of it, and that includes helping out the people who are suffering the brunt of it.

If you're interested in learning more about the Inupait, here's a wonderful look at the annual Nalukataq whaling festival:

From Your Site Articles

Heroes

31 photos of sculptures that will make you think so many deep thoughts.

Right now in Sydney, Australia, you can walk down a beautiful beach and see dozens of jaw-dropping, mind-bending sculptures.

Billed as the "world's largest annual free-to-the-public outdoor sculpture exhibition," "Sculpture by the Sea" was started 18 years ago on a budget of just $11,000 and now draws over 500,000 visitors a year. These amazing photos were taken by Lisa Maree Williams.

Despite the idyllic setting, the sculptures are — like most art — intended to make you think deep thoughts.

While it's impossible to know which deep thoughts the artists were going for (and it's rude to ask), these are my best guesses. Your deep thoughts may vary. Unlimited deep thoughts per customer.