Climate Change and the Arctic - Panel Discussion at University of Alaska Fairbanks

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Ra. It.

Hey dave.

Okay, and the live stream is actually happening.

Live stream.

It's got like a holding about to start.

Okay.

Okay.

Just waiting for us to put the switch.

Okay.

Because I don't think anybody else is gonna show anytime soon, so.

Smooth.

Okay, there's the hand mic. Before mention.

Good morning everybody. We're gonna get started here in just a minute so please get yourself comfortable. Not that comfortable. There we. Okay. Welcome everyone to this workshop. My name is Brad A. And I lead the oceans conservation program at WWF US and I'm going to be moderating this event. We are, we are live streaming it Also we've had 130 people SVP and actually had a waiting list. So I have a feeling that the change in plans for ministerial might have had an impact on our, on our attendance. But possibly people will be streaming in or filing in as we go on. But we're going to get started and respect to everyone who's here. So the title of this workshop is what is the Arctic we need to sustain the global climate. Which is sort of an interesting question if you think about it, because.

What.

Is the Arctic that we're going to have is probably the first part of the question that we have to answer. What is the trajectory that we're on and where does it lead us? And we're going to hear today from folks who have been doing a lot of science and research on that question. And then the next part of the question is can we stand that change? Can we stand that change in the Arctic? Can we stand that change in the mid latitudes? Can we stand that change on a planetary scale? And at what point do we get to tipping points that we might not.

Be able to withstand anymore?

And that's obviously an implicit question. What is the Arctic we need to sustain the global climate system. And then of course the next obvious question is what can we do about it? Is there anything we can do about it? So we're on a trajectory, we've got some idea of where that trajectory is leading. There's error bars of certainty and uncertainty. There's more and more science emerging all the time and information and signals that keep recalibrating. At some point at which it becomes untenable for people in the Arctic and for the planet.

Increased warming over the Arctic, 3 to 7 degrees by year 2100. Sea level rise somewhere from 90 centimeters up to 1.6 meters by 2100. Loss of summer sea ice within 30 to 40 years. The risk of the Arctic becoming a substantial contributor to greenhouse Gas balance and more abrupt changes rather than smooth transitions.

We more and more learn that instead.

Of gradual changes, we see extreme events that are incredibly important. But we also see that some of the gradual changes are not gradual. They're happening much faster.

In the Arctic, changes are occurring. By acting now, we can shape the course of the climate trajectory in middle latitudes and lower latitudes. So the opportunity is there to act. Now, the window is open, but it's a window that's not going to be open forever. We do need to heed the warning in a timely manner, and that timely manner is fairly short.

Okay, get the lights back on some of the changes that have been studied and monitored and reported on the SWP report and look at trajectories in critical parts of the Arctic system that affect. First, with one of the Arctic Youth ambassadors. And this is a program that just started during the US Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, and it's designed to engage voices from the Arctic youth in telling the stories about climate change.

The Arctic's climate has been relatively stable for the past five to 10,000 years. There are signs now that we're moving out of that range of specific.

We see that the sea level is rising more and more. There's a lot of people that are challenged by this sea level rise. We can mention the Pacific Islands, Netherlands, Bangladesh. And as the sea level will continue to rise, it will be a huge challenge to adapt to these changes.

If you have increased warming, that will.

Then start to thaw the permafrost. And when you thaw the permafrost, the.

Carbon will be released.

It's released either as carbon dioxide or as methane. And methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide. And because of that, we will have an amplified warming.

This is just the beginning of the changes we expect to see in the future. There's going to be even more dramatic changes, particularly outside of the Arctic. The Arctic is kind of the canary and coal mine of the climate system. So the changes we see in the Arctic are the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

With the observations we have now, and taking into consideration the increased warming in the future, we can expect new scenarios in a series of fields. Increased warming over the Arctic, 3 to 7 degrees by year 2100. Sea level rise somewhere from 90 centimeters up to 1.6 meters by 2100. Loss of summer sea ice within 30 to 40 years. The risk of the Arctic becoming a substantial contributor to greenhouse gas balance. And more abrupt changes rather than smooth transitions.

We more and more learn that Instead.

Of gradual changes, we see extreme events that are incredibly important. But we also see that some of the gradual changes are not gradual. They're happening much faster.

In the Arctic, changes are occurring. By acting now, we can shape the course of the climate trajectory in middle latitudes and lower latitudes. So the opportunity is there to act.

Now.

The window is open, but it's a window that's not going to be open forever. We do need to heed the warning in a timely manner, and that timely manner is fairly short.

Okay, get the lights back on. Thank you. So that's a good scene. Setter for a very brief overview of some of the changes that have been studied and monitored and reported on the SWP report and many other, many other places. We're going to go much deeper into some of those and look at trajectories in critical parts of the Arctic system that affect the global climate and the regional climate. But we want to start first with one of the Arctic Youth ambassadors. And this is a program that just started during the US Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, and it's designed to engage voices from the Arctic Youth in telling the stories about climate change and impacts and a changing region. And so we have Camille Kimuel Kenrad, who is with U.S. fish and Wildlife Service and the U' Pic people, and he's going to talk about some of the changes that he's seen. So thank you, Kim know.

Good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today I'd like to share a little bit about life in Togiak, which is in southwest Alaska. So some of you may know that Bristol Bay is, excuse me, one of the more profound fisheries. I Alaska produces salmon. Worldwide. You have things like Cob River, Trident Seafoods, and salmon is one of the mainstays in Crystal Bay. For thousands of years, we've harvested salmon in the same way over and over and over again. With things going on in the ocean right now, we're starting to see a lot of changes with them. I've got hundreds, if not thousands of reports of deformed salmon, smaller salmon, less salmon fishing isn't as great as it was even 20 years ago. The next we'll look at a beef T bone steak. So because we live in such a remote place, getting these foods that are so commonly in these larger areas is a lot more difficult. If I wanted to get the steak, say, from Anchorage, it would have to hop on three to four different flights to get to my location. And by that time, it could have gone bad. It could have been rotten, could have been mishandled so due to all these shipping prices, this beef t bone steak is 14.29 a pound, running at $102.60. So running on those prices, I will segue that into the next photo here of walrus. I know it does look a little gruesome, but we have been harvesting walrus for as far as we know. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and U.S. fish and Wildlife Service, research dates it back to 6,000 years on the Round island. And we have been hunting them for a long time. So taking in the cost of all our hunting, say a hunting trip of 20 people to harvest for walrus, it's going to cost around $1,500. Considering all the gear, fuel, boat uses, your snacks for the day, it's going to cost around 1500 dollars to get a 4000 pound walrus at best. If you do the math there, you're running at $2.66 per pound for walrus versus the beef, which is $14.29 a pound. If I were to buy 4,000 pounds of beef from a slaughterhouse, that would cost me $57,160. And I'm not sure of any grants that are floating around Alaska that will give me $57,160 to 50. Feed my community and multiple others. 31 other villages that the walrus feeds. As I've said, salmon is quite common all over Bristol Bay. And it's not only the coastal communities that reap the benefits of salmon. Not only are they healthy, but they come in vast numbers. So a community like Togiak, where prices are insane and it's hard to buy food all the time, our diet is 90% of subsistence foods. And harvesting the salmon in the summer will last us all the way through fall, winter, spring, up until the next summer. And we're currently running all of our fish right now. But it's two to three weeks until the next salmon run. So harvesting the walrus is something we've done for a very long time. And last year in October was the first time I've been invited by the traditional council of Togiak to participate in handling of the walrus. I was given the opportunity to be a butcher, distribute the meat to the community of Togiak and the surrounding communities. And of course, seeing as we live on the coast, there's much more than just salmon and walrus. There's moose, caribou, there's bird eggs, there's birds. And within a week's time, the majority of the community is going to go out into the ocean, out to these desolate islands where you wouldn't imagine anything to be, but you will find life there. And mainly it's going to be mers. You can think of a mer as a flying penguin. And when we go out there, we harvest their eggs and they come by the millions. I'd like to add in that last year, due to everything warming up, it seems like. We had come to the conclusion where we came to the idea that since there was warmer water and we had the tens and thousands, hundreds of thousands of mers dying off, that we were not able to harvest the myrrh eggs the way we usually would. And last year we went completely without these mer eggs which we so heavily rely on. We'll gather maybe 100 gallons of MER eggs and that'll last us for the year. But they were nowhere to be found last year. The reason being is we think that with the warmer water, the mers, the myrrh bird, its food source has dove deeper into the water and therefore they had starved. And we had found hundreds of thousands of them washed up anywhere from Bristol Bay down to the panhandle. And there were reports all over Alaska on the coast. So that's another thing I would like to add is that seeing as we have been harvesting walrus for thousands of years, we've been doing it the same way for thousands of years. We are starting to see a change of that. I remember hearing elders talk about how there used to be over 150,000 walrus at the Round island in Bristol Bay. Last year we were averaging 11 different walrus a day, whether they would come in and leave. The lowest amount of walrus we had last year was 12 actually, and the highest we had was 1500.

And.

As of right now, there's no solid answer as to why we're not seeing as much as we are. But one conclusion is that in the Chukchi Sea, the sea ice is moving further and further where the females calf. And on our own island, we only have the males. With that sea ice moving further and further north, we are thinking that they don't want to travel down there as much as they would like to. And with such a far traveling distance, we think that they're moving somewhere else rather than Round island where they have been for thousands and thousands of years. And that's what I would like to share today is with all this warming going on, it's really affecting everything. Not just the snow and ice, but our traditional hunting and our values where it will take our culture in the next hundred years, by 2100, what will we have that. Will we have walrus? Will we have these murres? Are we going to have salmon? I'd like to see that by 2100, my great, great grandchildren would be able to participate in these activities that I have been able to. Thank you.

Why don't you stay here just for a second? I was remiss. I should have said in the beginning, we're going to actually have a little bit of questions after each speaker, just to break things up a little bit. So does anybody have any comment or question for Kimu?

Yes, ma'.

Am. We heard a lot about the mer. The mer die off. And at what point did you. How did the community respond? Did you just decide amongst yourselves like we're not. How did you decide to deal with the egg collection? Was it kind of a collective decision or just you couldn't find them or.

Our community took it harshly, not being able to find the eggs we had to substitute. Whether that was going out and collecting other eggs and having a tough. I've been invited by the Traditional Council of Togiak to participate. Finding them or buying chicknecks from the market, which is like $16 for a dozen of eggs. So we took it harshly, not only financially, but spiritually.

We've.

Ever since I was a kid, 6 years old, I've been able to climb these islands and harvest these eggs. But last year was a lot different. We didn't harvest any. So we improvised, whether it's looking for goose eggs, duck eggs, or gull eggs. So even if they weren't there, we always do our best to improvise and think light of the situation.

I just have one. Oh, go ahead, ma'.

Am.

You talked about moose and caribou. Is that traditional counting in Tobias?

So that's a great question. Moose is not one of our traditional mouse. You look back 75 years ago, back in the 1930s and 1940s, you would not find a single moose within the 4.7 million acres of the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge where I work. According to elders that are still alive today, they can recall seeing the first moose from the interior walk down from the Molt Chatana river into the Togaq National Wildlife Refuge. To this day, there's somewhere, according to our count back in March, we are conservatively around 1400 moose within that 4.7 million acres. One of the hunts that is traditional, though, is caribou. We've had caribou for thousands of years, and we are originally caribou.

Herders.

We had a strong herd of around 8 to 900 caribou on Hagemeister island, which is about 30 miles south of Tokiak. And we've had caribou in the area, whether it's in The Auckland Mountains, 10 miles north of Togiak, or down at the Cape Pierce or Cape Newnham area, which is around 70 miles southwest of Togiak. So caribou is our traditional hunt and we have been doing it for a long time, but moose is still fairly new to us. We haven't even had moose in this area for the Bristol bay area for 50 years, so 75 years. So that's fairly new to us.

I just have one last question for you. We talk a lot about adaptation and how we're all going to have to adapt to a changing climate. Obviously, you're on the front lines of that change. What do you see as the prospects for being able to adapt?

Not quite sure how to answer that. Still adapting, still trying to do our best. We just go with what we have. If the salmon were to disappear, we would do our absolute best to try and survive with some else, whether it's looking for trout. If the walrus were to completely disappear, we would try our best to survive off something else, whether that's seals or moose or what have you out there. So with things changing, I imagine that we will have to do rapid adaptation and it will be tough, but I'm sure we can pull through. We will try our best anyways. It will be really tough.

Thank you very much. Thank you again. So it's a change from the big picture SWIPR report to actually help. The effects of these changes are changing people's ways of lives that they've had for tens of thousands of years. And we often focus at the larger picture and not so much at the smaller. But now we are going to go back up to the larger picture and hear from Dr. Max Holmes, who's with the Woods Hole Research center, and he's going to give an overview of the various elements of the Arctic that are changing and what it means for global climate. Max?

Thanks, Brad. And thanks to you in the room who made it here this morning with the change schedule and everything else. Let me fire this up.

So when I was asked to participate.

