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>> Tom Layson: Metaphorically speaking, University of Washington climate scientists are traveling back in time by drilling into the Antarctic ice sheet to learn about the climate of Earth's past, in hopes of understanding what maybe in our future.
It's a fascinating journey drilling down to frozen places that haven't seen the light of day for hundreds of thousands of years.
And the person responsible for communicating the science to a sometimes-skeptical public is Dr. Heidi Roop, our guest on Northwest Now.
[ Music ] The climate is changing.
And the data show that the rate of change since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution is just off the charts.
We know that because of research like the ice core drilling in Antarctica.
Where an undisturbed record of the Earth's climate through its natural cycles, shows us that this cycle is being spun up to unprecedented levels, due to the massive production of carbon dioxide from our industry and transportation.
Predictions of doom are probably overblown, but so are predictions of business as usual.
Since the effects we're seeing are already remarkable as temperatures around the arctic circle set annual records.
And phenomena like ocean acidification has crept into historically benign environments like Puget Sound.
Watching the ferry boats glide across the surface of the Sound, you'd never suspect a problem.
But the combustion of the fossil fuels the ferries burn, when combined with cars and trucks, accounts for 45% of the carbon dioxide produced in Washington State.
Which then, in turn, is added to the huge global CO2 problem resulting from all of humankind's industry.
With a big piece of it the fossil-fuel-driven electricity production happening in many countries, like China.
One of the many results is ocean acidification because carbon dioxide doesn't just confine itself to the atmosphere where it traps heat.
>> Mr. Horwith: That carbon dioxide is also absorbed by the world's oceans.
So where the atmosphere meets the oceans, carbon dioxide crosses into the water.
And over time, the oceans have absorbed about 30% of all the carbon that we've put into the Earth's atmosphere.
And over the last several decades, we've found out that that carbon dioxide is slowly changing the chemistry of Puget Sound and the global oceans in ways that are harmful to animals that build shells and to many other species.
We -- we find out new sensitivities every year.
>> Tom Layson: Micah Horwith is a coastal scientist working for the Washington Department of Natural Resources.
He says Washington is one of the few states now tracking acidification.
And that while data is only a few years old, it's been clear for years that shell-building species like barnacles, Pacific oysters, and crabs are being affected.
And acidification isn't just from airborne CO2.
It's made worse by the migration of stormwater, wastewater, and fertilizer-based nutrients flowing into the Sound, which causes another chain reaction of problems.
>> Mr. Horwith: So wastewater and agricultural runoff, when it hits marine waters, can cause the blooms of phytoplankton.
Which, in the short-term, actually counteract ocean acidification.
When that phytoplankton starts photosynthesizing, it absorbs carbon dioxide like plants do and produces good conditions for shell-building animals.
But when the phytoplankton dies and starts to sink to the bottom and decompose, it produces more carbon dioxide.
Which means that excess nitrogen that enters Puget Sound may be a source of additional acidification, on top of the carbon dioxide that we're putting into the water.
>> Tom Layson: Upwelling in the ocean brings acidified water to Puget Sounds.
And Horwith says the decay process at the bottom of the ocean almost guarantees a hundred years of trouble.
One more problem in a long list of them, including deforestation, shoreline armoring, and water quality problems from pharmaceuticals.
>> Mr. Horwith: Acidification by itself may not be enough to cause an ecosystem collapse, but it's drawing down the energy reserves of marine all across Puget Sound.
Every little bit of energy that they have to put into coping with acidification is energy that they don't have to deal with warmer temperature, with toxics, and with other stresses in Puget Sound.
So everything that we can do to reduce acidification buys our marine life time to cope with these other stresses.
So I like seeing it as a constellation of different factors that we have to address all together.
And acidification is one of many stressors.
>> Tom Layson: Ocean acidification is just one of dozens of interlocking phenomena regularly observed and measured, that are directly related to climate change.
So let's talk now about where some of that raw data is generated, at the bottom of a drilling rig in the deep ice of Antarctica.
You hear me tell a lot of guests that they've been on my list for quite a while.
Dr. Heidi Roop is one of those people.
