The title of this nature documentary says it all – all about scientific data mined from the Antarctic telling you what is happening up there in the sky or in the air around us. It is the story of the pioneering climate scientist Claude Lorius, now 83, whose lifelong passion for the Antarctic began in his 20s when he signed on for a scientific expedition to that remote region.
Lorius was able to take samples deeper and deeper in the ice, which effectively contained fossilised records of its ambient temperature hundreds or thousands of years ago: the evidence showed an unmistakable upswing in the last century, and Lorius realised that mankind’s CO2 emissions were heating up the atmosphere.
He has lived long enough to see these insights accepted as mainstream fact (the movie shows the remarkable footage of Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 speech to the UN in which she declares that manmade climate change exists – she was arguing for nuclear power) though bruised by the aggressive dissidents. There is something interestingly non-argumentative and personal about this documentary. It is gentle and reflective, a paean to his own youth and idealism that have been preserved in the ice.