In this workshop or panel discussion, I was asked to consider the question, what is the Arctic we need? Which is kind of a. I found that to be an interesting and intriguing question right from the start. I'll say I'm not going to answer that question, but I'LL try to convince you that it's a worthwhile one to consider. And I have we in quotes because we can be the people that live in the Arctic. It can be indigenous residents of the Arctic, it can be the Arctic nations, it can be the whole global community. And I think we all have a stake in the Arctic. Most of my comments are going to be based on some material that's in this report. A five degree Arctic and a two degree world. That this report came out, I guess it was last September, just before the Arctic science ministerial in D.C. i think there's some copies of that report in the back of the room. A number of organizations and people participated in the preparation of that report. Two of our speakers today, I did, Brad Ack and Rafe pomeranz. Rafe with Arctic 21 and Woods Hole Research Center. He'll speak at the end today. I was not directly involved, so I'm not encumbered by any inside knowledge of the content or dealings of that report.

But what I want to do is.

Think about in various terms Arctic and global interactions. And I'll approach that from a variety of different frameworks. And is it just me or is it.

Yeah.

Okay, here we go. And I'm going to start with what I think is the most common way that we think of Arctic and our global and Arctic interactions. And that is the ways in which some of the ways in which global change, global climate change is impacting the Arctic. And I'm just going to touch on a few of those. One, we all know, I think that while the Earth is warming, the Arctic is warming even more. And again, so that's the basis of this report. A five degree Arctic in a two degree world. And this figure just shows this is basically a temperature anomaly over a 10 year period, 2005 to 2014, where you see basically it's warming everywhere. It's warming an awful lot more in the Arctic and that's having all kinds of implications. We've already heard a bunch of those. The movie we saw touched on those. We're losing sea ice at a rapid rate. That loss of sea ice is impacting all kinds of different things, including the marine mammals that depend on that sea ice. I took this shot out of the airplane window yesterday afternoon. This is a glacier not too terribly far from here. Glaciers are retreating or melting around the Arctic. That's another one of the big changes that's underway. Permafrost, this is a topic I work a lot more on. Permafrost is warming and thawing around the Arctic and those changes on land can impact human infrastructure. This is a photo of an apartment building in the Siberian Arctic. And this is a fairly common scene around the Arctic where you'll see buildings essentially sinking into the ground. And in this case, you may see how this building sort of falling into the middle as the permafrost. Permafrost is fantastic for building on when it's frozen, but when it's thaws it is not. And I suspect that Vladimir Romanowski, who speaks next, will talk more about that. And all these changes, as we heard with the the previous speaker, are impacting the people that live in the Arctic, and particularly the indigenous people that rely very much on the land and ocean and water. And this is just a shot of a Venki reindeer herder in the Siberian Arctic. And all these cascading changes are certainly impacting their ability to continue living as they have for thousands of years.

All right, now I want to flood.

It a little bit and think about how changes in the Arctic can impact the global climate system. One which I spend a lot of time thinking about is permafrost thawing. The permafrost frozen ground in the Arctic contains about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. That's built up over thousands and thousands of years. But as the Arctic is warming and permafrost is thawing, some of that carbon is released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methods methane, which leads to more warming and so on and so on. Obviously with global consequences. As land ice in the Arctic is melting, whether that's glaciers or Greenland ice sheet, as land ice melts, sea level rises, certainly that is having global consequences. And as that accelerates over coming decades, those consequences consequences will become even greater. There are also some intriguing science being done about potential connections between weather patterns at the polar vortex in the Arctic and weather patterns outside of the Arctic. And somebody coming from Woods Hole in Massachusetts, much of what some of the strange weather that we've seen over recent years could be connected. This is a controversial idea. Not everyone's on board with it, but it appears that there may be some interesting connections here. There are also connections with the hydrologic site. A river discharge in the Arctic is increasing, adding extra fresh water to the Arctic Ocean. Land ice, as I've already mentioned, is melting, adding extra fresh water to the Arctic Ocean, that influences the salinity and density of the ocean water. And that can impact the global ocean circulation, which can have global climate implications. All right, now I want to switch to another frame for thinking about this Arctic Global connection, and that is thinking about global climate policy and how that can impact what is happening in the Arctic. I'm just going to give one example of that. So this is from the Paris climate negotiations and of course lots of discussion about whether the warming threshold should be 2 degrees C or 1.5 degrees C or whatever it should be. But once we have those kind of numbers, the modelers do what they do. And there are lots of examples like this. This is showing permacross loss over the rest of the century under different emissions scenarios. And I won't go into the details of that, but basically different policies or different emission scenarios for any different variable that you're interested in, the Arctic, you can look at the implications of that on that variable. Again, this is showing permafrost loss under three different emissions scenarios. And now finally, I want to flip it around to this final frame for considering the Arctic global interaction. That is how changes in the Arctic can influence global climate policy. Now, one thing that's happening already, I think in many ways the, the Arctic is the, let's say the canary and the coal mine are the case study for impacts of climate change on the Earth system. And I think the changes that are already being observed in the Arctic help motivate hopefully stronger international climate policy. But as the title of this session suggests and the title of my talk alluded to, we can think about sort of the fundamental question, back it up a bit and say, okay, what is the Arctic that we need? Again, that's a question that's considered in this report. If you haven't seen it or you don't have it, you can get a copy in the back of the room. And I'm just going to highlight a few of the recommendations from that report as I wrap that up. Now, the first is we need to figure out the Arctic that we need. We need to get together and think about, okay, how far can we pull back? And as Brad said at the beginning, I mean, the Arctic is changing. Part of that is figuring out where it's going. But at some point we have to say, can we live with the Freeland ice sheet, Melton, can we few of the recommendations from that report as I, as I wrap that we live with, can we accept and again that we can be different communities, it can be indigenous people of the Arctic, it can be all the Arctic nations, it could be the global community. Can we accept widespread permafrost thaw and implications of that on both infrastructure, on greenhouse gas release and so on? What are we willing to accept? What is the Arctic that we need. We then need to think about how we get from, well, how we get there. If we decide, here's the Arctic we need, we know the direction things are headed. There's probably a great divergence between what we think we need and where we're headed. How do we actually get there? Is it, I mean, rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions? Is it pulling carbon out of the atmosphere through either natural processes, planting trees, or technological processes? Is it through some geoengineering approach? And we'll hear more about that later. But how do we close the gap from this arc that we think we need to actually. How do we actually get there? And finally, we need to speak with a unified voice to exert some influence for global action. And a really good example of a community that's done that is people from low lying island nations, so very small countries whose existence is threatened by a sea level rise. And these guys had a really big influence, I think, on the direction of the Paris climate change. Their existence is threatened. They stood up, they were heard and they were one of the reasons that I think the ambition at Paris of pushing toward 1.5 degrees C threshold was greater than it otherwise would have been. So we can think about, okay, how can the Arctic community, the Arctic residents, Arctic nations, the Arctic Council stand up and be heard to push for more aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or more aggressive actions to get us to the Arctic that we need? Thank you.

Let's also take a few questions for Max, if anybody has any. I'll start. I'll see the questions. So the impact, the models that you showed, just the one quick graph of various emission scenarios and their impact on permafrost, all of them were bad, right? I mean there wasn't, it wasn't that the RPC 2.6 was a good scenario. It's just the best of the worst. To what extent do the models take into account the feedback loops of permafrost continuing to melt and release methane and carbon?

Yeah, I think. Good question. At this point, most of the models don't represent that feedback loop very well. You're certainly right that the best case in that slide I showed was still a 30% loss in near surface permafrost over the rest of the century. So the best case scenario is still pretty bad. But there's a big difference between the best and the worst case. And that should motivate us to take action.

But, but my point of my question was if the model doesn't account for that release, then actually I know I.

Know, yeah, yeah, no, I wanted to.

Confirm whether that was.

Yeah, no, that's right. So all of the feedbacks aren't there.

Okay.

And. And so the picture could quite possibly be worse than what is shown in that figure.

Okay, other questions.

Did these models account for methyl hydrate release?

No, I don't think any models get that.

Very.

Yeah. So do the models account for methane hydrate release? Well, of methane as seas warm, as Arctic is warming and to the best of my knowledge, no models get that. No, no models understand the process. We don't understand it well enough to model it. So no.

Yes, ma'.

Am.

Yeah, so the question, the question was what are some of the small island nations that stood up and helped motivate stronger action in the Paris climate negotiations? They came together in a coalition. Small island nations. Yeah, sorry, I can't give you the whole list of them, but they, they form. What is it? Yeah, somebody just said the acronym theosis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry.

It's a lot of violence in the Pacific, a lot of low literature in the Pacific. Kiribati, Palau, Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, Florida. Florida was not on that coalition. All right, well, thank you again, Max. Okay, so for a now drilling down deeper, pardon the pun, into the world of permafrost change, we have Vladimir Romanovsky from right here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming and thank for Max to give some good introduction for what we should expect from Chromos. And I was asked to talk about global impacts.

Like this.

And I will, I will be talking about global impacts but if you have questions I can answer about local because I'm living here, so I know all these problems. So not all of them of course, but. And actually very good presentation, opening presentation which was mostly addressed the problem to get food or there is problem to save this food over the winter and this problem getting more and more severe because the traditional ice source which was used to save this meat over the over the winter are not working anymore properly. So anyway, so just small comment, but I will be talking mostly about global things and first I will show several slides from SWIPA report, the Swipa 2017 which is being released right now. I was a coordinating lead author on permafrost chapter on it. And I will start. We will start my presentation showing several slides from that SWEEPA report. So here is what we know about what climate is doing specifically air temperature recently. So the graph showing the difference between mean number for from 20002017 compared to 1970 to 2000 and you see there is a huge increase in air temperature and especially in the high latitudes. And of course permafrost reacts to these changes. And all these kind of dots there which not really you see very well. It's all boreholes where we measure temperature. And that's about the records from these boreholes. And you see that they were all around the circumpolar north. All of them show that permafrost is warming. And there's no doubts it's warming in this warming started in. Eighties in Alaskan Arctic in Siberia. It started a little bit later in maybe 90s in Nordic countries and Eastern Canada and Canadian archipelago. But it's all going up and going up significantly. I will show another graph from Alaska which is fortunately for me is the highest rate of warming in permafrost. So it's very exciting to study if something is changing. But it's not just Alaskan phenomena, it's circumpolar phenomena. And also you see that the colder permafrost in the lower grass and upper right, I'm sorry the left grass and upper graphs, colder permaphoros is warming faster than warmer permaflost because warmer permaphoros is already getting to the point where it starts to thaw. And then you don't see too much change in temperature, but it's really losing already its ice. And because of that the process is slowing down, but it will not stop. Eventually all ice will be gone and that's it. And chromophores will go together with this ice. Now in Alaska. This is our data from Geophysical Institute. It's even more kind of exciting to see that at the size near to the coast West Dock and Deadhorse for example, temperature at 20 meter depth increased during the last 35 years by 3 degrees Celsius, 30 degrees Celsius, so 6 Fahrenheit and it's a 20 meter depth. And this warming was pretty much very stable and sustained in colder chromophores. A little bit less change in the warmer chromophores but still very significant. And most of the permophores in interior now is about warmer than minus 1.5 degrees Celsius. So very close to Thorium. Now looking at the other data, what we have, air temperature. Compare air temperatures lower graph and surface temperature and surface temperature. We can see that mostly warming in the ground is being led by warming in air temperature, increasing air temperature. So so far snow doesn't have long term impact. But it's another very important Factor And I did some very simple projection for one of the sites. It's Deadhorse site. If everything in terms of climate and permafrost will continue to do what it have been doing during the last 30 years. So the 0 degrees threshold at Deadhorse site it's proud of it will reach by 2050. So 2050 if everything will be just doing what it is doing for the last 30 years. So that's pretty kind of significant result and not well most of the chromophorest scientists would not believe in that. But that's what is happening. Of course it's very simple model but like I said just assume that everything will be doing what it is doing so far. So now what projections? So what permafrost supposed to do? And Max start to show this already in one of his slides in the warmer world. So we look at some a little bit more sophisticated model than just a straight line which I showed before for the entire northern hemisphere and permafrost temperature and distribution. And this model used kind of moderate climate warming scenario. It was a previous from the previous IPCC it's a 1B. So it's kind of about probably 4.5 scenario. So it's not the worst, almost the best actually. And what we can see by 2050 according to this climate scenario permaphoros always read is permaphoros estoy it's already gone from the surface. It's somewhere still maybe deeper, but few meters from the surface down there is no permofrost already by 2050. So by the end of the century about half of permafrost will be thawing. And that's moderate scenario. And even this kind of blue areas it looks like it's safe and stable. Well it's not because in these blue areas there will be increase in summer thaw. And this increase in summer thaw will get into ice and develop some processes which are not reflected in this model. Like thermal cars, thermal erosion, slumps and so and so and so many things which actually can produce some sudden changes in permafrost, sudden flow of chromophorest and that's it'll be in many places in that blue area. So blue area is not safe either. Now the same model can be used just to illustrate what we can imagine or we can aim for in terms of warming. So 1 degree of warming in the Arctic. I'm talking about Arctic warming, not global. We'll start throwing permafrost in this southern rims around the permafrost area. So 2 degrees warming and 3 degrees warming and 4 degrees warming and 5 and probably that what will be kind of realistic for that Paris agreement about 6 degree warming. So that's what will happen to promophorest if all these problems and obstacles Paris agreement will be implemented Permoforest. Well, it will not help too much to keep permophorest at the bay. So half of permophorest area will see thawing of permophores with all these consequences. So the consequences that next part of my presentation, the consequences. And again I will be talking only about global but we can discuss later some local things as well and regional. So global of course the first one and it was mentioned already several times I think. Oh in the video. Yeah, that thawing chromophores we are will release carbon which is now sequestered in chromophorest and amount of this carbon. This is the map of the concentration of organic carbon in upper 1 to 2, 3 meters of soil. The problem is that or kind of what is really brought attention to this problem was the amount of carbon sequestered in permafrost. And there's just some little bit older numbers but they still pretty good because they're all new numbers. They plus minus, you know, 20%. So it's okay. So in the upper 1 to 3 meters there is more than 1000 gigaton of carbon sequestered organic carbon sequestered permaphores which potentially could decompose and release as a methane or CO2 into the atmosphere. And additional to that there is some another six more than 600 gigatons. So altogether it's more than twice carbon is sequestered in permafrost compared to amount of carbon in the atmosphere. So potentially if all this carbon will be released into the atmosphere that the concentration will be tripled compared to present day. All right, so but this is kind of well more or less known thing about carbon in the first two bullets. The real wild card is the third.

