Remember what it was like to ride your bike on a hot summer day in late July? And how great jumping in the swimming pool felt, or eating a popsicle afterwards?

   This week, a group of very dedicated conservationists from National Wildlife Federation are biking 478 miles across the state of Iowa to spread the message about confronting global warming. They will be foregoing the swimming pools and popsicles and instead engaging Iowans along the roads, in towns, and in restaurants. They will also be asking presidential candidates what they would do as president to commit the U.S. to meaningful efforts to reduce global warming pollution.

Interested in what they’re hearing? Check out http://nwf.blogs.com/arctic_promise/.

My hats off to this dedicated team of riders Christine Dorsey, Kate Hofmann, Vivian Coss, Nicholas Gimbrone, Dyanne Singler , Patrick Kenney, Don Hooper, Miles Hooper, and Karen Sage; and their support team Georgina Price, Marc Engel, Derek Brockbank, Caron Whitaker, and a host of other helpers.

The natural mirrored beauty of the "fjieldsbanken"  at the mouth of the Jakobshavn fjord in the Disco Bay at midnight can be absolutely breathtaking. This is the most active iceberg bank in the Northern hemisphere and because of global warming, icebergs like these are being spawned at an unprecedented rate.

Since it stays light 24 hours a day this time of the year, several boats full of tourists visit the Bay and cruise through hundreds of large icebergs calved from a now distant glacier that is breaking off ice at nearly two meters per minute at the "Jakobshavn Isfjord."  Brave souls paddle about in kyaks weaving in and out of massive icebergs and scattered cakes of floating ice.

                          The extensive iceberg bank called fjieldsbanken, is jam-packed with endless shapes and sizes of icebergs, massive ice floes and slush ice debris. Nine-tenths of the iceberg's mass is under the surface of the water. 

This fjieldsbanken is a mass of icebergs that are temporarily hung up on a underwater terminal moraine which is a sand and gravel debris pile left behind when the glacier stopped growing and retreated up the Jackobshavn 14 kilometers east.  The fjieldsbanken looks completely different each day as the rising tide releases a new crop of icebergs to drift into the Bay.

Some of the ice floes are known by the captains as "black ice" which is not evolved directly from compressed snow like the glaciers but is created directly through the freezzing of water.  Captains must keep a constant look out for large blocks  black ice which if undetected can severely damage or sink a vessel.

Ilulissat, Greenland: The Ilulissat harbor is 250km north of the Arctic Circle. Perched above the ice-infested harbor are hundreds of wonderfully maintained, multicolored homes dotting the rocky hills. Rugged hillsides surround and protect an overcrowded harbor with 450 fishing boats jammed together. 

Most residents of this fishing village earn their living fishing or by processing fish for shipping at the local plant-Greenland’s largest fish processing facility.  “Long-liners” as they are called, fish under the midnight sun from skiffs in the traditional means by hand-held long-lines. Though the morning fog, we saw skiffs, one by one, dock and unload their nightly catch of black halibut. 

Shrimp in declining numbers are also harvested by a couple of modern trawlers out of Ilulissat, while the halibut fishermen are reporting catching smaller fish.  A cold-water fish, Halibut tend to be stressed by the warming waters and are no longer gaining the size they once had.

This town of five thousand has nearly as many sled dogs as it has people. In the dark winter months, Inuit fishermen have ice-fished for 4,000 years. For generations, fishermen hauled their catch over frozen Disco Bay waters using dog sleds.  In this roadless world, dogsleds have been the sole means of winter travel between villages up and down the coastline. To protect the purity of the sled dogs and the coastal transportation they provide, Greenland has forbidden the introduction of any other breed of dog. 

Just in the past decade, the Disko Bay simply quit freezing so dog sleds have been replaced with power boats.  Sadly, this region of Greenland is facing a future where dog sledding on the bay is not going to be feasible way to fish or travel.

Ilulissat, Greenland: We are on the world's largest island that happens to hold the second largest reservoir of frozen fresh water on the planet. More than 80 percent ice covered, Greenland is a misnomer for the vast ice dome reaching more than two miles in depth and covering an area about the size of the Gulf of Mexico. The ice has been accumulating on this island for tens of thousands of years.

We are lodging in the fishing village of Ilulissat at the mouth of the Jakobshavn Fjord and glacier. This massive glacier is about 4 miles wide and several thousand feet thick. Discharging 11 cubic miles of ice a year, this glacier is considered “the most productive” in the Northern Hemisphere in terms of ice flow.

The Jakobshavn glacier has long spawned the largest icebergs to the North Atlantic and is believed to have been the source of that notorious iceberg that ripped a gash in the ill-fated Titanic a century ago. The out-flowing ice in the Jakobshavn is flowing twice as fast as it was a decade ago. It’s “tongue” has retreated 4 miles since 2000 and the ice outflow is now moving at a rate of 120 feet each day plugging the Ilulissat harbor with random-sized chunks of ice.

