He Spent 40 Years Alone in the Woods, and Now Scientists Love Him | Short Film Showcase

have you ever wondered if you watched the snow long enough what stories it might tell there is someone who has done it his name is billy barr i spell it small b-i-l-l-y small b-a-r-r some people call him the snow guardian he lives in a cabin out in the woods picture this it's a snowy day it's dark and cold and you make a fire and you're sitting by the fire and you're reading with a cup of tea and it goes on for nine months billy lives alone in this house he helped build here he grows his garden has an impressive hat collection loves cricket and dreams of bollywood every couple of weeks he skis back into the nearest town for supplies he's been doing this for more than 40 winters but billy does a little more than just read and drink tea for those 40 winters billy has kept a meticulous record of snow in his little part of the world okay market said february 26 and 1978 half inches of snow that day january 20th minus 11 and a half april 28 1980 high was 41. in 1997. one half inch knee snow a weasel was roaming around inside the shack damn the birds were back i lived in an eight by ten foot old shack and had no electricity no water and i had nothing and i was just there all day the main thing i interacted with was the weather and the animals so i started recording things just because it was something to do [Music] i had nothing to prove no goals no anything so actually a researcher at the lab wanted to look at it and then once he started looking at it scientifically then all of a sudden like these decades worth of data were being used for more than my own curiosity billy has done this every day twice a day all winter long i'd keep going until the snow was gone if it snowed i would record that no matter when [Music] the trend i see is that we're getting a permanent snow pack later and we get to bare ground sooner we'll have years where there was a lot of snow on the ground and then we lost no sooner than years it had a lot less snow just because it's a lot warmer now in a normal winter you'd expect to have four to five record high temperatures last year billy recorded 36. not only is it a lot warmer we're getting a lot of dust blowing in as soon as you get dust on the snow it melts like that you're talking about the the snow pack the water supply for most of the southwest i'm not real hopeful just because [Music] i don't know how you reverse something like that as we leave colorado behind billy imparts one last bit of advice it's like anything else you know i learned to ski to get around i learned how to ski better so i wouldn't fall down all the time over a period of time i kind of learned how to survive in this environment [Music] actually learning to fall is probably the most important thing you're going to fall sick a lot easier falling on your butt than on your face [Music] you

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 12,264,295

Rating: 4.8120513 out of 5

Keywords: gothic, colorado, cold places, united states, ghost town, 40 years, woods, man in the woods, scientists, billy barr, cabin, morgan heim, climate change, PLivjPDlt6ApTDlm7OufY6HAzNmFAqxWSo, PLivjPDlt6ApRiBHpsyXWG22G8RPNZ6jlb, PLivjPDlt6ApTjurXykShuUqp7LQcj9s8s, national geographic, science, natgeo, nat geo, explore, nature, animals, wildlife, survival

Id: L72G8TLtTCk

Length: 5min 8sec (308 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/EnvironmentalEnigma]

Is it just me or does anyone else want to know how he's funded himself with a sweet set up in the woods for 40 years?

[u/Dayofsloths]

"July 7th, 0 inches"

"July 8th, 0 inches"

"July 9th, 0 inches"

"July 10th, 0 inches"

[u/oryes]

lol what is national geographic doing with such a clickbait title? Scientists LOVE him

[u/AllUncertain]

I hate the final platitude, "adapt to climate change. Fall on your butt, not your face".

If your plumbing bursts, you don't just say, "time to adapt to an inch of water on my floors for the rest of my life", you fix that shit as soon as you can. After you have fixed the plumbing, it is then the time to say "shit happens, time to clean up" and you absorb whatever consequences there are and move on.

I am really fucking disappointed that an organization with a reputation like National Geographic, one of environmental responsibility and stewardship, is pushing the "adapt to climate change" mantra while we are still making it worse. Push the "get angry and make an effort until this shit is fixed" mantra, and once we've finally stabilized the climate then maybe we can talk about accepting and adapting to the shit situation we find ourselves in.

[u/esmith4321]

I like it - but if we're talking about climate change I feel weird about this. The distinction isn't made between climate (large patterns) versus weather (local patterns).

It's the same argument deniers use "well the weather isn't changing where I am, what do you mean global warming is real?"

In reality we know about climate change because different observatories all over the world are recording the mean climate. It's not like they're only using one point of reference.

When you're evaluating climate systems your local weather pattern might just be unhelpful.

[u/r4tk1ng2]

This guy was recently featured in an Atlantic article that's written pretty well. If you have some time (the articles pretty long) check it out https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/billy-barr-climate-change/512198/

[u/PunjabiIdiot]

Im in Chicago and this winter is probably the weirdest one I have been apart of.

It is raining and 45 degrees like we are in Seattle, right now when it should be freezing and snowing.

It snowed once early in December, which is unusually early and we only had a couple of days in early winter, when it was unbearably cold.

[u/cs_747]

"Fall on your butt and not your face," is the most inspiring sentence I have heard in years.

[u/Buffalochickenwrap]

Ole Billy Barr watching snow of theah...Oh geesus