Breaking... OVER THE HORIZON book is now available!!

It is with great pleasure that I announce my long overdue book project:
OVER THE HORIZON: Exploring the Edges of a Changing Planet
The book is now available for pre-sale on my new website davidthoreson.com

About the story-

David has sailed over 65,000 nautical miles across the globe including below the Antarctic Circle, three times across the Atlantic, six times over the Arctic Circle, twice through the Northwest Passage and completed a 28,000-mile circumnavigation of the North and South American Continents. During this time, Thoreson has accumulated some 150,000 photographs and over 600 pages of personal journal entries documenting his journeys.

Over The Horizon is an autobiographical photography book. Thoreson has been called “The Accidental Explorer” because he is a sailor from Iowa and ventured to the sea with a “salty” southern Minnesota farmer. In this very personal account of his adventures, David combines story-telling with stunning photography, ultimately arriving at a tipping point of human history in the Arctic waters of the Northwest Passage. 

After all the the years chasing the horizon and following his dream, David became  an eye-witness to a rapidly-changing Arctic and ocean environment.Thoreson’s life has been profoundly impacted by his eye-witness documentation of a changing Arctic environment with less ice. He is now an advocate for ocean and wilderness protection along with a more sustainable future for generations of explorers yet to come. Over the Horizon is his beautiful and compelling life story...

David Thoreson TEDx Vail Talk- Watch Now!

Wow, this is a very nice piece to be able to post on my blog. I am very happy to have you watch my 9-minute TED Talk from the beautiful Vilar Center for the Performing Arts in Beaver Creek, CO. I was one of 9 speakers (I kicked of the event!!) in the 5th year event as part of the TEDx Vail Conference.

How does a small town Iowa boy find his pathway to the sea and polar regions of the planet? Well…  please watch if you are so inclined and share with as many folks as you wish. Thank you for your interest in my work and the very important issue of climate change. Cheers all, David
The Accidental Explorer-DT's TED Talk

TEDx Vail Presentation

Wow, what a great experience in Vail/Beaver Creek with all the other presenters and our terrific hosts. Thank you so much to the never-resting Kat Haber and her side-kick Corinne Hara. I started out the weekend experience with a nice presentation at the Walking Mountains Science Center in Avon. Thank you. Very fun evening. http://www.walkingmountains.org/

Then events shifted to the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek for the main TED presentations on Friday (Jan. 9th) afternoon and night. This was an amazing time and there was a big buzz!!

Nine speakers, folk dancing, classic fun music, piped in TED videos. Spectacular! I kicked off the event as the first speaker and told my story, my big idea, the discovery of rapid climate change while sailing the Arctic's Northwest Passage.

I am going to add to this blog with more personalities and ideas from others and many big thank yous. Keep checking in, more to come...

TEDx Vail Presentation!!

It is with great excitement and honor that I announce I will be doing a TED presentation at the 5th annual TEDx Vail Conference this Friday evening in Beaver Creek, CO. There are unbelievable presenters with topics from slam poetry, healthy recipes to "Frenemies." Please check it out and all of us will be filmed and our presentations will be uploaded to Youtube.

 You can find all the information here- TEDx Vail

Lost Franklin Ship

The search for the Northwest Passage has been a much sought-after goal of explorers for over four centuries dating back to the late sixteenth century. Most of the expeditions into the far north ended in tremendous hardship and quite often the deaths of the entire crew members of the vessels.

 

The Franklin Expedition of 1845-6 was no different than many others. The loss of Sir John Franklin's vessels Erebus and Terror, along with all 129 men, began a flurry of activity that eventually led to the successful navigation of the Passage in 1903-6 by Roald Amundsen.

The ultimate demise of the Franklin expedition is still a bit of a mystery but a big piece was just uncovered this week with the very exciting discovery of one of the two ships in Franklin Strait in Arctic Canada. See photo above from an underwater rover. It is still so new that we do not know which ship it is but that news will emerge and I will post a full account here soon...

My Exhibit at the University of Iowa and the Great Climate March

Hello everyone. I am fresh back from the start of the Great March for Climate Action in Los Angeles which kicked off a 3000-mile, 8-month, human-powered journey to Washington, DC. The goal of the March is to attempt to raise awareness and create action to engage citizens and politicians to engage and address the issue/crisis of Climate Change. More on this to come for sure soon...

First though I want to post a youtube video from the University of Iowa Television about my opening night gallery talk in Iowa City at the Keyes Gallery in the Old Capitol. It was a fantastic night, even though it was so miserably cold (I brought the Arctic weather).

 Please feel free to browse through the video and pass it on to friends. I will be back in Iowa City the week of April 21-25 speaking in schools, Prairie Lights, Iowa Children's Museum and again at the University of Iowa during the evening of the 24th. Hope to see you there. Thank you all.
David Thoreson Gallery Talk YouTube

400 Parts Per Million...and Climbing

It is a sad note today that the long-awaited climate milestone has now come and passed. On May 9th atmospheric CO2 officially passed 400 parts per million of concentration in the atmosphere creating a condition of "loaded dice" as we have now gamed our climate with certain unknown future consequences. We, as human beings, are now in very uncharted waters and speaking of those, well, they are being loaded up with CO2 also and turning our ocean into a very acidic ecosystem. Yes, we are well underway with the big Ponzi scheme on the planet.

One of the most important "real" climate scientists of our time, Michael Mann, recently put it this way, "The last time we're confident that CO2 was sustained at these levels is more than 10 million years ago, during the middle of the Miocene period. This was a time when global temperatures were substantially warmer than today, and there was very little ice around anywhere on the planet."

So where are we going as a people on this planet? Certainly not in the responsible direction.