- Sacramento State professor and filmmaker Kathy Kasic's Emmy award winning film: "The Memory of Darkness, Light and Ice" explores the 1960s discovery that part of Greenland was once green and ice free.

She joins us to share what that tells us about the coastlines of our future.

Kathy, tell us, what is the story of this discovery that was made decades ago, but only really came to light recently?

- Yeah, absolutely.

This, um, this story kind of starts back in the 1960s Cold War era.

The US was really worried about the Cold War and enemies trying to attack the U.S.

And so there's a base in far north Greenland, and um, they decided to build a camp underneath the ice sheet in this sort of nearby, where, um, they now have, um, a military base as well.

And so they built a camp about 40ft underneath the ice sheet, and they housed about 100 men because only men were allowed.

There was one woman who came to camp, but, um, that's another story.

But she was-- she was actually fixing the nuclear reactor that they had underneath the ice sheet.

- Really?

- Yeah.

Um, and then she left in the day because she didn't want to be around all the men.

This is a story.

Um... But anyway, so they had this camp that they built underneath the ice sheet.

They were going to hide missiles from enemy view in these long tunnels.

Um, and as part of this whole thing, they also took the very first ice core that went all the way through the whole thickness of the Greenland ice sheet, which was about a mile down.

And at the bottom they took sediment, and that sediment they took and stuck it in freezers.

The ice cores they used and they looked at atmospheric conditions of when the ice sheet was present.

But the sediment tells you when the ice sheet was gone.

And so it's a really kind of interesting part of it all.

Uh, but they didn't have the methods to be able to answer those questions.

So they kind of stored it, you know, like for future times.

Um, and people retired and the ice cores, the sediment cores moved around and ended up in Copenhagen, kind of stuck in the corner behind a bunch of boxes.

And so people didn't really know where it was.

Until they finally found it one day and um, just a few years ago, and they pulled it out, and they looked at it under a microscope, and they realized that there was plant life and bug remains in this sediment, like the sand and mud and dirt that was found under the Greenland ice sheet.

Um, which of course means that at some point uh, things were able to grow and you can't have things growing without sunlight, which means you can't have a mile of ice on top.

And so uh, that's when they started thinking, "Okay, how do we try to figure out how long ago this was?"

Um, and thats when-- - And-and so and approximately how long ago was it?

- Well, the top part of the sediment was about 400,000 years ago.

So um, and then they've dated other parts as well, and they're continuing to do more, but, um, it goes up to a million years ago.

- It's really mind blowing because when you think of Greenland and you think of that part of at the top of the world, so to speak.

You think of nothing but ice and snow and cold.

And this tells us that at least in this particular area, it was green and there had to be some level of warmth there.

- Absolutely.

It means that 400,000 years ago, uh, Greenland, in the place where they took the sediment, uh, was totally ice free.

And um, the CO2 levels at that point in time were actually half of what they are today.

So we know this by other measurements-- - Half... - Half.

- Of what they are today.

- Exactly.

- So... when this finding came up, I assume it was pretty startling to the researchers that found this.

- It was very startling.

I think, you know, scientists get excited.

They're very excited.

Like, wow, can you believe that at 400,000 years ago?

And then comparing it, um... Yeah, it's, uh, it's exciting, startling and... and troubling, you know, because if you look at our CO2 levels today, they're twice that, right.

And so and it's not... it's not like this long duration that we- that we had in the past, um, of the CO2 levels, the carbon dioxide levels rising It's this really fast um, amount that we've poured into the atmosphere over a very short period of time.

And that short period of time means that oh, we don't know how quickly things are melting.

Um, because it takes time for this gigantic system we have to react to that kind of change.

Um, so that's the most concerning part.

- And, uh, and the reaction to this led you to make this movie.

- Exactly.

Well, what led me to make the movie was um, a phone call, - as many things do - Ok.

- start with a phone call in um, 2020, and it was Paul Bierman from the University of Vermont.

Um, he had seen my work um, that I'd done in Antarctica, um, a film called "The Lake at The Bottom of The World" and also funded by the National Science Foundation.

And he said to me, "Would you like to join our grant?

We're um, applying for a grant for the National Science Foundation to look at the sediment, to understand um, just how long ago it was ice free."

The... the Greenland ice sheet was ice free.

And I sort of didn't have to think very long cause I was really deeply intrigued, you know, partly by this sort of bizarre military story.

Like somebody built a camp underneath the ice sheet, you know?

And then, of course, that camp collapsed later.

Um, so, yeah, it was very... it was very intriguing to me.

And um, and then he said, "But there is no funding to go to Greenland."

And I thought, oh, well, that's really going to be a challenge.

