Customer Reviews

Warnings From the Ice (Global Warming) (PBS NOVA Series) [VHS]

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I found this film very informative in both a scientific sense and as a concerned human being inhabiting a planet where the implications of a rising sea level on a global scale is worth waking up about. The scientific jargon is held to a minimum yet maintains the use of proper terminology, followed by explanations that are understandable to anyone not scientifically inclined. The film is provocative and stimulating and worthy of family discussion as well as college level classroom discussion. The real-life filming is incredible, clear, and exciting. The annimated illustrations of the ice stream, although a tricky concept to visualize, is done very well. Watching this film gives the viewer a sense of the immensity of the ice on our earth and it's importance in our life and it's precarious balance in the scheme of our earth. It also, without even trying, encourages women in the geoscience field and encourages the feeling that by research we are finding answers to earth problems. A ten year old watching this might think - I want to do that kind of work. A 45 year old might think the same!

WARNING: Any kind of discussion of penguins is minimal here. Fans of "March of the Penguins" should be ware.

If I could wave a wand, both poles would be protected from global warming. Still, this work didn't feel as compelling as works that focus on the North Pole. When I see photos of baby walruses drowning and hearing that caribou and polar bears and all kinds of species to the North will go extinct, then I am moved. This work does admit that half of Florida could be drown in the South Pole melts. It even says Earth could become like Kevin Costner's "Water World." Still, this work presents Antarctica as a big, boring boulder of snow. It's just not as interesting.

This work is a bit congratulatory. It's just full of the narrator saying, "Look at all these new tools that will allow us to study Antarctica." This work really covers the research being done down there. It's not as environmentalist as the title implies. It is not as much about "The South is melting and you the viewers need to do something about it." This work is just too science-based and nerdy for most viewers to sit through it. For example, the narrator says, "Yeh! We mad a tunnel in the ice!" Okay, and?! It is compelling, however, when they recall Shackleton and Scott, explorers who failed in studying that continent a century ago. I can't even imagine that many science classes being able to use this documentary for anything informative. The emphasis is ice: big, boring ice!

The interviewees are not diverse in the least. One guy from University of Texas has an awesome Aaron Eckhart-like chin dimple. I don't blame NOVA, but I hope this encourages diverse individuals to study the South Pole.