Salter explains the physics of cloud brightening, a technique that could potentially cool the Arctic. The idea, based on work by Sean Twomey and John Latham, involves increasing the number of small drops in a cloud, resulting in a higher reflection of sunlight. To achieve this, filtered seawater is squirted out in tiny drops below a micron in size. The cost of this method is considered affordable.

       Lawrence Martin, a Canadian musician and politician of Cree heritage and manager of the National Marine Conservation Area feasibility study of James Bay and Hudson Bay, is also part of the discussion. He talks about the ongoing studies in the region and his interest in the cloud brightening idea.

       The conversation continues with a focus on the social impact of potentially refreezing Hudson Bay, including how it would affect the people living in the area. Paul Beckwith suggests hearing from Megan and Lawrence about the current state of ice in Hudson Bay, how it has changed over the years, and the challenges faced by the local communities.

       Lawrence Martin has been working with elders to understand the changes occurring in the Hudson Bay and James Bay area due to climate change. For example, polar bears are moving inland, farther from the shoreline, and hunting beavers for food. The number of polar bears in the James Bay area has increased, possibly due to a lack of ice for hunting. This also affects the seals, which the polar bears depend on for food. As the ice thaws, it becomes more difficult for polar bears to hunt seals, leading to an increase in the seal population.

       The changing ice conditions also impact local hunters, who rely on traditional routes and hunting grounds. As the ice moves around, it blocks certain passageways and affects the availability of food sources. This has led to different experiences for hunters in the north and south of the region. The people in the south are seeing more access to food, while those in the north are struggling with blocked passageways.

       Megan Sheremata has been documenting sea ice changes in the Belcher Islands and surrounding communities since the 1970s. The construction of the James Bay Project led to environmental changes that affected both Inuit and Cree communities. The project caused a shift in the timing of freshening marine waters, which has had a significant impact on the region’s sea ice and wildlife.

       The loss of thick, stable sea ice has been felt immediately by Inuit and Cree communities, who depend on the ice for navigation and hunting. The changes have also impacted the migration patterns of animals such as walruses, which have moved further north.

       There is a need for cooperation between different groups, including Inuit, Cree, and other communities across Hudson Bay and James Bay, to protect the region’s environment and wildlife. This includes working together on conservation efforts, as well as sharing knowledge and resources to adapt to the changing conditions.

       The group considers whether it is feasible to keep parts of Hudson Bay frozen longer in the summer and if doing so would create problems for certain groups.

       Lawrence Martin believes everyone is aware of the shared environment and its interconnectedness but acknowledges that there could be differing opinions on whether to keep the bay frozen. At this point, the melting of the ice is the primary concern, and communities may need to relocate due to the impacts.

       Paul Beckwith highlights the rapid warming of the Arctic region due to human-caused climate change and the increasing unpredictability of weather patterns. He emphasizes that the severity of the problem has led to discussions about potential ways to cool the Arctic, such as marine cloud brightening or thinning high-level cirrus clouds. Implementing these solutions in the James Bay and Hudson’s Bay region could be advantageous, as it would not require international approval.

       The conversation touches on the importance of considering the rights and experiences of Indigenous people living in the region. Megan Sheremata points out that many have suffered negative consequences from past development projects, so it is crucial to involve them in any decision-making processes.

       In this conversation, the speakers discuss the importance of indigenous self-determination and the challenges faced by the Arctic due to climate change. Megan Sheremata emphasizes the value of learning from indigenous peoples’ experiences with environmental change, while Paul Beckwith acknowledges the lack of self-determination in humanity’s decision-making regarding climate change. Beckwith highlights the rapid warming of the Arctic, which is causing thinner and more mobile sea ice, and predicts a future with no sea ice at all. Adele Buckley stresses the importance of helping indigenous communities adapt to these changes rather than attempting to restore the ice.

       Metta Spencer introduces the idea of combining cloud brightening technology with thinning of cirrus clouds to potentially cool parts of the Arctic. However, there are potential negative side effects, such as increased rainfall in other parts of the world. Another approach mentioned involves spraying water from beneath the ice to thicken it, a method used to maintain ice rinks and ice roads. Paul Beckwith explains this technique in detail, noting that its effectiveness in the vast Arctic is uncertain.

       Beckwith emphasizes the alarming rate of climate change, mentioning that Arctic sea ice is at near-record lows, and the next super El Niño event will likely surpass the 1.5°C target. He predicts a future with an ice-free Arctic, which will significantly impact the planet’s climate system, including jet streams and food production.

       Stephen Salter suggests that ice thickening methods, like those proposed by Paul Beckwith, may be less effective on a large scale due to the heat transfer involved. Beckwith mentions that thickening ice in Hudson’s Bay could help preserve permafrost and reduce coastal erosion. Both Salter and Beckwith agree that cloud brightening could be a more effective solution, particularly during the summer months when it can be applied over open water.

       Salter explains that cloud brightening can be controlled based on the wind direction and speed, and that the process has a relatively short lifespan, with its effects disappearing after the next rain or snow shower. He also notes that increasing reflectivity in the high stratosphere is another option, but its longer lifespan may make it less desirable. Beckwith emphasizes that cloud brightening would be most effective over open water and should be avoided over ice-covered areas.

       Lawrence Martin, a representative of Indigenous communities in the region, raises concerns about the interconnectedness of the ecosystem and potential effects on inland areas. He also points out that many communities are more concerned about permafrost melting than ice thinning in Hudson Bay. Beckwith suggests that restoring ice in the bay could help address permafrost melting by cooling inland temperatures.

       The panel also briefly discusses the possibility of cloud seeding from above but concludes that generating cloud condensation nuclei from seawater at the surface is a more cost-effective and practical approach. The conversation highlights the importance of considering various perspectives and understanding the potential effects of climate interventions before implementing them. The experts encourage further dialogue and public engagement on the topic to explore the best solutions for combating climate change in the Arctic.

TRANSCRIPT

This transcript has been machine generated using “otter.ai.” Prior to using information from the transcript, please watch the video to catch any obvious errors.