One.

Hydrates, gas hydrates and free gas below permafrost. That's a big risk, very unknown risk, but potentially very very serious. Well, I will show some things about what is known about this shallow carbon in permoforest. So there are some very active research going on right now with some modeling. But it's not climate models which include real carbon feedback. But there are some kind of specified models, climate models which do better job on that. And those models show that by the end of the century about from 5 to 15% of the carbon in the upper 3 meters of chromophores may be released to the atmosphere or mostly as a CO2, but some of it as a methane. And of course, compared to other sources, it's pretty similar to what land use and change. It's definitely much smaller than release from burning fuel. It's about 10% of burning fuel release. But so compared to that is small number, but not small enough to be ignored. And if all this attempt to keep amount of greenhouses in atmosphere will not account for this additional, they will fail to reach the goal. It's simply like this question. Okay, so now this is kind of more or less it's risk, but it's more or less understood. And there is lots of work right now to make progress to make these estimates much better than we have right now. So now the real wild card is permafrost under sea. So here we have the map of permafrost distribution in Northern hemisphere and this red line showing the potential presence of permafrost on Arctic shelves. So there's huge areas, especially in Siberia where permafrost is under sea. Because in the past, and also below this, in this permafrost and below this permoforest on the shelves and inland as well, there is such a thing as gas hydrates, methane gas hydrates or cathrates. The same thing, just different names. Yeah. I will not spend too much time, but if it will be question, I will explain what it is. But the thing is that one volume of this hydrate may release like up to 180 volumes of methane. So that's really, really, you know, very potentially very big source of methane. If clathrates will start to decompose. So the question is if they will. Because normally you think about the deep in permafrost or even deeper below permafrost, it's so far. Well, actually this process is already going on I think on those Arctic shells. Because about 100,000 years ago, all these shells, they were land, that's in the upper rock and they developed permafrost, normal permafrost, what we see now on land and gas hydrates below them. So now about 10,000 years ago, rapid sea level rise put all this land under sea surface on the shelves and permophoresis degrading because of that, it was degrading already under lakes and before even. So that's why they developed some kind of conduits. The permaphores is not impermeable anymore. It's not continuous anymore there and develop some conduits where gas from decomposing gas hydrates and free gas. There's still free gas because permaphores serve as a cap on it may escape through these openings into the water and then into the atmosphere. Or this process also going on on land as well. And there is some development, very new development, which I will also mention. For example, in Alaska, the known gas hydrate existence region is shown here on this map. And it's known, it's USGS map. It's all proved and drilled and even extracted some gas hydrates the same in Canada, in Canadian Archipelago as well. As a result, there's lots of this bubbling which you may have heard about methane bubbles coming from the shelf of the Arctic seas. This example is a laptop in East Siberian Sea. It's worked by my colleagues Igor Simredov and Natalia Shakhava. So they do every year they do cruises there and they measure methane and they measure that there's huge concentration again huge concentration of methane at the bottom water. But not only at the bottom water is shown here. And this is the scale. Who knows what's normal concentration of methane in atmosphere. It's huge numbers. And even in shallow waters there is still big anomalies of this concentration. So it means that these bubbles, because it's bubbles, they can travel very fast. And before this methane oxidize in the water, they already release to the atmosphere. But there's some new phenomena and yeah, pretty much done new phenomena. It's those craters which are actually could be the conduits of methane from below the chromophoros into the atmosphere. And well, I don't have too much time. I will just show some slides just to impress you and if you have questions, I will explain. So there are several of them just suddenly appeared in the mao Peninsula about two, three years ago. And it's about 30 meters in diameter and 50 meters deeper. Look like this in the wall. It was actually erupted those things and pieces of dirt was thrown by 100 meters away from the crater. So it was huge pressure in this thing which falls down. And now in the winter people get into it and how it looks like it's already half filled with water during the summer. And that's interesting. So when they discovered this hole, they measured methane concentration in the first summer after it happened and it was 6%, 6% of methane was on the bottom of the hole. So it is related somehow to methane and it could be a source. Of course, if it's just few of them there, no worry. But we don't know maybe they will be became very, very common. So now there's some at least seven of them was happened seven in West Siberia on the north. It's on the map here. And what is interesting that before it looks like small pingo. I don't know if you know what pingo means, but it's kind of hill about 40, 50 meters in diameter, 10 meters high. And then see this is very high resolution images. So that was right before well in 2010. So and then in fall of 2013 it's erupted developing a crater. So that's kind of remote sensing pictures of that. And by now after all time it just became a lake. So this is the latest images image here. Yeah, this is the latest from the last summer. And it's just lake and we have thousands of hundreds of thousands of lakes there. So maybe some of them really this kind of origin.

All right.

So the same thing as different places. So it was a small finger here and it became whole. It's another place and they're very, very short, very short. So it's all about climate. But now I would argue that there is some another global impact of thawing Chroma forest, its impact on infrastructure and especially on gas and oil infrastructure. Gas and oil pipelines because it's question about national security and maybe even global security. So. And there is lots of things to think about it. Yeah, just newly built two years ago finished this pipeline across all permafrost regions in Russia and Siberia. And it's already. Well that's exactly this pipeline. So it was just simply buried into the chromofrost and there are some problems already start to exist and it's just waiting. We are waiting for more news from this one. All right, I think that's it. More information on the website.

Thank you. We'll take one question and then, and then we're going to have a break after the speakers and then we're going to come back and have an open conversation so you'll have a chance to get deep into this if you, if you want to. But one question for now.

So I was just wondering now that.

The permafrost is warming, is that an.

Irreversible or if we somehow manage to reduce or slow the rate of cooling.

It's a good question. It is partially reversible if say climate will start to cool and permaflows is still stable, it will start to cool as well. It's just following climate with some kind of delay. But it is irreversible part is release of this carbon which was Sequestered for thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of years. And also big masses, massive ice bodies which were also, you know, developed during the whole previous glacial period. So those disappearance of those components is not reversible in our time scale. Of course, new. Yeah, new ice age will bring you all this back to there, but it will be about, you know, you know. Yeah, well, not only us, but maybe, you know, human. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, no projections, but it's about 40,000 years.

Thank you.

Bud, we've got some questions online.

Can we just take one?

Sure, we'll take an online question.

So there's multiple.

But we have a question.

Kind of about permafrost over time compared to earlier estimates. What would you, what would you say.

About the knowledge, you know, today?

Does it surprise you and what can you say about earlier or decade old estimates on homophobic?

Yeah, it surprised me definitely. And it surprised. Oh, the question was if this new estimates of degradation of homophores surprised me pretty much short. Yeah. And I start answering, yes, it surprised other people as well. It surprised them so much that they don't believe in that in even chromophores scientists, they would say, well no, no, it's impossible. Chromophores on the North Slope will not start to thaw anytime this century. But this being more realistic. Well if you can say this, more realistic about climate scenarios, but at least range of them we see that at some range, like more like 8.5 for example, scenario will definitely start throwing permafrost on the North Slope of Alaska and it will be happening at least the half of the area of the North Slope. So it is very surprising. It's not surprising that it's. Well, it's surprising for me that this keeps going warming. I mean because I'm kind of cycle, cycle person. No, it goes up and then goes down. That's what we see from the past. And a recent min. 10 years ago or 15 years ago, up was. I said okay, it's one up and then it should go down. And that time about 10 years ago, I said to myself, so if it will not go down, that's it. I completely believe in global warming and it will be for me personally, no questions. And that's what happened. It's going up and up and up when it probably should be down, going down according to, to natural variability.

Thank you again, Bud. Maybe we can keep those online questions and then bring them up in the. Excuse me, in the discussion section. So we went deep here on permafrost. We didn't go deep on sea ice. We didn't go very deep on land ice. We didn't do it about snow or fresh water. We could, and many other seminars have done the same thing. And I think you'd get it equally as worrisome or challenging of findings from the scientists who are really spending a lot of time in any of these particular areas. And then there was one thing Vladimir said that really struck me, which was this is known at some point in his conversation, in his talk. And I was thinking to myself, it's not known by the people who need to know it. It's known by scientists and a circle of researchers. But it really is actually news to a lot of our colleagues who are meeting just across the way at the Carlson Center. This is not something that is necessarily widely discussed. And when you look at those estimates from Paris, you start to think, can we ever get there through political agreements and human actions to reduce greenhouse gases? Is that possible to arrest these trends and changes that we're seeing? And if that's not possible in a way that allows for our continued existence on the planet in a fashion that we hope we can have, what are the alternatives to that? Is there any alternative to that? And climate engineering is the topic that always comes up at that point. Another term we don't talk about very much. Maybe some people in the scientific community do. The policy community is. It's a taboo topic. It's a taboo topic in the environmental community. But we need to break the taboos and start actually thinking about what happens if we get to that point that we have to arrest and avert these changes. Are we going to know what tools are even available? Which ones might be acceptable, nominally acceptable? Which ones would be completely unacceptable? We need to start doing the science and the research on this. And for our next presenter, we have Simone Thomas from the national center on Atmospheric Research, who is going to give us an introduction to geoengineering.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for having me here. Yeah. I was asked to give an introduction into geoengineering. And what I want to do is really give you an overview on the ideas, what are out there and discuss a little bit, what are the benefits if we could do this closer? Okay. What are the side effects? What are the risks? And as Brett has said, what are good options? And what do we have to do in research to do more? And also, what does it mean for the Arctic in particular, considering this meeting? And so we have heard a lot about the Arctic, and this is an illustration of the Arctic sea ice on the left, it's September 2010. It's a model simulation and it shows that there is quite a bit of sea ice available every summer. And looking at the right, this is the RCP 8.5 business end user scenario. And the sea ice is gone and the temperature is melting. This is an indicator for what is happening and what we have heard today. The climate is changing and even if we follow the Paris agreement, as we have heard, this may be what we face. There may be more sources, as we heard, that come out of the soil that will actually accelerate the climate change. And do we have an obligation to look into other methods to say, is there a way we may be slowing this down or we can revert this? And that's where geoengineering is considered and looked at and ideas have come out. And actually for the last 10 years there has been a lot of research done in climate intervention or geoengineering. As you see, these are the two reports that came out from the National Academy Press, looking at the main two parts of geoengineering that are discussed and one that is called the carbon dioxide removal and reliable sequestration, which really tackles the source of the problem, the increase in greenhouse gases. So we want to try, in this scenario, people want to try to remove CO2 out of the atmosphere actively. In addition, what is already done in the nature, the oceans take up a lot of CO2, the trees take out a lot of CO2, but can we do more? And of course we need to stop emitting greenhouse gases first or we have to be on the track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to think about pulling it out, because it is very difficult and very expensive at the moment. The technologies don't really exist to do this. Some ideas are to actually build artificial trees that can pull out CO2, or we can seed the oceans to uptake more CO2 or change the dynamics of the oceans to do this. We can capture CO2 once we produce it right from the industry. But then the question is, where do we store the CO2 because it has to be removed out of the climate system and not be coming back like trees, they die and they come back. So that doesn't help much in that way. There's limited storage available and we have to figure out where to do this. And it may come back and may not be safe. And therefore this method has limitations. The other part is tackling more the symptoms of the problem, which is the warming with increasing greenhouse gases. So we try to make the planet more reflective and in that way we try to cool the surface and not letting that much sunlight reach it. And this is usually called reflecting sunlight to cool the Earth. Solar radiation management, you may have heard that term. And there are many methods there too that people think about it. And one obvious or one often mention is let's paint roofs white and increase the reflectivity or change grass in a way that it's whiter across. So we really try to increase the reflectivity of the planet. But often those methods are not very effective because they are small scale and it doesn't help. So the next one is maybe we can modify the clouds. There are lots of clouds and especially this is one scheme that is called brightening of the clouds. And you see here is an illustration of a ship that could be built and people have designed to do this. They are remotely controlled and they would just float over the oceans, for example, over the southern oceans, where a lot of low cloud exists in a pristine area. And then you spray sea salt up in the clouds and that makes the clouds brighter. And since at least some location on the Earth there are a lot of clouds like this, you get a really big, strong global impact and also local impact. And it's even discussed that maybe this ship could help now to save the coral reefs in Australia. So maybe we can do something locally. The, the problem with these approaches is that cloud physics is very difficult to understand still in the models. And so there's a lot we don't know. And if it actually works, other approaches even tackle the higher clouds, the cirrus ice clouds, and try to get them away because they warm the climate. This is called cirrus thinning. Another method that is discussed is a stratospheric aerosol modification. And this is really something that we have learned from nature, from volcanic eruptions. Large, big volcanic eruptions in the tropics inject gases and aerosols up into the upper atmosphere in the stratosphere, 25 km, 20-25 km in the atmosphere in the tropics. And they are the gases form aerosols very shortly and distribute quickly around the globe. So after half a year, like we had in 1991, the last eruption, that emitted about 10 teragram of sulfur into the stratosphere. And we saw a cooling for about two to three years on the third surface. So we already have this analog, it is actually in a way working. And that's why scientists said, can we do this? Can we also emit gases in the, the stratosphere and do this continuously to achieve some kind of cooling? But of course, the question Is how do we know that that works and what are the benefits for this and what are the side effects? What are the problems? That's an important question. And we can observe volcanoes, but they don't happen that often. Of course, we cannot trigger them to test it. So what we do is we use climate models. That's our tool right now. We do use climate models to say, can we actually cool the climate? And there are many people, many modeling groups that have come together to do experiments. And as you can see on these slides, we looked at surface air temperature change. On the one hand, when you do have a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, and then you compare it to a case where you increase the CO2, but then in addition apply the solar radiation management. And you can see here, we can actually cool the climate back to the conditions where we had it. It is working in the model. And that of course has some benefits. If we can do this, if we can actually reduce temperatures, we can reduce all the side effects that climate change brings back. I mean, at least some of them. And depending on when we do it, because we just discussed, some are irreversible, but some are irreversible, but some we can bring back, for example, the heat waves, the Cessna, flooding, some of the sea ice. And that also causes, of course, when we do manipulations or the Greenland ice sheet, we would maybe prevent high sea level rises with this method. But of course there are side effects. And the next slide and the next trigger kind of shows some of the benefits, but also some problems and risks. And I want to walk you through this figure. So what you see here is a scenario, what some models did, where you see the gray line increasing CO2, 1% per year over 70 years, this gray line. And you see the temperatures on the top are increasing. I hope you can actually make this out. And on the bottom is the precipitation. Precipitation is increasing. We have more heavy rain events happening with climate change. And the second scenario shown here in the black yellow range, and in this way the models apply solar radiation management to keep the temperatures for 50 years. And they actually achieve to keep it from not changing. But after 50 years, the idea is to stop geoengineering. And this is a sudden termination. And as you can see, the temperature stops do rise back to the original values. And for the precipitation, what you see actually is the precipitation is not staying the same, even though the temperatures are the same, but they go down. So for some of the known side effects of this approach is that we reduce rainfall and that can change the water Availability it is not quite clear what that really means, how it impacts, how it impacts other places, which has to be really looked at and we don't know exactly. The other thing is, what I haven't mentioned yet is that these particles get emitted into the stratosphere and that's where the ozone layer is. That protects us from the ultraviolet radiation which is harmful to people. And with this method we may delay the helium of the ozone layer that happened in the last. So that's another problem. And then there are uncertainties in regional impacts. As I already said, one of the largest risks with these approaches is probably if people would apply a solar radiation management without large scale mitigation. And I think you really nicely see this on the top plot because you see as you increase greenhouse gases, the temperatures go up. If we want to geoengineer, we have to continuously increase the amount of sulfur injection on other particles. So if we are not on a pathway where temperature ever go down again, we're committing forever. And this increases of course the risk for these termination effects. At one point it is happening that we cannot sustain this and we would keep going and going. And that's why there is even no way to apply any of this scheme without ambitious mitigation and climate change. So it's just not sustainable. And then of course there are unknown side effects that always could happen. Although of course after volcanic eruptions we haven't seen too many, but maybe on the ecosystem and so on. And coming back to that, this is a global application. So there are political implications for this problem. And I really, I mean that's a whole different talk, probably political and ethical question, but it requires international agreements. It requires the question is this the right thing to do? Do we want to do this? But we want to in a way do this in a reasonable way if we want to apply this. And that's something that we are thinking about now there's the question on how can we actually develop strategies that reduce these side effects and reduce these risks. We're starting to think about it. In the past we looked at the volcanoes or we looked at these scenarios and said, okay, we inject some sulfur in our model. What are the side effects and implications? As I described to you, what you see for example on this flood is that the Arctic is still warming more than the tropics. And that may not even be enough for us. We may still get permafrost or other things that we don't want to. Also this precipitation issue, we get shifts in precipitation, but it could be that it's just how we apply this because precipitation shifts occur if you do an uneven application of solar radiation management. So we are thinking about how do we do it better to set climate goals to reduce these effects. We want to set climate goals to reduce the Arctic warming. We want to reduce the impact on the precipitation. We could think about choosing particles that are different that won't destroy the ozone layer in that way. This is a new way that we have to think about it to say is this an option that can be produced, maybe a safer way of applying geoengineering. And then we have to examine the side effects and set new goals to improve again these methods. And this is what we did. We did try a few simulators, we injected aerosols or we try to design a strategy that we will not face the warming of the Arctic. For example, I want to show you a movie that shows our scenario that we want to keep temperature at 2020 levels. What you see here is that reduce these side effects and reduce these risks. We're starting to think about it. In the past we looked at the volcanoes or we looked at these scenarios and said, okay, we inject some sulfur in our model. What are the side effects and implications As I described to you, what you see for example on this flow is that the Arctic is still warming more than the tropics. And that may not even be enough for us. We maintain the left is the usual RCP temperature scenario that will still get permafrost or other things that we don't want to show the temperature change. And on the right we're starting geoengineering in 2020 and the temperatures always regard to 2020. So right now it's a little cooler. And when I start the movie, you will slowly see how the temperatures are going up and be at 0, 2020, and then they will continue to rise with the business as usual emission scenario. And then we start our scenario. Also the precipitation issue. We get shifts in precipitation, but it could be that it's just how we apply this because precipitation shifts occur if you do an uneven application of solar radiation management. So we are thinking about how do we do it better to set climate goals to reduce these effects. We want to set climate goals to reduce the Arctic warming. We want to reduce the impact on the precipitation. We could think about choosing particles that are different that won't destroy the ozone layer in that way. This is a new way that we have to think about it to say is this an option that can be produced, maybe a safer way of applying geoengineering and then we have to examine the side effects and set new goals to improve again these methods. And this is what we did. We did try a few simulators, we injected aerosols or we try to design a strategy that we will not face the warming of the Arctic. For example, I want to show you a movie that shows our scenario that we want to keep temperature at 2020 levels. What you see here on engineering, we decide on where to inject every year to really counteract the warming and to also decide how much and in what locations to say we don't want the Arctic to get. On the left is the usual ICP temperature scenario that will show the temperature change. And on the right we're starting geoengineering in 2020 and the temperatures are with regard to 2020, so right now it's a little cooler. And when I start the movie, you will slowly see how the temperatures are going up and be at 0, 2020 and then they will continue to rise with the business as usual emission scenario. And then we start our scenario of geoengineering. We decide on where to inject every year to really counteract the warming and to also decide how much and in what locations to say we don't want the Arctic to get warmer, we don't want the precipitation to shift and so on. And as you can see, there is much variability of course, which happens every year. We have interoperability, but the temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic are not increasing here. So we basically could reach the goals in our model to do this. Although as you see, this is again what I said we should not do in the real world. We should not apply geoengineering in a business as usual scenario because we ended up injecting an amount of about four and a half times the amount that the largest big volcano erupted. So it's not sustainable, but it is working. And it's for the demonstration what happens to the sea ice when we look at the sea ice and this is the same simulation, September sea ice on the left, RCP 8.5, you will see it disappear. And on the right we apply geoengineering in addition. And we already have very little sea ice left by 2035. In this model simulation, while we do sustain the sea ice, we actually grow it slightly back, which is not possible to see with eyes, but you see that it's continuing to be available. And so the next step here is really to work on these strategies and to get more research. And that's why we need a research agenda. Because if we decide that we ever want to use this type of implication, or maybe we have to use it very soon to keep very dangerous climate impacts from climate change. We will very soon have to do much more research. There isn't a lot of funding available right now and so there isn't also a very coordinated effort at this moment. So we would need an international research effort to really understand what is going on. And the central tool is really Earth system models. I'm not proposing experiments and I'm not proposing to start geoengineering at this point. It would be dangerous because we don't have the knowledge we really need to understand or to design the strategies. There are suggestions for experiments already to do and I think they can be useful to understand and improve our climate models. But that should be really the main toll. And that's why we need frequent assessment as well to inform policy, policymakers and society to make really serious decisions on this. And so to summarize, well, I showed you we can actually save the Arctic sea ice as an example for we can control the climate with this type of new strategies. But of course there has to be much more work to be done. We need comprehensive research and develop the safer technologies. So, and never to forget, as the last word, we can only use it in combination with rapid decarbonization and to reduce the risk of climate change. Thank you.

Thank you, Simone. We have some time for a couple of questions.

Yes, ma'.

Am.

I'm wondering if you modeled any of the potential impacts of solar radiation management on agriculture and also solar energy production. Yeah, we have modeled impacts on agriculture and the problem is at this point the models that really have agriculture included are very uncertain and the impacts are usually two sided. It depends on what crop you look like. Some crops do better with geoengineering, some crops even do better with climate change. But in general with climate change we get fruit reduction, geoengineering, we don't want the precipitation to shift and so on. And as you can see, there is much variability of course, which happens every year. We have interval, but the temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic are not increasing. So we basically could reach the goals in our model to do this. Although as you see, this is again what I said we should not do in the real world. We should not apply geoengineering in a business as usual scenario because we ended up injecting an amount of about four and a half times the amount that the largest big volcano erupted. So it's not sustainable, but it is working and it's for the demonstration what happens to this sea ice. When we look at the sea ice and this is the same simulation, September sea ice on the left, RCP 8.5, you will see it disappear. And on the right we apply geoengineering in addition. And we already have very little sea ice left by 35, 20, 35. In this model simulation, while we do sustain the sea ice, we actually grow it slightly back, which is not possible to see with eyes. But you see that it's continuing to be available. And so the next step here is really to improve seed in some senses. But other crops don't do that well because of this very much sensitivity of crops on temperature. If you leave that range where they like to grow, they don't like it anymore. And that's why geoengineering is beneficial in some sense. The other question second. Yeah, so of course the dimming, you will introduce an aerosol layer.

Yeah, just repeat that question.

The impact on the solar energy production. So these really strong solar collectors that are existing in some places, they would get impacted by this. But the percentage of the dimming, if you think about it, it wouldn't be that large. Maybe it depends on how much you would cool. Of course, the more you do, the more is the impact. But it isn't under traditional, it wouldn't be that large.

So I have a question for you. We seem to keep settling on solar radiation energy. How many other promising technologies are there? You touched on cloud brightening, which by remotely controlled vessels that could be turned on and off, seems a lot less drastic. Are these just not shaping up to be at the scale that would be needed?

I think there's, as you say, very promising. If they could work and we have to really test it, that's where little process studies would be great. If they would work. That can be very beneficial for things like if you have seen, for example in my movie, we don't do it all. There are still local changes. So the idea is even to combine those methods, put them together and try to do the optimal way of doing like over the Great Barrier Reef. Maybe that's the way to cool. And so it has a different application. The reason why I talk mostly about this, it's my field of research. But the second reason is that this is really the one that is, is at the moment the most efficient one and the most discussed because we can do something very big if we needed to. But the question is if we should do that.

Okay, in the back here.

Similarly, you haven't talked about sequestration. As someone working in the field is it your sense that solar radiation management is going to be more effective or more economical.

I tried in my first slide or two to talk about oh yeah, the question about sequestration, if that is not so effective it cannot be used in the field so much. I think this is certainly something we have to do in addition, I mean actually the first thing to do is to get out as much carbon out of the atmosphere as we can. I tried to say that in my first two slides but yeah that's, that's certainly something we need to do as much as we can and as quick and fast as possible possible work on these strategies and to get more research. And that's why we need a research agenda because if we decide that we ever want to use this type of implication or maybe we have to use it very soon to keep very dangerous climate impacts from climate change, we will very soon have to do much more research. There isn't a lot of funding available right now and so there isn't also a very coordinated effort. But, but to me again if we don't reduce the emissions it's not very helpful. So we have to really do everything and that's one of an important part of this as well.

One more question before we.

Well, I'll just reiterate that your last summary point is pretty telling. It has to be a combination of these two things. Yes, you can blandly assume that we control that atmospheric temperature. We're home free but global ocean acidic at this moment.

So we would need an international research effort to really understand what is going on. And the central tool is really Earth system models. I'm not proposing experiments and I'm not proposing to start geoengineering at this point. That would be dangerous because we don't have the knowledge. We really need to understand more to design the strategies. There are suggestions for experiments already to do and I think they can be used.

Will be perhaps as devastating as temperature increase in the atmosphere. And by the way everybody pretty much understands this. The temperature impact of climate change is mostly in the ocean. 94% of the heat that's being gained by the planet is in the ocean.