And she's recently moved from the University of Washington to the University of Minnesota, but we won't hold that against her.
Dr. Roop is the scientist responsible for communicating the progress and results of a new National Science Foundation mission to Antarctica.
A massive project to drill down into a spot called the Hercules Dome.
That's where scientists from a consortium of university research departments hope to unlock more secrets of our climate's past and possible future.
Dr. Roop, thanks so much for joining us here on Northwest Now.
I'm looking forward to a conversation about what's going on in the ice sheets in terms of research, but also communicating that to a sometimes-skeptical public.
Let's start, though, with a little bio.
Tell us how you came up in the sciences and what got you interested.
>> Ms. Roop: Great.
Thanks, Tom for this opportunity.
As you said, I'm a Ph.D. research scientist.
I'm a professor at the University of Minnesota and I also serve as an extension specialist.
So I actually serve as sort of a statewide [inaudible] in communicating critical climate information to a range of different public audiences.
And before my position here, I actually had a similar role at the University of Washington where I was a lead scientist for science communication with the Climate Impacts Group.
And so I bring the sort of science training and science background.
I look at archives of past climate, what they can tell us about what we should plan for in the future.
And then I help to communicate and translate that information and knowledge to help make sure that it can be useful and actually, you know, benefit society as we confront the challenges of a changing climate.
>> Tom Layson: You have some pictures that you sent us that show the ice sheet and where some of this research takes place.
That the University of Washington is well known for when it comes to ice core data.
It really strikes you when you look at how remote it is.
And, really, other than the climate, ice versus the desert, it really does kind of have that same feeling you get when you look at pictures of Mars.
How vast it is, how there's not a single solitary sign of -- of human activity there unless you look back at camp.
So talk a little bit about what your experience was on the ice sheet.
You've participated in some of this core drilling.
>> Ms. Roop: Yes, that's right.
I've spent several seasons down on the Antarctic continent in a variety of locations.
Some of them in this remote flat, white environment where, literally, spin 360 degrees, all you see is a flat white ice sheet and a blue horizon.
And sometimes it's such that the lighting gets so that you can barely even see where your -- your foot is in front of you as you walk.
It's quite funny on those days, those flat white days.
You may have experienced that in some of the mountains in Washington when the light gets just right.
You can barely step forward.
So, you know, it's a really fantastic place to be.
And also really profound, right?
There are very few places you can go on the planet where you look around you and there are no signs of human life.
And in remote Antarctica, very few signs of any type of animal life.
If you see a bird, it's somewhat of a miracle.
But it's usually not a good sign.
It means the bird is really far away from the coast.
And so, you know, it's sort of this lifeless but really dynamic and beautiful place.
And in this case, for the research that I do, a really critical place for understanding future climate.
>> Tom Layson: Yeah, I was going to say.
So let's talk about why it is people go down to this relatively inhospitable place for this ice core data.
How are the ice cores gathered and -- and what do they tell us?
>> Ms. Roop: Yeah, that's a great question.
And there's a long history of collecting ice cores from places like Antarctica and Greenland, so Earth's major ice sheets.
And the reason we go and collect these ice samples is that they preserve some of the best records that we have of past climate.
And ice cores, in particular, are a really valuable archive for understanding the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in the past before there were humans.
Some of our ice core records, when we combine them all together, they go back over 800,000 years.
And they provide us with this critical information about Earth's atmosphere and the temperature and a whole host of other things that we can learn from ice cores.
They provide this critical climate context.
And, specifically for ice cores, they're the only geologic tool that we have that gives us direct evidence of past climate.
So with ice cores, when we talk about greenhouse gases we're not guessing.
We're not making an inference, it's not a proxy.
We're actually sampling direct atmosphere from 200,000 years ago, 205,000 years ago, right?
March back in time through this time machine through the ice sheet, like a layer cake, and we can sample what the atmosphere was back in time.
And the reason we can do that is very simple.
It's as snow falls, as it does on sort of a Washington mountain, and it accumulates, between the arms of snowflakes are little spaces.
And within those spaces is air, right?
As it falls on landscape.
And over time, because the ice doesn't melt, the snow doesn't melt, it slowly gets compressed into ice over time.
