lonnie thompson and his team have been risking their lives for over three decades drilling into mountain glaciers -- ice that has remained frozen for thousands of years. the ice cores they retrieve contain a perfectly preserved record of the earth's past climate. looking toward the future, chris field has created a time machine in a northern california grassland. the jasper ridge global change experiment is subjecting an entire ecosystem to the predicted climate conditions possible 50 to 75 years in the future. both research programs -- one looking into the past and the other toward the future -- will ultimately provide us with better ways to predict and cope with earth's changing climate. [ wind whipping ] man: ie climbed a t of mountains and i've been told that i hold the world's record for the amount of time a human being has spent above 18,000 feet, which is 3 1/2 years of my life. but i've always had a purpose for going up there. and unlike mountaineers, i am always looking for the simplest, safest way we can get our crew up there and all of our equipment 'cause we have to move 6 to