Thank you. That was a comment rather than a question, but well, well stated. And the ocean acidification issue is the biggest concern we have. Speaking on behalf of the WWF Oceans team about what's one of the biggest about solar radiation management. There's actually I read the other day about some people thinking about instead of injecting sulfur, injecting calcium carbonate into the upper atmosphere which then would deposit into the oceans and actually work reverse the effect that sulfur would have this whole.

To understand and improve our climate models. But that should be really the main toll. And that's why we need frequent assessment as well to inform policy, policymakers and society to make really serious decisions on this. And so to summarize. Well, it has.

I don't actually know whether that has any feasibility.

So now I showed you we can actually save the Arctic sea ice as an example for we can control the climate with this type of new strategies.

We're going to have our last speaker and then we're going to take a break and I think we saved the policy piece for last because. Because of course we've heard all the science and it's compelling and there's much, much more of it. And we've been repeating and publishing and talking about and having seminars on this science for a long time. We've known about these problems for a long time. For some reason the political side of the equation has just not kept up and is not keeping up. And we're having a meeting today that is going to result in a declaration about future collaboration in the Arctic that may or may not touch on these issues at all. So the politics is the art of the possible and here to tell us what's possible.

But of course there has to be much more work to be done. We need comprehensive research and develop these safer technologies. And never to forget as the last word, we can only use it in combination with rapid decarbonization and to reduce the risk of the climate change. Thank you.

Thank you, Simone. We have some time for a couple of questions.

Yes, ma', am.

I'm wondering if you modeled any of the potential impacts of solar radiation management on agriculture and also solar energy production. Yeah, we have modeled impact scale on agriculture. And the problem is at this point the models that really have agriculture included are very uncertain and the impacts are usually two sided. It depends on what crop you look like. Some crops do better with geoengineering, some crops even do better with climate change. But in general with climate change we get a fruit reduction. Geoengineering improves it in some senses. But other crops don't do that well because of this very much sensitivity of crops on temperature. If you leave that range where they like to grow, they don't like it anymore. And that's why geoengineering is beneficial in some sense. The other question, second solar energy production. Yeah, so of course the dimming you will introduce an aerosol layer.

Just repeat that question.

The impact on the solar energy production. So These really strong solar collectors that are existing in some places, they would get impacted by this. But the percentage of the dimming, if you think about it, it wouldn't be that large. Maybe it depends on how much you would cooler. Of course, the more you do, the more is the impact. So. But it isn't on the traditional. It wouldn't be that large.

So I have a question for you. We seem to keep settling on solar radiation management. How many other promising technologies are there? You touched on cloud brightening, which by remotely controlled vessels that could be turned on and off. Seems a lot less transparent, drastic. Are these just not shaping up to be at the scale that would be needed.

I think they are, as you say, very promising. If they could work, and we have to really test that, that's why little process studies would be great if they would work, they can be very beneficial for things like if you have seen for example in my movie, we don't do it all. They are still local changes. So the idea is even to combine those methods, put them together and try to do the optimal way of doing like over the Great Barrier Reef. Maybe that's the way to cool. And so it has a different application. The reason why I talk mostly about this, it's my field of research. But the second reason is that this is really the one that is at the moment the most efficient one and the most discussed because we can do something very big if we needed to. But the question is if we should do that.

Okay, in the back here, similarly, you.

Haven'T talked about sequestration. As someone working in the field, is it your sense that solar radiation management is going to be more effective or more economical?

I tried in my first slide or two to talk about. Oh yeah, the question about sequestration. If that is not so effective and cannot be used in the field so much, I think this is certainly something we have to do. In addition, I mean, actually the first thing to do is to get out as much carbon out of the atmosphere as we can. I tried to say that in my first two slides, but yeah, that's, that's certainly something we need to do as much as we can and as quick and fast as possible. But to me, again, if we don't reduce the emissions, that's not very helpful. So we have to really do everything. And that's one of an important part of this as well.

One more question before we.

Well, I'll just reiterate that your, your last summary point is pretty telling. It has to be a combination of these two things. Yes, you could, you could blandly assume that if we control atmospheric temperature, we're home free. But global ocean acidification problems, mass extinctions that will follow will be perhaps as devastating as a temperature increase in the atmosphere. By the way, everybody pretty much understands this. The temperature impact of climate change is mostly in the ocean. 94% of the heat that's being gained by the planet is in the ocean. Right? Not the air and not the ice.

Thank you. That was a comment rather than a question, but well stated. And the ocean acidification issue is the biggest concern we have. Speaking on behalf of the WWF Oceans team and how it's possible is Reef Pomerants.

Thank you, Brad, and welcome, everyone. I'm the chair of Arctic 21, which sponsored this session. I'm delighted my colleagues are able to come together and give a really good overview of the situation that we face. And Arctic 21 was born as the US assumed the chairmanship of the Arctic Council and we supported a decision by the State Department to make climate change about.

Well, it's one of the biggest about solar radiation management. There's actually I read the other day about some people thinking about instead of injecting sulfur, injecting calcium carbonate into the upper atmosphere, which then would deposit into the oceans and actually work reverse the effect that sulfur would have. But I don't actually know whether that has any feasibility. So now we're going to have our last speaker and then we're going to take a break. And I think we saved the policy piece for last because of course we've heard all the science and it's compelling and there's much, much more of it. And we've been repeating and publishing and talking about and having seminars on this science for a long time. We've known about these problems for a long time. For some reason, the political side of the equation has just not kept up and is not keeping up. And we're having a meeting today that is going to result in a declaration about future collaboration in the Arctic that may or may not touch on these issues at all. So politics is the art of the possible. And here to tell us what's possible and how it's possible is Rafe Pomeranz.

Thank you, Brad, and welcome everyone. I'm the chair of Arctic 21, which sponsored this session. I'm delighted my colleagues are able to come together and give a really good overview of the situation that we face. And Arctic 21 was born as the US assumed the chairmanship of the Arctic Council and we supported a decision by the State Department to make climate change a focus of the US Chairmanship, which was a really, really important event when it occurred because it gave a great deal more legitimacy to focusing on the impacts of climate change in the Arctic and globally and in the lower 48 of the United States, which goes to Brad's point. How do you change the politics? What does the Arctic have to do with the, with the politics of moving forward? And I'll give you one word answer. Florida. You know, well, why am I up here in Fairbanks and mentioning Florida? Well, if you want to solve the political equation in the United States, Florida is the most important purple state. Wither Florida, wither the presidential election. So what's an existential threat to Florida? Right from where? Greenland, the Canadian, Alaskan glaciers, among other places. So our one liner in our campaign in order to fix the politics was the fate of Greenland is the fate of Miami. And as far as a one liner goes, it's done pretty well. It's lasted three years. We keep hammering it. And in fact, in Florida, there is beginning to emerge a bipartisan effort on climate change. Can you believe it? We've been locked down in US Politics for a very long period of time because we haven't been able to get bipartisan support. Because you need massive policy changes to begin to solve this problem. And if the United States Congress can't move, that limits the entire global situation. Because when we go to negotiate, assuming we stay in the game, and it's not clear we will if we pull out of Paris. But when the Paris agreement was a complete reflection of US politics, the targets or emission goals are voluntary. Why is that? Because we only have in the US So much authority without new laws. Well, how do you get a new law? You have to go to Congress. But we know the Congress won't give us any new laws to deal with this because there's no bipartisanship. And so the US The US Negotiators have to come back with an agreement that doesn't require any new laws. I know this. I was the chief of us negotiating for a while in the 1990s when I worked at the State Department. And it's not pleasant negotiate on behalf of the United States because, you know, it's pretty limited what you can deliver because there's no bipartisan consensus in the Congress that there's an urgent need to deal with this. So in order to solve this problem. So the point of that is that the US Congress holds back the rest of the world because the US Negotiators can only go as Far as the US Congress is willing to go, the other piece of it is if you agree to a legally binding treaty, which Paris is not, you have to get the Senate to give advice and consent. That requires 2/3 of the Senate. Can you imagine this Senate ever getting the 2/3 and approving a treaty that's like 19, that's like 20th century US politics where that was possible. My notes did not have me beginning there, but in a nutshell, the Arctic is the path to solving the political problem through the sea level rise issue. The state of Virginia, the state of Florida, state of Louisiana, the city of Boston, state of Massachusetts are all at risk, and many of Brooklyn, much of Manhattan. So the Arctic is about at least a third of the global sea level rise problem right now. So in a way what happens is that the Arctic is a threat to the US national interest. So solving the climate problem is all about protecting the national interest of the United States. I think that's the way we ought to go about it. And so Arctic 21 is about helping solve a political problem in the United States. That's one of the things we do. So what we started out aim to communicate what we call very important word in this effort that we've almost got into the lexicon of climate change, which is the unraveling of the Arctic. Scientists like to say change, not all scientists. Change is a lame word to describe the Arctic. Excuse me, but you have to have something that's realistic in describing what's really going on. And its unraveling is almost too weak. And now we might say the unraveling has accelerated. But what do we mean by that? Sea ice, spring snow cover, thawing, permafrost, shrinking Greenland and the loss of the Canadian Alaskan glaciers. Because the Canadian Alaskan glaciers are large enough volume, they are a significant contributor to sea level rise. So that's the unraveling. And that's the case we made to the State Department and others said that's the picture you have to communicate. That's what we supported. And today you see the emergence of point 2 in the Arctic 21 effort, which was to develop a policy framework for the Arctic in the context, as Max put it, in the global climate situation. And that's. We started with the question, what is the Arctic we have to have. And then it got elaborated in a sense in this workshop. What is the Arctic we have to have to sustain the global climate system. You have at least three pillars or more of the global climate system that are dependent on a cold Arctic, on a cold Arctic Number one, the ice storage in Greenland and the glaciers holds back massive sea level rise. Permafrost. The cold permafrost holds back a massive feedback of warming. And the loss of sea ice and snow cover reduces the reflectivity of the planet. So much so that it's a major feedback in the climate system, contributing the warming not only in the Arctic, but globally. So those are just three. Ocean circulation is another. So we ask the question, what's required to sustain the global system? What of the Arctic is required to do that? Because we're dependent. Okay, just very briefly, what are the components of a policy to deal with this? The actual pieces? I mean, Simone talked about one which is the most, in a way, speculative, but perhaps necessary. And the odds just keep going up, which is solar radiation management or the geoengineering options. But a prerequisite of that has to be the decarbonization of the global economy. This is an urgent large scale task and we're in uncharted territory. And the rate of change on the planet and the scale of this challenge is also uncharted, unprecedented. Trying to change the global energy system in time. Nothing like that has ever been attempted on a global scale. And I could tell you how stressful it was when I was a U.S. negotiator. You have to walk in a room and talk about such topics with the entire fossil fuel industry sitting behind you, watching every move you make. It's not so easy for some negotiators. It's easy, but wasn't for me. So you have the decarbonization of the global economy. That's number one. Number two, we can vastly improve the amount of biological sequestration in forests and soils that the Woods Hole Research center does so well in its analysis. We can control methane emissions through regulation, through pricing. There was just a vote on the Senate floor yesterday that blocked the removal of a key regulation to control methane. That was a very interesting signal. Fundamentally, we have to price carbon. That means carbon taxes. You price carbon, you use the revenue, you can reduce other taxes and make the economy overall much more efficient. And we know how to do it. We know how to do this. It's really easy. There's no regulation, there's just the price and that drives the change, behavioral change. But there you go, back to the bipartisan consensus. The Democrats have tried twice to raise carbon prices and they just lost politically on both occasions. It can't be done without a bipartisan consensus. The third that was discussed is carbon removal, which is really speculative. That's a mechanical removal of carbon from the atmosphere has large cost storage problems, but it has to be on the table. And there's an underlying theme in all this, that the basis of making these changes rapidly is research and development. The Pentagon has a $5 billion year program called DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects and Focus of the US Chairmanship which was a really, really important event when administration darpa. Many technologies we use today that are so valuable were developed by DARPA. 5 billion a year. Well, we just got off the ground about five years ago a program called ARPA E Advanced Research Projects Energy, which is all about investing in radical new technologies, high risk investments which the government should be doing. And part of the mission is to develop climate benign energy technologies. Well, that's $200 million a year. So it's 5 billion for the Pentagon and 200 million for the planet. And I just thought that was a good joke, sort of. But the comparison, but it's very serious and it just shows where our priorities are. But it's one place we can change the risk. I'm not saying take the Pentagon's money away. We need to increase the RD on technologies that go to save the planet's fundamental systems. And those that can be energy, it can be the geoengineering, the carbon removal across the board. Okay, that's the policy framework. Those are elements you need the politics as I've discussed, you need the policy. So what's going to happen next? 2018 is a really important year. In 2018 there will be a stock taking of where the nations of the world have gotten under the Paris Agreement. This will be an important process and part of what's going on here at this Arctic Council meeting will go directly into the stock taking. And how does that work? Well, the Arctic Council scientific body just finished a major assessment. Swipa Snow, water, ice and permafrost in the Arctic. Well, that assessment is going to be part of the stock taking. It has to be. What does it imply for what the nations of the world have to do? And the state of the Arctic is, as we say, is accelerating, unraveling.

