The last chapter explains how the 2010s became another lost decade in the fight against climate change – as the move to natural gas delayed a transition to more renewable sources of energy. Engineer Tony Ingraffea, in the 1980s, helped develop a new technique for extracting gas and oil from shale rock, which ultimately became known as 'Fracking'. It was to unleash vast new reserves of fossil fuels and was promoted as a cleaner energy source. But Ingraffea explains how he later came to regret his work when he realized that gas could be even worse for climate change than coal and oil. Dar-Lon Chang, a former ExxonMobil engineer, speaks for the first time on camera alleging that as the company increased its natural gas operations, it was not sufficiently monitoring methane leaks that were contributing to climate change. Now, after a year of unprecedented wildfires, drought and other climate-related disasters, multiple lawsuits are being brought in US courts in efforts to hold Big Oil legally accountable for the climate crisis.
The most important story of our time. 2022 is set to be a year of unprecedented climate chaos across the planet. As the world’s leading climate scientists issue new warnings about climate change and the soaring cost of fuel highlights the world’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuels – how did we get here? The first part tells The story of what the fossil fuel industry knew about climate change more than four decades ago. Scientists who worked for the biggest oil company in the world, Exxon, reveal the warnings they sounded in the 1970s and early 1980s about how fossil fuels would cause climate change – with potentially catastrophic effects. Drawing on thousands of newly discovered documents, the film goes on to chart in revelatory and forensic detail how the oil industry went on to mount a campaign to sow doubt about the science of climate change, the consequences of which we are living through today
Three years after the devastating fire, Lucy Worsley has exclusive access to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris at a key turning point of the restoration. Work to rebuild and restore the monument is being ramped up in a bid to meet the ambitious deadline to reopen it to the public in 2024. Scaffolding now fills the interior of the cathedral, giving Lucy and the team unprecedented close-up access to every inch of the structure. Lucy meets scientists, historians and craftspeople working to return the 850-year-old Gothic masterpiece to its former glory. The fire coated Notre-Dame with tons of toxic lead dust, so specialists are now decontaminating the site. Unique access to the stunning rose windows allows Lucy and the stained-glass historians to uncover the mysteries of these enigmatic 13th-century works of art. An unforeseen legacy of the fire threatens to destroy the remaining vaulting, so the team must develop an ingenious solution to save the stonework. The loss of the roof during the fire reveals hundreds of large iron staples embedded in the stone along the top of the walls. And the incredible task of sourcing and cutting two-thousand perfect oaks gets underway to rebuild the world's most complex medieval timber structure - Notre-Dame's extraordinary roof and spire.
Sir David Attenborough presents this landmark documentary which brings to life, in unprecedented detail, the lost world of the very last days of the dinosaurs. Searching in the hills of North Dakota, palaeontologist Robert DePalma makes an incredible discovery in a prehistoric graveyard known as Tanis - fossilised creatures, astonishingly well preserved like the bodies found at Pompeii. Whilst DePalma hunts for the evidence that can shed light on the final days of the dinosaurs, state-of-the-art VFX transports Sir David back in time to the Late Cretaceous to witness the creatures who lived at Tanis at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. Meanwhile, cutting edge scanning techniques reveal fossilised secrets that could change our understanding of the dinosaurs' extinction once and for all.
The film explores the revolutionary gene-editing tech now giving humankind the freedom to redraw the blueprint of biological life itself. We investigate not only the tremendous potential the technology holds, whether in the fight to eliminate diseases or in transforming agriculture to adapt to unprecedented climate extremes, but also probe the inherent risks involved and the potential for widespread abuse, dangers that could take our future down a very dark, dystopian path.
(Click CC for Subtitles) Deep in the forests of Northern Italy resides the prized white Alba truffle. Desired by the wealthiest patrons in the world, it remains a pungent but rarified mystery. It cannot be cultivated or found: the only souls on Earth who know how to dig it up are a tiny circle of canines and their silver-haired human companions-Italian elders with walking sticks and devilish senses of humor-who only scour for the truffle at night so as not to leave any clues for others. Still, this small enclave of hunters induces a feverish buying market that spans the globe. With unprecedented access to the elusive truffle hunters, filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw follow this maddening cycle from the forest floor to the pristine restaurant plate. With a wily and absurdist flare, The Truffle Hunters captures a precarious ritual constantly threatened by greed and outside influences but still somehow protected by those clever, tight-lipped few who know how to unearth the magic within nature.
Engineer Tony Ingraffea, in the 1980s, helped develop a new technique for extracting gas and oil from shale rock, which ultimately became known as 'Fracking'. It was to unleash vast new reserves of fossil fuels and was promoted as a cleaner energy source. But Ingraffea explains how he later came to regret his work when he realized that gas could be even worse for climate change than coal and oil.
Dar-Lon Chang, a former ExxonMobil engineer, speaks for the first time on camera alleging that as the company increased its natural gas operations, it was not sufficiently monitoring methane leaks that were contributing to climate change. Now, after a year of unprecedented wildfires, drought and other climate-related disasters, multiple lawsuits are being brought in US courts in efforts to hold Big Oil legally accountable for the climate crisis.