Metta Spencer  00:00

Please note: This is a machine-generated transcript, so it contains errors. Do not cite it without checking for yourself by watching the video and catching any obvious errors.  Hi, I’m Metta Spencer. Today, we’re gonna go to Hudson Bay again, which is I’ve never been there, really, but it’s one of my favorite places nowadays, because I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can cool the place. You know, my concern is that the Arctic is warming about four times as fast as the rest of the world. And it’s melting a lot of co2, releasing co2 and methane. And that just scares me more than almost anything else happening. So I’m trying to figure out ways of cooling the Arctic Ocean and the even the permafrost in the in the Arctic. And one place that we might start was with Hudson Bay, because I live in Canada, and Canada owns Hudson Bay. So we don’t have to ask permission from anybody else if we experiment with things. So I’ve been talking to a lot of people about things that we can do to cool the Arctic and specifically starting with experimenting with Hudson Bay. So I have three people here who know a lot more about it than I do. And we’re gonna have a conversation about the various alternative ways in which we might be able to chill the place down a bit and maybe even refreeze the, the Arctic oceans and and keep Hudson Bay frozen throughout the summers. So in Edinburgh, Scotland, I think you are, that’s where he lives is as Stephen Salter, who is a an emeritus professor of engineering design at the University of Edinburgh. And he’s somebody who spends a lot of time figuring out how to make nozzles on squirt guns. Not quite, but he’s invented ways of making very fine systems of spray, that will, he can spray into clouds, which will make the clouds a little lighter particles and larger particles are white, and white clouds reflect the light back into space and cool the place underneath. In Ottawa is my favorite climatologist Paul Beckwith, who is a physicist and engineer, and a climatologist, and he teaches off and on at University of Ottawa. But mostly he makes a lot of videos. And here in Toronto, but we’re just getting acquainted is Megan Sheremata, who is an environmental scientist at the University of Toronto. She’s a PhD candidate, and she specializes in environmental change in the East Hudson Bay region. And she actually goes and hangs out with with people and knows what life is like for people living in the coastal regions of the Hudson Bay. And also here with me in Toronto is Adele Buckley, a very dear friend and a member of the a very active member of the community and Pugwash group. And she is a physicist and engineer, I wanted to have today if possible, to think about alternative means of cooling Hudson Bay besides the one that we’ve been investigating most, which is to brighten the clouds. But the, some of the people that I wanted to ask about this. I haven’t been able to reach and get them on board. The beauty of having Megan here is that, that she can fill us in on what the people are experiencing. She is able to tell us what the social situation is that is being experienced by people who are undergoing the worst effects of climate change. So I’ll get to you in a bit though, Stephen, let me let me start with let’s let’s give a real quick recap of what our our original notion was that we were going to, we’re going to specialize in talking about how we can cool Hudson Bay, possibly even refreeze the ice in the summer, or keep it frozen and by brightening the clouds,

Stephen Salter  04:31

The physics began with some work by a chap called Sean Twomey and he was able to fly over clouds and measure how much energy was coming from above, how much is being reflected back up, and how big it could fly into them and he could measure the sizes and the numbers of the drops in them. And he did a lot of work which has been pretty well accepted now and it’s been replicated in it everybody believes it. And it boils down to the fact that if you have a lot of small drops in a cloud, you get a high reflection. And if you have the same amount of liquid water, in a smaller number of bigger drops, and it’s a darker cloud. And what we have to do is to increase the number of drops in the cloud for the same amount of water. And you need to understand that to make a cloud drop, you can’t just have the relative humidity going up to 100%, you also need a little seed, they call it a condensation nucleus to get this drop started. And once it’s grown over a certain size, then it can keep on growing. And this depends on some work by a chap called Cola. And we know the sizes of the drops you need for different kinds of relative humidity and different kinds of chemicals. And the really important thing to realize is that the amount of energy, you need to make a condensation drop from seawater, that’s going to be the right size is very, very much smaller than the amount of energy that will be reflected by the cloud droplet grows on that seed. And it’s many millions of times. So we have a way of spending a very small amount of energy in an intelligent way, that will make us able to reflect a much larger amount of energy. I mean, it’s potentially something, I can’t remember it. But it’s it’s so big that it really is a wonderful, wonderful tool. And the way to do this is to filter seawater, and then squirt out tiny, tiny drops below a micron in size. And they are mixed up into the bottom of the atmosphere because it’s turbulent. There’s the boundary layer, which is like stirring cream in your coffee. And that gets the little drops. Creating bigger cloud drops. The cost of it seems to be really very, very affordable, and maybe even cheaper than having Cop conferences. That’s rent I brightening. And the names are Sean Twomey and John Latham, who thought of the idea of applying Twomey’s work. I’m just trying to do the engineering.

Metta Spencer  07:32

And I’m delighted to say that we have somebody who’s doing this since I introduced everybody else. It’s Lawrence Martin. Lawrence is a Canadian musician and politician of Korean heritage. And he has been previously the grand Chief of the Mushkegowuk, is that how to pronounce it?

Lawrence Martin  07:54

Very close, very close Mushkegowuk.

Metta Spencer  07:57

Mushkegowuk, okay, that’s good. But now you’re doing, you’re the chair of a marine conservation area that is administered by the Mushkegowuk people Council,is that right? I haven’t quite got it your title down. But I know that you’re actually doing hands on administration of trying to save the environment. Is that right?

Lawrence Martin  08:29

Yeah, that is correct. The title that I have is the the manager of National Marine Conservation Area feasibility study of James Bay and Hudson Bay. So we’re doing that now as we speak. And we’re to now going into our second year getting everything all organized. And certainly taken a look at all the various studies that have taken place in the past, including some of that kelp, we talked about the last time. And now we’re finding out a lot more. We just saw a film by National Geographic people that were in Hudson Bay, this summer of what they were able to find at the bottom of Hudson Bay, and various places that they dove into. So that’s going to be released this coming year. And we’re looking forward to that. And so we’re going to continue with the studies. And certainly, what we’re talking about here is is of great interest. So I think certainly my staff, my work my colleagues here at Mushkegowuk Council, I told them but our last conversation we had, and they were quite interested to learn about, you know, the, the mist that the gentleman was just talking about now that can be created over the Hudson Bay, or any any ideas of how to be able to prolong our lives here on Earth as human beings, I suppose you can say.

Metta Spencer  09:44

Well I am glad to hear more about that because I know that we you know, it’s not like we’re going to bound ahead doing things on our own. When you look at the folks living there, you know, the people who have to live with what the consequences would be. Have you met Megan Sheremata by any chance? Megan, do you know, Lawrence?

Megan Sheremata  10:07

Lawrence, we’ve, we’ve never met. But it’s great to meet you.