And.

This will play a larger and larger role in the global negotiations as people realize the implications based on the kind of talk that Vladimir gave. So Arctic 21 has been all about trying to bring greater attention to those impacts. So the stock taking is one. And then there's a second process under the Framework Convention being carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is to look at how the world might achieve 1.5 degrees centigrade as a global temperature range. Well, there's no way it's going to happen. My guess is without the kind of thing that Simone is talking about, because we're kind of at 5.5 today. We're very close to 1.5. But I'll leave it to the, to the IPCC to come back with the answers on that. But it's a pretty radical concept in this because carbon dioxide concentrations have already gone from 280 parts per million pre industrial to what? 410 today. So if climate sensitivity is around 4 degrees, we're very close to that. And the third thing, which actually won't get done in time, is a IPCC assessment of the cryosphere and oceans. But that's not due until 2019. That's why the SWIPA report will dominate the cryosphere and Arctic input into this stock taking. And the stock taking then leads the parties of the Paris Agreement in 2020 to determine their next set of emission reductions. So that's the politics. We need a bipartisan consensus in this country to move. We know what the policies are. We know what the R and D priorities are. We know what the risks are to the planet and our way of life in the 21st century and beyond. The question is whether we can pull ourselves together to address this in a significant enough way. So thank you. Okay.

Do we have any questions? You've changed location, but it seems to.

Me that right here you're preaching to the choir. And we all buy into this, but how do we get the policy to change in this country?

What is it going to take?

Just for the online, the question was what's it going to take to actually get the change in policy?

Well, you may be part, maybe you're part of the choir. Your congressional delegation sings and sometimes in tune and sometimes not. I mean, Lisa Murkowski is the chair of the Senate Energy Committee. She's in a very powerful position. The a. I mean she's a smart, capable senator and I think recognizes this problem. But there you go. This is the fate of Alaska, not just the fate of Florida. Right. Second, at this meeting there's about 100 members of the press corps. This meeting is getting global press coverage and our message within that is the unraveling and what's required. So we here trying to, what's the word? Multiply. Use the event. To multiply the knowledge about the fate of the Arctic. So. Well, I guess I was at two recent events with the chorus in Washington. One was the March on Science and one was the Climate March. So there were hundreds of thousands of people in the street in Washington. That makes a difference, too.

It was the March 4th science.

March 4th science.

We're countering the march on science.

Yeah, that's right. Well, you know what the head of OMB said I have to say that we had a. Oh, good.

Well, I was just going to say we do have two asks that we're making to the Arctic Council on the point that Rafe has raised. One, because we need to be specific about what the Arctic Council can do. One is to get amap, the Monitoring and Assessment Program, to be reporting on a regular basis on these key tipping points that Rafe has talked about and that we've heard about earlier, sea ice, land ice, permafrost, and making sure that that reporting is getting into the UNFCCC discussion so that the people who are negotiating climate agreements cannot ignore the impact that Arctic change is having and so that it begins to hopefully drive faster change. The second is to produce a research agenda on the sort of thing Simone was talking about, which is not on the not on the docket right now for the most part at the Arctic Council. So those are two specific policy asks of the body that's meeting here in Anchorage or, excuse me, in Fairbanks today. And we'll be making those asked directly. So that's part of the political approach. There was another question back here, this.

Question in terms of international policy and politics.

And when you look at the amount.

Of the Arctic Ocean coastline is Russia and the rivers flow north and resource extraction goes along the rivers and you know, my sense is that that's a fairly large geography where people additionally like.

Look at climate change being negative.

And that seems to yes, we can talk to Ms. Murkowski, but between Russia and China, I think there are some political economic gains perceived to receive ice and money notwithstanding necessarily changes to put across the level talked about. What are the discussions that are going on with those nations in terms of negotiating international.

Well, okay, so there may be some nations who see themselves as benefiting from the warming, melting, thawing of the Arctic and what sort of negotiations are going on with China and Russia in particular in that context? Is that fair? Well, first of all, I don't think that the Chinese, I would take the Chinese right out of that equation based on their I don't hear or I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the details of the Chinese negotiating position or their energy strategies, but they the great thing that the Obama administration did was to bring off a bilateral deal with the Chinese that was the key to unlocking the Paris Agreement so the Chinese intentionally not.

Look at climate change.

Was like ours to get moving in the right direction. We have Russia. People understand the Russian political system better than I certainly do. But one of the interesting questions about the permafrost, the obvious answer is, oh, the Russians want an open Arctic, let's say. But the implications of the Arctic for the rest of the world are so large that that kind of national. That let's call it a benefit. How that stacks up against the losses to the rest of the world is an interesting question. And how it stacks up against the unilateral interests of, let's say, the United States. We may have a major stake and keep restoring the ice and keeping Greenland intact. The third, which I learn from Vladimir all the time we have these good discussions, is how big is the loss of permafrost to Russia? It's like 60% of the land mass of Russia. 17. 17. Excuse me. I learned something new now. So I don't know how those. Those issues are weighed in Russia, but. So it's a mystery to me. I'll let others talk about it more.

So I'm conscious that we've been here for two hours and I think it's time to take a break. We're going to come back after the break and have a more freewheeling conversation with everybody. So please. I believe there's some coffee out there still and tea and maybe take 10 to 15 minutes and we'll come back and finish up.

It's great.

Hi. Thank you.

My name is Walter.

Colonel. Hi.

Enjoyed your talk. I was just wondering if you knew my daughter.

Yes, of course. She's wonderful. Well, congratulations.

Yeah.

She's still here.

She's here.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'll tell her. I think that's wonderful.

Great.

I'm learning a lot.

See her once.

Oh, good.

Well, she knows it all.

Just two minutes.

It's a pause. Maybe it's four minutes. Because I saw people who was involved in.

Mar. It. That.

Global.

It. So. It.

What?

And. Infrastructure. So. So.

Yeah.

Believe. Okay.

I'll just give you a call.

Try to find you.

You'll have my.

You have my bag?

No.

Well, I know.

That.

Yeah, I heard she said.

Party. It's.

Ra.

It.

So you're supposed to sit here. Exactly.

Yeah. These were great presentations. I'm going to see if I can find the.

Would you offer a backdrop that 5.

Degree Arctic and 2 degree worlds.

You don't want Camille. Camille's dissected walrus.

You do that. That was great, too.

Yeah. He seems to be gone.

He did he. I don't know where they hustled him off to.

There we.

Sake my leave People don't just wonder.

Where I don't pat off.

All right, we're going to get started again and I am going to say goodbye because I actually want to try and get into the ministerial and see if we can have any side conversations on any of this. But I'm going to turn it over to my able colleague Margaret Williams, who directs our Arctic program out of Anchorage, Alaska and she is going to moderate the discussion.

Hopefully.

Hopefully it's going to be open, flowing and quantum grid.

Okay, great. And we'll look for some creative solutions from you all. Let me start with. We had a few questions for each of our panelists after their presentations. I know there were some questions from the audience and Dave, perhaps you would be willing to share some of those questions and then we'd love to hear some of your questions or comments and kick it off with responses from our panelists. So Dave, in fact maybe I should hand the microphone to you so you can read the questions online.

So we have a question for Vladimir from online.

So poor Dave lost his voice. Question 2. Vladimir does so called permafrost craters. What can we say about those today? And are those potentially explosive buildups likely to increase? Are their programs for monitoring?

I'm sorry, I, I was playing with this thing. Can you repeat it please?

The so called permafrost craters. What can we say about these today? Are those potentially explosive. Are those potentially explosive buildups likely to increase? Are there programs for monitoring? Let's see if there are any more for you.

Well, I spend probably one by one.

Oh, here's just one more. So why don't you build on this too? What in your opinion should be done to stop permafrost smelt?

Okay, that's it. So the first question answer is no. I mean there is no monitoring system.

In.

A sense what we have been doing system for comforts. For example, there is lots of attention right now in Russia because all of those craters happened in Russia recently. There is some money were specifically sent to scientists to study this phenomena and, and there's some work on it right now. It's all happened during the last two, three years. Now if it will continue to happen. Yes, that some service. Yes, it will continue to happen. It may start to happen here in Alaska and in at least northwest Canada. We start to look. Well, we try to get mine, we two to study this and so far we were not successful. So I don't know mass is not interested in us we are waiting but it's getting less and less to have this FS but we start looking anyway and we found two of those very suspicious people like mous under right directly under Al well probably we should wait when they go first so then many will have money studies. The second question about what we have.

To do.

What we have to do to stop well we can do something on a local scale and that's already engineering solutions for structure on time cross so there are some solutions paid expensive there's some WASPs that are more expensive but it's possible locally to prevent comprom th under some infrastructure it's impossible to do anything like this originally and especially circle polarity so it's only way to start from frosting is to start growing plan that's it that's only only what you do there's no other ways to.

Okay, question and comment from the audience. Why don't we take a couple I'll take yours after and if you like to introduce yourself in your institution I.

Work for the Institute of Geography in Moscow, Russia.

I'm the biology department.

My name is Maria.

My question about pol maybe to you.

We know that the President of the United States Trump doesn't like even the world climate and I know that from American researchers that they even change their titles of the project that they apply for.

Other words.

So maybe you were explain what will be the strategy in climate issues in the United States and cooperation with other countries in this area.

Respond to my old friend Nancy's query about how to deal with policy. Both of us come from a background.

So I guess we have kind of.

An old world view on this. But not long ago there was an article in the Mother Jones magazine entitled the Science why we don't believe in Science. The first sentence said it all. A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. And I think the answer comes if not more from science, from the economists and the historians. I have a friend he graduated from high school with he has a home and two cars in Michigan. He has a home and two cars in Arizona. He's worried about his job, his kids jobs and that sort of thing. And the historians would tell him that jobs and how we make our money have changed throughout the course of printing the first coin. And people look at the climate effort is going to take away jobs from them. I think it's going to give them new jobs. We need new training and the economists would verify this. So I think getting to the policy.

Question goes to the public.

How we deal with the public and has some relevance to them beyond the physics of how water moves through permafrost. As important as that is, I think that's where we find the support for climate research and the impact of warming climate. Thank you.

So why don't we start with Vladimir, since the question was.

Or perhaps Rafe.

Rafe. The question was really about first question. Ray's question was about the difficulty for scientists to talk about climate now under the new administration. And then perhaps each person could offer a thought on your efforts and your institution's efforts to think about translating information that reaches to the public.

Well, you could divide the response to.

President Trump right up to.

Right up here. Better.

Yeah.

Okay. Part A is encompassing one resistance. Resistance to these initiatives that diminish reduce the Obama administrations to reduce emissions, which are really just in the early stages of the transformation of the US Energy economy. On the other side, state and local governments, many of them are extremely progressive, recognizes threat trying to act. And what is California, the seventh largest economy in the world with a fifth. There could be no place with more leadership than under Governor Brown.

So.

And the same is true in many other states and metropolitan areas. So there is despite the Trump's view and we don't really know what, you know, he changed his mind in under 10 hours or 5 hours and 30 minutes.

Yeah.

So who knows what will be after this trip to Europe. I wouldn't be surprised if he stays in Paris because it's going to be a year for a lot of people. I just happen a friend of mine sent me this incredible YouTube from Macron. The new president of France. Welcome to France. And he was speaking to scientists and innovators that we are serious about climate change. Come to France. We will welcome you. I mean it was not, it was just astounding to. To listen to this 22nd pitch with something so.

Good place.

Good place.

Yes.

I'm not, you know, so I think we as the United States, the federal government faces big problem internationally trying to leave Paris as a political matter. And I think. Let me just finish. The message that Secretary Tillerson should take back to the White House from Fairbanks is the unraveling of the Arctic, what it means to the United States, including Florida. And that would be. He'd take that to the table at.

The White House when they discuss whether.

Or not the league.

Yeah. Just a couple of comments about funding for science in the US at the Woods Hole Research Center. We're an independent nonprofit research organization. Almost half of our funding. Well, we do climate change that's, that's us. We can't call it something else really. We need climate change research and almost half of our funding comes from federal sources. So you can imagine we're concerned about what the future may hold and trying to prepare for that uncertainty. So far the funding hasn't gone off the edge, but things move kind of slowly. We're certainly very worried about it. And even, you know, pre this administration funding for science has been pretty flat. One encouraging thing is that while almost half of our funding comes from federal sources, much of it comes from individual supporters. And I think they are all recognizing that what we do is threatened by the federal funding uncertainty of the administration and they're already stepping up. So we're in the short term, we're seeing a bump in our research funding in a measure and we're really afraid and we're doing whatever we can to sort of insulate ourselves against that. But you know, I don't think it's going to come down to sort of playing games with changing words in our proposals for us because we're really proud that we're working on climate change. We think it's the important thing to work on and we're going to stick with that as long as we can.

Hat that Royal Fund has a lot of. We've been working with many businesses throughout the US and other countries to help advise them on how to reduce their carbon footprint and to be more efficient in their various production. And they are interested in doing that because it helps their bottom line. But also they hear from consumers who are all of us who care about these sorts of things. And so that is one, I think, one useful way that people can play a role in your consumer dollars is looking for, looking out for companies that care about their carbon footprint and they're not able to, I mean, they're on, they're on. They have strategies and business plans there, they make commitments to do certain practices and they're not going to suddenly reverse course. So I find that is another area of hope for people who may do this.

That question about what we do for the public. Yeah, I think there's no problem with lessons so they, you don't have to convince them that it is a problem. So they just sit from their everyday life. But of course from worlds it's much more difficult question. And what we can do? Well, we try to do what we can. I give interview to all kind of media almost every week. Sometimes when it's something like this, it's maybe six times a week presented some places to kind of, well at least to bring knowledge, what we have in our community to everybody else. What else can we do? Because we still, this is just a small part of our opinion public Service. So it's 10% of money we pay to work. So you try maybe somebody professional.

I also want to address your comment on the public. It may be tell you a story that is actually a success story that happened when scientists had talked to politicians about something and made it work. For example science decades ago we discovered the ozone home and at that time scientists discovered it. They figured out what the processes are, that it's the chlorophyll carbons that do this. They went and worked together with politics and industry to remove those from the production and the modular protocol was designed. And then if we wouldn't have done that, people have done simulations how the workhorse look like we would be in much more trouble right now because these are greenhouse gases as well and they are very potent ones. This is a success story that shows that we can actually, we could do this. We can talk, scientists can talk to politics and work together. And I don't know how much the public was even involved in this process. So you can see that there is also the politics and the industry is a very important part here as well.

I'm going to hand the microphone to you so that people online can hear you and if you would introduce yourself and your affiliation.

My name is Glenn Druddy and I'm Professor Meredith in the School of Natural Resources here in University of Alaska Fairhouse. I wanted to introduce our a topic here that should be on your list.

Right.

The climate has changed to a degree that it doesn't. The forests are not distributed within the most suitable climate envelope. Right now that has already happened. Forests and other trees that have been there for over 100 to 200 years need to be starting to occupy the environments that will be suitable for them 100 to 200 years from now. That's clearly it's not the case now and it's not going to be the case then. We have a massive, massive challenge for these forests. Now. They've met similar challenges in the past. Virtually every organism in our forests. But the survivors of global climate change on the scale that we're looking at, although the magnitude hasn't occurred in recent geologic time, so it can be done, but there is going to be massively disruptive. We've already seen the fires, acceleration of the fire cycle, we've seen mass free death from insect algorithms, et cetera and those are very important Elements of the global carbon cycle, and particularly the annual uptake trees, are fantastic at storing away carbon in this cylindrical structure we call those bowls or trunks. So final element that makes it really challenging is that these, they are biological organisms, and they have a genetic program that is available to execute, and they simply have to match their location to where that program works. And we have the knowledge, we have the tools, but we don't have the sense of urgency. We don't have the program, we don't have the integration, and we don't even really have the awareness yet among the advocacy groups that this is an extremely important part of the same story as the sea ice, the permafrost, et cetera. So I'm just saying. Flores, please add your list.

Thank you, Glenn. Any more comments? We have an audience. A question from the live stream audience.

A question from Max. It says, if money was not a.

Problem, what is the most pressing Arctic.

Research question you would like to attempt to answer?

Money for a question for Max. If money is not a problem, what is the most. What was the adjective the most pressing research question you would take on?

It's hard for me to even imagine.

A world where money is not a problem. But I guess my personal answer, the thing that I'd be most curious about and worried about. I'm interested in all the carbon that's locked up in permafrost that's built up over the last many thousands of years. I'd say roughly in balance now, and it's tipping towards the permafrost being a carbon source. So I want to know, I would like to do the research that would better nail down how quickly the magnitude of carbon loss from permafrost over coming years and decades and whether that carbon would be lost as carbon dioxide or methane, because that has big implications, or how much more that costs. To me, that's one of the biggest feedbacks from the Arctic to the global climate system. And if it starts to happen in a big way, it makes it really hard. Even if we absolutely get our act together on everything that we can control. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, if permafrost starts losing a lot of carbon, it makes.

It really hard to control this.

So I'd like to focus a lot of resource, those unlimited resources, on nailing the question of how much carbon's in the permafrost, how quickly it's going to be lost and what will be lost as carbon dioxide or methane and what.

We can do about it.

Okay. And Simone, in your dream world of endless budgets, what would you do.

But I mean, I really wanted to say that there is not a program right now for geoengineering research in the US Other countries have started that beforehand. But if you don't have a coordinated research program, there are some universities and other like we do some research. Most of it is just done without secure funding. And if this would be funded like climate research or in a larger scale, I'm not saying the scale of higher revision, but it feeds the back with redeveloped strategies or other things. We also develop the models and we hire. But if we would have funding, we would make progress much faster than we have done in the last 10 years. And so it's really important.

Thank you. Great question over here.

Thank you.

Introduce yourself. Introduce yourself and your affiliate. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Krueger and.

I'm with the World Wildlife Fund. Now a question for the whole panel. It is about the role of industry and companies that are currently engaging in.

Extraction of carbon resources.

And I know Margaret mentioned lowering the footprint. A lot of other types of companies.

Are talking about lowering the footprint.

Is there a role for traditionally extractive based companies to play in crafting a solution? Have you considered that?

Okay, how can private industry and the extractive sector help with climate solutions? I would start with you.

That's kind of far from my expertise, but I think they will not do anything if they will not push to do it. And I think the suggestion about, you know, to make some policy in terms of vaccine or some other incentives to make this movement to decarbonize all this thing profitable, that's definitely the Otherwise of course they will everybody not sure if not and they will do the same way they did it for many, many years before. Why they had to change if there were no profitable things.

In the end.

It was interesting. What came to mind is there's some ways we know don't work. And I speak first for the people who question Virginia, the coal industry in West Virginia, coal companies have resisted environmental regulation forever and always made the case that it's in the interest of the state to do so. Well, now the industry is shrinking radically and their tax revenues are shrinking radically because the industry always maintaining the fiction that they can keep all the jobs and the coal production going. So the state is unprepared for the transition that's required when the state had been. When the companies, the companies that allowed the state to get ready and the companies that acknowledged the seriousness of this issue, the state of West Virginia would be in a much better place for economic transition. Instead of being a center of resistance. And this is the coldest of companies that did this. The miners still lost their jobs and by backing the companies there was no benefit ultimately or very little. That's the wrong way. The right way is to acknowledge the threat, acknowledge the risk, know what's coming, get the right policies in place. And part of the right policies, as somebody said, is a transitional question because some of these industries are going to.

Have to fold up.

We can't extract all the fossil fuel.

That'S been put in the earth.

It's ended up over the millions of years. We just can't do it without an operating planet. So you have to get ready for the transition. And that is a global question. There are massive oil industry across the globe, massive coal industry. Those communities, those workers have to, if we're going to succeed, have to be part of the solution and transition. So I think an individual company's job is, is a innovate, bring us new technology. They do it all the time and they gotta find out that it's in their sort of financial interest to do so. And I think that's happening. So and then secondly, if they're extractive, that is, let's say they're a carbon fuel industry, yet acknowledge the issue, get ready for the transition and get out of the way of solving the problem because it's in the planet. It's in humanity's interest to solve this problem, help us solve it instead of a continued blockade of resistance to efficient, timely policy.

All right, questions, questions. Great question on that. Please introduce yourself and your affiliation.

Thanks Cam Webb. Just as citizen. This is a question for Professor Priminowski. I think you're right. This is a local question going to ask you here. I think almost everyone encounters the distance climate change, the second part of the equation which is equating the burning of fossil fuels to climate change. I think a lot of people are still finding that hard to accept and might be called deniers. I just wondered what your experience has been in addressing that second part of the equation as you talk to local people.

Second equation of what to do?

Well, I don't have answer when we talk about local problems I can give them some suggestions how to keep their structure more stable, say simple ones. Don't let water under your house on piles. So some kind of, well, straightforward answers. But in terms of global things, well, what I can say, I know use more solar energy, it's possible but it's, it's really, well it's, it's really not my question. So I, I, I cannot help this this one too much.

Sorry.

Okay.

Well then it may be really hard to believe. The argument is always the climate is changing, but is it caused by humans? And I mean, that's why we use climate models. We can actually this very simple process of saying we run a climate model in the future or even what happened in present day, the increase already with the only natural sources and we can run it with the size antigenic sources on top of it. And it's really amazing to see what happens because the temperatures would actually not have been risen right now. They would slowly go down again at this point. But if we add the anthropogenic forces, you see that increase. And so the models, the science, the physics really show that that's anthropogenic climate change. And there's no doubt about it. I don't know how to demonstrate a difference and if anybody has a good idea to tell these people how to demonstrate it better than with these model simulations, for example, I mean, to see the change, but that is unprecedented. That's really something we have to work on. I agree.

I'm going to pose a question to the audience. So while you're thinking of your responses, I'll also have a question for daughter that bread. It would be great to hear and interesting to hear from any of you all if you have found maybe your skepticism or your thoughts about something you could do or some messages that have resonated with you that would be fascinating to hear what has been effective in your learning about this topic. So think about that and would love to hear from any of you. And meanwhile, I have a question more about the science of self and the ecosystem processes connected with. So we've heard a lot about the warming temperatures in interior Alaska leading to the desiccation of a number of lakes. So some lakes are just almost disappearing. I forget what the actual statistics are, but. And these are in northern areas where permafrost is so. Well, how does that work? These. I mean, what is the kind of trajectory for the hydrology of places that are both drying and perma Cross Islam. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sure.

It's more regional kind of impact, but it's definitely already very well established.

So this.

Hydrology change for sure and in both ways. By the way, at some situation situation where drainage conditions improving because of thorium ground frost, the surface can get more more dry. But at the same time, in some low places where chrome frost is growing and surface subsiding, the surface can grow under groundwater level and then you will develop wetland on a place where it was nice and perfect birch forest like the local that place behind the cranium seals here. So it goes on both ways. And of course the changes in hydrology have also feedback to changes in chromosomes. So it's all related systems. One of this you mentioned, dry Malays, it's very common especially in the northwest of Alaska. It's not only departing ecosystem but also people who live there because many local communities the water from lakes was used as a water source, main water source and it's usually one good lake with good water quality, tanks and so on. This lake will disappear. It's huge investment to move all this, the water kind of water supply system to another lake and this lake can disappear as well. So it's not only ecosystem which also infrastructure is very, very important for local communities. And if you're talking about changes hydrology and ecosystem, well, ecosystem is very adaptable. So there will be some mosaics of course but there will be some species who do it again and eventually it's very flexible. Infrastructure is much more rigid and any changes is bad for infrastructure. So you have to think always about not just ecosystem but probably infrastructure is much more problematic.

I attended last several months two workshops that the National Science foundation has had in the Arctic system science program.

Yeah.

And there's, there's real progress being made in understanding how the client change is unfolding.

And.

It was briefly mentioned the polar vortex issue.

But it's.

We're getting to the point where we're seeing the real evidence for it that the temperature gradient between the equator and the pole is decreasing because of pole's problem. As a result you don't have the storm systems that are the way that the temperatures get even out are weaker. They don't move as vigorously and they don't move in the same way. They tend instead of moving west east, they tend to get locked into place and stagnate and just suck it. And then you get this amplified pull away. So the result of that is we're seeing extremes actually both ends but bias toward the warming. So 2013, this brightness time of year.

Is still another week before the snow.

Melted Fairbanks it was the second latest breakup of the river in the last 200, 100 years.

We've seen new records.

So that was your question.

Okay.

But we've now had in the last four years we've had two summers with the record summer rainfall. So what we're seeing is this wild swings back and forth as these systems get locked into place. California stays in drought for two years and that high pressure System nudges all the way up into Alaska and we grow it up in summer because we have our record fire year, et cetera. So this simple minded model of it's just steadily giving Warburg can be disproved and the skeptics love that. They lock onto that and they believe that they have disproved the whole global warming method when they make simple observations that pull the strings so happen. It's really important to use and apply and understand our latest thinking about exactly how climate warming unfolds and what its implications are and not impose our preconceptions on what's a very complex phenomenon and that we're still learning about. So these statements about well it'll never snow again and when it snows in, you know, unusual times of the year is, is really working very much against the public understanding the phenomenon. And I think as scientists especially and working with media, people have to work very, very hard on that understanding.

Great, thank you. And I know from the World Wildlife Fund point of view we always try to talk about climate change, not global warming because as you mentioned, there's so many, many changes. It's not just, not just increased temperatures. Any just comments before we come to you, Any more comments on ideology or comments on Glenn's.

Well, I think the best kind of impact on understanding is something happening under people's feet. And there are several households here in Fairbanks experience huge acceleration of these phone cars and have an organ process. And you don't need to tell them anything. They will they ask you what is that? What did happen? And they definitely related to changes because they lived there for at least 40 years and everything was good and suddenly their land start, they start to lose their land. So it seems like that the way to the brain goes through the stone kind of, you know, the same thing. So otherwise all this, you know what you just talk about. If you tell a person who has no problem with anything around him said ah, come on, I saw it, you know and I, I had this, this conversations and I had this conversation with people who live here and they say oh yeah, home cross is not a problem. And then 10 years later I see their houses look like this and they act move out. So but 10 years ago they have no problems with this because nothing happened around them. Well some unfortunately people do around on their own problems.

I take people out and show them dead trees. That usually does it, right?

