Photographer focused on global crisis lectures tonight at Coronado

There is so much ice and it jockeys — frantically, futilely — for a place in the chaotic soup of the Alaskan fjord. Blocks roll and gnash, submerging and colliding in water so dense with ice that you can’t see the surface. A massive, Popsicle-blue iceberg rises, elbowing other boulders aside like an ominous god.

It looks like creation, or the apocalypse.

Nearby, standing on a mound of black ice, a man watches the spectacle. You can’t see his face in this “NOVA” documentary about his work, but his body language telegraphs something like awe. He seems somehow at home in one of the least-hospitable places in the world.

This is Jim Balog, the Boulder mountaineer who gets giddy poised at the edge of an apparently bottomless crevasse; the professional photographer with 30 years behind him and a graduate degree in geomorphology; the guy who endures long flights, bad weather and rickety helicopters to get to places even animals don’t want to go.

He’s also the guy who wants to save the world, although he’ll balk if you suggest that’s what’s at the heart of Extreme Ice Survey, which can be glimpsed, in part, in a local photo exhibit.

And tonight, he’ll talk about his photography, the Extreme Ice Survey and the conclusions he and others have reached. The Balog lecture begins at 7 p.m. at the Coronado High School Auditorium, 1590 W. Fillmore St.

“This isn’t about me,” he says. “I’m a vehicle. I’m a spokesperson for forces far greater than myself.”

“That sounds kind of biblical, actually,” I say.

He shifts in the chair in his small, unassuming Boulder office. “Maybe. I wouldn’t use such a grand word as that.”

Balog started what was to be a three-year project in 2006, after noticing vast Arctic changes in only a year. Now, it documents 15 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and the Rocky Mountains.

In addition to video, each of the more than 30 custom-made, time-lapse cameras records a frame for every hour of daylight, which generates more than 4,500 images a year. It is the most extensive photographic survey of the cryosphere ever attempted.

Now, the life and death of glaciers has become Balog’s nearly 24-7 preoccupation. And while Al Gore may be the face of global warming, Balog is a real player, if one who says he’s driven by a deeply rooted personal calling, not political aims.

He has meetings with NASA, briefed Congress on the Greenland ice sheet, graced the cover of National Geographic, and presented his work in 2009 at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen and the prestigious think tank TEDGlobal.

And these exquisite images? They are his joy, but also his tool: As the centerpiece of frequent lectures and exhibitions in museums and galleries, they are designed to seduce new audiences into hearing his message:

Wake up. Now.

“The Extreme Ice Survey” runs through March 26 at the Smokebrush Gallery.

Through the storm

You may agree with the science or you may not. Talk to Balog very long, though, and it’s hard not to worry about what you’re doing to the planet.

“The richer societies may be able to spend their ways out of some of the problems,” says Balog, who looks lanky even on the empty Arctic tundra. Putting Balog in this little office is like putting a clothespin in a matchbox.

He rubs his face and combs his hair back with his fingers. Balog is worn out but determined to make it all clear. Again.

“Imagine if you get a string of Hurricane Katrinas one summer pouring across the Southeastern United States, Florida and the Gulf Coast,” he goes on. “That’s out there one of these days. I can’t tell you when it’s going to be. … There’s a high probability that it’s out there fairly soon.”

And we may not be ready for it because humans have enjoyed a relatively stable climate for the past 10,000 years or so. Balog and others predict that climate change could put us in the “realm of science fiction. It’s a place where we’ve never lived before as a species, and we’re gonna have some vicious surprises coming down the road in the years and decades to come.”

That is the message., and much of his life now is about delivering it.

There are meetings and meetings and meetings, interviews for radio and television, lectures to groups he especially wants to reach. In Colorado Springs, he hopes to connect with the evangelical community.

He travels almost every week because: 1) he likes meeting smart, influential people; and 2) no one wants to give money to an assistant. He has a family he doesn’t see enough. His phone rings constantly and his operations manager of 18 years won’t let him keep his own schedule.

And all this with an office staff of five, about 20 field consultants and a budget of about $500,000 a year.

Still, the more he knows how it works — environmentally and politically — the harder it is to sleep.

“I’m seeing with greater and greater clarity all the time where we’re failing and where it needs to be different. I see with greater and greater clarity all the time how difficult it is to surmount those limitations. … And it makes me crazy. What should be done? What can I  do as an individual to fill the gap?”

In December, Balog made a conscious decision not to shoot as much. He’s got to cut down on travel, he says. But he misses making photographs. To fill the gap, he’s working on a book — his sixth — about 90 minutes at a time.

He compares his mission, which is inextricably tangled with his life, to a white-out snowstorm. “I can’t think about what’s out there on the other side of the veil. All I can think about is getting here to there and when you get there, another three feet out there.”

The problem, he says, is that it never stops. “There’s never any end to it. That’s what I was bemoaning at coffee this morning to Suzanne, my wife. I’ve got no yardstick for when it’s over. In fact, it’s never over.”

His friends and family worry about him. You’re taking on too much, they tell him.

 “Do you ever wish that you could go back to a time when you didn’t know what you know?” I ask.

“Believe me, I do. All the time.”

He rubs his face again, looking, perhaps, to deliver a better message.

“But I’m happy to say that we’ve had success beyond my wildest dreams. My father reminded me of this on the phone. He said, ‘Jim, as frustrated as you can be, as tired as you can be, remember how damn good this is.’”

James Balog lecture

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Where: Coronado High School Auditorium, 1590 W. Fillmore St.

Admission: Free

Something else: See “The Extreme Ice Survey” through March 26 at Smokebrush Gallery, 218 West Colorado Ave., 444-1012.

For more: Go to extremeicesurvey.org for details on the project, time-lapse and still images; pbs.org for “NOVA’s” “Extreme Ice,” an hourlong documentary on Balog’s work