Before Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth proved that science + movie = blockbuster documentary, Simon Lamb from Oxford's Department of Earth Sciences had already decided to make a movie about climate science. Yet The Tipping Point, his celluloid collaboration with director David Sington, will be a different kind of documentary: one where scientists studying climate change are the stars and get to tell the story their way. We caught up with Simon to ask him about the challenges of filming in Antarctica, the highlights from his interviews with top researchers and what climate questions he'd still like answered. Full interview after the click
"We were met by a wind chill of 55°C below zero when we landed, and the camera immediately froze up as a block of ice. I remember the excruciating pain of incipient frost bite round my eyes as I tried to peer down the camera lens... It occurred to me that if I was on my own, I would not survive more than a few hours here..."
OxSciBlog: Why did you need to go to Antarctica to film?
Simon Lamb: Many scientists believe that Antarctica plays a crucial role in controlling the planet's climate. In addition, Antarctica contains most of the Earth's fresh water, locked up as ice. What happens here affects the whole planet, and so if there are major signs of climate change in Antarctica, this will have important implications for the rest of the world - not only in terms of weather patterns, but sea level change as well. In other words, Antarctica is both at the centre of the climate change problem and is the focus of a huge international research effort, especially as 2007/8 is the International Polar Year. For all these reasons, we felt that Antarctica is the place to be if one wants to talk about global warming.
OSB: How did the idea of the movie come about?
SL: Actually, we had the idea of a movie on global climate change long before we knew about Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. In early 2006, I was on sabbatical leave in New Zealand, and I attended an international conference in Wellington on global climate change. This was when the science was starting to show for the first time that it is virtually certain that human activity is provoking climate change. However, there had been very little communication of this to the general public from the scientific community itself. I remember thinking that scientists must do a much better job of this, and get their message out themselves. The science of climate change needed to become centre stage. It seemed to me that the obvious way to do this was to make a movie in which the scientists are the stars. I had already been involved in a number of BBC television programmes on the Earth Sciences, including creating the major eight part BBC 2 Earth Story series with David Sington, who has made numerous award winning science documentaries for television. I asked David if he was interested in working on a film about the science of climate change. Finally, when I mentioned the idea to Philip England, my head of department, he felt strongly that this is something that Oxford University should get involved with. He felt that universities are not just about the pursuit of knowledge, they are also about communicating that knowledge. And Oxford University is at the forefront of climate change research.
Filming the penguin colony at Cape Bird, Antarctica in November 2007
OSB: What are the hazards of filming in Antarctica?
SL: The
biggest problem is operating the filming equipment at extremely low
temperatures in a very remote place. During our visit the effective air
temperature, taking account of the wind chill, ranged from about minus
10°C to minus 55°C. These are very challenging conditions for both
humans and our delicate filming equipment, neither of which like
operating below room temperature! The equipment was swaddled in
thermal fleeces with hand warmers taped to the inside. However, frost
bite was still a real hazard for us, especially when looking down the
eyepiece in blizzard conditions, trying to film scientists working out
on the sea ice. I suppose the most extreme situation we found ourselves
in was when we flew up on to the polar plateau toward the South Pole to
film a US scientific expedition crossing Antarctica. We were met by a
wind chill of 55°C below zero when we landed, and the camera
immediately froze up as a block of ice. I remember the excruciating
pain of incipient frost bite round my eyes as I tried to peer down the
camera lens. Humans should not be in this sort of environment. It
occurred to me that if I was on my own, I would not survive more than a
few hours here. Yet this was precisely where Scott's ill-fated
expedition came, man-hauling their sleds across the polar plateau as
they made their painful way to the pole.
OSB: Out of the projects you have
covered so far, which struck you as the most ingenious/challenging?
SL: The
US expedition across Antarctica, referred to above, certainly stands
out as an amazing project. Antarctica is vast and most of it has never
been visited. Yet the story of the planet's climate is locked up in all
this snow and ice. The aim of this project was to sample snow and ice
right across Antarctica. This involved using bulldozers to pull a team
of scientists and their laboratories on sleds across the polar plateau. By travelling for about 22 hours each day at an average speed of a few
kilometres per hour, they hoped to reach the South Pole by Christmas.
When we visited them, they had nearly 1400 km to go! The US air force
had dropped fuel dumps every few hundred kilometres to keep the
bulldozers going. We only managed to visit them because one of the
bulldozers had a broken radiator and there was room on the supply
flight for us.
OSB: Did any of the interviewees you've
met so far change the way you think about climate science?
SL: I
suppose the main thing that has struck me so far is how much fun it is
to talk to climate change scientists about their work. Though they are
clearly worried by the seriousness of the problem, they are, by and
large, amazingly optimistic. In this respect, I have found the whole
experience very reassuring - this is something we definitely want to
convey in the film. In my view, knowledge is power, and so the more we
know about how the planet's climate works, the better equipped we are
to deal with it. Spending so much time with people who are really
trying understand all this makes one much more optimistic that humans
can deal with global warming.
Sea ice near the Cape Bird penguin colony in mid November.
What do you think will surprise people about the movie?
SL: I
think people will be surprised by how eloquent the scientists are, as
well as the sheer scale of their research effort. All this stands in
stark contrast to international efforts to negotiate some sort of plan
to deal with climate change.
OSB: Is there a question about climate change science you'd really like someone to answer?
SL: Yes!
Strangely enough, there is something rather basic. I'd really like to
know all the details of the mechanism by which greenhouse gases cause
global warming. I know that the details are surprisingly complex, even
though the general principles are straightforward. I suppose my
instinct as a university lecturer is to be always several steps ahead
of the audience!
OSB: How do you hope the movie will influence the debate on climate change?
SL: I
think that in many debates, the messenger is as important as the
message. Until recently, the public understanding of the climate change
debate has come largely from non-scientists, and the scientists
themselves have remained in the background as rather shadowy figures.
If you were ill, would you rather find out about what's wrong with you
from the hospital's public relations officer, or a consultant surgeon
who is an expert in your condition? The public needs to meet the
scientists, find out what they are like, and hear from them directly
what they think about global climate change. Until this happens, I
think there is always going to be a lingering doubt in many people's
minds, and a greater reluctance to make the big changes that might be
needed.
OSB: What's your schedule for the rest of filming?
SL: We
aim to continue throughout this year, filming not only scientists at
work, but also the UN-sponsored international negotiations on climate
change. Our plan is to have the film ready for screening in mid 2009. But there are many hurdles to overcome yet!
The film is financially supported by Oxford University and Victoria University of Wellington.
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