Showing people the dead trees. And I think part of the problem, the challenge is that so many people don't see the immediate change day to day. In New York City they're going to work or in New Jersey or Texas. And maybe we could talk with you already if you could comment on the work you've been doing to promote the understanding of the fate of Greenland and the fate of landing. But let's go to our colleague here. If you could introduce yourself and your relation.

Your question. Thank you very much. I wasn't making a comment but my.

Name is Walter Harold.

I live here in Fairbanks and I grew up on Yukon River. I'm born and raised here and indigenous to this country. In my lifetime I'm 71 right now I've seen huge fish, king salmon coming up this river. One time I caught one that was £70. You'll never find that again. This young man that spoke here this morning, indigenous, they've never seen moose in their country. Now our moose is down in their country. They're down below Yukon. But I'm also affiliated with a regional corporation DO Unlimited. And our main business is in. In oil field drilling for oil. Oil and gas. We have a rig that's going to be one of the biggest lands in the world that's going to take three years to construct. It's being constructed now but the way we do business is smarter. A lot of these roads up north and footprints for drilling pads like shrub immensely from you know the big footprints that was in the past. So we're doing our part and even we're into even construction on pipeline. So we have to think smarter on how to construct this pipeline. It's all a mustard finances and the country we live, we still want to live here. We want to diversify but anywhere we want to diversify to or transform, transform to no matter where on this planet we have we're faced with some of the same issues because every place is changing. So that's what I have to say.

Thank you. Thank you Walter. A good perspective on how things are changing right before your very eyes. Ray, did you want to comment on this or. Okay, question from another question or comment or something you'd like to share in your experience.

Hi, I'm April Melvin from the Polar.

Research Board at the National Academies.

And much of what we've heard today.

Has sort of been this, the doom.

And gloom scenario that's facing us.

And I think in this kind of.

Audience talking about it in this way is we're very receptive do it and we acknowledge the science and what's occurring.

And I'm just wondering in your experience communicating with a general public audience that.

Might be terrified by this, have you found ways to maybe not spin it.

Positively but convey it in a way that is more receptive and not so terrifying to them.

Just very briefly I'd say try to emphasize that there's a really big gap between the best case and the worst case. And that doesn't mean that the best case is marvelous, but it's an awful lot better than sort of the business as usual. So. And that hopefully can motivate us to take action and not just duck and.

Duck.

In terms of kind of getting.

More.

Objective picture of changes. I think the most important way to do it to give people who live on this changing land power of see what is going on. So empower them to get information firsthand. Not reading newspapers which are always allowing because you have to sell this newspaper. But in this case what we in terms of home force we try to do. We try to push this facility for communities to do observations by themselves and see if temperature and home forest is not changing in this area. So they shouldn't worry right now. I think in general they should work and you know, if climate will change and so but at least for now they know that there is not much change. If it's changing then they have to do something and very quickly. And I think it's very good example of Kenji Shikawa. I don't know if you know about this tunnel man, but he's very interesting person.

But yeah.

He'S. He's here in Fairbanks. He's actually growing, raising radios to use them for travel from. From village to village and do this kind of work. He put at the school, local schools. He put some measurements devices to measure temperature in the summer thaw and each pretty much in each school in Alaska. This way he provides information and ability to collect this information for the local people and then based on this information and also teach them how to read this, how to understand this and then which is pretty straightforward. And then they have this data and they can say themselves if they should.

Worry a lot about it or they.

Can worry a little bit later. I think empowering people to get information firsthand, not from somewhere, it's very, very important thing to do. And it's very in the very beginning, actually the process, very beginning. But development of over measuring technology right now is such that it's technically it's no problem. So K works with high school kids and they do no problem.

Yeah, I agree it's very easy to get very pessimistic especially listening to this and to the outlook. Although I think we have to also see that there's still a lot of hope and that we have achieved a lot still. I mean the Paris Agreement was a great success and we actually see that we still can do a lot. And as you said, there's a difference between the law and the high scenario. That means we have to act now. And even this workshop today, it's Aurelian's pain. But we talk about this and that. We try to really look at the architect as an example to do something. So I think we shouldn't, I think we can all do something and we can do our own things, we can conserve energy and we can talk to people and everybody can just say there's still hope to change things and we can develop the technologies. That's what I said. There's another opportunity, opportunity that may be there, but we have to put the resources in it as well.

Just. Because the other side of the issue is overselling optimism. And I, and I watch people do that. It's hard to not do that. The difference between the high scenario and the low scenario is real and important. So I, I mean that's valid. And at the same time, not at the same time, there's a real need to be realistic about what's required. So I sort of come around trying to use the term realism and face up to the scale, size, the unprecedented nature of the problem, what's required, because without a realistic view of the issue, we're going to, you know, you get into more and more trouble. You don't convey what's required if you're overly optimistic. The other hand, if you chase people out of the room because you're doing the room, you don't get anywhere either.

So. And I would like to add that the Swift report, Snow, water, ice, permafrost, the Arctic report that was produced and that Max, somebody spoke about it, I thought that was, I mean the information is overwhelming. At the same time the message was if we take action now, we will have a much better scenario in 50 years. So we have to wait. And that's one of the most very challenges that can make because we're all, we like instant gratification, we text, we like instant solutions. And so to get people to think in that long term way is a challenge. But at the same time that was really, really important and I thought that was a really big success to have those climate scientists say we need leadership. And I really commend the authors of the soho report and Martin Forsius senior Arctic officials meeting the Arctic Council in June, in March. And he spoke really strongly to the Arctic leaders and said this is, this is an opportunity to act. And last year during the Arctic Council in senior official meeting that took place here in Fairbanks in March, the Haldor Thor Ra the is it the UN ship in automations convention of climate change. I forget that he's the director anyway, it was as though he was reaching out to the senior Arctic officials and shaking them by the shoulders and saying people, we need to act. So I think more and more scientists are stepping out as we saw with the Science March and that's really important. And I also wanted to say that at the Art Council and the fact that the Arctic Council is still a place of dialogue, I mean our countries are working together or really I think we're still the ministerial declaration says today because there's a lot of intrigue and drama about what will be said about climate change in Paris. But I think the fact that our eight countries are working together and that we have many observer countries, if we take the observer countries, the 12 observer countries and the eight Arctic countries together those nations represent 80% of the world's carbon emissions, which is a huge opportunity to get things done. And so I'm really pleased the Area Council is moving into a more decision making, kind of cooperative, action oriented body. Any questions from our online audience? Oh great, we'll come to you and then if you could introduce yourself, sir, any question or comment?

I'm Carl Dunson, I've been with the.

Emeritus professor New Year. My impression as I listen to this.

Reminds me of a good experience I had some years ago on Buck Venture Fuller visited the campus here. One of my close friends in the chemistry department was his host and we.

Had some interesting little small room chats with him. He's the one who coined the expression Spaceship Earth. The point is we've got a certain amount of fossil fuel here. We're using it up at an exponentially.

Increasing rate and there's sufficient amount. So we're going to run out of it.

And this people, a lot of people deny this.

It will happen.

It's a question of if or when.

And preparing for that and using the.

Energy we have now to prepare for.

How we use the current income from.

The sun, which drives the wind and the currents. That means there's a lot of energy that we get coming in.

We are, I think the success of the internal combustion engine may have called us back in the sense that it works so well.

We, even though it's only 30% efficient.

But we haven't really worked at what.

We'Re going to do.

When we run out of this, we're.

Just dealing with a symptom of the.

Problem, mainly the exhaust that we throw.

Into the atmosphere by treating the atmosphere.

And the ocean by shores that biting us.

But in the long run we've got to figure a way to come off.

This high that we're on of using fossil fuels that are limited.

Thank you, excellent point. We take this over to our colleague here.

I think this will be the last.

Question unless anybody's really just burning with a key question or comment. We'll take your question and then I'll ask the panelists to each have a closing statement. Brief 1 My name is Ron Smith, another emeritus faculty from the university here in paramatic biology. I think like a scientist but I want to point out that there are a bunch of non science ways of thinking that need to be brought to the core. For instance my notion of what's happening with shrubification of the Arctic, with the migration of treeline to higher altitudes on alpine tundra and other issues, the redistribution of trees in this landscape.

Suggest to.

Me that we may be seeing the end of some things that scientists in their scientific mode would say are neither good or bad. We could be facing the end of caribou. If their habitat disappears from Alaska they will disappear and anybody that values Caribbean from any other system of thinking besides science will be diminished. Whether that's an economic interest, a cultural interest, a study, perhaps even a religious connection. They'll be gone. And I would think that the Russians would be feeling something these same feelings, thought processes. There are other value systems besides science and certainly there are other value systems besides money. And we've got to learn to value those other systems and not have money drive this world to extension. That is a really helpful and great comment in my opinion. Any reactions to that?

I don't exactly have enoughbeat reaction but to use an example from another part of the world and how it constructs us about climate change issue with I have been working on it for some time and parts the climate system drives change at different rates in different parts of the world in different systems. The sea ice is going much faster than the Herbert Falls. Greenland's going at one rate, the Alaskan glacier is at another. Well, back in the 90s when I was at the State Department we made a major push on the question of.

Coral leach.

Because coral bleaching was starting to show up episodically throughout the world every few years. Well, I remember one meeting with the Marines. The park authority had managed the Great Barrier Reef and we said that this is coming. And they said, no, no, this is a local problem. Now we look at the rearview mirror and the massive leaching occurred in the Barrier Reef and it looks like the ocean's warming up, that this is no longer episodic. It's constant because the temperature of the ocean is what drives the reef. So back to the original story. Climate change means extinction for species that can't move or can't find a viable habitat.

Like the trees were discussing earlier.

That's what it means now. And it been compared, right, potentially to the massive extinctions. So that's what we're into. It's not a surprise. It just happens in different parts of the system.

Just to add to your point about hearing from different points of view, I think that's. Obviously we're here at the university and we have this opportunity for these, with these amazing experts to share our knowledge. But it's. Well, what I find is, and many other groups are trying to amplify those other voices. And as we heard during the Paris negotiations, the voices of those low lying island nations were critical in convincing negotiators that we needed to have a lower target. And so going forward, I hope that there will be many more Arctic voices and maybe that's something that we can all work more actively toward really highlighting those other values. Because Arctic has so many incredible values and cultures and languages and biodiversity and history that it's not just about resources, as you say. So let's wrap this up. You've been a wonderful audience, loyal and engaged. So just if you'd like to share a few closing thoughts, any take home messages, closing remarks. Max.

Yeah, I'll just follow up on the comment that was made a minute ago about fossil fuels being a finite resource and that eventually will use them up and we need to start figuring out what happens next. So fairly recently started using fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas. We started around 1850 is when we first started to use coal as an energy source. Around 1900, we started to use oil in a big way. Maybe 1950 or so, we started to use natural gas. And over that 150 years, 170 years, something like that, we've used today, cumulatively about 350 billion tons of carbon and fossil fuels and putting it in the atmosphere. And there are about 1200 billion tons left in oil, gas and coal in the ground. We could get if we decided to go that route. It is a finite amount, but that's an awful lot left. Then I guess my hope and plea and desire is that we Transition off those fossil fuels way before we run out.

Oh, I think the topic of this discussion was impact of Arctic on globe and it's understandable because of the are here to help some politicians and big stakeholders to pay more attention to the Arctic and at the end it's all money again. But I think we should also think about local original impacts. They much less maybe profitable. Talking about money you may not get you know, lots of funding for that. But I think it's, it's as important as global impacts and we have all suit of local and regional impacts of changing our system of the system which will affect people locally and regionally. And we have to remember it and we have to push for that. It's or maybe more difficult, difficult to bring attention of outside world for that. But for people who live in this environment it's the most important thing. Much more important than global consequences.

Yeah, thanks for the great discussion. I think we said a lot and maybe just to iterate it is really important to understand that the climate change order people see this in this place then we have to communicate to other places that don't see it so much and we don't keep our eyes closed for things that may be important to develop and do. And although I don't want to promote really these technologies, I think we may have an opportunity and not forget that research could be quite helpful to continue this.

Yeah, thanks Margaret. I would just say I take back from the party generalson here that the Arctic climate change in the Arctic is a major driver of a global solution because nowhere on earth is it more apparent that the climate is changing with fundamental impacts globally. So the Arctic is the such a visible apparent area of climate change that in the coming year or two has to become a driver of global solution.

Okay, and on that note I want to thank our panelists and thank all of you and we'll be on for a few minutes if you want to have one on one conversations. Thank you, Thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

I often think of your presentation that you gave at Matters.

It's fun.

I remember you asked for that and a few people have asked for it.

Now.

What was your name again?

Yeah. Billion.

Yeah.

Well, roughly half of it. Roughly half. Of the remaining half. Roughly half those individuals.

All right.

I think the other part. Where everyone agrees basically there's no arguing carbon dioxide.

Yeah.

And there's really no argument that 150 years ago that concentration CO2 was 280 and that it was about 280 a long time before that. And right now, we're 405. And the rate of increase. Yeah, and the rate of increase matches up really nicely with how much carbon atmosphere. So to get to the point where.

You say that, okay.

350 billion times every day, some of it stay there, some of it's not. But it's not.

You've got to go.

You got a lot of explaining to do.

How. How this would not. Yeah, nobody really knows what's going on. Pretty basic math.