An Italian adventurer will be packing his bags and moving to an iceberg in Greenland so he can reverse global warming. He plans on living there for eight to twelve months, which is the length of time he expects that his new home will exist before it melts into water.
In the Spring of 2015, Alex Bellini will bring his backpack, replete with 300 kilos of dehydrated food and some electronic equipment and his floating Kevlar survival capsule. This will come in handy down the road when he wakes up one morning floating adrift in the Atlantic Ocean.
Of course, that is if everything goes as planned. Last month, Russian climate change scientists aboard the 233-foot Akademik Shokalskiy learned a cold and lonely lesson about icebergs when they were trapped in the ice for three weeks off the coast of Antarctica. It took a rescue contingency of American, Chinese, and Australians icebreakers and helicopters to finally free the researchers from their icy prison.
Ironically, the trapped scientists were on a mission to observe and report on the decline of polar ice, but to their chagrin there was quite a bit more than they had expected.
Bellini won’t let that episode get in his way of proving to the world that icebergs are melting, the seas ar rising, and coastal cities will soon be overwhelmed by the rising tides. “For me it’s a time to act, I will be alone,” he explains. However, not entirely alone; the Italian will, for short periods of time, be visited by writers, bloggers, and environmentalists which will form sort of a dream team of virtual global warmingists.
“I want to tell the story of how the ice can become icebergs, how the iceberg becomes water. I want to live on an iceberg for 12 months witnessing its last phase of life, the one that forces it to turn back to water,” Bellini declares. For the adventurer, it is an era of personal responsibility, and he has prepared himself for his journey to the tip of the iceberg.
Bellini is no stranger to taking on unusual and challenging projects; in the past, he has crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean in a row boat and has run across the United States from coast to coast which he ascribes to using his powers of self-hypnosis.