Lawrence Martin  10:14

You too. Likewise.

Metta Spencer  10:15

Yeah, Megan is an environmental scientist at the University of Toronto, who spends most of her time on the east, with the people on the East Shore of Hudson Bay, and has such an enormous body of water, that the people who live on the east shore are 1000s of miles away from practically from the people on the other shore. So you might not even know each other that way. Okay, I want to I want to bring both of you in and and mostly here’s this. We don’t know what realistically, what can be done to chill the water, but it’s just so important to chill the the entire Arctic. And there are things that we know, could work. The question is, would they have side effects that we wouldn’t like? And not only that, but would people want it to happen? Suppose we could refreeze the Hudson Bay so that it’s frozen, you know, at least partly frozen in the summers? Would this be a value? And would people want it to happen? And what would what would be the social impact of doing that?

Paul Beckwith  11:37

Before that why don’t we get Megan and Lawrence to tell us what’s happening with the ice on a yearly basis in Hudson’s Bay right now, where they are? And what, how that’s different from say, 10 or 20 years ago, like where are we at right now?

Metta Spencer  11:53

Good point.

Lawrence Martin  11:54

I’ve been working with the elders a lot since we started this project. And me growing up in this area also heard stories over time, about what changes that are going on in this area. So and particularly to the ice and Hudson Bay. I know this summer, for instance, I mentioned National Geographic people, they were out there in their ship to 64 foot ship, and they were having a hard time getting around because of the ice, ice is moving around, chill out there. And that was in July, the near the end of July. So there’s still a lot of ice but at the same time, what we see as people on the shoreline is that there’s probably less ice because now we have a lot of polar bears that are moving inland into the shores into the bush like even 150 miles inland from, from the shoreline. And they’re going after beavers you know for food and that sort of thing. So we know there’s changes happening because of the animals and how they’re moving. We also see a lot more polar, polar bears moving into the James Bay area into the Akimiski Island area. So they’re say that our counts are actually increasing on a number of polar bear’s that are entering James Bay. So we feel and what the elders have been saying is because of the lack of ice for them to be able to continue hunting, out in Hudson Bay why, why, that’s why that’s going on. So obviously there’s the climate change, the warming of the of the earth that’s going on and it’s affecting the animals and therefore they’re moving. So that’s how we read what’s going on on the ice and Hudson Bay. And in the Jame’s Bay ice is the same thing. We had another ship that was out there called William Kennedy this year and again, same thing they were having trouble getting around because of ice that was now floating around in smaller chunks, mind you, but still floating an currents being blown in from the from the north from the Hudson Bay area. So there’s activity there. And when we fly along the coastline, we see the the animals that are out there seals and so forth out sunbathing early in early March, you know, now getting to be sometimes the odd February once are out there. So there’s a change of ice that’s going on all together.

Metta Spencer  14:06

You see these are at these are seals or something that normally would be when and you’re seeing them.

Lawrence Martin  14:13

Later in the springtime later in the spring, like in April, they would be out sunbathing, we call it sunbathing on the ice and but now they’re coming out earlier.

Metta Spencer  14:24

So that means is warmer.

Lawrence Martin  14:26

Yes it is a lot warmer, yes for sure.

Metta Spencer  14:29

Are they as healthy or do you know whether it’s affecting them? Which would they rather have?

Lawrence Martin  14:37

Well, I know from the the polar bears segment the polar bears depend on the seals for food and so when there’s a lot of polar bears coming in shore on to the shorelines that means they’re not able to access the seals as much because there’s no ice for them to be able to do their hunting on, on that. So there’s there’s an impact there’s an impact that’s going on. So maybe it’s the thawing of the ice that’s affecting the the polar bear from getting onto the ice. And therefore the seals are now much more in abundance, because there’s less polar bears being able to hunt them out there. So we see that correlation of activity going on. And also, in southern parts of James Bay, we see now polar bears coming right into the communities in Moose Factory, which is way south. So that’s a new phenomenon that’s that’s going on. So that obviously, there’s lots of changes happening. And people keep telling us that yes it is that there’s a permafrost, that’s also melting on the river systems. So that’s affecting how the rivers flow in the summer, and especially in the springtime. So we see that going on. And how does it correlate with with the scientific findings? We haven’t really tested those out specifically, to try and match the the science studies versus what our elders are telling us. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard the elders say.

Metta Spencer  16:02

It, if, if possible, you would like to have it colder?

Lawrence Martin  16:09

Well, I guess that’s something that would have to be talked about, in general, we’re going to be going into the communities this in March, starting in March, and having the three day events in every community. So we’ll be talking about a lot of these scientific studies that have been taking place, and also asking the elders in the community members themselves about these types of questions. You know, what can be done about the climate change? They don’t really say what can be done, they only see and what they see going on is what they share and what what is about to happen. Not so much of what can happen by trying to make any changes by the human race.

Paul Beckwith  16:48

A few decades ago, was there lots of open water? On the, on the, in the area you’re at in summers, by the end of the summer?

Lawrence Martin  16:54

There was oh, yeah, definitely, definitely, when we’re flying over James Bay, you can see that some ice was out there. And but the further north you go and of course, there’s more ice that can be seen. And right now, even in the summertime, when we go say in August, you see a lot of ice that are now being blown into the shore. So there’s the ice at the ice is not as solid as it seems. It’s just breaking up and it’s being able to be blown into into the shorelines a lot more, which makes it harder for the people that are out hunting to get out sooner to try and squeeze out of that. The estuaries that live near.

Adele Buckley  17:36

But tell us how this is affecting the people. How they did things I didn’t know 30 years ago and how they do it now.

Lawrence Martin  17:47

A lot of the the hunters were never out there. They they witnessed those changes, and therefore it affects how they hunt and where they actually would go. Mind you in areas to the south, there’s more access because there’s less ice. So they’re having a different impact on the hunters and access to more food, more geese more, more of everything that they get. But to the northern folks, it seems to be the other way around. Because the ice, the way it’s moving around is blocking certain passageways that they normally would be using. So that has an impact on what you’re able to use for food. So it depends where you are exactly and in how the the weather patterns change over from the Hudson Bay to the change space quite a distance. And there’s quite a bit of difference. We’re on the west side.

Metta Spencer  18:37

Well, Megan specializes in the east side. So let’s have a comparison of notes there. Tell us about the life on the east shore of Hudson Bay.

