Through a Lens, Darkly.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING--I HAVE SEEN IT WITH MY OWN EYES, I SEE IT RIGHT NOW.

I have stood in the empty rookeries of displaced Adelie penguins, and felt a chill from the receding ice of the Antarctic Peninsula. I saw young black spruces growing higher than ever before on boreal hillsides in Alaska, and subtle changes transform the tundra. Near my home in the Pacific Northwest, I watch the slowly melting glaciers, and in the Andes, have rephotographed 65-year-old images of great glaciers to show them wasting away. Along the coasts, I have seen rising tides and heavy storms erode beaches. In the woods of Eastern North America, I walked through spring wildflowers and spotted incoming migrant songbirds, knowing them to be arriving disconcertingly early.

I made these and other observations during 1999 and 2000 as part of a personal photographic project, "World View of Global Warming." I wanted to get beyond the raw statistics, the charts and the predictions. I wanted to create an alternative to the numbers, the arguments over "who is to blame" and what palliative measures governments and corporations might be willing to take. I looked instead at the Earth itself, with the eyes of a natural history photographer. Global warming and climate change have been set in motion. Ecosystems and species are already reacting. In both remote locations and familiar gardens and parks, scientists are devoting their careers to documenting the effects. But this evidence is missing from the political debate and from the halls of Congress; it is rarely written about, and remains unseen by the public.

Capturing these effects on film poses a great problem,. Changes have been unfolding for 50 years or more; each year's effects are small. They are subtle and incremental, if not literally invisible. But after a year and a half of visiting scientists at their sites and hearing their passionate concerns, working with images from the past, and documenting the meticulous recordkeeping of scientific field work, my photographs begin to add up.

Photography's message is strengthened because global warming is revealed in the Earth's most beautiful and sensitive landscapes. Treasured and threatened ecosystems and creatures are in transition. Like some early signs of heart disease or cancer in our bodies, the first effects are strongest in the extremities of our planet. The poles, the mountains, and the animals and plants on the edge of their ranges, are feeling it strongly.

I have come to believe that I am documenting one of the most crucial, overarching events of the 21st century. As it exacerbates overpopulation and food crises, climate change may affect more people than did war in the last century. Whether or not humans are to blame, there happen to be six billion of us on the planet now--and we are deeply interconnected and affected by these changes. We are going to have to adapt to them and live through them. This is an urgent story that is just beginning to he told.

An exhibition of Gary Braasch's work documenting international climate change is on the web at: www.globalchange.org/current.htm. His global warming photography is a project of Blue Earth Alliance, www.blueearth.org.

GARY BRAASCH is a photographer who has illustrated stories for Discover, Natural History, Smithsonian, Audubon and Life. His exhibit, "Polar Thaw: Global Warming in the Arctic and Antarctic," just completed a long run at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC.