Watching Chasing Ice, a documentary on glaciers that’s showing in some cinemas this week and which tells how James Balog hit on the idea of dramatising global warming through time-lapse photography, I remembered how former OneWorld journalist Mark Lynas used glacier retreat for his  book High Tide: How Climate Crisis is Engulfing Our Planet.

In an article for The Observer Lynas later recalled a Christmas 2009 slideshow during which his father showed “my favourite photo. A huge, fan-shaped glacier loomed over a small lake” in Peru.

His father, Bry – who still works for OneWorld under the alias of Tiki the Penguin – wondered whether the scene had changed. “That moment,” wrote Lynas junior, “marked the beginning of a three-year journey that would take me across five continents in an often dangerous search for signs of global warming. I was stunned by what I found. The changes were everywhere and people were desperate to talk and to bring attention to their plight in a world that seemed to be unravelling. And, of course, I also retraced my father's steps in Peru, in order to one day come back with my own slides and answer his question.”

His picture of the same spot showed that the glacier had shrunk back almost a kilometre. Exactly what Balog is trying to draw attention to.

 

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