The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts sea levels will rise almost half a meter by 2100. That water will displace several million people on coastlines around the world. Much of the water will come from the region around Pine Island Bay. Specifically, it will come from what’s been dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier”: Thwaites, one of our planet’s largest glaciers, which is roughly as extensive as Great Britain.

Glaciers form when snow is compacted into ice over hundreds of years. As the weight of new snow and ice presses down, the ice beneath starts to flow like a river. Thwaites is an outlet glacier, meaning it flows all the way to the ocean. There, its coastal edge stretches 120 kilometers in a dazzling white wall of ice that looms up to 40 meters above the surface of the ocean and reaches over 200 meters deep.

Thwaites and its neighbor Pine Island Glacier drain about one-third of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—the ice sheet extending west from the natural dividing line of the Transantarctic Mountains. The two glaciers are breaking up into icebergs far more quickly than new ice can be created. Already they contribute five percent of annual sea level rise, or roughly 0.18 millimeters annually: the equivalent of dumping over 20 million Olympic-sized swimming pools into the ocean each year. And if Thwaites collapses, its shape and location mean the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could go with it. All told, that’s enough water to raise sea levels by over three meters, redrawing coastlines and transforming the planet we know.

"So, today's your birthday?"
"Yes,. March 14th, a day that will live 'in family.'" [He laughs.] "That's cute. Did you make that up?"

"Heavens, no! My grandfather kicked the slats out of his cradle the first time he heard it."
"But you did say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right?"

"Oh my... never said that either. I think Rita Mae Brown might claim credit for that, but in any event, that's not the definition of insanity. What you're dealing with there is a psychosis so debilitating that a person can't distinguish fantasy from reality."

"Well, what about this quote: 'Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.'? That sounds like something you might have said."

"Nope, wasn't me," he said, picking up his violin and tuning the instrument.

"Well then, are you familiar with this one: 'I refuse to believe that God plays dice with the universe.'?"

"Close, but no cigar. What I actually wrote my friend Cornelius Lanczos at Princeton in 1942 was: 'It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that He plays dice... is something I cannot believe for a single moment.'"

"So, what can we believe you said?"
"Just this: 'Don't believe every quote you read on the Internet, because I totally didn't say that.'"

Select a digital tool from the list below. Create your "artistic impression." Your goal is to artistically and orally summarize a piece of literature. 

Go back and read the piece you chose as a group. Consider the questions shown right as you go through the piece a second time.

Click the image representing each drawing tool to access it. Be sure to save your work to save with others.

• What words from the piece jump out at you to help make an artistic representation?

• What was the focus of the reading selection?

• Think of all the parts in the piece. Put them together as if you were going to tell another person.

• What details are most significant? Least?

• How could you use key ideas to condense the information in the text?

• What is important and essential to the text?

• Share some important ideas that struck you.