Satellite radar measurements taken across the southern half of Greenland reveal that melting on most glaciers in the region are accelerating dramatically. Dr. Eric Rignot got my attention back in 2005 when he calculated that Greenland was losing 54 cubic miles of ice each year which is double the volume of a decade ago.

The 4th IPCC report in projecting expected sea level rise left the water volumes from Greenland (and Antarctica) out of the reprojections because Rignot’s numbers were far more than many scientists had expected. Enough doubters prevented its inclusion into the IPPC calculations. Other scientists fear that once the floating ice in the fjords clears, land-based ice will be unleashed in dramatic fashion.

What we know is this. Perched between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, Greenland’s ice-covering is melting far faster than expected. How fast it is melting and how it behaves when melting accelerates continues to be the question on scientist’s minds on this day of our visit. It’s a question that should be on everyone’s mind. After all if the ice on Greenland goes, sea levels around the world will go up 23 feet. The future of every coastal city and every coastal environment on the planet rests with the answers.

I can’t help but wonder why so big a question has so few scientists on the ground. Why are we not more concerned?

As the fog lifts this morning, we will be hiking on the Jakobshavn glacier and tonight we will float among the clutter of icebergs in the jammed Ilulissat harbor at the seaward end of the fjord. I hope to get first-hand observations of its changing conditions from old-timers who have spent a lifetime looking at these waters.

I’ve been hearing great stories from my friends and colleagues this week, especially the younger ones, about how much they enjoyed and were motivated by the Live Earth Concerts on Saturday.

What has remained in my thoughts is how over two billion people around the world awakened to the climate crisis.

Evidence of global warming abounds. We have seen dramatic increases in polar ice caps melting, record heatwaves in the American West this summer, and 2007 is now predicted to become the second-hottest year on record.

Saturday was a first step for many in this incredible journey we are on to confront global warming together. It’s time to keep the momentum going and demand that our political leaders take action now to avert the worst consequences of global warming. This is not about right or left, it’s about right and wrong. Global warming will affect each of us. And working together, we can make a difference.

What will you do today? You can start by taking the Live Earth pledge at http://liveearth.org/.

Saturday was an incredible day in the fight to wake up the planet’s inhabitants to the urgency of global warming. In addition to the concert attendees at the multiple events, millions of people from around the world tuned in to Live Earth, including 10 million concurrent viewers via msn.com – making Live Earth the most simultaneously-viewed concert ever. It was estimated that 2 billion people were exposed to Live Earth in some way or another.

I started the morning in Washington, D.C., where I had the opportunity to witness from afar a completely packed out Live Earth concert at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Former Vice President Al Gore kicked off Live Earth in America, appropriately in front of the U.S. Capitol, in spite of political detractors who attempted to stifle free-speech by preventing a Washington venue by denying Al Gore, a former Vice President, a public permit to hold this educational and musical event on Capitol grounds.

This smaller event was boldly sponsored by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and was a key part of Live Earth. As Al said in his opening remarks, "the Calvary didn’t come riding to the rescue; the American Indians did." Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, and Blues Nation, rocked the house.

After the D.C. event, my wife Clara and I had the privilege of riding the train with Al and Tipper to the Live Earth concert in Giants Stadium. Al was so proud of the Native American community for their courage in standing up for the future by organizing this DC venue and for their undying multi-generational commitment to the stewardship of the earth. Al told me that Live Earth was kicked off in Australia by the aborigines and fittingly in the US by the native people of this land.

Traveling on the Amtrak, we were all watching the events around the world on Al’s Apple computer as Al talked with Kevin Wall who was at the master control room at the London concert. They were making adjustments to the timing of events. The behind-the-scenes coordination between the many events was just amazing to witness as one performer finished in New York and transitioned to a London performance on giant screens in New York.

The energy in Giants Stadium was awesome. I was touched by so many young people not only enjoying the music but giving an enthusiastic voice of support for creating a bright energy future and for their incredible support for Al Gore’s leadership. Everywhere Al went during the day, he was mobbed by young supporters. We need to stand with our youth, since it’s their generation and the ones after them that are going to be most affected by global warming.

The momentum is turning. America is waking up. I saw it on Saturday and I feel it in my gut. Saturday was a great day, a much needed "second step" in a massive wake-up call. While much of Live Earth was the great music, it was also about what we can do together to stop global warming. Go to http://www.algore.com to see the clips, sign the pledge, and learn what steps you can take as we stand together. Read more about the event at http://blogs.nwf.org/globalwarmingnews/. 

Time is short. Let’s not lose the momentum from this incredible event. What will you do today to join the fight to stop global warming?