But those little bits of air get trapped in the ice.
And we take advantage of that very simple physical process and are able to then extract that air from ice back in time, and measure exactly how much greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, are present.
And that is how we know today's atmosphere is dramatically different from the atmosphere of at least the last 800,000 years.
>> Tom Layson: Right, you're able to see these natural cycles between glacier -- periods of glaciers and -- and ice ages and -- and other eras.
But you've also been able to see with the ice core data the rate of change and the amplitude of that change really be unusual and outside of that bell curve of normal with the ice data.
>> Ms. Roop: Right.
And so ice cores provide us with this evidence of sort of the natural cycles in climate, as you say, going between glacial periods when there's lots of ice, to what we call interglacial periods, periods where it's warmer on the planet and there's less ice.
Global sea level tends to go up during those time periods.
And we understand well, because of ice core records and other geologic evidence like ocean sediments.
But from ice cores and these other geologic proxies, we understand what drives those natural cycles, the rate of change in those cycles.
And we, of course, have lots of other questions that we're asking, and that's why we're going back to get more ice cores.
To sort of -- it's not one and done, we still have a lot of questions about the drivers of those change, the rates of change.
And critically, for some of the new ice core work that we have underway, we're going to look at periods of time in the most recent geologic past when it was about as warm as we expect it to be, sort mid- to late-century.
And the reason we want to do that, is we want to understand what happened to the Antarctic continent during this last period of warmth.
And what can that tell us about what we should expect; especially, related to sea-level rise around 2050 and 2100 and, of course, beyond.
>> Tom Layson: So you're talking about this new National Science Foundation mission down to the Hercules Dome to take a more detailed look at this 100,000, plus or minus, year period.
Talk about who is involved in that.
What the timeline has been.
I mean, you don't just dream this up and go.
It's quite a process, right?
>> Ms. Roop: That's right, yeah.
Ice core projects themselves are typically decades in the making and then decades through from execution to delivering the science.
I am part of the next deep ice core drilling project, as you said, that will take place at Hercules Dome, which is sort near the south pole.
It's sort of hard to describe without a map.
But we're going there specifically to derive a record of past climate that goes back about 130,000 from present.
And the reason we're doing that is, again, it's sort of -- it's a near -- it's an analog for future warming.
And we're asking these critical questions around sort of what happens between a glacial-interglacial cycle.
And what happens, importantly, to the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is a major contributor to sea-level rise.
We've seen that there can be about 10 -- several feet to meters of sea-level rise.
There's tens of meters of sea-level rise locked up in West Antarctica.
We're not expecting all that to go very quickly.
But we have questions about how and when -- sort of how fast and how much?
And the ice core project is one piece of a complicated sort of scientific puzzle that we're trying to put together.
To understand and answer that question about what we can anticipate for future sea-level rise under planetary -- the sort of climate warming that we're experiencing.
Anthropogenic driven climate change.
I am one researcher on that project.
The University of Washington is involved.
There are several researchers there.
I'm at the University of Minnesota.
The University of California Irvine is also involved, as well as the University of New Hampshire.
And together we're sort of leading the first part of this proposal, which is the collection of the ice core.
And we represent a small subsection of a much bigger diverse community of researchers across the United States, who will actually be putting in separate proposals to study the ice itself.
So it's a big -- we represent -- you know, we're one small piece of a very big pie.
But we're making -- helping with the logistics and making sure that we can go collect this ice core that will be of high value to the broader ice core science community.
>> Tom Layson: One of the things that is interesting about this is your role, you are specifically tasked with communicating some of the things that are going to be happening.
And then interpreting some of the data for a skeptical public.
Let's face it, we've been through some of these sort of anti-science, anti-intellectual periods in society before.
But now a lot of that is being amplified by social media.
The mainstream media and its gatekeeping role, finding research scientists to speak to instead of your uncle who has an opinion, that is fading by the wayside.
So how much trouble are we in here when you try to explain to people, listen, this is what this data shows us.
We're able to understand what is happening in the arctic circle right now with record temperatures and the tundra thawing and creating even more greenhouse gases.
