Marshall Severson from Anchorage, Alaska, recently posted a video documenting the changes to glaciers since 1989.
“The video distills 40 years of flying over the same glacier area and how things have changed,” he told General Aviation News staff.
The 1989 video was shot from his Piper Colt, while the 2021 video was shot with a Go Pro camera on his Cessna 172.
Yes, I think my recording the flights over the years led me to understand personally as a witness what was slowly happening…memory alone can be distorted, and access to the data and imagery is important. I appreciate these comments and the critical thinking and analysis that went into them.
Amazing what millions of years of sunshine, 10,000 degree earth core temperature and the Gulf Stream pumping warm water into ice will do eventually.
Google Earth offers a feature that goes back before 1985 and progresses through to the most recent satellite images. Enter the location then click the icon at the top that’s a globe with an arrow around it to see the available time line of images.
The Knik Glacier when backed out enough offers an image from 1972.
https://earth.google.com/web
There is a treasure trove of long-forgotten/archived aerial/space observations being harvested as we speak.
Onsite observations, reconnaissance flights and spacecraft ‘weather, thermal, images/spectral/radar, etc… data world-wide thru the years [late 1960s to today]… are consistent in their observations. Glacier and sea ice loss is factual; Weather intensity and rising temperatures; and many other factors ARE NOT FICTIONAL. These phenomena are happening in small increments, locally, such that human perception barely notices this… UNLESS You have actually traveled the world to witness this personally. Obviously, trusting in the record of factual/technical data and mathematical/scientific analysis methods and tools is paramount. The FACTUAL DATA is showing patterns of WX changes… and many other related phenomena from all earth science disciplines… are occurring EVERYWHERE… on this ‘little blue dot of a planet’.
Per the late Carl Sagan… “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The required ‘extraordinary evidence’… factual/technical/scientific data…local and global… is growing exponentially day-by-day.
As a reminder how ‘small we humans are’ and how much there is to know/understand/experience… the esteemed Admiral Rickover [father of the nuclear Navy] warned-us…”It is necessary for us to learn from others’ mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.”