Ice

I love ice. I love its form. Its hardness that belies its fragility. And I love the lines and the hues of blue. And the way my dualistic brain works, I immediately think of its opposite. Do any of you think like that? I seem hardwired that way.

So, really, today I got thinking today about ice by first thinking about heat waves. I live in BC, Canada where we were in the midst of a heat wave that broke all previous records. So, uh huh, the planet is definitely warming. And, it’s warming at different rates in different locations. In Antarctica, there is a region on the Antarctic Peninsula which has warmed the most on the planet near the Verdansky (formerly Faraday) Station. A lot pictures in this slideshow are from the Antarctica Peninsula and most of the ice in these photos is long gone.

Close to my home, the ice is also melting. Our namesake Glacier, the Comox Valley Glacier is receding at a rapid pace. Some estimates say the glacier will have completely wasted away in the next 25 years. When I look at it from year to year, even that sounds optimistic. It seems to be melting before my eyes. .

So, things to do to slow climate change? Well, you probably know a heap of them so I won’t go into that here. Just don’t fall for the naysayers that say “it ain’t happening”—they usually have a financial agenda attached to their “idea”. But I love ice and it’s worth just looking at it to see how creative and staggeringly beautiful wild nature is regardless of its position as a bell-weather of the climate.