He said, "Well, you can get it all in archive."

And I was like, oh, that's not how I like to work.

And so I, um, I quickly... well, I helped them apply for the grant with my part being the film part.

And then, um, I reached out to a colleague from Antarctica who does work in Greenland, and I said, "Hey, you know, I'm doing this work.

Would you be able to take some footage for me?"

And he said, "Oh, no, just come with us."

And so that led to me going with a European group, uh, funded by the European Research Council for the last three years, and we went and explored different parts of Greenland.

Um, and I camped with them on the ice sheet and allowed me to get some, really, um, I think, unique footage of Greenland um, in places that people really just don't go.

- And... and the final product, the movie itself, has been incredibly well received.

As a matter of fact, um, sitting next to you is uh, an Emmy Award.

- Thats right.

- And so what... - What is it like uh, to win an Emmy Award for this work?

- Well, it's, um, it's shocking.

I would say, you know, I applied um, for the Emmy as... as one does, and I sort of did it in like a lets just see what happens kind of way, you know?

And, um, so it was really honored to be... - maybe I put it just right here?

- Sure.

- I, um, I was really honored to be, um, recognized, nominated.

That was enough for me and, um, and then of course, like, I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to go to New York City and, um, see what happens with the red carpet and all the rest.

And, um... so- so I went with my partner, who also worked on the film and, um, and the editor who lives in Brooklyn and one of the camera operators, um, one of my former students who came with me to Copenhagen.

Um, and... and so we- we all sat there wondering what was going to happen.

And... and all of a sudden they announced that we won.

It was like a... like a slow motion car crash, but in a really good way.

- In a good way.

- Yeah.

- Oh, that must have been so gratifying.

- It was, it was.

It was really wonderful.

- What do you hope that this... this award and this recognition will do for the film and also for the- the underlying information and message that the films all about?

- Well, I... I think that's the part about the award that I am most happy with, is that the recognition that the film gets.

The message in the film is, of course, that we need to figure out how to look at the past, to understand the future, how we need to pay more attention to the climate science that we are- that we fully know is happening.

We know that the Greenland ice sheet is melting.

Um, we know that we are emitting fossil fuels, and those are 64 to 68% of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are due to fossil fuel emissions.

Um, we know that we need to change our behavior.

Um, and so the recognition of this film allows people to um, not maybe to watch something, maybe they'll- they'll go and watch it afterwards and say, “Oh yeah, maybe, you know, maybe we should do something different.

Maybe I should be voting more for um, legislat- legislators who are actually going to do something different about the climate."

Um, "Maybe I'll adjust my behavior a little bit, you know, and maybe drive less," and you know, all those things.

- Well, I will tell you that from watching the film, I haven't had that strong a reaction personally since... when I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" many, many years ago.

And the two things that really struck me was - and you spoke to one of them a few moments ago, which is that there is a chart that shows the CO2 increase over a period of time.

And then from the start of the industrial age until now, it goes - I actually had to kind of squint at the screen and look very closely, because I thought, I must be looking at the wrong thing, because it's almost like straight up, you know... you know, off of the page itself.

So that- that really struck me as a bit scary.

And the other thing was when there was a computer model showing how if the Greenland ice sheet melts and I - please correct me if I get this wrong - what the impact will be from a coastal perspective in different parts of the world.

It looked like London disappeared.

Um, the east coast of the Pacific Rim looked like much of it would have been underwater.

Um... I started thinking about, um, you know, what the west coast of the United States, in places like San Francisco would look like.

And this is real.

Um, but that core made all the difference in terms of explaining that it's happened before and it could happen again.

When people hear that, that type of alarm, the one thing is, Kathy, is that some might just throw their hands up and say, "Well, you know, it's just going to happen.

There's nothing we can do."

What's the message that the film communicates to the public in terms of, uh, in addition to what you just spoke to, where it is that we all at least need to get better educated?

If not, take a stand.

- That's right.

I think it's- it's in the science, right.

It's, um, understanding exactly what the science is, what it really tells us.

Um... you know, in the film we talk about Eunice Newton Foote, who in 1856, um, did an experiment, a very elegant, simple experiment where she showed that CO2, when you add it to a bell jar and stick it out in the sunshine, it'll actually warm up more than any of the other jars that she used.

And that tells you that it can warm the atmosphere.

And so she published this paper.

She had to have a male colleague read it in front of the American Association for the Advancement of Science because she wasn't allowed to because she was a woman.

Um, but in 1856, she did this research.

And then a few years later, John Tyndall actually, um, did a similar, slightly more complicated experiment that showed the same thing that CO2 would warm the atmosphere.

Um, and so we knew this in the 1800s, in the mid 1800s.

