Sunday, July 20, 2008 Exhibit shows disappearance of glaciers By Martin B. Cassidy Staff Writer Robbert Van Batenburg often asks his parents to buy a new, more fuel efficient car to reduce heat trapping carbon emissions and help combat global warming, he said. "I don't worry about the mileage," the 7-year-old Westport boy said. "But there is too much pollution." Robert and his family were part of a group that visited a new traveling photo exhibit at the Bruce Museum yesterday, "Double Exposure: Photographs of Glaciers Then and Now," a set of photos documenting the retreat and thinning of 14 glaciers from Alaska to Switzerland in the past 50 years. In the show side-by-side photos of the glaciers taken in 1960 by mountaineer Bradford Washburn and then between 2005 and 2007 by David Arnold are used as to show the shrinkage of the massive ice floes, and contend that man-made pollution is driving the process. Courtney Cook, 38, of Greenwich, said he brought his two children to see the exhibit to help raise questions about the need for conservation and being ecologically aware. The deterioration of the glaciers and rising temperatures are alarming, especially for those living in the surrounding regions, Cook said. "A lot of people rely on glaciers for fresh drinking water," Cook said. "Though we may not feel the impact here now when they are gone they will be gone." In an adjoining room a related exhibit was on display, "Climate Change: From Snowball Earth to Global Warming," a look at the cycles of heating and cooling the Earth has experienced for hundreds of millions of years. Temperatures are believed to have risen sharply the Cretaceous Period, which occurred between 65 to 144 million years ago, when dinosaurs thrived and sea levels were dramatically higher than today. Scientists theorize the last Ice Age began nearly 20 million years ago when ice sheets began to spread from the Antarctic, covering Long Island as recently as 20,000 years ago. After viewing the photo exhibit of glaciers, Bob Elliott of Stamford said the photos were interesting but felt unable to decide whether man's activity was responsible for the melting of the ice sheets. "I recognize my ignorance towards it," the 26-year-old said. "Based on the scientific research it seems there is not consensus so it would be presumptuous of me to make a determination." Double Exposure will remain on display at the Bruce Museum until Oct. 26. - Staff Writer Martin B. Cassidy can be reached at martin.cassidy@scni.com or at (203) 625-4439. Copyright (c) 2008, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.