We're able to see these processes and also look back in time to see how they've acted in the past.
It must be very difficult to communicate that when you have folks who basically think this is all an opinion.
>> Ms. Roop: Right.
That is definitely true.
And, unfortunately, climate as a topic has become highly controversial and is a political subject in this country.
You know, not by choice, right?
I'm a scientist, I study the facts.
You know, I -- I look at the data.
The -- we don't predetermine what the ice sheet records as far as past climate information.
We would have no mechanism for doing that, right?
And so, of course, you know, I'm part of generating this body of knowledge about Earth and Earth's climate.
And, of course, it helps contextualize what we might expect under future climate.
And, of course, there's uncertainty.
No one has a crystal ball.
The scientific community -- the climate science community doesn't pretend that we do, right?
We use all the tools and technologies available to us to, you know, provide our best available understanding of the state of the science about what the future holds.
But when it comes to communicating this information, more often than not, it's not about the science, right?
More often than not, it's about trying to equip a variety of trusted messengers with information about climate.
But, more importantly, placing it in the values, the things that they care about that are threatened by, say, changing sea-level rise.
If we're talking specifically about sort of Antarctica, right?
The big threat of change in Antarctica to a lot of communities -- that connection is sea-level rise.
That's changes to our coastal communities, to our coastal economy.
There are many Washingtonians who live or rely on the coast and the oceans, right?
And so, changes there matter to us.
And so much of it is about really trying to think about having effective conversations about what's at risk and what's going to change and what opportunities we have to address those challenges.
Rather than necessarily always starting with the driving, like, we're changing climate, this is a catastrophe, you should listen to all these facts and figures.
We know that that's not how humans learn, that's not how humans change or adopt new opinions.
And so we need to really think about how to be effective communicators of this critical climate information.
Which also just means showing up as a person, as a member of a community with shared values or shared faith, you know, so -- so much of it really isn't about leading with the science.
You can get there, but it's really about finding common ground.
And building relationships so that as we work towards the shared vision that we might have for the future, we're factoring climate into that decision-making.
Because it's -- it's everywhere.
Climate influences our roads, our bridges, our agricultural system, our economy, how we get energy.
So it's everywhere.
And we don't have to look very hard, but the harder part is having those conversations.
And that's what I spend a lot of time doing, is equipping a variety of people with the resources and the confidence they need to go have those conversations.
Especially, given that context that you just outlined, right?
It's controversial, people dismiss it.
It can be a very politically charged conversation.
And so, really, building the core confidence, using capacity to enter into those conversations safely.
And know when to just, quite frankly, not bother.
That's also part of climate conversations at the moment.
There are just some audiences that aren't worth engaging.
>> Tom Layson: Yeah, I was going to say, and -- and, you know, that's the hard part.
That sounds great, that looks good on paper.
But as soon as it starts leading to policy and people start feeling like, oh, they want to take away my pickup truck, they want to take away hamburgers, they want to take away my airconditioning and put me in a smaller house, possibly a yurt.
That's where that pushback starts happening.
That's where they start to say, well, you know, Dr. Roop, I know you're looking at ice core data, but it's your opinion.
That is where it really gets difficult.
>> Ms. Roop: Right, and I don't disagree.
And I think, unfortunately, part of that narrative, that pushback -- and that's what I get from a variety of people, including elected leaders.
The unfortunate part of that is that so much of that messaging is influenced by people who have a vested interest in spreading misinformation about this issue.
Because they stand to benefit in the near term while we all pay the consequences in the long term, right?
And so one of the big challenges with messaging around climate is this idea that it seems like it's this sacrificial individual thing that we all have to do, right?
And that is not -- that doesn't motivate any behavior change.
Of course, nobody wants to be told what to do, or the things that they like and want to do they can't do.
And so, you know, I don't have a solution to that.
But I -- I do really think we need to start thinking about how to shift the narrative from one of individual sacrifice to collective opportunity.
What do we get when we come together and use climate change as an opportunity to address multiple issues we face as a society?
And think about how to maintain, you know, economies and community values?
And, of course, nobody wants a policy to tell them what they can or cannot do, right?
