- Title: The Iceberg Cometh
- Date: 29th September 1997
- Summary: Great natural beauty combine with awesome size and power in one of the largest free floating objects known on earth: the iceberg. From the Titanic disaster, in which a single berg claimed more than 1500 lives, to our hapless attempts to destroy them with bombs, guns and even black paint, Equinox chronicles the fraught relationship between man and iceberg.
- Description:EQUINOX: Ice Bergs - The work of the Ice Patrol, defending the Northern seas from Icebergs. (part of the Equinox/DCI output deal) Great natural beauty combined with awesome size and power, one of the largest free floating objects known on earth: the iceberg. What are icebergs? How are they formed? Why do they take so long to melt? The icebergs that find their way into the busy shipping lanes of the North Atlantic can be a menace and, at times, disastrous - 1,500 people died when the Titanic was struck by an iceberg. This film would follow the work of The Ice Patrol. In the past they dropped bombs on the bergs, but this just broke them up and increased the number of floating death traps. Now they use satellite surveillance and radar to monitor the movements of the bergs and report their positions to nearby ships. If a berg is on a collision course for a ship, the ship can of course change direction. But what if the berg is on course for an oil rig? Scientists have designed a system that produces surface current to deflect the incoming monster. But ice bergs are also a powerful barometer of environmental change, and this film will also explore how global warming could actually result in the incidence of ice bergs increasing and them coming further south. As the progress of the Gulf Stream is threatened by changing currents, ice bergs are something we could see off the coast of Britain.
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:RDF Media Ltd.
- Transmission Date:29/09/1997
- Rights:On Request
- Decade: 1990s