Paul Beckwith  18:49

Um, well, like Lawrence has just said I can only tell you what elders and younger hunters from the Belcher islands which are off the coast of Eastern Hudson Bay, the community Sanikiluaq and the community of Kuujjuarapik and Umiujaq and Inukjuak so they’re all the communities in that really semicircular curve that, that we all kind of recognized from our high school maps all along the coast there. And they asked me to work with them to document changes that they’ve seen in the sea ice environment. So the ice itself, the surface waters and wildlife, and going back to the 1970s. And so this Inuit, these are Inuit communities and Inuit are sea ice users, and have historically used ice going quite far down the it’s like Eastern James Bay. So along the coast of Eeyou Istchee, which are the homelands of Cree, on the other side, from Mushkegowuk territory. So I haven’t worked that far south. But I’m sharing some of the results of our work, which in Inuit and Cree, have started to do within their own knowledge sharing.  A conference within the Hudson Bay consortium, over the last few years has really allowed people to exchange ideas about their concerns about all these changes, and about sea ice loss and about their priorities. And, you know, when we talk about, like, the big decisions like that, the first thing that is always coming to my mind is Indigenous self determination that we’re talking about their homelands, even though it’s, as you said, at the beginning, it’s all within Canada. These are Inuit and Cree homelands, first and foremost. So whatever happens, there really, they’re the decision, they should be the decision makers of what happens on their lands. And anyway, so just going back to the 1970s, the reason why 19 1970s was of interest was because that was when that the James Bay project was initiative construction was complete by the early 1980s. And that’s when environmental change really began for Inuit and of course, the Cree who were affected by the the flooding of the building of the infrastructure of those dams. But important to know, and I’m someone who grew up in Montreal, and I grew up on James Bay electricity, essentially. We heat our homes with electricity and so we use most of our electricity in the winter months. And what the James Bay project did was it flipped what you know, freshening of the marine waters used to happen in spring with snow and ice mountain spring extends all the way to June, maybe even early July in eastern Hudson Bay. And now we see peak freshening in December, January and February. And for those of you who are climatologists is any sea ice climatologist know that this really affects ice atmosphere interactions, and really drove sea ice loss from the results of our work together until the mid 90s. And there was effectively the loss of what was once a very thick, stable sea ice platform as thick as productive in terms of providing for wildlife habitat for hunters, as ice very far up in Nunavut and that the loss of safe navigable sea ice was immediately perceived. And so there’s been a lot of team based work really led by Inuit, and Cree now they’re looking at sea ice changes more closer inland. I don’t know if Lawrence agrees with this. But you know, the elders that I spoke with always referred to Crees further south as people who lived in the trees who didn’t use the sea ice as much. So And Inuit used to go down to Akimiski actually, I think Akimiski is technically in Nunavut. Although, when I was in Mushkegowuk territory, doing some work a few years ago, a Cree man. It’s an island that Cree and Inuit have used since time immemorial. As far as I know, maybe Lawrence could tell me something about that.

Metta Spencer  23:55

I should put in a map. Maybe I can find one later and superimpose it over somebody’s face here. But I can’t visualize it in my head that maybe we can find a map later because you’re talking about something that we should be looking at. Okay, thank you.

Paul Beckwith  24:15

I’ve be looking at my map behind me the whole time. So,

Megan Sheremata  24:23

Lawrence, I don’t know if if you can answer this. But I’ve I, many elders who have passed in the last few years, there were a couple of from Chisasibi, who lived into Chisasibi who used to do a lot of sea ice hunting in James Bay. And there were a lot of Inuit maybe living in what now are called Cree communities. But you know, there are a lot of Inuit and Cree on the land in northern James Bay. And that a loss of sea ice has had a, in the 80s had a big effect on Inuit ability to go down into James Bay.

Lawrence Martin  25:08

Yeah, a lot of our stories of the Inuit stands back maybe say 150 years ago, when there was a lot more interaction going on. Most people evolve the Hudson Bay James Bay areas. And so the Inuit have not been in our area since since then. I know Akimiski Island that you talked about it’s, again, the story sort of saying, the Inuit haven’t been there for a long time. And there’s a lot of different changes that have happened to that we used to have a lot of walruses on the Akimiski Island, they no longer exist there is now have moved further up into the Hudson Bay where Hudson Bay, James Bay meet on Cape Henrietta we call it on the website. So that’s where the walruses are stationed today. So that’s a big change. And we even have names of places referring to the walruses further into the James Bay down to James Bay, but they no longer live in that area. So those are some of the changes that have happened. And yeah, Nunavet is, I guess, has, Akimiski Islands and all of the islands in James Bay, as far as when they when they were created by Canada, so that automatically came with that procession that they could have. But as part of our discussions here, we’re having with Nunavet on the islands like Akimiski there’s a willingness to talk about that, and to refer it back to us to the Mushkegowuk people for them to manage it. Because there’s a lot of bird sanctuaries there. This is a flyway for all the migratory birds from the South from Central America, South America, and so far shoreline birds, geese, you name it. So this is where they come. So we’re obviously really wanting to work together with all people, not just in James Bay, but to the south of us as well, because that’s where the birds come from, like from Mississippi and from, you know, Florida area everywhere. So we need to work together with them to make sure that those birds are going to continue flying, be safe and have food to eat. So we’re mindful of that. And definitely mindful of how can we work together with anybody even more now? How much more can we protect all of Hudson Bay, and this conservation effort that we’re putting together, not just James Bay, because with James Bay [inaudible]just basically two groups of people the crease on the east side and the crease on the west side. And but to the north, you know, the bay is bigger, and we need to work together with the Inuit, and with the people too in the Manitoba area, Northwest Territories. So there’s a desire to do that. It’s just a question of time and how to do it. So and I think by..

Metta Spencer  27:53

Excuse me, do you think that there’s any incongruity or differences of the interests? So far, as you know, do any of these people have, are they advantaged by something that would be disadvantage? The disadvantage disadvantage for one of the other groups? Are their interests are aligned, or are there some incompatibilities of interests as far as you know? 

Lawrence Martin  28:22

No, everybody is, you know, understanding of the environment, then how we’re all part of that lifecycle, the humans and the animals and the birds and everything that we depend on, the food chain, we’re all part of that. It’s just a matter of where we live and how we get the food. So working together,..

Metta Spencer  28:42

For example, if we could, if it if it becomes possible, and and feasible, to, to keep the the parts of the of the Hudson Bay frozen throughout the summer. Are there some people that you know, who would find that a problem that they wouldn’t want that?

Lawrence Martin  29:05

It’s possible. We haven’t asked that question. But you know, if we put it that way, if people had a choice, maybe they’ll have something to talk about right now. I don’t think we have a choice to say yes or no, we would keep it frozen or not. We’re just watching it melt away at this point. And making plans and probably having to relocate our communities because of that. And the impact of that.

Metta Spencer  29:33

When we’re thinking we’re thinking of you know, fanciful ideas that may not be realistic or may there may be some side effects. Megan if you if you know of any [inaudible]

Paul Beckwith  29:50

Well I think what Metta is getting at is you know, and let cannot let, can I just say a couple words on my thoughts. You know, Indigenous self determination, of course, is very important, but it’s becoming so that all of none of humanity has any self determination on the climate. Right? I mean, we put so many fossil fuels, we burn so many we put, we’ve changed the atmosphere, the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans are, we’re suffering consequences of massive climate change. I mean, you’re getting a lot more storms, I think, you know, massive storms, and I call it weather whip lashing where it goes from, say, for example, in Ottawa, you know, a week ago, it was minus 31, with a windchill of minus 40, for several days, and now it’s like five to 10 degrees Celsius. Okay, and it could swing back, but another polar vortex came along. So so the idea of weather whip lashing from one extreme to the other, I think that’s very hard on on any on all ecosystems. So I guess, you know, people in the North are seeing the warming much more acutely than people in the south. Metta at the beginning mentioned that the Arctic is warming four times faster. Well, for the longest time, scientists were saying double, twice as fast. And now, then it became three times as fast and Metta said four times. I mean, for years, I’ve been saying it’s five to seven times faster, it depends on the latitude that you’re at, you know, the higher the latitude you’re at, the faster the warming. And this is because the Arctic is becoming a much darker place. And so it’s losing snow and ice, it’s absorbing more sunlight, you know, the Arctic amplification effect is ever increasing. So, so, people up until now, people really haven’t been thinking much about, you know, can we do anything to reverse this, can humans do something, but now the problems are becoming so severe, that it’s really in the works that we may actually have to try to cool the Arctic, because a release of methane and co2 and melting of the permafrost could shoot the Earth into a much totally different regime, which will be taken out of human hands when the methane and co2 are coming out of the earth, and they’re dwarfing human emissions from fossil fuels. So it’s a very nonlinear system and nonlinear process. So what the purpose of this meeting really is, we need to start getting, giving people the idea that it is it may be possible for us to do things to reverse this, this huge warming in the Arctic. And so one of the ideas is that Canada, could be the first place where this is done in the world in the James Bay, Hudson’s Bay region, because it’s all within Canada, we don’t have to deal with the international community getting by on from all of these different groups. So how would we cool this area? And there’s, there’s a number of different ideas. Okay, Stephen Salters work is on brightening the clouds, so that the brighter clouds and these are low level to mid level clouds, basically, so that the clouds are brighter, and they reflect away more sunlight. So it’s cooler underneath the clouds. So basically cooling the regions or the entire region of James Bay, Hudson’s Bay, you know whether if it was done in the summer, I mean, the idea is to keep the ice around much longer. So if you thicken the ice, and stop it from disappearing in the summer, you’ve got a bigger head start on ice regrowth in the winter. And if you manage to keep it around in the summer, then over time, it can thicken because it never completely disappears. So that’s what so there’s different ways we can look at doing that. One of them is marine cloud brightening. But but you know, Metta has concerns because it only works over what open water. If you brighten the clouds over an ice surface, the ice is already highly reflective of the sunlight. So you’re bright clouds above the ice surface won’t have as much impact on causing additional cooling. So you want to do that over over open water which is dark, right, very dark your replacing. So the sun coming down instead of hitting the dark ocean and being absorbed and heating the water it hits the bright clouds above, reflects and lets ice regrow over the water, dark water. The other idea, another idea is to go higher up there’s the clouds behave differently on whether they cool and heat the earth depending on their altitude. Okay, so low level clouds generally are good for cooling the surface underneath the clouds. Okay, so that’s the idea of the marine cloud brightening, but high level clouds I’m talking about the thin wispy cirrus clouds. They, they are they keep the heat in. You know if you’re in the desert and as cloudless sky, the swings of temperature can can be enormous from day to night, because at night all of the heat can radiate out to space. If you have high clouds, they, they reflect some of the radiated heat back to the surface and they actually keep it warmer on the surface. So you know, we have a minus 30 day, it’s going to be a clear cloudless night because the heat can radiate out to space. So one of the ideas to cool the whole regions is to thin the high level cirrus clouds. And if you reduce the number of high level cirrus clouds, and more heat can radiate out to space, and you can cool the whole region. Okay, so these are the these are the two main ideas that we’re thinking of. And the idea of doing it over Hudson’s James Bay is that it can all it can be a within Canada thing. You know, we don’t need international buy in to do this. So. So that’s the main thing. So I guess what Metta is trying to do is get more we’re trying to get more information from people that live in the region, that see what happens year to year with the ice, and whether we could whether we would get buy in to try techniques to cool the whole region and get back to thicker ice. Now, I assume there’s less interaction between people living in the area now because they can’t travel from one area to the other area across the ice like they used to. Right. I think that’s my, I could be wrong.

Megan Sheremata  36:33

I wouldn’t assume that at all. There’s a lot of long term relationships. And we’re talking about many different regions in this area. And I’m just not to let you off. But I do think that it is a multi jurisdictional area where people have rights and who’ve experienced really negative effects from major development projects that transformed the environment in the pretty recent past in ways that had very negative impacts, not just on hunting on people’s ability to feed their children where they were feeding them, you know, like there’s a legacy,

Paul Beckwith  37:12

Right, right.

Megan Sheremata  37:12

From the outside. Can you just let me, … Yeah, yeah. When I say starting from the Indigenous self determination, like it really is important, because there’s a lot to learn from their experiences of environmental change. They’re irrelevant. And I’m not saying that people might not want at want to entertain this idea. But I do think that there’s a lot of work to understand sea ice and salinity change. And there might be other ideas, if you build relationships with this big network of Inuit and Cree and researchers who are supporting them, to see what the reception would be like, I would say, go there and ask people.

Paul Beckwith  37:15

Yeah, yeah. My comment on self determination is that none of humanity has self determination. You know under, under that within us decision making [inaudible]

Megan Sheremata  38:09

We are talking about decision making within Canada, like it’s, …

Paul Beckwith  38:14

The climate is we set the climate change in motion. And there’s nothing that an individual or a group of small group of people can do. I mean, they can only they can only adapt to the changes. And governments are not trying to stop the problem, because fossil fuel companies are still making record profits. And, and, you know, as much as renewable energy is growing, the fossil fuel chunk is still there, and the lobbies are strong. And you know, our planet is changing. I mean, our climate is changing, our weather is changing. So we only so we have self determination within that scenario, but we’d have we don’t really have individual ability to change it. So the question, the thing is the Arctic, the, the Arctic, James Bay and Hudson’s Bay, like all the Arctic is warming at incredible rates, there’s less than less sea ice. The sea ice is thinner, so it’s more mobile, it moves from one location to another location. But those are, those are transition effects. Okay, in a few years, there’ll be no sea ice at all, for people to worry about. Okay, it’ll be completely gone.

Adele Buckley  39:22

Even if we had a methodology to fix what’s wrong now and make the ice return. It wouldn’t be permanent in any way because it’s getting warmer and warmer. And the way things are going it’ll keep on getting warmer. So what will work now to make the ice comeback will, will, will stop working, you know, before too long at all. So it doesn’t seem you know, really worthwhile to to do that. I wonder about the local people. They’re continuing to adapt. They’re famous for adaptation to circumstances. And I think best to assist them to adapt, rather than try to return the ice. And then if even if we spent a lot of money, it would stop being useful as when the climate continues to warm.

Metta Spencer  40:25

Well, look, I mean, everybody here is right in some way. For sure. Megan is right, we do not act as if we can go in and do things that is if we run, run everything, no, and we wouldn’t. And that’s why we’re asking Megan and Lawrence and we will be inviting other other people because we want to consult as we go along and get feedback. And and of course, Paul is right. Nobody has control over the world’s climate today and that’s the problem. It would be nice if we did. And for Adele, I would say you’re right, that that what we could do, probably, if at best would maybe cool parts of the Arctic or the Hudson Bay for a while. And the question is, can we keep it up long enough and keep it up enough to to make the kind of difference that we want. Now, here’s the point that I would like to introduce now, which is that a probably the cloud brightening is not going to be enough to do the job. But the it’s possible to combine the cloud reckoning technology with one of the other methods that Paul has mentioned, the, the thinning of the cirrus clouds, that is, if you knock out the ice in the high, high, high, clouds, then that will actually allow some of the Earth’s heat to escape. And as I understand that, you could do that throughout the winter, you could see the clouds, the cirrus clouds that are very high. And that would allow that some of the heat from the from the planet and especially, of course, from the Arctic, to escape the problem, there is one of the problems and that might even be the problem for the cloud brightening, that they you could increase the amount of rainfall in another part of the world as I understand it, the Sahel in Africa, and the monsoons in India and Pakistan might become real floods. And this might this is reason some of the people who said well, we could do it, we could knock out some of the cirrus clouds, but it would possibly have negative effects on people elsewhere. And so they sort of said don’t do it. We don’t know enough yet. So I think that this is the kind of thing we could combine, the two approaches, the eliminating offending the clouds of cirrus clouds along with the cloud brightening. This could do both, and this would multiply the effects of cooling the Arctic. Again, there are some dangers involved. Another approach that, that Paul hasn’t mentioned, and maybe you maybe I don’t know one of you should describe which is that you could take water from underneath and spray it on top of the existing ice. As I understand it. That’s how they make ice rinks keep ice rinks cold as they go along the top of the ice and spray it so that it keeps thickening the ice. So, Paul, would you explain how that would work? And I know that Stephen had when I spoke to him last about that you have some objections to doing that. So the point is there are downsides or potential dangers in all of these things. And that’s what we want to think about is the problems that were causing it, Paul explain that…

Paul Beckwith  43:56

So just I’ll start off with Ottawa, the canal this is the first year ever that the the Rideau Canal has not frozen sufficiently thick for skating. And this you know, skating in Ottawa has been going on for many, many years. I don’t know 50 plus years, I don’t know how long the canal when the canal was first developed as a skating rink. You know, it’s 7.8 kilometers along touted as the longest rink in the world and what they do is when ice thickens, of course, ice growth starts off very very fast you know from cold air above, and of course it freezes on the bottom you know and thickens always just on the bottom on the bottom. So you need the heat going through the ice from the atmosphere to the bottom of the ice to till the water enough to freeze it onto the bottom ice is a good insulator. So the thicker the ice grows, the slower the process occurs. So ice thickening goes on a curve and slows down. So if you take water from underneath If the ice and pump it on top of the ice, you can greatly increase the thickening rate, at least double it because now the ice is now the water is freezing on the top of the ice and on the volume of the ice. So you can get much thicker growth rates or you can pump you know, slushy sort of water on top, where you know, people have tried different things to to enhance the process. And you of course, want to get the snow off the ice, because snow is also a good insulator. So if you want the ice to thicken faster, and it’s got a snow covered snow layer on top, you plow all the snow off, right so that the heat doesn’t have to go through the snow and ice which are both insulators, it just goes through the ice. So, you know, these techniques have been used for years and years to enhance the longevity of ice roads in the Far North. So I know you know, in, I do some work with some people in Winnipeg and a lot of the First Nations people communities east of Winnipeg have no, there have no road access during the summer, right, lots of little islands and so on. But in the winter, if it’s cold enough, they make these ice roads which go island hopping, basically. And then transport trucks can drive goods across to the communities in the winter. So these ice roads are very important. And they’ve been doing this for many, many years. But now it’s much more harder to make these ice roads because of the warming temperatures, and they don’t last as long. But if you can get an ice road in operation for even three weeks or a month, it’s worth your while doing it. Because in that time when it’s open, you can get huge amounts of goods transported, and you don’t if you don’t do it that way, you have to fly them in basically or something go in by boat, perhaps. But anyway, so the technology for thickening ice has been around for a while. So some of those methods, you know, some people have envisioned you know, little little Renewable Energy Energy Sources say you know, little wind turbines, running a pump, pumping water from below the ice to above the ice, etc. But, of course, you know, the Arctic is vast, I mean, to do it to think of a concept like that being, you know, more effective and effective to thicken the whole ice is just absurd up there. So, so we’re looking at all of these different technologies and ideas. The National Capital Commission, in Ottawa has hired a bunch of engineers at Carleton University to try to find ways to thicken the ice on the canal for skating and also for extending the duration of the skating season. But, you know, with warming climate, it’s the same these things are all kind of band aids right now. I mean, the climate is warming so quickly, that here’s a couple of things. Okay. Right now the Arctic sea ice is near record lows, extent and area, Antarctica is way, way below record lows. Okay. And we’ve been coming out of it, we’re still in a La Nina, where there’s not too much heat coming out of the ocean, it’s supposed to be a bit cooler than otherwise, when we were heading into an El Nino, and if it’s a super El Nino, we’re likely to blow past the 1.5 degrees Celsius target. In in 2024 2025, if it’s a super El Nino, such as you know, as strong as they say, the 1998 El Nino, or the 2015 2016 El Nino, so those were both super El Ninos, very powerful El Ninos, lots of heat coming out of the ocean, lots of heating of the atmosphere. So the next super El Nino will blow away all temperature records on the planet. And the Arctic will continue to warm even more. And it will only be who knows exactly when, but we’re going to have what I call a blue ocean event in the Arctic, where there’s no no ice at the end of the summer season, or in less than a million square kilometers is the number that lots of people use. That ice I think will be circulating the the light the ice that is left. Most scientists say it will be fast ice it will be along the edges of the coastlines etc. I think that’s complete nonsense, because those regions are much lower latitude, that ice is going to be gone much faster than say the last ice that circulating in the Arctic. I think it’ll be circulating around the North Pole. I don’t understand. You know, there’s a lot of there’s too much compartmentalization and science people are all in their own little areas. They don’t have enough system thinking, but we’re heading to an ice free Arctic. You know, whether it be in five years or 10 years or 15 years, you know. Who knows, right? It’s hard to make predictions on that. But that’s where we’re heading. That’s where the trend is going. And once that happens, as Metta was saying, the concern is big relief, you know, the we know all about the permafrost, the amount of carbon stored in there, when that goes into the atmosphere, co2, methane, etc, you know, we’re heading to a much warmer world where there’s much less ice and snow in the Arctic, there’s no sea ice in the summer, and then it are in say, September. And then within a few years of that, there’s no sea ice for August, September, October, and with a few more years, there’s no sea ice for July, August, September, October, November, right, and then eventually, year around I think, no sea ice in the Arctic, the only ice up there will be covering Greenland. Now, the way the jet streams are, or the Jetstream circle around the center of cold if you like, which is near the Arctic near the North Pole right now, but offset toward Greenland, because we’ve got this, you know, just look at the map. And you’ve got this where it’s the center of cold if you like the centroid of cold and it’s not in the North Pole, it’s it’s centered towards Greenland. But imagine with no sea ice, the only snow and ice is sent is on Greenland, the center of Greenland is about 73 degrees north latitude. So not only will the jet streams slow down and become wavier causing all these extreme weather events. But the jet stream will rotate over a lower latitude area. So that will offset so the whole climate system is rewiring and changing. And it’s going to affect how we grow food on the planet, it’s gonna affect every person on the planet. And this is where we’re heading. This is what the best overall system, the science is. Not many people are studying this, but more and more people are becoming on board. It’s why I do my videos. It’s what I’ve been doing for for years. It’s why I have about 1500 or plus videos on on YouTube, I try to educate the public as to what is happening. So. So we’re talking about trying to preserve what we’re talking about is really, you know, think of it in terms of the big picture of things. Right. So it’s, you know,..

Metta Spencer  52:19

Okay, thank you, Paul. And I think I want to we don’t have much time left I think I would like Stephens response to all this because it we’ve kind of taken your idea and have gone every which direction, but with it, and you may. What’s your response to the diversity of perspectives and concerns that we’ve entered introduced here? Do you still feel we’re on target with with your, your basic idea.

Stephen Salter  52:54

First of all, I’d like to say something a bit about this ice thickening now that will work very well, if you’re only wanting to thicken a one ice rink or one one road, but you’re actually putting relatively quite hot water on top of the ice and you’re going to be warming up the air above it. So you’ll be thinning, ice somewhere else. Okay, so it’s a small area, at the cost of you warming up slightly, a much bigger area. Now, that means that it’s the air above the ice that you’re treating is not an infinitely large heatsink. Okay. And if you were to work out the, if you’re going to freeze one square meter, and put that heat into one square meter of air above, where you are you your secondary eyes, the temperature of the air is going to go up to about 30 degrees Celsius, or a meter thickness of ice and a meter square area. It’s the ratio of the relative heat of fusion of the ice and the specific heat of the air above it. And if you get really hot, if you concentrated all that heat into just the area of the ice that you you’ve produced, it’s going to be much hotter. So it’s it’s a small area solution.

Metta Spencer  54:23

Okay, so we’re going to say we’ve kind of ruled that out. And what’s left now, is a possible combination of the two methods that we’ve considered not we haven’t looked deeply into the Cirrus cloud idea. But as far as I know, you could combine the cirrus cloud thinning with the summertime cloud brightening of the clouds right?

Stephen Salter  54:51

You could also increase the the reflectivity and in the high stratosphere and there are people who are designing ways of doing this for [inaudible] the trouble with that is that it’s got a much longer life than the than the cloud brightening. If you did cloud brightening in the winter, it would work in the wrong direction. The cloud brightening has a very short life. And if you if you stopped doing the spraying within the lifetime of the next snow shower, the next rain shower, it’s all been forgiven and forgotten. So we would, we would only doing it for about three months over mid summer. And then we would stop. And you can’t be quite sure that the the stratospheric sulfur idea for for cooling is going to stop quickly enough. Some people say you can do it quickly when other people are saying it goes for two or three years.

Paul Beckwith  55:49

Okay so Stephen, the three the three months over mid summer, that for cloud brightening, that would only be done over open water, is that correct? You wouldn’t do it over areas, they have Hudson’s Bay that were ice covered?

Stephen Salter  56:04

Well, it would be much less effective, it’s already a very good reflector.

Paul Beckwith  56:08

Right.