And that, of course, is even more true in the United States, where we have this culture of freedom and individualism.
And so we've been fed a narrative around individual sacrifice.
When, really, to scale up the action we need, we need individuals committing to and participating in the collective dialogue around how we shape policy.
How decisions in our communities are getting made on our behalf today that determine whether we're ready for climate or not, right?
Those conversations are happening.
They're not just happening at the federal government level.
They're happening at the commissioner level for your water board, for people designing roads and bridges in your community, or managing greenspaces.
Climate is everywhere and climate conversations and climate action are everywhere.
It's not just about what you shouldn't do at home or what you shouldn't do in your daily life.
Of course, we all need to make individual sacrifices where we can to address this challenge and confront it head-on.
But that's not the only way, it's a every action matters and we're all in this together.
>> Tom Layson: I think you hit the nail on the head there.
And that's something I've been saying for years.
I think one of the great mistakes the environmental community made historically was talking solely about that sacrifice.
You can't do this, you can't -- it's like religion.
Here's a list of don'ts.
No, there's another opportunity here.
I think rebuilding the power grid and our transportation and this planet's systems will probably be the most economically stimulative thing mankind has ever embarked upon -- or humankind has ever embarked upon.
I've been corrected on that a couple times.
But point being, I think -- I think that approach is -- is -- is key to that.
And I think you just hit the nail on the head there, making that -- that analogy that, no, this -- this could be a great thing.
You might be able to get a bigger, more efficient pickup truck.
Maybe you'll have a hamburger that tastes better because it won't be all meat.
Is -- is that going to be a piece of your communications package?
>> Ms. Roop: Certainly.
And I think, you know, the idea is there's no one size fits all.
And when I think about communication, really, the entry point is listening.
Because I'm one member of my community, right?
I live in a certain place; I have a certain identity.
And so, really, it's about trying to equip and empower and inspire people in their own communities who have their own things they care about.
Being part of crafting the solution.
And so, so much of that has nothing to do with what I know and it has everything to do with trying to learn from people that I'm connecting with, right?
And trying to engage in communities or think about how, you know, a utility, or a commissioner, or a Department of Transportation might use sea-level rise science.
So much of that, to design and do that work well, involves working with community.
And there's a real transition to doing this work.
But how you engage with community and leading with listening, rather than telling, is such an essential communication strategy.
One that's well-documented, but one that has not readily been adopted.
And so if I'm able to achieve anything in my work as part of this Hercules Dome project, it's really about helping people wade through a whole range of what is super interesting to someone like me, nerdy science.
But what people want me to tell them is what do I plan for?
How much sea-level rise will there be?
And I can't tell them that, but we can explore solutions together with their communities and their constituents to help figure out what it is we should be prioritizing when we confront this threat.
>> Tom Layson: Our last 40 seconds here, and I always encourage people to be lifelong learners, where can people go to learn more?
And where should people be following the data and you when it comes to this mission and the progress it's making?
>> Ms. Roop: Yeah, that's a great question.
We do have a website at herculesdome.org.
And you can follow a range of organizations.
I'm on Twitter, but you can also find me online, a simple Google search.
But I also really encourage, for those of you in Washington that are listening to that, to seek out some of the regional experts that hold a lot of this knowledge.
Like the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, which is cig.uw.edu.
>> Tom Layson: Great conversation, Dr. Roop.
Thanks so much for coming to Northwest Now.
>> Ms. Roop: Thank you.
>> Tom Layson: So keep your eye on this mission to Antarctica.
The data will take a while to be gathered and interpreted, but it promises to be maybe just as interesting as the exploration we're doing on Mars right now.
The bottom line is a simple one this week.
Social media and cable channels designed to pump you full of fear are not your best resources for understanding our world.
Help people in your circle spread their wings a little, like to the National Science Foundation.
I hope this program got you thinking and talking.
To watch this program again or to share it with others, Northwest Now can always be found on the Web at KBTC.org.
And be sure to follow us on Twitter at Northwest Now.
Thanks for taking a closer look on this edition of Northwest Now.
Until next time, I'm Tom Layson.
Thanks for watching.