Film screening: Thin Ice

Monash alumni are invited to attend the screening of Thin Ice – a film that explores global warming and what we can expect in the future through documentary style interviews with climate scientists from across the globe. The film will premiere on Earth Day April 22 at Federation Square, Melbourne. There are two sessions available: 12pm and 5pm.  

Thin Ice screenings
12pm and 5pm, Monday 22 April
Federation Square, Cnr Flinders and Swanston Sts, Melbourne

This event is free.

The research explored in the film resonates with work being done by the three institutions hosting the premiere: Monash University, The University of Melbourne, and the Monash Sustainability Institute (MSI). Of the many researchers at these institutions, climate scientist Malte Meinshausen, features in the film.  

Head of the Monash School of Biological Sciences in the Faculty of Science Professor Steven Chown will be one of several experts available on the day to answer questions about climate change. Professor Chown is a biologist who sees growing evidence that the rate of change is likely outstripping the rate at which much of life can respond in this modern world.

Director MSI Dave Griggs is running major projects in Australia and Asia to help society mitigate and adapt to change.   

The film maker and geologist, Peter Barrett, has spent three years following climate scientists to give us a rare glimpse into the work of what scientists do, and what drives them. 

Professor Chown: “I was captivated…both by the project and the intensity of Peter’s concern about the difficulties a changing climate was bringing and would continue to bring us.”

The messages are not all bleak. In the words of one scientist interviewed: "Don't be afraid… this is something we're going to get through... Join in this effort and become the best scientists or engineers you can ... let's solve this problem".

View more information and movie trailer.

Read the story behind Thin Ice in the words of Professor Steven Chown.

Enquiries: Email Enrica Longo, External Relations, Development and Alumni Relations Manager, Science.  

Finding Thin Ice

“The first glacier I saw was small - by Antarctic standards tiny. Nonetheless, it was unmistakably a glacier. Well mapped in the 1960s, it seemed to have much the same outline in 1983. The last time I saw it must have been on Christmas Day 1986. The day was one of rest from the insect-focussed research I was doing on Marion Island in the far southern Indian Ocean. Climbing the peaks on one of the few cloud free, calm days to see the ice was a rare opportunity much valued on station. When I went back to look again at this small wonder in the late 2000s, it had vanished.

Signs of considerable change are now everywhere on that largely uninhabited, remote island. The meteorological station’s 60-year records reveal more than 1.5°C increase in mean annual temperature, more sunny days and a decline in annual precipitation of close to 900 mm. Oceanographers have documented rising sea surface temperature trends, and the plankton are more subtropical than they used to be. The most responsive indigenous land plant species on the island has moved uphill by nearly 400 m since the first records in the 1960s.

Early on in this story, the idea emerged that changing climates would benefit non-indigenous, weedy species to the detriment of the local ecosystem. I have spent much of the rest of my career investigating it. From initial work on the island’s animals and plants, I broadened the geographic focus to include the entire sub-Antarctic and then the Antarctic continent. By the mid-2000s I was involved in translating research findings to policy advice through the Antarctic Treaty System as a member of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research delegation to Treaty meetings. In this way I first met Peter Barrett, a geologist and one of the executive producers of the film Thin Ice.

Our interactions were infrequent at first. But one of these involved an invitation by Peter to consider a film project about climate scientists. I was captivated. Both by the project and the intensity of Peter’s concern about the difficulties a changing climate was bringing, and would continue to bring us. Since then, Peter and I have discussed these matters with growing frequency, and sometimes it seems with a growing sense of desperation. We are both concerned by the pace of change – fast for the climate, geological for the human response. We are also much troubled by the difficulties scientists face when drawing the world’s attention to the bleak futures climate change is already bringing.

Thin Ice is about some of these scientists. It reveals the personalities behind the work, exposes their motives, and summarizes some of the findings. The people in Thin Ice form a small fraction of those stacking up the evidence to show that through our own actions, humanity is in serious climate difficulty. Nonetheless, these Thin Ice scientists provide a clear reflection of the way in which a diversity of views, approaches, and values have converged on an inescapable conclusion. The planet’s climate has changed and will continue to do so if we don’t reign in our excesses. Indeed, so much so that Australia’s Climate Commission has dubbed the past season ‘The Angry Summer’.

It’s therefore especially appropriate that one of the personal paths Thin Ice has followed is to Melbourne and a premiere at Federation Square on Earth Day, 22 April 2013. Its portrayal of the scientists behind the research resonates with work being done by the three institutions hosting the premier - Monash University, The University of Melbourne, and the Monash Sustainability Institute. Of the many researchers at these institutions, Malte Meinshausen, a climate scientist, features in the film. Dave Griggs, Director of MSI is running major projects in Australia and Asia to help society mitigate and adapt to change. And among other things, I am a biologist who sees growing evidence that the rate of change is likely outstripping the rate at which much of life can respond in this modern world. I also count Peter Barrett among the world’s remarkable people.”

Steven L. Chown
Monash University