 When I found out that Will Steger was going to be our speaker and I asked two geography students if they would be willing to host Will. And one of them was Amanda Varley and I'd like Amanda to stand up. She's done this tremendous job. And the other is Caroline Rue and if Caroline would stand up. And I said you know this you know Will is this famous Arctic and Antarctic explorer and you know he's just known worldwide for this and things that he's done on wilderness survival and wilderness camping and all of his teaching and I said would you know would you like to host him and let me just give you a little of their reaction to this. Amanda oh my gosh I've admired Will since he was since I was just a little kid in school. He did all these real cool expeditions to the Arctic and to the Antarctic you know to try to understand what was going what was going on. Man that guy you know he's really good and guess what Bob my mom and me made mucklucks with his wife. You know so I've got this personal connection and I'd love to do this. Caroline says oh geez he was at all these schools you know when I was in high school he'd tell and he'd show all the kids about all this global warming and how it was melting the ice sheets and the Arctic and Antarctica and how it was affecting the polar bears and the Inuits and the Inuits life and you know he saw this with his own eyes you know he really got out there and observed it you know and man he is just oh geez wow you know he's really trying to help the world. Well Amanda and Caroline I can't say it any better. Here's Will Steger. Thanks Robert. I want to thank everybody for this evening and particularly the Novel Conference Committee and and Tim for the fine work and the faculty that put all this together and Jeff from the environmental studies your faculty and and all the students and all the work that put put this 5,000 persons event together and it was a great two days for myself I learned a lot myself I'm sure we all did. I'm often asked who is my heroes who who inspired me as a kid. Well you know I had fictitious heroes like Huck Finn of course and that kind of what got me into adventure I think in second grade or at least thinking about going down the Mississippi River and that explorers a number of explorers really inspired me. Nansen Norwegian Explorer was a very good model for me for not only adventure but a man that dedicated his life to science ended up my agent his life he he dedicated himself for humanitarian efforts after World War II World War I received a Nobel Prize for that. Amundsen also was another hero that to me showed logistically how it's done properly with dogs and and skis and organization and teamwork and then of course Shackleton was a very good role model ever since I was kid I was very aware of him in terms of leadership and what he was able to do but my real life hero is actually here Jim Hansen and I've studied weather all my life 1967 I taught grade school junior high science about global warming very aware of Jim's career but particularly with Jim in the late 80s put his career put everything that he worked for in his life on the line that and the courageous to tell the truth because it was not very popular 20 years ago and it all started I think the summer of 88 when we had that hot drought that's when global warming got on the front page at least in Washington DC and Jim stood up and really got cut down for many different angles from that but he survived that and so I'm very thankful for Jim I read all his papers and this is my first time I've met Jim and incredible man I think we we have a lot to thank Jim for and what Jim predicted I actually saw come true the scientist said the the scene would basically rip and global warming in the polar areas the problem there is very few people have traveled in the polar areas some areas I've been in nobody's ever seen but I've seen it first hand and I have reference going back to 1960 actually for 40 some years I've seen the entire change of the Arctic and the drastic changes that we've seen just in the last five years this is what I want to show you today I want to really nail the nail in the coffin here and show you show you the reality of what what's really happening we really need to face the truth two years ago I gave this similar tome down version of this and got a lot of trouble for it too and but I kept giving it and now it's okay because you see everything I'm showing you've read in the paper you've seen in the Time Magazine it's common knowledge I want to just go a little bit back to my myself how I got started I was raised in richfield Minnesota born two parents that never camped out a day in their life except for my dad during World War II nine kids in our family and as a kid I was given total freedom in high school I had no rules the only rule was two rules certain grade point average and if I didn't get that you know I was it in the house and then if I got in trouble with the law that was the end of the whole program yet the other understanding was if I wanted to do something or any of my brother and sisters we're all different we all raised in different ways and we all followed our dreams if you want to do something you had to pay for it yourself so I took a motorboat down the Mississippi River in 1960 when I was 15 I actually start working on that project when I was 12 about an old motorboat fixed it up and traded in and three upgrades in 1960 when I was 15 I took a loan actually from a bank for 1200 which was a lot of money went down the Mississippi River we got arrested in every southern town they thought we stole the boat and it's a very expensive trip for us and we were really in debt when we came back and it introduced me to the life of an explorer and that was the last motorized adventure then I started climbing when I was 16 I'll go into some of my stories here in a couple minutes but as a kid I was very fortunate because I knew I had a very strong vision I've always known the direction of my life and and kind of seen things a little ahead of time for myself and I wanted a life of adventure and I love the city and the many friendships that I had in the city and I stayed in Minneapolis long enough to get my couple degrees and three years of teaching experience I felt before I dropped out of society I needed to get these credentials together but I always had a vocation for education I had a deep concern since a child for the environment for the innocence the God's creations and so I always knew the direction I was going to go I didn't see myself really as a classroom teacher I knew I had to go through that avenue and that I would be working in the education profession and I spent the three years in the trenches and then I left for Ealy Minnesota I'll show you the pictures here hopefully there we go oops there we are good this is climbing on the Lake Superior mentioned I was 16 years old nobody climbed or kayaked in Minnesota that time at least I never met anyone in the early 60s I I checked the book out of the Minneapolis Public Radio Library called a mountaineering freedom of the hills and in that book I learned all the moves the blaze bought a hemp rope from the local hardware store Penn Avenue in Richfield and then went to North Shore Taylor's Falls and learned the crafter by top rope climbing and the traverses and so forth like this and and I'd also have to say climbing you really sometimes you come this close to meeting around so I I was humbled at a very young age fortunately I did a lot of rock and ice climb Sir Edmund Hillary across in the 50s that was he was my hero is when he climbed Everest in 53 that was the images I was very fortunate I was just in New Zealand on Saturday met Sir Edmund Hillary I get presented there to the New Zealand and Antarctic research and NSF there and he's on his last legs I don't think he's not going to be around long but I've had a chance to meet him but it was this picture similar picture of this inspired me I did up and when I was 19 I got in with an expedition of real experience climbers and I learned literally the ropes there we did a first ascent on this mountain 20,600 did a first ascent on this one up this ridge 18,600 and we did a number of other first ascent