Excerpt from Planet Ice

In Antarctic Bay, a southern minke whale circled our Zodiac raft, and I heard its grand, percussive exhalation, an octave lower than the lowest note of a pipe organ. As we waited for its next breath, we heard only the crackling of ice meeting water. Suddenly we heard the whale’s immense lungs contracting, then spray raining on the sea.

On the other side of the world, walking a bluff above the ice fjord near Ilulissat, Greenland, I again heard the distinctive sound of whales, a spare rhythm of single-note exhalations and long rest notes. At the end of the fjord—a 40-kilometer-long (25-mi) channel filled with icebergs disgorged by the Jakobshavn Glacier—I saw spray like smoke signals in the open water. Humpbacks were feeding in the current, surfacing between small icebergs and crushed ice, flipping their tails skyward.

On the Riiser-Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, I first encountered emperor penguins, the only large animals to winter so far south. I felt as if I had met Martians. The penguins huddle together against Antarctic winds in the dead of winter, in darkness and terrible cold. After a while in the wind, each male takes a turn moving into the warm center of the group. From above, it looks like an eddy in slow motion.

As my understanding of ice has deepened, I have grasped how ice and climate interact and profoundly influence ecosystems and human civilizations, especially as we are altering this ancient balance.

Decades after an ascent of Mount Athabasca in the Canadian Rockies, I stood again on the slope where I had first practiced ice climbing. The Columbia Icefield seemed to be reeling the Athabasca Glacier up the scoured slope, and no ice remained where we had climbed out of crevasses. The Crowfoot Glacier’s talons had been amputated; the Angel Glacier’s body had been sliced in half; the Tumbling Glacier had tumbled. The ice seemed to be rotting on the cliffs. As I crisscrossed the globe to document the life of ice, this experience repeated. I saw changes I had assumed would proceed in geologic time instead happening in a generation.

Ice is disappearing around the world, and the likely consequences are poorly understood. The rapid loss of reflective sea ice surrounding the North Pole, exposing heat-absorbing water, could lead to warming oceans. Retreating glaciers in the Himalaya—what some call the Third Pole—may affect half the world’s water supply. Melting permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere could flood the atmosphere with methane, triggering even more rapid warming.

Almost all scientists agree that the planet is warming quickly, that human activities play an important role, that there will be costs and perhaps a few benefits. These conclusions are about as controversial in the scientific community as the theories of continental drift or evolution. But consensus falls apart when scientists predict the future. Will sea level rise a couple of inches or many feet? Can we expect milder winters or desertification? Will hundreds of millions die or just be inconvenienced? Only time will tell.

Ultimately, it is the loss of ice’s beauty and its wild refuges that I can’t stand, seeing the places I love diminished year by year. Perhaps human will and ingenuity can arrest impending disasters—and I hope so—but for the balance of my lifetime, I know that I will witness the world’s store of beauty decline.