( CNN ) -- In graduate school and as a mountaineer and nature photographer , I 've visited many of the world 's great mountain ranges and seen hundreds of glaciers . In spite of this , I did n't understand how fast truly enormous quantities of ice could disappear until 2005 when I went to Iceland and shot a story for The New Yorker magazine . This led to a 2006 National Geographic magazine assignment to document changing glaciers in various parts of the Northern Hemisphere and South America . By the time this cover story was done , the Extreme Ice Survey was born . EIS merges art and science to give visual voice to the planet 's changing ecosystems . Through time-lapse imagery and other innovative methods , EIS documents and communicates environmental impacts from global warming and other human-made causes while inspiring action among citizens and policymakers . Time-lapse photography captures the speed at which glaciers are retreating in places such as Greenland , Iceland , Alaska , the Alps and the Rocky Mountains . Watch video and see EIS project here . EIS is a collaboration between image-makers and leading environmental scientists , all of us devoted to documenting the changes transforming Arctic and alpine landscapes today . We do this because shrinking glaciers are the canary in the global coal mine , the most visible , tangible manifestations of climate change on the planet . The survey is extreme in every way -- distances , costs , logistics , field conditions . Truth be told , there are times when I wonder why I 'm putting myself through this ordeal . But other voices , asking different questions , ultimately provide the answers . I picture myself 30 years from now . I hear my daughters Simone and Emily saying with a certain amount of anger and exasperation : `` Dad , with what everyone knew back in 2009 , how could people not have realized the climate was changing ? '' And then they ask the personal zinger : `` What were you doing about it ? '' Hindsight can be merciless . People of any given era often look back in time and wonder how their predecessors could have been so dimwitted . How could the British navy have taken hundreds of years to make limes and other antiscorbutics a standard part of sailors ' diets ? The cure for scurvy was known to European navigators as early as the 1500s . During three epic voyages of the 1770s , Capt . James Cook forced his crews to eat sauerkraut , which was later shown to be rich in vitamin C. He lost not a single man to the disease . Yet the British admiralty waited until 1867 before mandating that its sailors eat limes to stay healthy . When the future looks back at the late 20th and early 21st centuries , people will be as astounded at our mule-headedness about dealing with climate change , as we now are at the foibles of earlier societies . Unfortunately , the astonishing pace of climatic events , as witnessed in the ice , does n't give us the luxury of time to be slow learners . We can not afford to be hamstrung by ponderous social institutions or deluded by false information . We must make a major effort to stop climate change right now , and not think we can absolve ourselves of responsibility by educating our children to do things differently . A generation from now will be too late . The voices of the future -- our grown-up children -- will damn us if we are passive and indifferent . As I head to Copenhagen , Denmark , for the United Nations Climate Change Conference , I hope to bring the extraordinary evidence of melting glaciers that my colleagues and I at the Extreme Ice Survey have worked so hard to collect to both the climate-change believers and the skeptics . I hope to attract even more widespread attention to this critical issue , because if we rise to the occasion demanded by a changing climate , we will be heroes . Descend into collective complacency and dysfunctional denial , and we will someday be judged to have been fools . Sir Edmund Hillary once said about great deeds , `` People do not decide to become extraordinary . They do extraordinary things . '' The quality of our society and our lives will be judged by the deeds we do or do n't do . Once upon a time , I was a climate-change skeptic . I 'm not one anymore . The evidence is in the ice . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of James Balog .
James Balog says he did n't know how fast enormous quantities of ice were vanishing . He says his eyes opened with photo assignments , now heads Extreme Ice Survey . Balog says people will look back , wonder how predecessors could 've ignored global warming . Once a skeptic , convert says we ca n't afford to wait or be deluded by false information .