it was pretty incredible as a teenage kid to do that and but it was really the North I started kayaking when I was 17 I was lucky in 1963 I inspired by a National Geographic article we shipped our kayaks to Juneal Alaska hitchhiked up the Prince Rupert took the ferry to Juneal and then we kayaked up the inside passage portaged over the white pass route or the old timers of 1898 dead got into the headwaters of the Yukon and this area was unmapped at that time the map was like white that's it unmapped was just you know you wonder what you know when you see a white you think something's different but it's the same old bugs and rapids and cold water but it was on that section that though I did I met some of these old timers from the Gold Rush of 1898 it was incredible experience and I think they were relating to to themselves being young going into the country like we were because we really hated at the bugs the rain we were always afraid of dying and we'd warm up around their stoves and they they would say mark my word boys you will be back and we didn't have no way so we kayaked on into the Yukon and one day we were growl our we didn't see anybody for a couple weeks kayaks were grounded on sandbar so we were trudging through the water hauling the canoes or the kayaks bugs all over the place and out of nowhere this airplane swoops down and does the flight over like this it was just like we were so homesick it was civilization but the bottom of the wings that said Shell Oil and that was the beginning of the exploration of minerals and this is before the big big rush and so I was able to see that generation of 1898 the beginning of of that perspective of the beginning of the rush for minerals the very beginning and then I continued traveling about 10,000 miles each summer and in high school college in the three years I taught I did major expeditions always worked two or three jobs I worked myself through college and high school and this was a guy graduated from the University of St. Thomas to talk to him into a raft trip so we hitchhiked as far north as we go in Canada we ran out of road and we built this log raft in a small little river floated that down connected into the McKinsey and then went to the Arctic Ocean the problem on the Arctic Ocean there are no trees but we use this yellow small little yellow rife rafts to get over the mountains and then come back again so we always got into Alaska hitchhiked back and enough time to start school either teaching or or or a regular college or high school I was inspired by the north I ended up this is Ealy, Minnesota a lot of you are familiar with the chain of great lakes there I was very fortunate because in 19 I had this idea of finding the perfect place to live and I thought two two lakes from nearest road so I went up for the first time in Ealy and actually found what I was looking for and it was three miles the nearest road is right here and I was sophomore in college at that time and that that's where I moved to after I taught school when I was 25 I moved and made my life in the wilderness in 1970 this cabin I built I didn't know anything about building but you know I saw cabins I talked to the old-timers read a few books log cabin is reasonably simple to build but I really wanted to do everything the law you know the the pioneer way I was I was inspired as a kid with Lincoln logs and pioneers and I'm sort of reliving that vision but I also wanted to live really simple I didn't want to re-own much I wanted to roof over my head I wanted to raise my own food and cut ice for refrigeration and so I built this cabin where I still live today I put an end up putting a road in about 12-14 years ago but still today's I wouldn't have anything to do with power line where wind and solar and I went many years without electricity we heat with wood and haul water from the lake very very simple life and always a little help from your friends when you're off the road you know you have to carry everything and there's trails so this is the way we did things in the early days always had friends and I basically if we know there was no soil for gardens so we cleared these containing walls and pumped mud to form these rich gardens and in the 70s were really quite self-sufficient on food and that's my parents here and but it was really dogs I first moved to Ealy I didn't know anything about outward bound I never heard of it and I heard this outward bound schools I hitchhiked out there just to check it out and they were starting winter courses in 1970 so I was hired on the spot and that was a paradigm in my life at that time because I really put together my skills and outdoors along with my need to educate and also as for the first time was with peers men and women that climbed and kayaked and it was incredible thing but that was actually the first last job I ever had and I lasted there for two years and mainly because I had different ideas I thought the winter courses should be run with dogs and not hauling and never being on a dog team before but I thought dogs should be running and I was getting tired that the cabin will hauling in all the supplies in the summer so I quit charter I at least out a team of four dogs and started that way and then I recruited my students down here in the city I would come down lecture about the environment and living off the land and so forth and actually I met a number of people here from the early days and start these I started with a links track a school a school for outdoor education the dogs served a dual purpose they were used to transportation we hauled in you know for couple decades you know hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds of gear and sand and stuff into it and then it also afforded me with a way to live make a livelihood I wanted I wanted to really my goal is to have a livelihood where I was totally self-sufficient where I was doing what I wanted to do teaching and being out in the outdoors which I really accomplished in the late 70s I had the pretty homestead and dogs and business pretty well together and that's when I start traveling north and this is a couple of the courses that I ran here outward bound or pre or after outward bound and then from 1979 then I start branching out I traveled about 20,000 miles in the Canadian Arctic in Alaska at that time pretty much unsupported we lived off the land we didn't have a radio we're pretty much on our own no one knew we were out there I didn't do any press I always like Jim Hansen I think and I've similar it were quiet people we do this out of duty out here sometimes or sometimes to make a living but that we were we did expeditions or some of the greater days in a way in my life where we were really self-contained and didn't have any pressure on us but then I had this idea of doing the North Pole and that's when my life changed and many of you know me through the North Pole expedition 21 years ago we we did what most people said was impossible doing the North Pole and support it we organized that by selling posters and t-shirts and so forth and build a huge audience around that and that then lived led to the Antarctic expedition I I want to just get into the front of my talk here and I want to show you first of all what an X a major polar expedition is like this was the International Trans Antarctic Expedition 8990 where we did the longest crossing of Antarctica international team six of us Victor Boyarsky here glaciologist from St. Petersburg Antarctic Arctic Institute and Victor had about 12 years under his belt here in both polar areas Chin Dahoe another world-renowned glaciologist IPCC he's written so many papers there Dahoe were his career up up to this point was in the Himalayas and he was in charge of the Chinese base in Antarctica so we have a great scientific team it's very difficult to do science when you're mobile like we're doing a lot of people say they do science on a expedition like this but it's really kind of play science but these guys did real science I mean that was two hours a day real discipline my partner John we attend for French physician who I met on the way to the North Pole 21 years ago by one in a million chance and like energy attracts we came together and that's where