Stephen Salter  56:08

So that’s the only reason for not doing it. But you…

Paul Beckwith  56:11

You would you would right,  so you would do it over a region, if it worked in the ice formed you would then move to a different region of open water and do it there and continue on is that correct?

Stephen Salter  56:23

If the effect is spread over a whole area. So what would happen is where there is a border, the ice will be going more towards the open sea. And you can choose exactly where you do it. If you know what the wind direction on the wind speed is going to be, you have really quite a lot of control over which bit you want to cool. And we would be eventually we’d be wanting to do it with four vessels that are very mobile and can go extremely quickly. If you’re if they’re not spraying so you could go from the North Pole to the South Pole in about three or four weeks. So we wouldn’t be wanting to do it in the winter in the Arctic anyway, because there’s no rain, no so matter of fact, but they wouldn’t be off to Australia orthe Caribbean, or wherever we want to do this very fast moving vessel, when it’s not when it’s not not spraying. So you can choose where and when. And when to stop.

Metta Spencer  57:24

I’m gonna give the last words to Lawrence, because you actually are in a situation where you can go talk to people and consult and ask people what they want and how they feel about all this. So is there anything we can do to present more information to you that might be useful.

Lawrence Martin  57:43

Well I think it’s this this topics a good starting point, the automatically, the people say, Well, you know, it’s one ecosystem, you can try to affect change in one section without affecting the other. So I think you know, that’s that’s has to be kept in mind. If you’re going to go out talking about this, you have to have answers ready for those kinds of questions. And the thing is also many of the communities working with their inland. So their concern is more on the permafrost melting, as opposed to the ice thing and the Hudson Bay, if they spend more time on the land on the rivers and so forth, and they see the impacts there. So what can be done would be the question on the permafrost melting, as opposed to trying to work on the Hudson Bay ice.

Paul Beckwith  58:32

This is important if you if you manage to restore and thicken ice on Hudson’s Bay in James Bay, then that will cool temperatures inland and help the permafrost certainly, you won’t have open water on coastlines because that will start causes huge erosion, especially with high wave action and can degrade coastal permafrost. But if you have an ice layer over the over the base, it’s going to be much cooler inland because the onshore breezes, for example are colder, it acts more as a continental climate situation rather than a climate on a shoreline. You know and if you’re if you’re if you’re next to a lake and the lake is ice covered, you don’t have the warm moderating Lake Effect occurring as long as there’s ice cover on that body of water so so it’s a big improvement for  cooler temperatures inland. It’s not independent of the state of the of the ice on the base just so…

Lawrence Martin  59:35

I can I can see the other thing that people saying well, you have to you also have to stop polluting now. There’s still a lot of co2 that’s going into the air that’s that’s arriving into territory. So stop that maybe you have a better chance of doing what we’re talking about doing here.  We need both.

Paul Beckwith  59:54

Yes, but I mean, I’m wondering if it would be interesting if if we could get some sort of feedback from people that, you know, people that live up in that region, like for example, you know, shout out to, you know, send your friends and people that you know, this video, right and other videos where, you know, we’re talking a lot about Hudson’s Bay. And what’s possible because people aren’t aware, they wouldn’t be aware that anything was possible at all.

Metta Spencer  1:00:21

I’m going to edit this and post it tonight on our website to save the world.ca. And when you scroll down under the screen, where you can watch that, there’s a place that says public comments. So if you click there, it’ll take you to a place where you can comment. And so I want to encourage people, anybody in the world who’s interested in this issue, to go there and post your thoughts, and issues and questions. And you can there’s also you can reply to each other. So we can have a real discussion, continuing about what we’ve raised today, because there are 1000 more things to be said on the subject. And and that’s the place to do it, please use it feel feel free. Anybody can go there and post your thoughts or questions and have a have a continuing conversation about this. So we’re not through but we’re through for now. We’ve stopped by time. So I’m very, very grateful to all of you. And I think…

Adele Buckley  1:01:23

I have one burning question for one, one minute. Yeah. Okay, well, I’m wondering if there’s any role for seeding the clouds from above. And particularly, there’s obviously planes that exist, you know, but instead of, from below from above, and then also, if you could do that from above, you might save the permafrost.

Metta Spencer  1:01:51

Does anybody know?

Stephen Salter  1:01:52

You don’t need to do it from an airplane, you can do it all from from [inaudible] ships on the on the sea, because the air above the sea is very turbulent. It’s a bit like putting some cream in your coffee and stirring it. So the this little salt fragments that we’re getting, again, to get up to where the clouds are, whether we, whether we, whatever happens because the air is turbulent. So it’s much, much cheaper to release them at the surface than to fly.

Metta Spencer  1:02:24

All right.

Paul Beckwith  1:02:26

You’re generating the cloud condensation nuclei, the little salt crystals that are engineered to be the right size to make the right proper types of clouds. The source is seawater, which are pumping through nozzles. So if you’re on a plane, you’re talking about huge weight transport, you’re talking about a Hercules full of water, seawater, to pump it through the nozzles like you have to be at figuring out how to create those little particles. So that’s, you know, it’s it’s much cheaper and easier just to use sea water from the ocean. And once it if you pumped it a few meters, you know, few meters or 10s of meters above the surface, air turbulence is going to carry it very quickly and distribute it amongst the boundary layer, which is about the bottom 1.5 kilometers above the surface.

Stephen Salter  1:03:21

You get a pretty mixture very quickly, that the you have to think about the size of the fragments that we’re putting up there. It’s a bit like having a marble being dropped in a liquid, that’s 100 times thicker than syrup. Okay, so you can pretty well forget how fast the little dry fragments would fall if the air was still, the air is moving around randomly with velocity very often a meter per second, and more and more. And this is a way of stirring your coffee cup.

Metta Spencer  1:03:57

Okay, well, that’s the end of our conversation for today. And we will be back in about a month. So what’s your timetable? I’ll let you know. And we’ll have a continuation of this, to me extremely interesting, and maybe important conversation. Thank you. Oh, bye now. Thank you. Bye bye. Project save the world produces these shows. This is episode 546. You can watch them or listen to them as audio podcasts on our website tosavetheworld.ca people share information. They’re also about six global issues. To find a particular talk show it or its title or episode number in the search bar, or the name of one of the guests speakers. Project save the world also produces a quarterly online publication Peace magazine. You can subscribe for $20 Canadian per year. Just go to pressreader.com on your browser. And in the search bar is the word peace You’ll see buttons to click to subscribe.