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Conrad Anker in PBS documentary about climate change
Check out the video clip below from a PBS documentary on climate change that features our own Conrad Anker. The following was copied from PBS website:
Seventy-five percent of the world's fresh water is stored in glaciers, but scientists predict climate change will cause some of the world's largest glaciers to completely melt by 2030. What effect will this have on our daily lives? With global warming falling low on a national list of American concerns, it's time to take a deeper look at what could be a global calamity in the making.
This week, in a special one-hour NOW on PBS, David Brancaccio and environmentalist Conrad Anker—one of the world's leading high altitude climbers—trek to the Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayan Mountains, the source of the Ganges River, to witness the great melt and its dire consequences first-hand. The two also visit Montana's Glacier National Park to see the striking effects of global warming closer to home and learn how melting glaciers across the globe can have a direct impact on food prices in the U.S.
Along the way, Brancaccio and Anker talk to both scientists and swamis, bathe in the River Ganges, view a water shortage calamity in India, and come as close as any human can to seeing the tangible costs of climate change.
"We can't take climate change and put it on the back burner," warns Anker. "If we don't address climate change, we won't be around as humans."
United States / English 
11 Sep 2009, 6:05PM
People are constantly changing their living environment, making themselves more prone to disasters. Third world populations are forced to overcultivate, deforest and generally overuse their land. Right now it takes earth 1 year and 5 months to reproduce what humans use in one year. There is no evidence that global warming is directly caused by human activity; we are along for the ride on a dynamic planet with ever changing climate and weather patterns. 12000 years ago most of North America was under thousands of feet of glacial ice; 2000 years ago Romans grew fig and olive trees in Switzerland and 500000 years ago hippos roamed throughout England. Over the last 100 years global temperatures have risen 0.8 degrees Celsius; is it really that significant? Since there is nothing we can do about it we should instead learn to live with it.
In this entire video dramatically melting glaciers are being portrayed as the result of global warming. Why is the decrease in precipitation or a generally drier period not discussed as a possible cause?
As a geologist and an alpinist I think we should climb ice while we can, and accept the fact that it will not be there forever; the next generation will climb in a different environment and that is neither a good thing or a bad thing, it just is.
8 Sep 2009, 11:26PM
Byron,
Lets start cooling it by taxing your lawn mower.
5 Aug 2009, 10:48AM
Ptor and Jakob: I'm not going to get into it point by point, since I know I'll never convince you anyway. I'll just say that I'm sticking with the scientific evidence and not conspiracy theory and hyperbolic insult, and the evidence is getting clearer with every new study. What we call each other isn't going to change the weather. We've all got to cool it, guys.
4 Aug 2009, 11:11AM
Glaciers have been melting for the last 20,000 years (and some are still growing!). Nature is change and the climate will keep on changing, humans or no humans. CO2 is the most basic fertilizer and the amount that humans produce is miniscule compared to what the oceans, vegetation, wildfires and volcanoes produce. Let's get real and focus on real pollution like the war machine, Central Banks, Big Pharma, Monsanto etc. and not get sucked into the global elite's harvest of green hearts that will reap them trillions more while taxing everybody with a cow. Buying into anthropogenic global warming is about as daft as anthropocentrism itself. Instead of being tricked into whining about what we can do nothing about by criminal hypocrites like Gore and his gang, we should be grateful to live in such a benign climatic epoch and make the most of it. There was no lack of powder or ice last winter!
2 Aug 2009, 9:15PM
Kindly take your fear mongering and stow it in a crevass.
The notion that humans are causing entire weather systems to change is completely loony and not based on real observation; rather, it is predicated on faulty and biased models that fail to even take account of such factors as solar radiation and cloud formation. They also generally ignore gulf stream activity, underwater currents, and anything not related to human input, which is miniscule in the grander scheme of things.
Do humans pollute? Absolutely. So let's address true issues of urgent concern like toxic waste, heavy metals everywhere, "gender-bender" plastics, and GMO crops/"food." Where's the concern about the diminishing population of bees? Does anyone even think outside the Gore?
1 Aug 2009, 7:20AM
Excellent documentary! We see it first hand every year here in the four corners area as the wind storms of spring bring in the dust all the way from exploding developmental areas in AZ and CA. Land is cleared to support new developments resulting in massive amounts of dirt that was once anchored down by trees/grass. Our mighty San Juan mountains in south western Colorado appeared pink this spring due to all of the dirt that blew in. As Conrad said, the dirt warms up and prematurely melts the snow. Compound all of this of course with the increasing number of fossil fuel plants used to support all of the new development. I was encouraged on a recent trip to see family in AZ, the new wind farm just south of Holbrook AZ.
14 Jul 2009, 1:06PM
Thanks for getting this link up. It was good fun working with the PBS crew on this project.
As an alpinist we are seeing unprecedented change in the mountain environment. The original Ogre route in the Karakorum was climbed in 1977. Doug Scott and crew found a nice ice line and had one of the grandest epics of all time. The route they choose has melted out. The second ascent in 2001 followed a rock pillar.
I returned to Meru a scant three months later to try the Sharks Fin with Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk.
http://merudispatches.blogspot.com/
I had tried the peak 5 years earlier and found belay stations I had built 10 feet above the ice.
We are all in this together.