we had the inspiration of doing the Antarctica North Pole was nothing but a personal best for us but we knew in 1986 we met that the Antarctic Treaty was up for review in 1990 and the big issue there was it's called the Minerals Clause and behind closed doors in 86 there was a pretty much a formal document called the Wellington Convention was drawn up to start the exploration for minerals so sort of like the shell oil flying over and no one no one really knew about John Lee and I knew because we'd studied it and I had a map of Antarctica and I went to his tent I show on the map I wanted to do this full route so we decided we would we would organize this international expedition and do it around the treaty and that was the whole whole program behind our endeavor here Jeff Summers from the British Antarctic Survey Jeff was in charge of the dogs on the British bases back in the days before snowmobiles one of the most experienced men I've ever met he was familiar with the Antarctic Peninsula which was a very dangerous area as we found out Kaiso Finazzo from Japan Kaiso was also venture a world renowned dog driver and and then of course our dogs we bred a special breed of dogs 30 dogs three teams of 10 these dogs very thick fur I have another picture no very thick fur their ideal temperature is 30 40 below zero they they hate anything above freezing they don't like in fact they like zero Fahrenheit the dogs have a tendency of heating up when you're running them on a clear day above zero and the other thing that they love are expeditions probably more than we do the worst thing you got to do do a dog like this is leaving behind on an expedition so they're there all the time they have this incredible incredible animal this is the route on Antarctica let me just show you first of all little geography this is South America Chile and Argentina and this is the Antarctic Peninsula Antarctica it's actually divided into we call the Western and the Eastern the Eastern part is the main part of the continent very high plateau 10,000 feet an average ice that goes down below sea level in places the ice cores Jim was talking about you know we go back 400,000 700,000 years this is where the main main science I was talking to the directors of National Science Foundation there's a lot of really interesting coring operations going on in the central part of the plateau this is a the interior of the Antarctic Peninsula is a horrible place no one has ever ventured across it like this and then we have the Western Antarctic at this part Western Antarctic as mark my word is the place you're going to have to watch because that's going to determine the future of our civilization and why we need to move and I'll show you later on this because Western Antarctic is actually most of its below sea level it's just hinged on rock and if we destabilize the car the the climate which we've already done we upset by upsetting the heat balance with a sea level rise and thawing weather there's a possibility that that could slip into the ocean which I'll talk to you about more in a little bit this I route here was 3,731 miles across and historically this route here was Scott's route there's a race to the pole in 1911 Scott and Amundsen Scott was English of course five men they made it to the pole but let me go in this area first this would be Amundsen Amundsen did it from here they did with dogs five people Norwegians brilliantly executed expedition they played out caches when they got into the actual hybrid here they're basically killed many of their dogs they leave it for dog food on the way back made a dash across the pole came back with the dog food the dead dogs they ate the dogs and came back in really good shape Scott on the other hand made made several wrong decisions and historically modern history is real critical of Scott which and most of the people that are critical or people that read the books that have never been down there basically don't know what they're talking about Scott made one major error and I always read the history books to find you know lessons the big error he made us that he packed his kerosene tins in with the food and leaked on to the food and because of that if you want to you know Nick that's why the five men died on the way back they did make it they took care of each other if you read Scott's journal I recommend reading Scott's last expedition it's an incredible book talk about courage and sharing and taking care of each other to the bitter end and under the worst marginal conditions this was Scott prior to our expedition 13 people had entered into the interior only six went back we also had Shackleton we familiar with history up the endurance he he was going to cross Antarctica this way the endurance got into the Wendell Sea got caught in the pack ice 30 miles from where they were going to make their base camp the boat got caught and start drifting away and eventually the boat was crushed and the big story was how Chaco led his man did the did the rescue to Elphin Island and then made the famous boat crossing a real incredible journey like this which a lot a lot of these journals like Nansen and Shackleton Massen it's almost Providence the way they survived and then we decided to do the long route I never debated with myself when I looked at this route this was the route but in order to do this we had to have the Russian cooperation because this is the Russian sector of Antarctica and this is during the Cold War in 86 so that was one of the one of the challenges we ended up getting the Russian help Chinese help did a lot of diplomatic the late 80s the wonderful era I think you remember when the Berlin wall look like we had world peace for about two years but logistically here to do this full crossing we have to leave in mid-winter and in order to get off the continent off the plateau before the second winter set in and so we left on the Antarctic Peninsula we traveled along the Larson ice shelf this is what I'm going to show you mainly about the Larson here and then we got up on the on to the Antarctic Peninsula the plateau there there we had a 56 days storm that basically blew and led up a little bit and just a horrible situation we survived that we got into the interior got back on sort of schedule arrived in the north South Pole December 12th and then made it across the area of accessibility we're right in the highest part of the plateau 11,000 when the winter came in again 60 65 below but we managed to get off right in the nick of time and major storm 17 miles from the end we one of my team members got lost in the storm when he was feeding his dogs and almost lost him but we ended up finding him next day and as we had a happy ending so I'm going to concentrate right here in the Antarctic Peninsula an area called the Larson Ice Shelf this is the Larson Minnesota here to show the ice shelves there's Larson A Larson B Larson C right here it's a mountain range across here this is our route it took us 31 days to go across the Larson A and B and you almost have to travel day after day after day after day skiing one foot at a time to get an understanding of the dimensions of the globe and the dimension of which things are changing so rapidly this is on the Larson first day out we traveled three dog teams always I like a team of six because it's a perfect number you have a lot of options we have always have three dog teams and three tent units so each sled is totally self-contained for 10 dogs and two people that means food for dogs people and this is before the days of GPS so we had radios so each tent had a radio tents fuel and so far so if we lost one or even two sleds we could still survive we traveled on skis we never rode very undesirable to ride because you would get cold instantly only thing that keeps you going is the movement and then if you ride if you did ride you'd wear the dogs down so the main concern always is keeping the dogs energy going that was all you all I ever thought about was the dogs and the dogs because if you lose the dog spirit not only you don't succeed on your trip but in this trip you know you probably wouldn't survive it you probably can't see in the back but there's a little bicycle wheel here that's attached to the sled this is old dominer it's called a sled wheel and that gives us our straight line distances and then we would have a compass we know the magnetic the variation of the compass on the Larson it was not almost a no-brainer if it was clear we had mountains to navigate on this was actually the first 300 miles map by the British and but so we had the the sled wheel for mainly on the on the plateau the other 3,400 miles this is Larson a here Larson a basically disintegrated in 1982 nineteen nineteen nineteen ninety five ninety eight I think it was and there's a highlands here this is we had a number of mountain ranges we did about 12 or 14 mountain ranges on a way across very spectacular ranges and if you have clear weather this is probably the only range that we actually saw avalanches on the side and and all you're always roped up crevasses are always the danger especially dog sledding in a crevasse field is as we bad weather we're on skis roped up in the ice fields you only have crevasses when you're going up and down once we're on the main plateau it's it's quite safe this is the food caches in the summer before and you know even fickled weather but not quite this bad we set out our food caches by plane to an otter and on paper it looked like it was going to be an easy expedition on the way to the pole we had you know nine I think it was nine food caches every 250 miles would be like connect the dots we didn't expect was the the winter storms no one ever been up in the plateau in the peninsula in the winter time so because of the storms we lost three caches very fortunately every other cache else we wouldn't have survived but this is how we were dressed once we got up to high elevation we had you know routine when when chills 80 below were pretty normal but you know we were like space people were just basically covered up we were also underneath the hole the ozone for almost a couple months that year and the ozone as long as you're covered up you're fine doll the Chinese member one day made a mistake was kind of a warmer day and wasn't blowing hard he went expose his face and his face actually fried and so you have to protect your skin the dogs were okay dogs evolved in high latitudes they're northern breed of dog in a mix of many breeds of north northern dogs including the wolf their eyes are adapted to the high ultraviolet so they didn't have any trouble with the dogs but this would be like a normal normal situation here this is one of the dangers the crevasses again you can see why we put you didn't want to put all our eggs in one basket there was another expedition moss in from Australia 1913 something you're most of you not familiar with history books and on the eastern Antarctic out and had dog team with a team of two dog teams three people and they had almost all their food all their supplies on the front sled and the front sled along with the dog driver went into a deep crevasse me just just disappeared they're gone and here these guys out in their underwear with no tent and on the way back the other other person died moss and by a miracle survived it but that was a good lesson always to never put your eggs in one basket then it was a storm so we had a major star first major storm on the Larson be a shelf which is pretty mild we're on sea level it was you know 50 60 mile our winds 20 below which is pretty mild compared to what we got at higher elevation we had some of the days we couldn't travel it was 100 miles an hour you know 50 below but what happened on the trip is since we were running out of food we would have to travel in these storms and like I mentioned fortunately every other food cash we missed we'd hit the food cash that was missing then we have to make a quick decision do we look for this thing and run out of food we always opted to go we'd go on rations and then luckily we hit the next one so that's how we go but but it gave it gave us a lot of empathy for Scott because we we traveled in the same conditions that he did and this is what motivated us because we were pinned down by a storm and we didn't know if the cash would be up there and 50 miles or so but we give us a really good perspective of history the mornings always digging out two feet of snow you know it's always an hour and a half of chores the dogs are covered up by the blowing snow and they're totally comfortable they're bored you know just staying underneath the snow waiting for the day to start and they pop out usually the ones that are close to the tent or the stoves get a sled or the tent are buried in bigger drips so we kind of locate them and then dig them out and then they're ready to go this is the Larson bee these ice shelves the scientists think that they were you know laid down during the last ice age maybe 8,000 years ago and they they vary from 300 200 to 600 to 700 feet thick very thick ice and when you're on them it's just like land it's like an ice cap you can't tell the difference and so this is what what the Larson be a historical slide because Larson be is not around anymore this is the higher elevation here and then I want to I want to get back to now showing you the eyewitness account again this is the peninsula with the crevasses Larson a Larson be and this is a satellite photo that some of you probably seen January 31st 2002 this is the peninsula again notice Larson be is gone and actually when that broke up I was on a ship in the area and these huge icebergs were flowing out this is a low pressure area during their summertime which is like these this is December when I was down there but these ice these big icebergs were so large they kind of created their own high pressure system so in the fog we would see like a like a clearing light and it was these huge areas like of ice that were floating off that was the Larson a this this is the Larson be here the slides I'm going to show you of that area here it took us about 14 days to cross this and this is a day before the collapse started what happened again the Antarctic Peninsula it's like a thumb and a hand the Antarctic itself is really pretty protected that creates its own weather system but you have the thumb which is the Antarctic Peninsula it sticks away from that that influence of Antarctica and that's one of the fastest changing places on on earth in fact when I was researching the glaciers and stuff on this 1988 I was in Cambridge in England at the British Antarctic Survey talking to two glaciologists and they were I was asking a million questions and they're about the glaciers and so forth and one of them closed the close the door and they literally looked over their heads and they made me promise not to tell anyone what I was what they were gonna tell me and they were they told me about rapid slippage that they were seeing in this area and they said this is global warming of course you didn't say Jim said global warming and but they their science would be their their career everything would be cut off and my promise not to tell anybody that and that was when I was you know privy of it I mean I knew about this 67 as it was so obvious in science you add carbon dioxide the earth warms everybody that's never was disputed where is carbon dioxide coming from fossil fuels well this is now in 88 this is 89 when we cross it but this is 2002 so the summer of 2002 tremendous amount of water on the ice and when you add water on top of ice and it trickles through structure of that ice changes and that triggered a massive breakup of this thing disintegration within five week period we redo this for you this planetary this is global warming we know that now western Antarctica I mentioned before has these massive ice shelves that buttress against the continent itself and the problem here is when they disintegrate this one was floating in the ocean so sea level rise no problem couple problems these glaciers here the glacier that we traveled up on wire houses glacier was over 100 miles long these are like massive long huge glaciers a tremendous amount of ice when the large ice shelf is there it's like a cork in the bottle the glaciers aren't going anywhere you take away the ice shelf the glaciers start surging into the ocean and that's what's happening here another problem is this when it was here the Larson was a large ice front so in the warmer weather it kept that ocean water and summertime away from the continent now that that warmer air is right against the right right against the continent itself and that's causing more problems this is on the Greenland Greenland ice cap we traveled across Greenland in 1988 it's a training for Antarctica in fact our success in Antarctica was because of this expedition we traveled the long route south to north unsupported about 1600 miles no one had ever ran dogs at 5,000 or 10,000 feet we went first of all we had to find out if dogs you know what how we could factor our logistics how much energy out the dogs we could calculate that and also we had to prove to ourselves when we cross the area of incessibility from the South Pole to Vostok which was a you know thousand miles or so we needed to prove to ourselves that we could travel 1600 miles and get our own self out plus we we worked on diets and team team building and so far so this is at 10,000 feet the highest part of the Greenland ice cap this is Greenland here it's probably about 1700 miles from north south here to north large ice cap the height of land is right in here it contains I believe about 11 12% of fresh water on the earth of course locked up in ice and if the Greenland ice cap what totally disintegrate you know the scientists are saying maybe a 22 foot rise in the sea level it's it's stable I'm not saying that the main ice cap but there's problems this is to 1992 the red lines here is where you had the summer thaws so this was actually a little bit of a warm year but you can see the thaws are going up to you know thousand feet maybe a little less not a major problem yet this is 2002 notice how that's getting higher now this is three years later 2005 they'll be very curious to see what it's gonna look like this year but look at this again you're gonna envision as the warmer and air in the summer and the Antarctica that's getting in the Arctic that's getting higher and higher but we're not gonna get a total milk down Jim talked about this today but what happens is you get a massive runoff of water and this what water flows down through holes and crevasses and you have the ice cap and glaciers of course you have gravity involved when you lubricate the bottom of the glacier what happens on the edge you have this type of thing southwestern Greenland we read about this now in the paper the surging of the glaciers there and this is happening at a very rapid rate it's that water it's the water on it so we're already seeing some real questionable places here in southwestern Greenland this is on top of the continent North Pole here the North Pole this is the Arctic Ocean for a geography lesson here the geography the Arctic Ocean is a deep ocean basin like a serial boat drops down real deep it's about average of 10,000 feet it's almost 15,000 feet at the salt of the North Pole itself covered by a thin layer of ice which I'll talk about in a little bit and about the size of the United States the main body here but what I'm showing you here's Greenland it's the ice cap but this red this white area here is permafrost and permafrost if you ever walked in the tundra and the mountains or you know above the tree line permafrost is permanently frozen ground I have lakes of course but a lot of it is frozen bog and swamp in some areas it's extremely deep now as long as permafrost is frozen it doesn't interact with the atmosphere and I actually testified in the Senate 1991 about the dangers of the permafrost thawing releasing methane in the air this is what permafrost looks like in the winter now you really can't tell if you're in a lake or a swamp it's pretty benign looking in the wintertime summertime to read beautiful flowers and so forth this is Ellesmere Island about 500 miles from the pole I've dog packed a lot that's one way of when you run out of snow you keep moving across mountains and so forth but if you were to dig down where the dogs were you'd go down about six inches of moss and humus and you hit the solid ice that's that's permafrost this is the permafrost area the colored areas the deeper area here in Russia about 6 million square miles if I have that figure right of permafrost this as it is now thawing on the edges this is what's predicted 50 years from now business as usual and then this would be totally a catastrophic event 90% of it gone in a hundred years even this would be beyond a world that we would hope hard to envision but to visualize this think of permanently frozen ground and this this state is not interacting but what happens to in this scenario in the summertime which is getting longer and longer well once the fraud it thaws you start getting decaying decomposition of organic materials and that releases carbon dioxide and methane methane is extremely dangerous greenhouse gas and this is this would be a major problem this is happening we've heard about the permafrost melting if you were in normal Alaska 10 years ago and you said you didn't believe in global warming they probably running out of town so in Alaska and areas on the fringe of the permafrost like so many places in the Arctic you know it's been happening for quite a while this is the top of the globe again we talk about the Arctic Ocean here the top of the Arctic Ocean is thin layer of ice called pack ice when we went to the North Pole 20 years ago 1986 21 pretty much a normal year as it was 100 years ago when Perry did it at that time the average thickness of the ice is around eight feet it's now you know under under six right now but you have in the summertime the winter of course is all frozen but in the summertime 20 years ago and for the last 5,000 years most of this has been pretty well frozen little thawing on the fringes and you have a real long winter that breaks up May or June so the top of the globe top through the globe has been ice and snow in the summer majority and then when energy hits that it reflects off it's like wearing a white hat you know you don't get hot but now what's happening with global warming is 80% of this heat is going into the ocean it's cumulative it's been happening for a while but now we're finally starting to see things happen this is what the Arctic Ocean looks like from a resupply plane it's open cracks it's almost like a tectonic plates where it opens in some areas and it comes together forming pressure ridges it's really a unique challenging terrain to cross I you as an explorer I really fall in love with crossing it although you know those days are over this is what it's looking like now in the winter it's opening up more and more and within another 10 years I do not think you'll be able to make it to the North Pole without flotation I think those days of going over in the winter without flotation is is over and this is the situation that we have here normal sequence reflected about 99% of the energy goes back into outer space and then this would be like the normal summer a little bit of heat but mostly reflecting this is what we're doing now the domino effect if you get once you get more energy in you get more heat absorbing more ice going and this is happening extremely quickly now in the summer this is the scenario that the tipping point that I believe that we're heading for and I get I testified in Congress and then you want I talked about the losing the summer sea ice that would be the point where everything would change really rapidly and this scenario here scientists are predicting that this will happen in 2030 and that's very soon I actually think it's gonna I'm a I'm not I don't have a career in science with funding and I'm able to take a little bit of a license hedge the bell a little bit but I would say it doesn't really matter because if it goes in 2030 it's it's pretty serious I think 2020 and that will change the heat balance of the globe which is already starting because when you have this reflective area when that disappears all that heat goes in and already everything kind of in concert it's not like one thing after another but other things are happening these other positive feedbacks water vapor more water vapor more methane we're reducing our methane now but the release of methane of permafrost is going to equal that and then suppress that and then you're going to see we're already starting now see the sea level rise and that I believe will unhinge the ice shelves in Western Antarctica which will be you know another climate and this is 1979 I was talking about the summertime this convenient with the summer scientists to measure the least amount of ice that's a good parameter that usually happens in September this is 79 here kind of a normal year you'd have a little bit of opening a lot of this would be loose pack ice not totally open water as it shows this is 2003 I don't have a slide for 2007 but I think you've all read it that the level that we lost this year this whole area here is out of here this year and this area was what was used was called multi-year ice that's ice that stays one year after another two or three years and then what happens is there's a there's a current that trans trans Arctic drift transpler drift that goes across and that ice exits here so your normal situation but now with the loss of this ice here we're losing the multi-year ice which means this year it'll freeze to maybe six feet or thinner ice next year it'll break up faster so this is the this is what's happening now in the Arctic it's at the Northwest Passage was wide open I think it is still wide open first time in recorded history and I traveled across the Northwest Passage on a small boat actually in 2000 and 60 feet or something big to me but not ice reinforced but we crossed we managed to get across it but we're in coronation Gulf you're having genotemics at 70 below where you know Franklin died and it was like everybody that were on was on that ship got the wake-up call but this was a major wake-up call this year and then our beloved bears are gonna go I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for if I would have said that a year and a half ago I've gotten real trouble but you're reading about it what's really baffling to me is that I I've been down as many of you know in the trenches here for the last two years and I always go where there's the most resistance and when we came down we really needed to get the conservative support in the state and I first approached it through economics because this is a huge economic opportunity as their infrastructure of energy changes but also as a moral issue and I show this slide and talk about the bears being gone and look out in the audience of 500 people and it's it's amazing but what what it what it does to me as I wonder where have we been for the last 20 years we knew this and all of a sudden this takes a polar bear sometimes to make a moral connection of our lifestyle affecting mass extinction and the bears are not all going yet and the fringes southern Hudson Bay or that population will go up in Spalberg Spitzburg and it's interesting because I I'm always watching ice and talking to people and gathering information from you know with the scientists and wherever I can gleam it and read it I have a number of Russian friends of mine that work the ice breakers on the Arctic Ocean so each at the end of the year I ask them about details of what they're seeing this year they saw a lot of bears 17 bears in one area bears at the pole so as the ice is getting loose the Arctic Ocean used to be solid there's a good bear population there well we were at last year Baffin Island the bear population is healthy in the center it's healthy but as this gets warmer and warmer especially when we lose the summer sea ice because the bear 95% of its bear bears died a seal and the only way I can catch a seal is for that seal to be either sleeping on the ice in the summertime or in an ice hole breathing through the ice hole in the winter time they can't swim after a seal so when they lose the ice their history this is the dilemma this is the Time Magazine of April of 2005 this is actually was a the opening saw all finally the media came on board with this Time Magazine it was safe finally to talk about the bears and the Time Magazine had the bear the dilemma of the bear this is a dilemma of our civilization by the way dead bears you know don't want to scare you but I was on an expedition with Russian's Russian ship Spalberg and northeastern Greenland a year ago in that area the sea ice would be opened normally two months maybe three a bear can last three months but last year it was like five months and we found a number of these bears that were starved like this number of bears that were cannibalized but it's not the bear is just starving to death what happens when an extinction situation it's the birthing rates the mother bear gives birth of two or three and then without the food it's one or it's none and that's how the population will eventually drop off I just want to briefly show you what we did last year we are here this is Baffin Island large island 1400 miles across this way this is again ground zero of global warming not only because this is one of the fastest changes changing places in the Arctic but also it has an intact traditional knowledge that relies on the while their tradition for hunting up to 80 percent of their food comes off the land so I do a lot of policy work I've actually been doing this for 20 years most people know me as an explorer and I'm also science background but science only goes so far I mean I can see people I throw up a chart here I have your your eyes won't glaze over but an average audience you know you can see you can see him losing them so we wanted to put a cultural face on global warming so we organized this expedition in Baffin we traveled about 1,200 1400 miles really rugged terrain here and we got a real sense for ourselves first time we had these three you know what guys mentioned before 54 and 60 in their 60s they were basically our eyes and ears because this was new area to us but they were very familiar with the area because they when when you're an you know what they're not of our culture they don't understand materialism and the way we operate but they're extremely observant but a lot of this knowledge has been passed on for centuries of centuries of centuries and their whole life is animals conditions and so far so they were excellent you know guides for us to show us I was often asked what what was the the big wake-up call here the wake-up call that I saw was the Cumberland sound this area has always been frozen actually a rope this is our plan route didn't go that way at the end of January before we crossed the Cumberland the entire sound broke up and it was the you know what that we're living along the side you know describe it they said it was in the wind it was a big swell it was a huge you know super storm in North Atlantic setting up a thing that just shattered the whole thing and then when we came about it was freezing up we went around the edges here to Pangerton the day after we arrived in the town this whole area that we had just crossed went into the ocean so that was a little bit of a wake-up call me that was that's probably a global warming event I question a lot of people in 42 they had a similar break up at one point but going back as far they these people that live there forever you know this again it could be a freak weather event can you got to be very careful always of pinning a one event the flood of Minnesota or this or that go boring these are climatic you know spot things but you can add all this up which is happening around the world that's predicted all this extremes are part of the picture so anyways we cross here the villages this is our team the three you know what guys here feel Simon Lukey and two of our women over the education Elizabeth and Abby my partner John Stetson was one other educator Nancy was took the picture here our dogs we had about 50 dogs these guys Simon was 54 Lukey 67 he's one of the toughest guys I've ever seen dog they they were raised in that culture and they can go without eating without food they're they're lived by a glulik in an area where the traditional center of that culture is glulik is like Baffin Island and North American continent there's a straights there fury and heckler straights this area there's a strong current that goes through there but it's also the coldest place