Documenting the End of Arctic Ice on our Planet

It's imperative to pay attention to the disappearance of ancient ice all over the world. It's not an academic question of "when" this will happen anymore. Global Warming is real. It is happening right now and the effects on our planet will be devastating as temperatures and oceans rise.

I saw parts of the movie "Chasing Ice" on PBS a few months ago, and it is amazing. What they are documenting is historic, awe-inspiring and undeniable. And real.

Earth Vision Trust on Facebook
James Balog on Twitter

We are so thrilled to announce that Chasing Ice will be showing at the United Nations later this month.... fb.me/NT8XELeq

— James Balog,EVT (@earthvisiontrst) December 2, 2012

"A lot of people have told me it's time to stop but I find myself with a profound committment to continuing to tell this story. I feel like I'm in the middle of the biggest story I could possibly ever be in the middle of as an environmental photographer. This is a monumental historic change in the natural landscape, happening in our time."
~ James Balog, "Chasing Ice" Photographer, on PBS News







From the Extreme Ice Survey Website

In 2005, internationally acclaimed nature photojournalist James Balog traveled to Iceland to photograph glaciers for The New Yorker. This led to a 2006 National Geographic assignment to document changing glaciers in various parts of the world. In the course of shooting that story (which became the June 2007 cover story, “The Big Thaw”), Balog, who in addition to being a photographer is a mountaineer with a graduate degree in geomorphology, recognized that extraordinary amounts of ice were vanishing with shocking speed. Features that took centuries to develop were being destroyed in just a few years or even just a few weeks. These changes are the most visually dramatic and immediate manifestations of climate change on our planet today.

Founded in 2007 by James Balog, the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) is an innovative, long-term photography project that merges art and science to give a “visual voice” to the planet’s changing ecosystems. One aspect of EIS is an extensive portfolio of single-frame photos celebrating the beauty–the art and architecture–of ice. The other aspect of EIS is time-lapse photography; currently, 34 cameras are deployed at 16 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, the Nepalese Himalaya, Alaska and the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. These cameras record changes in the glaciers every half hour, year-round during daylight, yielding approximately 8,000 frames per camera per year. We edit the time-lapse images into stunning videos that reveal how fast climate change is transforming large regions of the planet. Finally, EIS supplements the time-lapse record with episodic repeat photography in the French and Swiss Alps, Canada, Iceland, and Bolivia.

Snark in Pictures

Law Links ~ SCOTUS: Filming the Cops, Gay Marriage, Facebook Copyright, Jindal and School Vouchers

I'm starting a new weekly feature called "Law Links" to alert readers to legal actions here and around the world. This has always been an interest of mine, and even more-so now that my daughter is a new attorney who just passed the Bar Exam and is in court every day.

SCOTUSBlog Gears Up for Supreme Court Rulings Next Week

Editor's Note: On Tuesday, December 4, we expect one or more opinions at 10 a.m. We will be live blogging.
On Friday, the Court has granted two new cases, Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett (12-142) and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (12-398 ). The Court did not act on the same-sex marriage cases. Additional orders are expected Monday at 9:30.

Bloomberg: A Free Market Fix for the Copyright Racket

Even as digital technology has made reproducing, remixing and repurposing creative works easier -- with potentially enormous benefits for consumers and producers of new works -- the monopoly privileges of copyright have expanded. The result is a bizarre combination of rampant copyright violations, frequent encroachment on legitimate fair use, suppression of new technologies and business models, and the ever-present threat of draconian penalties.

Ars Technica: Supreme Court Backs 7th Circuit Over Filming Police

The United States Supreme Court rejected a request from a Chicago-area prosecutor to review a recent ruling that the First Amendment protects a right to record the actions of police officers as they perform their public duties.
. . . The Supreme Court's decision to let the Seventh Circuit's ruling stand is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which spearheaded the case. The ACLU's chapter in Massachusetts also had success vindicating a First Amendment right to record the actions of public officials. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled police violated the rights of a Boston man when they arrested him for using his cell phone to record the arrest of a suspect. In March, the city agreed to pay $170,000 to settle his civil rights lawsuit.

Louisiana Judge Rules Against Bobby Jindal's School Voucher Program

The Associated Press said that (Judge) Kelley’s 39-page ruling concluded that the voucher program violates provisions in the state constitution regarding the Minimum Foundation Program, or MFP, which determines how public schools are funded. “The MFP … was never meant to be diverted to private educational providers,” Kelley’s ruling said.
What Jindal’s team has been doing is implementing a voucher program, potentially the country’s largest, as a result of a new law that in part allows the state to offer vouchers to more than half of its students, or some 450,000 students. About 10,000 have applied, with most of the slots given to Christian schools, some of which didn’t really have the resources to handle the influx. They also use curriculum that promotes Young Earth Creationism, the belief that Earth is no older than 10,000 years old — and that human beings lived alongside dinosaurs — despite definitive scientific consensus that it is billions of years old.

Wired: Magical Copyright Hoax Debunked by Facebook

A silly copyright notice is sweeping Facebook . . . with users attaching pseudo-legalese to their status updates in a misguided effort to prevent Facebook from owning or commercially exploiting their content. The notice incorrectly implies that Facebook has recently changed the copyright provisions of its user agreement. It then unnecessarily asserts a user’s copyright over his Facebook posts (you retain such copyright without posting a notice) and cites the “Berner Convention,” an irrelevant international treaty properly spelled “Berne Convention.” The notice then instructs Facebook to get written permission to make commercial use of the user’s content, which is pointless as Facebook users agree to let the social network make money off their posts when they sign up for the service.
Popular hoax-debunking site Snopes addressed this copyright notice in the spring and updated their refutation today. Also, Facebook has taken the further step of putting out a statement of its own:

There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users’ information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.

Nancy Pelosi Will Use "Discharge Petition" to Force Up or Down Vote on Middle Class Taxes

Nancy Pelosi isn't just going to wait for the White Men in the House to save the Middle Class Tax Cuts. In a clip on The Ed Show, Pelosi says if there is no Deal by Tuesday, she will introduce a "discharge petition" forcing a simple up or down vote on the issue and bypassing the Republican leadership.

I love this plan so much! Tea Party folks will be forced to go on the record either For or Against the Middle Class Tax Cuts. They have to decide whether to save the Middle Class or to bow to big business and Grover Norquist.

The Discharge Petition has been used successfully before, according to MSNBC:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy