2007 Freemasons BIG Science Adventure winner

5,000 km, my feet and climate change

by Susan Smirk

Only one month after the amazing night we were announced as the winners for the ‘Big Science DVD Adventures Competition,’we found ourselves at Dunedin airport with our packs and passports, excitedly boarding our first flight on the trip of a lifetime. 3 blurry days of anticipation, airports, cheesy in-flight movies, and food packaged in (and frequently resembling) plastic, took us from Dunedin to Wellington to Sydney to Singapore, and at last to London. Our feet swelled to 3 times their normal size, before we finally crammed them back into our shoes, and hurried out through Heathrow airport. Soon we were sitting in the midst of a small patch of green and floral park. We let the bright sunshine help us come to terms with the fact that London was bustling all around us. This was the first of many picnics in the green oasis of Hyde Park, and the beginning of London for us.

Over the next week, we were able to let satisfying measures of tourism slide into the gaps of our schedule – from Buckingham Palace to ‘Chicago’ at the west end. Waking up every morning to the customary continental breakfast was made into an extraordinary event by the sight of the London eye in a constant orbit outside the hotel window. Vaguely astonished at the sudden intrusion of summer into our lives (5 months early) we bought jandals which slapped in a loud and distinctly ‘kiwi’ manner as we walked the hard pavements of London, moving between tourist interests and interview appointments, often distracted by increasingly blistered feet. 

Filming and field trips melded into one. We were astonished and pleased to see that the inner workings of the Natural History Museum, included a special heating/cooling system designed to be ‘zero-carbon.’ The best thing about this was a shattered myth – the idea New Zealanders cling to, that being environmentally friendly or sustainable is somehow a lot more fuss, bother and expense. The NHM is a working example that taking the initial time and cost of setting up sustainable options ultimately is more efficient and money-saving. In the noisy bowels of the ‘engine room’ of this machine, we listened incredulously to tales of smaller scale energy operations – flat blocks with car engines churning away in the basement.

Sustainable living became a reality before our eyes as we approached the BedZED (Beddington Zero Energy Development), where space-age looking colourful funnels protruded from the roof of an otherwise average-appearance modern apartment block. These ventilation devices were only the tip of the iceberg, for a housing development with a difference. We soon learned that by beginning deliberately and with foresight, houses too can be designed to fulfill more efficient (and ultimately cost saving) systems of heating, cooling, and energy use.


The BedZED housing development

Eventually our filming took us further afield. In Cambridge, we had a relaxing punt down the river (past the most Englishy looking England we had seen yet). Then we made our way to the 14^th century mansion of Lord Martin Rees, in the middle of Trinity College, avoiding the large square of (‘don’t stand on the’) grass, and secretly hoping he would take us for a stroll on it later. Beneath a famous painting of Queen Victoria, the Astronomer Royale, president of Trinity College, and ardent advocate of English tea, we compared not believing that we are causing climate change, to not believing that smoking causes lung cancer.

Prominent cosmologist Jerry Gilmore, (also in jandals, to our delight), showed us around the Astronomy department - most notably, the place where Einstein ate his eggs for breakfast.

After one more day in the vibrant hub of London, we regretfully put on what we hoped were comfortable flying shoes, and departed. After Heathrow had again frisked us and searched our bags and we had removed our shoes multiple times so they could be x-rayed, we found ourselves  a relatively short time later showering in the naturally heated (and appropriately reeking of sulfur) geo-thermal water, in Reykjavik, Iceland. Our thoughts were transposed forward a day however, to our morning flight to Greenland. We passed the relatively uncomplicated airport security of Reykjavik that morning, only to wait 3 hours and be kicked out again when our flight was ‘delayed till better weather.’ Icelandic Subway was not all it should have been, the rooms of our hotel seemed smaller, our tiredness greater, and the city less pretty, all because none of the above were in Greenland.

Next afternoon however, after a nervous day with feet itching to be off, the fog cleared and the airport summoned us to our small plane. As we soared in over mountains, fiords and icebergs that looked every bit as ‘Greenlandic’ as we had imagined, the sheer relief and awe was enough to cause the entire plane to burst into spontaneous and heartfelt applause.

Landing on the gravel runway of an East Greenlandic island, we gasped at the jagged mountains and deep blue fiords, in a tiny village of little brightly coloured houses – Kulusuk.

The village of Kap Dan on the island of Kulusuk off the east coast of Greenland

In the breathtakingly fresh air, with icebergs on the horizon, we fished for (and didn’t catch any) Arctic Char. We were later to learn that many of the local fish populations were redistributing , and moving north, with the warming sea temperatures – a disaster for a fisheries based nation. We jumped as the huskies leapt out at use with a snarl, from the rocks around the village. As the setting sun cast low shadows across the water, and the air became bitterly cold, our Inuit guide, Giorg, took as in a small motorboat to the glacier we could see across the water. It’s massive 30m head loomed above, us, but more astonishing, was learning through Giorg’s broken English, that a small Island 1km out from the head of the glacier, had been engulfed in ice just 50 years ago. The giant river of ice was retreating – and fast. What’s more, the wooden sleds we had seen stranded in the sun, back in the village, were getting less and less use every year. The very fiord we were floating on used to freeze up every winter – as did most of the fiords.

The Apusiajik Glacier

This allowed for dog sleds to carry hunters on long distance hunting trips – the traditional subsistence lifestyle relied on this, and fishing. The sea ice takes longer and longer to form each year, and in some places it never completely freezes over. The Inuit lifestyle is less and less to do with the hunting of caribou, seals and reindeer, and more and more based around the benefit from the Danish government (and the beer which this can purchase).

A salty, rusty fishing boat (complete with whale harpoon) was our means of transport to the larger town of Tasilaq, crossing between islands and icebergs in the Greenlandic fiords. A little alarmingly, our weather-beaten Icelandic Captain’s main means of navigating seemed to be sticking his head periodically out of a small window in the cabin. In the equally colourful town of 1500, with a post office, a handful of cars and a small supermarket, our newly donned tramping boots bore us up the hill of the Island Angmagssillak, enjoying  the crisp summer air.

Another sea-trip (roads on the rock and ice coast of East Greenland don’t really apply) took us up the coast, following the trail of enormous bergs from a more northern glacier. We fell asleep to the motion of the boat, and woke to the looming white giants gliding in silence right past our boat.

The silent giants of the Artic Circle

On the Island of Ikateq, an abandoned hunting village, we scrambled up a cliff to gain the panoramic view of islands, icebergs, sea ice, and derelict huts, fish drying racks and sleds. The eerily uninhabited village had fallen victim to the un-sustainability of fishing and hunting, and Danish decrees to discard smaller settlements because of this. Our Icelandic-sea-captain-of-limited-English miraculously produced several bags of bread, cheese and ham, 8 varieties of chocolate biscuits, and miniature gas cooker and teapot for coffee, and a huge bottle of coca cola, to be shared around in too few half-clean and mismatched mugs. It had never tasted better.

Picnic amongst the derelict houses

Back in Angmagsillak, our hotel yielded a variety of fascinating faces – adventurers, tourism managers, geo-physicists, and politicians – all submitting fairly willingly to our camera, as we interviewed and quizzed them on each different aspect of the climate change issue we were exploring. Kiwi explorers Marcus and Graham swapped Bro’ Town quotes with us as we saw them off to walk, kite, and kayak across the icecap. But the icecap, as it seems is the centre for not only quests, but questions. Thomas Nylan and his team explained the system of GPS’s they are installing on the rock of the icecap itself, to measure crustal uplift. So much of the global warming, and sea level rise argument hangs on the frequently cited point of ‘…but The Greenland icecap is melting!’ The measurements that can be gained from these accurate tools, over the next 5 years, will solidify either the notion that the icecap is decreasing, or the alternative proposition that it’s mass is only redistributing. It is more than a notion for Greenland, however. The west Greenlandic polititian who was having a meeting and a smoke in the hotel foyer one evening, explained Greenland’s new directions. Because the traditional lifestyle of hunting and fishing can no longer support them, Greenland is focusing in on tourism, and on mining. They have several South African and Australian gold and diamond companies already seriously prospecting. Also oil – yes oil. He sadly told us that for years Greenland has been asking the world to take notice of what was happening to their country, and only now it that beginning to happen – but so many options are already past their time – so oil is now an option, ironic though it seems. However the government is already promoting small scale energy generations around the country. We were surprised to learn that the ‘lake’ behind our hotel, was in fact the top end of a hydro energy scheme. To me it seemed that when any problem has been enough of a reality to force a people to alter their lifestyle, and a government to change their policy, that it is enough of a reality to take notice of. The only positive seemed to be the possibility of now growing tomatoes and potatoes, in the slightly warming temperature. Tomatoes seemed little consolation for the loss of a lifestyle.

View over Tasillaq

Fog again foiled our plans, and stopped us from the much anticipated helicopter flight over the icecap. However we were beginning to glean from our many conversations, that the fog was unusual, unseasonal and increasing – another sign of the shifting environmental balance which hovers around Greenland.  Instead, that afternoon we were treated to a trip to the Tasilaq dump; stinking, steaming pile of every kind of rubbish and refuse, spilling off the cliff into the ocean. Oil drums, plastics packaging, beer bottles - all testimony to the rapid westernization which the local people cannot escape, and cannot deal with.

On our final voyage back to the airport, the now-customary fog loomed down again, and the rain drenched us through. We dried (and almost scorched) our sopping socks, and warmed our feet, by a small furnace in the tiny triangular cabin of what we had come to regard as ‘our’ boat. Off the boat, we made a final push and dragged our tired feet through the rain up the road to the airport. In 3 weeks, we had covered 5,000km (not all by foot of course), and now we wondered with a distinct sense of responsibility, how many more fogs the emissions we were producing would cause - the plane flight home, the ride home from the airport, driving to school daily – perhaps we would be using our feet a little more than before.

The team – Susan, Annika, Wendy, Jinty, Peggy, Faith and Sarah