in the Arctic and with the 50 below freezes that and there's plenty of games so that civilization actually came out of that area because it was one area because there was always walrus in that the dogs evolved in that area other villages the dogs would you know be good for four or five years of the starvation but these guys were hunters on the moving ice which is really tricky and anyways learned a lot this is the way we traveled four teams the last leg Richard Branson son Sam join us and this is spring weather to its Arctic polar areas are kind of night and day that we left in the darkness pretty much the darkness in early February and then dark light here we've always done Abby and Elizabeth had the real hard jobs the educators because at nine o'clock you know you start in the evening you start gearing down that's when the education program starts it takes two three hours at least the technology usually fails and you gotta get up early in the morning so they were really young and and a lot of energy and we were able to transmit daily we had a huge following like this I used to work with Gordon the late 80s and they'll turn me on to the internet the white papers he gave me in 1987 and I and I read these papers and I saw I realized that the internet was going to change everything as an education which it did as we all know but it was really a hard concept to get across it took half an hour of business executives with lines to show how this whole thing would work but I advanced warning and I mentioned my career in education went classroom for experience outdoor education I didn't feel I was meeting me really making a difference with 150 people but the internet was was it and so I've always used in the last 20 years our expeditions as a platform to draw in a large audience young and adult audience and once you get this like a science model once you get the curiosity then you will be over environmental content and it's getting more and more interactive and but this was the heat the you know the real program we did a lot of work in the communities up there they don't call it global warming they call it global warming 101 so we did a good job branding ourselves and feel my partner feel was born in igloo almost done here is a couple more slides kids are all always excited about your dogs the whole thing I've been in traveling within this culture for 40 years along with the northern Indians I've been in every single village in the western Arctic I know four generations of people so I'm very familiar with with this culture and it's typical I sometimes show up in the middle of the night and also I'm there but the advantage that we have arriving by dogs you know these are very friendly people they hope they totally take us in open up and they're willing to talk so I'm always picking minds for information so children we're talking to the adult the elders here Theo and I and we always do radio they always listen to the radio in the evening and this is Clyde River we came in with a three-hour radio show and the guy that was running the station short as a couple switches and then disappeared so we had the whole whole thing to ourselves yeah but it was a lot of a lot of really good discussions going and and we always work with the kids here we're showing them what dogs were work was like and this is the this is the generation this is why we should be concerned I think about global warming you know my parents and my my grandparents always watched out for this future they always there was a different culture as we know and somehow we slipped into this culture where it's fast-profit tomorrow we don't look ahead at all but it's this these children I mean I cannot tell you what what's gonna what's installed for our children the you know it'll probably be okay their entire culture is changing but like they say we are adaptable people and we'll adapt and they'll ask me how about your culture will you adapt when global warming comes south I think that's the question we have to look at I'll talk at a personal level here what motivates me is the moral issue I understand clearly like Jim Hansen does mass extinction and I see very clearly where we're heading and it took a while to catch this on but in the churches and so forth people started seeing the moral connection that's spontaneous once you see the moral connection your peace of mind this is altered for a while at least and you're forced into action because you've got to do something because you can't stand by and what it does I think and I see in many different ways the positive things it's it's really causing a lot of social engagement I'm from the 40s 50s 60s where society was engaged people work together people volunteered for everything it was a really incredible community I came out of World War two but we lost that as we know but I seeing that the moral issue global warming is really forcing us into dialogue like we're having here I have an advantage because I'm all over the place and I get I've seen this and that and scientists and the average people from different parts of the country and different parts of the world so it forces the social engagements which is a spiritual I think I think it's something very and let's look at the culprit let me step maybe get in trouble here materialism let's look at materialism we all know it we've gone out of control here we've gone outside of ourselves for you know where we look for our pleasure where we look for our gods where we look for our leadership the materialistic habit is it's just I can't that's I try not to you know compare and I live when I moved to the wilderness really I I could make comparisons but I didn't do that and I wanted to getting rid of materialism or at least getting straight in your mind it's a huge relief and as a young I think because of my wilderness travel and you know being humbled a little bit I didn't want all that stuff I didn't want to maintain it I wanted my freedom I didn't want a lot of stuff I just needed what I wanted my food I want to raise my food I mean I wanted to have hands-on I wanted to cut my ice for refrigeration I just did not want all that stuff but you know we are such a privileged society we just don't I'll go to New York to visit my brother tomorrow or I'll go the ballgame in Dallas, Texas these entitlements we just don't we don't really understand I don't think what we're doing and but as much as consumers we make choices and when we make choices that's where decisions are made we turn on a light switch that's a decision and we can do a lot of choices as a consumer we first of all have to educate ourselves we have to think smarter which I think is a great thing but we need to start changing we isn't that we're going to go back to the cave and live underneath a candle I mean the life ahead of energy efficiency and the quality of life that we could have is really great I mean just something like a small thing organic cottons well you know how many pairs of shoes you have in your closet how many how many pairs of pants and all this stuff that racks of it you'd never even wear well make a choice buy organic product we're wealthy enough to afford that and when you when you buy as an example organic cottons think of the poor person the poor person on the end of the scale that's going to be affected by all this in a cotton factory and what they do with cotton if it's not organic and the dangers of that but if it's organic from A to B to consumer and recycling it it's a great thing also as human beings we're experts at denial we deny our death we deny we deny global warming we just we live in this bubble and we have a real serious problem here if I if I had you know relying on the stock market or relying on a job I would be real troubled here about the economy you know this economy of ours could melt down we talked about many different scenarios okay those are scenarios if we if we keep going I mean America's in debt national debt personal debt credit card debt home debt we need like 3% growth to pay the debt so energy prices finally we're saying it supply of stripping demand which is just the beginning what happens energy prices up and I would really be worried about inflation in this in this model you have the global warming issues we're a civilization that has built an infrastructure on a stable climate which is now deteriorating as example permafrost all the northern communities it's all changing roads power communities by the oceans that have to move back that's expensive stuff we saw we were humbled two years ago by Katrina we forgot about that of course by now for most of us we're going to see more of that that's expensive stuff we're losing small things like snowpack in the Rockies where we get our irrigation was that due to our mass displacement which was already happening I haven't been down to Louisiana but I heard all about it hundred miles you know economy ruined people gone but let's look let's look positive about this thing with solutions I'm of the era where the Apollo project when we were together as a huge race to the moon we're in that situation right now but the only problem is the American spirit is docile and passive is not moving but it's there and we all want something we all were ready for it we've heard in the last couple days the technology you know it's all there and and we don't know exactly the direction I mean this is exciting stuff it's like 1957 before the before you actually 57 a year ago tomorrow is when the Russians launched Sputnik Sputnik one that changed it we're in Sputnik one and this is the technological revolution is the greatest thing for our economy that's ever happened but we need to move it really fast you know we look at 80% reductions by 2050 I think realistically it's got to be 2040 that's a big that's a big mouthful to chew off but it's really it's right now it's turning that big ship that first 10 degrees getting over the lobbies the skeptics and everything that we've had a dig through here to finally get an honest discussion we're there and I sleep at night because I believe in the market I know the markets gonna drive this I think it's a good could be the greatest thing I believe it's gonna be the greatest thing for the Midwest ethanol corn ethanol cross we can debate that forever but corn ethanol is a step is a bridging technology corn ethanol is gonna be a niche of 15% or whatever there is there is almost reaching its limit right now and you can blame the food prices on ethanol but I look at the energy prices too when you're blaming but but when we get in the cellulosic ethanol I mean just think of the and the great thing about biomass you can't ship it to the coast you've got to you know we find it right there so that keeps the money I think the big challenge for Minnesota is local ownership we've got multinational corporations coming in buying up our ethanol and wind and when you own an ethanol an old multinational corporation owns an ethanol plant or statistics something like 10 or 15 cents a gallon goes back into the pocket of the local people you're in the treadmill again like like the we love corporate corporations this country is based on corporations my dad ran a small business all his friends from World War II ran small corporations took care of that we're talking about multi corporations multinational corporations and the challenge here is really low ownership I don't think some of us in this room see it but it's real important that incentives and so forth but I do see I have faith in the human spirit I've seen what the human spirit can do unbelievable the human spirit can be in the most dire situation it'll adapt it'll flourish it'll have fun you know and that happens I have faith in that and I like situations that are do or die when either you get off your butt and do something or else you're gonna go under we're in that situation right now I really believe this conference is really historical it's historical for many ways we we we've we've have this discussion it's historical because the Northwest Passage is wide open I mean it's too bad we couldn't have this discussion when in 1988 when Jim told us that we need to need to move but we've had the discussion we can't point fingers we can't look back okay we're in the present time can't blame the president that you know negativity and anger channel that into good works and and and let's stay together as a community and and and solve this problem but we're gonna have to adapt that's another thing you know but we you know we I asked I'll conclude this I asked you know what people are you worried about go boring they can't worry about something they can't change I mean we can change stuff and the hopelessness scenario is the big problem but we we have the ability here to return this around them this is such a honor here I can't tell you to be invited to talk in front of everybody it's just I hope I didn't talk too long but anyway do we want to do questions or I probably overboard here couple question I may have to have the questions relayed up since the acoustics in that shoot up a couple questions let me let me put in a plug here our website is global warming 101.com global warming 101.com we're leaving on an expedition to northern Ellesmere Island 1400 miles by dog team I've got a team of six 21 to 27 year olds from four countries we're going up the survey the ice shelves that are left in northern Ellesmere Island so if you want to follow along on that venture see what's left because what's left may not be around long we have if you want to do action go to our site there's a lot of ways of connecting with other people we have K-12 education we deal dealing a lot now set like 17 up to 27 28 year olds because I think they're gonna be the movement here that's gonna that's the greatest political opportunity if you want to donate to our nonprofit it's hard to ask for money but you can there's a mechanism for that where we're always hand and mouth I don't wait for money to come in I just do it and then you know get against the wall and make it all happen so but maybe a couple questions here and then we can go yeah yeah geographic I've been involved with geographic for 20 years and again I'm kind of a geography I didn't major in geology it would have been geography but but it always amazes me though that we're a semi-enlightened group here but most people don't know the difference between the North Pole and South Pole and I think you know wow so there's always I always have this urge to you know the teach about geography and geographic has always been you know that's been their main mission geographic though has a challenge right now like many many organizations do is there they're missing the basically like that's 17 to 28 29 year olds because they're not within that medium they're they're print you know radio TV and the marketers are having a very hard time reaching we call the emerging leaders generation and so we were working with them to make a conduit and also using that organization for geography environment and global warming to to develop new new avenues like YouTube and so forth this new type of medium that's ever-changing and and very connecting one question okay thank you well we've just about reached the end of the evening and at the Nobel conference the tradition is is that the president always sends us home and closes the conference you know I think about the only person that hasn't been thanked this evening is the president of the college and and it's kind of a special evening because Jim is retiring and this can't be your last Nobel conference you have to come back okay but every this conference comes off because everybody in the community pitches in and really works very hard at it and everybody contributes but presidents in particular get involved they are good at fundraising they also sometimes have to answer the mail that isn't quite as complimentary and he's nice enough not to tell us about it you but Jim has been amazingly supportive of the conference he's a scientist himself and he's very interested in the success of this conference and science and so president Peterson please come and send us home here go home it's wonderful to have you here I hope that you have all had as good a time as I have here and we'll go home with all a new information and perspective and again as I said earlier hopefully inspiration as well please drive carefully going home enjoy the rest of your evening and come back again next year