Commentary: I am a diver who documents climate change in the Arctic. And I am running out of time

Nearly 20 years ago, I led a National Geographic diving team that made the first cave dives inside the largest floating piece of ice ever seen on our planet. The B-15 iceberg had calved from an ice shelf in Antarctica, and we were moved to explore the inside of what was regarded as a potential harbinger of global climate change. While I wrote the script for the accompanying documentary film, "Ice Island," people cautioned me not to use politically charged terms such as "climate change" and "sea level rise."

Scientists recently announced that the polar ice is collapsing faster than predicted.