Balog’s transformation began not with a graph, but with a fracture. Sent to photograph “The Big Thaw” for National Geographic, he expected minor shifts, not entire landscapes erased between visits. Ice cores revealed trapped gases and rising temperatures; time-lapse cameras exposed glaciers retreating like time sped up. What he once dismissed as exaggeration unfolded frame by frame, undeniable and unsparing. The physics he trusted were no longer abstract—they were visible in every collapsing cliff of ice.
Over fifteen years, his Extreme Ice Survey amassed 1.5 million images from Greenland to Antarctica, turning disbelief into documentation. The world watched as Manhattan-sized slabs of ice sheared away and dissolved within hours. Scientists gained critical data; the public gained a brutal mirror. Balog’s journey from skeptic to witness is more than a personal reckoning. It’s a question aimed at everyone still hesitating: how much more ice has to fall before we change?
