Anders Graver had been invited by the University of Copenhagen to create a short film for COP 27 that would follow a project by Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) scientists William Colgan and Christopher Shields. But a chance encounter with Greenlandic hunter Olennguaq Kristensen and his family changed the course of the documentary. “Something happened on the ice,” Graver, director and producer of “The Color of Ice,” told GlacierHub in an interview. “[It was] a very unlikely meeting of two different worlds in the middle of the ice sheet.”
Initially, the film planned to chart Colgan and Shields’ “Hotrod” research, which was a performance test of an electrothermal ice-drilling system on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Designed to insert a temperature sensor cable into the ice, their research could provide important insights into deep ice temperatures—a potential key to predicting future sea-level rise. They were mapping the same area that scientists had previously tested over 60 years ago.
Yet partway through their journey, the scientists encountered Kristensen and his family, traveling from Pituffik Space Base back to the settlement of Savissivik across inland ice; the sea ice to the south had broken up earlier than expected. Upon meeting the team, the scientists and Kristensen shared a soda and stories about the ice, and they agreed to take Anders to Savissivik to give him an opportunity to talk more about his experience with climate change.
“Listen to the science, but don’t stop there. There’s not a person on Earth who is not profoundly affected by drastic changes to the environment.”
The vision of the film changed at that moment. The final product seeks a balance between two narratives: one from the messengers of science and one from people with deep cultural experience with the ice. Intertwined within the documentary, viewers witness the varying impacts of climate change across the globe.
The film still starts with an exploration of the scientists’ Hotrod research. “As shown in the film, we spend a lot of energy thinking about and monitoring the health of Greenland’s ice,” said Colgan in an interview with GlacierHub. “The ice drill followed in the film is much more experimental.”
Thermal-based drills, like the Hotrod, have been tested before. Their high power requirements and low penetration rates have made scientists prefer mechanical drills, which are equipped with rotating blades to get through the ice. However, mechanical drills are expensive, requiring large teams of people and heavy equipment that could make even the smallest projects take months to complete. Colgan and Shields’ research aims to use new technology to give the thermal melt-tip drill another chance.
But the experiment didn’t hit all the targets the scientists had hoped for. The hot-tip design demonstrated a 15% efficiency to convert electrical power to forward motion of just 6 miles per hour, Colgan said. But if they improved the efficiency to 80%, they would be looking at a 33 mile-per-hour penetration rate.
“Science in general [means] you do your best; you fail along the way. You fail 90+ percent of the time and you continue anyway,” Shields told GlacierHub. Though they had setbacks, Colgan and Shields also found results that were interesting enough to springboard a new proposal for a five-year project. The project would be focused on improving the drill efficiency and eventually attempting 500-plus meter boreholes.
While the concrete findings of the research project may have encountered challenges, the film shares valuable insight about climate change: how to reach the vast audiences that climate change affects.
“The messenger matters,” says Francesco Fiondella, who has taught courses in science and climate communications at Columbia Climate School. “Communication is about building narratives…. How do you get from science, which talks in a language of posters, abstracts and papers, into meaningful narratives that can actually be understood by a variety of different audiences?”
Colgan and Shields carried an idea throughout their research, borrowed from Greenland’s national research strategy: “Nothing about us without us.” Instead of pushing the narrative of a scientist using scientific jargon and then returning back home at the end, the film featured the perspectives of people who lived in the area. As Shields explained, if you want to hear what it’s like in Greenland, there is only one place to go.
“My opinion is, we met each other in the right place at the right time,” said Kristensen in an interview with GlacierHub. “When we talked about what they are doing with the Hotrod, I got interested….I think everything that we are doing is all connected.” Kristensen’s local hunting area has been getting smaller over the last few decades, he explained. Twenty years ago, the sea ice that he and his family rely on would come earlier, around the middle of October. Now, it’s three months later, and there are fewer seals. Hunting has become increasingly difficult as a result.
“We have always been hunters, and we would like to pass that on to our children. To be able to sustain ourselves from what the land can give us. We pass these traditions to our descendants and hope that they too can live this way,” Kristensen said in the film.
The Greenland Ice Sheet and other environments across the globe are shifting due to climate change. With such an unfathomable, far-reaching concept, Shields noted, we need more than just scientists to guide conversations about it. The documentary “The Color of Ice” attempts to support these necessary discussions by highlighting the many voices experiencing climate change’s impacts.
“Listen to the science, but don’t stop there. There’s not a person on Earth who is not profoundly affected by drastic changes to the environment,” said Shields.
Watch “The Color of Ice” now at waterbear.com.