We should all know by now that the main character of any Patrick Gower documentary will be Patrick Gower – and, sure enough, the first-person pronoun does plenty of work in the first few minutes of Patrick Gower on Ice. He even opens with a fairly strained play on his top-rating meth documentary: “But this two-part special covers a different kind of ice. The pure stuff – produced in Antarctica over millions of years.”
Thing is, it works. Gower has an ability to connect with viewers whom other documentaries don’t reach. It’s not hard to see why increasingly alarmed climate researchers might want to reach for a little Gower Power to try to get across the message that the Antarctic ice melt driven by a warming planet has catastrophic implications for humanity.
They also generally appear quite chuffed at the chance to be part of the Paddy show. After arriving at Scott Base, Gower gleefully has a go at everything, from drilling for ice cores to radio communications, and the scientists seem to enjoy it nearly as much as he does. Along the way, he swears, uses “ginormous” as a technical term and performs several versions of his gobsmacked face.
Happily, it’s all in service of the science. While researchers are far more skilled at science communication than they were a decade or two ago, actually conveying the complex, interdependent issues behind climate change in a way that won’t make people go glassy-eyed is challenging, as any journalist who’s tried to do so will know. But Gower and his production company Ruckus have come a long way since that first haphazard cannabis documentary.
As they stand out on the ice, Professor Jordy Hendrikx explains that the West Antarctic ice sheet is behaving in unexpected ways. If it melts, that’s a two-metre rise in global sea levels. Then there’s the much larger East Antarctic sheet.
“If that melts,” says Hendrikx, “we’re talking about 50 metres of sea-level rise.”
Gower’s gobsmacked face will presumably be replicated in the nation’s living rooms.
It’s not all on the ice. In Wellington, Gower listens as Climate Change Commission chief executive Rod Carr laments the lost generational opportunity to do something. The problem was known, he says, “and we chose not to take the urgent action – and continued to add greenhouse gas emissions so that we could profit from it”.
Gower also visits an elderly couple who live across the road from the sea in a coastal flood zone – but say they don’t believe in climate change. Even after Gower tells them he’s been to Antarctica and it’s serious, the man isn’t too bothered.
“It’s not going to happen in the next five years,” he says. “And that’d be about us done.”
By contrast, marine ecologist Katerina Castrisios, a 10-year Antarctic veteran, tells him she doesn’t like reading about climate change “because it’s scary … and unfortunately, it’s not us who suffers, it’s our kids’ future”.
There’s a good news story in a New Zealand-developed seaweed product that, if approved for cattle feed, could cut bovine methane emissions by 80%. (“So this seaweed can turn our farmers into climate heroes?” asks a gobsmacked Gower).
But oddly absent from the first of two episodes is any mention of what we might do in the suburbs, around, say, transport choices. Perhaps that will be covered in part two, where Gower will also visit the Pacific Islands. But for now, try to get your family climate curmudgeon in front of a screen for Patrick Gower on Ice. It’s just crazy enough to work.
Patrick Gower on Ice is on Three, Monday, August 12, and Tuesday, August 13, 7pm. Streaming on ThreeNow from August 12.
