Kind: captions
Language: en
although I'm a thousand miles south of
the Arctic Circle
this cave stays cold all year round the
rock and soil beneath the surface are
permanently frozen all through the
summer
I'm here with geologist Jeremy shockin
and mountain guide dave starck
a little tight huh the ground inside
this cave has been frozen since the last
ice age
this is 10,000 years of permafrost can
feel like getting cold fast yeah to
preserve this unique cave it's closed to
the public
even scientists restrict their visits to
once every few years this is really cool
that get here now it's opening up whoa
this chamber now we're in auditorium
with a giant enormous rock fall Wow 15
minutes in and there's a spectacular
change Oh Colin hands and knees
okay first cold knees just like it
gigantic igloo how deep is the ice
you're crawling on I don't know but you
can see way down oh you got to see these
super weird
like that's crazy though I mean this is
like it's like being inside rock candy
this is unbelievable it's one of the
most amazing places I've ever been on
this planet the grounds so cold here any
moisture in the air freezes to the cave
walls forming enormous crystals of ice
but they're big they're like five inches
across and right I've never seen ice
crystals like this and there's some that
are like big dinner plates I feel like
I'm in a crystal chandelier factory
stuff looks like laughs not ice cow this
place this is so totally amazing
I can hardly believe
and actually it's pretty crazy as some
of these are dripping just a little bit
it's very clear that just our bodies in
here if we stay much longer gonna change
the temperature this place and we're
looking at kind of a remnant of an ice
world it's it's amazing this is a nice
world that's changed to a non ice world
let's uh let's duck and go this crystal
cavern is a reminder that we are still
living in a nice house world but it
looks fragile on the cusp of change this
is treacherous going in here slick rock
slick jagged blue rock if we go deeper
into the cave system we can see what
happened when it warmed in the past so
the farther back in the cave the further
back we go in time yep Wow oh wow that
is totally peeling away from the ceiling
like right over your head right like
this ice at our feet seems like it came
from up there
wow that's crazy in here we find the
flip side of the ice chandeliers
evidence from warmer interglacial world
the last time this crystal cave melted
see that's the kind of stuff would be so
cool to date this is the stuff that
gives us a glimpse into a past warmer
world when this whole cave was thought
out and there wasn't any ice it's not
forming now cuz it's cold in here and we
don't have running water but if we were
in some warm time in the past when this
cave mossad so the water comes down from
the surface above dissolve some of that
rock we'd have sheets of water running
down this and it has little minerals
dissolved in it and when they run down
the surface they deposit those crystals
and layer by layer they pulled this
thing up beautiful right oh it's awesome
so let me show you this to check this
out here here's a phone that's actually
from this cave it looks like coffee yeah
absolutely right there's the thermal
colored stuff in it
absolutely and so the way this one
worked is oldest right here and then
with time
adding more and more and more layers to
it so it would have been something you
know growing like that out of the wall
then just layer upon layer just added
what are you measuring
so basically we're measuring when
there's water flowing right just when
this thing is growing like this one for
instance from this cave we dated it it's
four hundred thousand years old for
100,000 or hundred thousand how much
warmer was it four hundred thousand
years ago
how much heating did it take to file
this permafrost what's the danger line
and interestingly forty one thousand
years ago the world was warmer but just
like a couple degrees it's sort of like
though where we expect to be middle
later part of the century if history
repeats itself the permafrost in this
cave could be on the brink of melting
again what's wild about it is it
contains a time of frozen carbon and
it's it's a ton it's twice as much
carbon is already in the atmosphere
where is that carbon coming from it's
just old it's just old plants animals at
one point we're alive
they have carbon in them they die it
goes down into that soil so right now
it's frozen it's turned off it's not
going anywhere until you dial up the
temperature a little bit open the
freezer door starts to no and all that
we will just start rotting burping out
methane and warming things up even more
how much global warming can you do
before these caves this Arctic
permafrost thaws out it was typically
locked in here yeah which i think means
we're tipping back come back in 50 years
or something and these things are gonna
be regrowing again okay thanks yeah yeah
that's serious yeah
if the permafrost thaws in here and
across all the frozen land at the polar
extremes a massive release of methane
and co2 will speed up global warming all
over the planet creating an
unprecedented threat to humanity
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