And um, and so the fact that today, we still don't totally believe that carbon dioxide will warm the atmosphere, um, is a bit of a shock.

And... and also, I think that, um, maybe we don't want to believe it.

You know, it's hard to change our behavior.

It's easier to ignore it.

And the reality is we owe it to future generations to not ignore it.

We owe it to people who come after us because we are here today, because people before didn't do this to us.

And yeah, they didn't have it in them to do it.

You know, they... they didn't have the technology, but we have the technology, we have the intellect, we have the understanding.

Um... We just need to act and we need to pay attention to what's right in front of us, what's right on the page that, yeah, this is happening.

This happened in the past.

It would happen in the future unless we do something different.

- Well, let me give you the counterargument, ask you to react to that, which is that after I... after I watched the film, I thought about it for a little bit, and there was a part of Greenland that was green for a time.

And... but today that part of Greenland is covered in an ice sheet and the conditions are very, very cold.

A cynic might say, "Well, this is just, you know, the Earth's cycle."

And so all we're doing right now is living through a cycle that has been, you know, sort of continuing itself since the time the Earth was first formed.

So why worry?

Why do anything about it?

Because even if we green up, we'll freeze back up again.

- Um, absolutely a very valid concern and question.

And, um, actually, in the film, Jean-- Jean-Louis Tyson from, um, from Belgium actually talks about this, um, the natural cycles of climate.

And, um, you know, there are three major, uh, cycles that kind of are just always happening.

And, um, in fact, if you add those up there actually leading to it should be that our climate is getting cooler, um, but it's not, it's warming.

And so, yes, in in theory, all of those things should be acting together, um, to change our climate.

But actually what should be happening atmospheric changes should be causing it to cool down and we're actually warming.

So, um... I guess that's what I would say to people who think about that is, um, is to pay attention again to the science.

- Yeah.

- Ok.

So talking about the science, you're a professor at Sac State and you're also a filmmaker, um, as well as a scientist, uh, in your own right.

Where did the filmmaker piece come into essentially an academic scientific career?

How did that happen?

- Um, yeah, I you know, I started in biology.

Is this part of the question?

I started in biology and, um, I... I was actually studying frogs in the Amazon of Ecuador.

I was an undergraduate.

That's how I started with it.

Borrowed a tape recorder from a professor at the University of Texas.

Um, he probably didn't expect me to go and actually record the frogs, but I did, and I came back with huge stack of tapes, and he, um, he then invited me to be his grad student.

So I did that for a few years, um, and... And when I was there, I was, uh, doing a lot of obviously recording of these frogs sitting in the middle of a swamp at night, you know, recording frogs.

And it was so much fun.

I have to say.

I'd have to go talk to indigenous people about like, "Where have you seen this frog?"

Cause they were actually a little harder to find than other species that are similar that live in Panama.

And, um, and so I was like talking to a lot of different people.

And I would go out quite often with this man named Delfín Pauchi, and Delfín and I would have these long conversations about- about things.

And I was thinking about this the other night because I was like, yeah, this is part of what my journey was.

I started interviewing him and asking him about what he thought, um, about things.

He was actually, uh, on his way to being a shaman, and he would stand there in the middle of the night with his machete, and the moonlight would just hit it, you know, like "ding."

And he was just waiting for the woman of the forest to come and give him information.

And as part of his religion.

And, um, and so I would interview him and talk to him.

And he had this beautiful, eloquent way of... of speaking about things.

And he said, "You know, we have to figure out how to live more in harmony with the planet."

And, um, and I think there was something about that kind of interviewing his voice, interviewing the frogs, um, kind of being kind of all like in this... in this dark environment, the setting where every sense that I had was activated, that kind of changed me, you know?

Most definitely changed me and made me think that actually, I don't know if I want to study the science.

I think that I need to become a filmmaker.

And so one day I brought a camera with me.

And like, I really didn't look back after that.

- Wow.

And so you... it must be interesting to be with your colleagues, whether it's in Greenland or down in Antarctica.

Another film of yours that I saw, "The Lake at The Bottom of The World."

Um... You're able to communicate with them and on their behalf in a way that I would assume that most of them can't.

And so you're telling their stories, but you're telling the story is not necessarily, as, you know, someone who is just kind of parachuting in, but someone who would be a colleague.

What do you think you bring in terms of your storytelling on issues like these that... give an extra or an enlarged window into that world?

- Hm.

Well, I appreciate you saying that.

Thank you.

Um, I think I really try to hear what people are saying and to translate it, you know?

I mean, everybody has their specialty, right?

And they are brilliant scientists in their fields.

And, um, I feel so fortunate to be able to work with them.

