Much of our understanding of climate change and the precarious state of the Earth’s polar ice is due to the work of French glaciologist Claude Lorius. This program documents several of his missions to Antarctica and his primary innovation: heavy-hydrogen analysis of drilled ice core samples. Detailed interviews with Lorius and with several of his colleagues are interwoven with astonishing, rarely seen archival footage—steeping viewers in the lore and scientific findings of the 1957 Charcot mission, the long-range 1959 expedition headed by Frans Guus van der Hoeven, the challenges of drilling at Dome C, and Lorius’ dogged collaboration with Soviet scientists at the height of the Cold War. Not available in French-speaking Canada. (55 minutes)