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This chapter discusses the critical role glaciers play in reflecting solar heat back into space and how the melting of glaciers reveals darker land and water surfaces that leads to surface heat absorption and global warming. The chapter gets into the dynamics of albedo and surface heat, explaining the causes of color change on glaciers, such as soot and volcanic ash deposits. It reviews the significant albedo contributions of glacier and sea-ice covered surfaces of the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctica and discusses the urban heat island effect in cities as an analogy to glacier surface warming due to darkening. The chapter also examines geological history and anthropogenic causes of glacier surface albedo changes, such as the industrial revolution.

The Arctic region is the site of a geopolitical scramble for two major future assets: the opening up of the Northeast Passage and access to enormous gas reserves. Meanwhile, many other possible futures define the ongoing struggle to establish claims to the Arctic among a variety of ‘Arctic nations’, including the rights of indigenous people, the preservation of pristine nature, future tourism, and the reestablishing of historical connections with previous colonizing countries in Scandinavia and Russia. The chapter discusses a wide repertoire of future making, including scenario gaming, forecast technologies, and forms of nation branding used as geopolitical instruments for defining expectations and future interests in the Arctic. At a theoretical level, the chapter examines the mutual constitution of imaginaries and interests and highlights ways in which actors attempt to ‘close’ the future by establishing the dominance of particular expectations or scenarios that suit their interests.

This chapter recounts the brief history of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s trading post at the nexus of the Western Arctic and Eastern Arctic shipping routes. Difficult ice conditions forced the company to relocate the post farther south; nevertheless the post’s short existence serves as a paradigm for the larger story of the rise and decline of the arctic fur trade.

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to CC. Many scientists and most market proponents agree that renewable energy and energy efficiencies are better options. The chapter also shows that government subsidies for oil and nuclear power are the result of flawed science, poor ethics, short-term thinking, and special-interest influence. The chapter has 7 sections, the first of which surveys four major components of the energy crisis. These are oil addiction, non-CC-related deaths from fossil-fuel pollution, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and catastrophic CC. The second section summarizes some of the powerful evidence for global CC. The third section uses historical, ahistorical, Rawlsian, and utilitarian ethical principles to show how developed nations, especially the US, are most responsible for human-caused CC. The fourth section shows why climate-change skeptics, such as “deniers” who doubt CC is real, and “delayers” who say that it should not yet be addressed, have no valid objections. Instead, they all err scientifically and ethically. The fifth section illustrates that all modern scientific methods—and scientific consensus since at least 1995—confirm the reality of global CC. Essentially all expert-scientific analyses published in refereed, scientific-professional journals confirm the reality of global CC. The sixth section of the chapter shows how fossil-fuel special interests have contributed to the continued CC debate largely by paying non-experts to deny or challenge CC. The seventh section of the chapter provides an outline of each chapter in the book, noting that this book makes use of both scientific and ethical analyses to show why nuclear proponents’ arguments err, why CC deniers are wrong, and how scientific-methodological understanding can advance sound energy policy—including conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies.

This chapter by Daria Shembel examines the montage-based filmmaking practice of Soviet director Dziga Vertov, his theory of the Kino-eye, and how Vertov’s principles have been remediated through Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky. Shembel puts this practice in productive tension with the recent work of DJ Spooky, and how Vertov’s proto-digitality techniques greatly inspired contemporary multimedia artist Spooky in his Antarctic and Arctic projects. Paying particular attention to Vertov’s film A Sixth Part of the World (1926), Shembel delineates the parallels between Vertov’s practices and that of DJ Spooky’s multi media project Kino-Glaz/Kino Eye (2009) his Antarctica project The Book of Ice (2001). Shembel argues that Vertov’s practice foreshadows digital platforms and traces the ways in which digital media can be seen as the logical outcome of Vertov’s work.

This chapter details the increase in fossil fuel production and consumption that led to climate change. In 2005, the U.S. Energy Policy Act exempted shale gas drilling from regulatory oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act, leading to massive increases in shale gas production. Also, the melting of the Arctic sea ice opened seaways that permitted further exploitation of oil and gas reserves in the North Polar Region. As gas became cheap, its usage increased in transportation and home heating, and it became an additional energy source, satisfying expanding demand without replacing other forms of fossil fuel energy production. As new gas-generating power plants were built, infrastructures based on fossil fuels were set, and total global emissions continued to rise. By 2012, more than 365 billion tons of carbon had been released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and cement production. An additional 180 billion tons came from deforestation and other land use changes.

A compelling argument is made as to why solar energy is important in this first chapter. Fossil fuel resources will last on the order of 100–300 years, yet, burning them generates human-made carbon dioxide (CO2) and is responsible for changes in the Earth, such as global warming and Arctic ice loss. The CO2 concentration has reached a level approximately 50% above that of the last 800,000 years, which has happened only in the most recent 100 years. Data demonstrating the effect of this rapid increase are presented, including information supplied by the National Audubon Society, showing how far north, in the northern hemisphere, birds stay during the winter. Solar energy technologies can help to mitigate CO2 generation and must be used.