Um, and I want the rest of the world to hear just how brilliant they are.

But if they speak in a different language, it's really hard to understand them.

And so just by kind of translating that language out to the public, we can all start to have a deeper understanding of the very intricate science that they do.

So, um, to me, that's really important.

- Um... In watching a couple of your films... um, you have, uh, your own style that starts to resonate, uh, as one starts to view your- the- your artistic work.

What is your style, would you say of filmmaking?

How do you describe it?

- I call it sensory verité, um, and it's it comes from these two kind of fields of thought of filmmaking.

One is cinéma verité, which is from the 1960s, this documentary style where, um, if you take the French version where they were really trying to be interactive and kind of pull the participants in the film, um, out and their personalities to come out and the filmmaker to be interacting with that.

And to be clear that that was kind of what was happening.

There's no pretense about it.

Um, and not trying to be a fly on the wall hiding from anything.

We're just- we're here.

We're part of everything.

We're changing the reality.

And then the other side, which is sensory ethnography, which is an ethnographic style of filmmaking.

It's kind of like tends to be more in the art world a bit, but, um, but really highlights the senses and... and brings that kind of audio, um, visual feast to the... to the film.

And you kind of- so you merge those two together and you get sensory verité.

And, um, and so in the end, what I hope for is like always the holy Grail, you know, like always trying to get there, uh, is this film that is kind of a visual and sensory feast of some sort that you kind of, kind of feel like those images you could almost touch sometimes, like the ice really feels cold or, you know, you can almost sense the wind, um, and the landscape becomes... becomes its own character.

So that in every film I make, the land is actually really important.

The environment- where we are on this planet is really important.

Um, and then from that, then who are the people we are with, you know, and- and what are their personalities?

What do they really like?

And so hearing their voice and knowing who they are through their voice and their opinions and their thoughts and their science, um, kind of comes clear.

- Well, that's interesting you mention that because there's a there's another really fascinating- fascinating juxtaposition in the film, which is, is that obviously there's a lot of time spent with the scientists, but at the same time, there are conversations with some of the indigenous people that, uh, in habitat- inhabit the land and... um, that... that sort of like back and forth in terms of perspective and conversation was really interesting in kind of getting what the importance of the moment and this land really was.

What was your favorite part of your conversations when you were having, uh, the talks with the indigenous folks in the film?

- Hm.

Yeah.

Hans Jensen is really the main voice in that regard.

And, um, you know, we were actually staying at his place.

He had a hotel, has no sign on the outside or anything.

It's just like five rooms.

And, um, and he, he invited us to kind of partake in some of like, his food, traditional food that he was eating.

And um, so we got to know his family.

And, um, I just said to him and said, "You know, Hans, I'm making this film.

And we spent so much time on the ice, you know, and we're just with scientists.

And so we don't really get to talk very much with, with people on camera."

And, um, and he had lived there his whole life.

They had actually the U.S.

government when they built Camp Century, um, around that time, they actually moved the indigenous people to the village where we were staying.

Um, and so he has this whole other story about that.

He, um, since he was six months old, had lived in this other village that had to move because of our U.S.

military.

Um, and... and so he also has this deep perspective of time, of living in the exact same place, um, and knowing that landscape very, very well and has seen the change over his lifetime.

And he's about in his late 70s now.

Um, so I felt like, yeah, it was it was really special to be able to talk with him.

He was a really gentle, kind person as well, a very honored member of his society, too.

- And finally, I want to bring the connection between what you witnessed and what you recorded up in Greenland and bring it back here.

When you-- That seems so far away for so many of us.

Just in... in a final few words, what is it that we here, within this region should take away from this film in terms of what our connection is - no matter how many thousands miles away - is to this remote place?

- Really, that, um, there is no place that is, um, isolated, that we have an effect, um, throughout our planet, um, no matter what.

And so if... if there's a population over here that's suffering, we're going to feel it at some point.

Um, if there's ice that's melting in Greenland, we're going to feel it at some point.

So our actions actually do change the trajectory of our planet.

So yeah, that's what I would say.

And I hope you watch the film.

You know, whoever is watching, and I hope they get to enjoy it.

And, um, I think it has a hopeful message.

I think we can actually do something different.

I think we can see the future in a positive light.

I do know that we have the capacity to change things.

And I think we, um... We don't have time for depression.

We have to get on with it, to get it done.

- So... - All right.

And I think we'll leave it there.

Congratulations again.

Not only on the film but also on the Emmy win.

- Thank you.

- Look forward to seeing your next film.

- Thank you very much.

- All right.

And that's our show.

Thanks to our guests and thanks to you for watching Studio Sacramento.

I'm Scott Syphax.

See you next time right here on KVIE.