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Rainn Wilson is on a mission to learn more about climate change and the effects it’s having on our planet. In this episode, Rainn Wilson visits Greenland to see the melting glaciers and ice fjords first hand. He meets with scientist Dr. David Hik to learn about how the melting glaciers are affecting climate change.
*This show was filmed before Covid-19 became a pandemic and stay at home orders were in place. We strongly believe in social distancing and wearing masks at this time.*
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:00
– Just in case you were wondering
00:03
what the deal was with sled dogs in Greenland.
00:08
♪ Sled dog city ♪
00:09
♪ Sled dog city ♪
00:10
♪ Sled dog city nights ♪
00:17
SoulPancake presents, An Idiot’s Guide to Climate Change.
00:21
Hi, my name is Rainn, I’m an actor,
00:23
and I care about the planet,
00:24
so I’m going to Greenland with some scientists
00:27
to witness first hand the melting of the glaciers
00:30
and learn some hard science about climate change.
00:33
I pray this makes even a little bit of difference.
00:35
Also, don’t be an idiot.
00:37
Rainn.
00:40
Going to Ilulissat, I’m excited to meet some Greenlanders,
00:43
meet some glaciers,
00:45
and solve this entire climate change problem.
00:51
Just give me a couple weeks, I’ll get it figured out.
00:57
Time to make love to a glacier.
01:03
Good morning, Ilulissat!
01:05
Here we are, the very top of Greenland,
01:08
but I’m afraid it’s melting.
01:11
Sometimes you see a vista
01:13
that just completely blows your mind,
01:16
and I know that this is kind of an informative,
01:21
travel log, vloggy, documentary
01:24
of my learning about climate change,
01:26
but I have to show you guys this.
01:29
It’s unbelievable.
01:32
This is where the Greenland ice sheet
01:35
that covers almost the totality of Greenland
01:39
spills out into the ocean,
01:41
pouring out mammoth icebergs.
01:45
And the Greenland ice sheet has been there
01:47
for hundreds of thousands of years,
01:51
and is now melting.
01:53
It’ll be a great gain for the oceans of the world,
01:58
but that will also suck for humanity.
02:02
Over the next few days, we’ll visit remote glaciers
02:05
by boat and helicopter with some actual scientists.
02:07
But first, to learn from a local,
02:10
I speak to Karen from Greenland.
02:13
B camera rolls.
02:14
So this is one of the most amazing things
02:18
I’ve absolutely ever seen in my life.
02:21
Can you tell me what it is we’re looking at here?
02:23
– We are at the Ilulissat icefjord.
02:27
The Ilulissat icefjord is about 70 kilometers long,
02:31
and that means that the glacier front
02:33
is 70 kilometers from here.
02:35
– So there’s a giant ass glacier 70 kilometers up that way?
02:40
– Yes.
02:40
And it’s huge, huge icebergs that fall off.
02:44
So it produces these huge icebergs out here.
02:47
– [Rainn] So this is an iceberg graveyard, kind of.
02:50
Have you noticed negative impacts from climate change?
02:53
– Yes, the glacier front has retreated around 25 kilometers.
02:59
– Wow, so it’s shrinking.
03:01
– Yes.
03:03
We used to have sea ice, and now we don’t have sea ice.
03:08
So the weather is not as stable as it used to be.
03:11
There’s a lot more wind.
03:13
We also can see it in the glaciers.
03:15
They’re active all the time.
03:22
– Oh, this is crazy.
03:24
I’m hearing a glacier collapse out there.
03:31
That was amazing, that sound.
03:34
That’s the calving of an iceberg
03:36
tumbling into the ocean.
03:38
Sounded like an avalanche.
03:41
Next stop, find that glacier.
03:43
But first–
03:46
Just in case you were wondering
03:48
what the deal was with the sled dogs in Greenland.
03:52
There are literally hundreds chained up
03:54
all over the hillsides just howling for dinnertime.
03:59
♪ Sled dog city ♪
04:02
♪ Sled dog city ♪
04:05
♪ Sled dog city nights ♪
04:11
Good morning, Greenland.
04:12
How you doing?
04:14
We’re gonna get on a boat,
04:15
we’re gonna sail out to some of these icebergs
04:18
and get into some nitty-gritty facts
04:21
about climate change
04:23
and what’s happening in the Arctic, specifically,
04:26
and why it matters to know about the Arctic
04:28
if we live down the United States
04:31
or wherever the hell you’re watching this stupid video.
04:34
So here we go.
04:37
But first, we have to sail past those enormous oil tanks
04:45
and out into the wild horizon.
04:50
We’re headed right into the icebergs.
04:53
I know exactly how Leonardo DiCaprio felt.
05:04
These cliffs are like the most ancient things
05:07
I’ve ever seen.
05:11
Totally “Game of Thrones” back in there.
05:18
Look at all this brash ice floating around.
05:21
Winter’s coming.
05:26
Winter is coming.
05:29
Okay, I’ve seen some crazy in my days,
05:34
but man, oh man, I’ve never seen anything like this.
05:37
This is literally where a glacier meets the ocean.
05:41
Ground zero for climate change.
05:43
So David, Dr. David Hik, not hike, is that right?
05:50
– I can take a hike, but David Hik, yes.
05:53
– If you tell anymore jokes,
05:55
I’m throwing you off this boat.
05:56
It sounds like thunder in the background,
05:58
like through this interview,
05:59
but what is it that we’re actually hearing?
06:01
– We are talking to a glacier, it’s talking to us,
06:04
it’s telling us that its journey
06:07
from the center of Greenland into the ocean
06:10
is nearly complete.
06:11
– Can you distill for me,
06:13
’cause I’m kind of a climate change dummy,
06:15
can you kind of break it down for me,
06:18
what are some chief salient points?
06:21
– So the first thing to remember for Earth,
06:24
for our whole planet, it’s a climate system,
06:26
so all the parts are connected.
06:27
Which means, what happens in the Arctic
06:29
doesn’t stay in the Arctic.
06:31
– Okay.
06:32
– We think of the Arctic as being a cold place,
06:34
but that helps to regulate the climate
06:35
on the rest of the planet.
06:37
And as the Arctic warms up,
06:38
that balance between cold and warm
06:40
gets kind of blurry.
06:42
So one example of that is the jet stream
06:44
that goes around the Northern Hemisphere.
06:47
And as it warms up in the Arctic,
06:49
you start to see cold air coming further south
06:53
and warm air going further north,
06:55
and you get crazy weather systems.
06:57
We’re seeing heatwaves that we’re not prepared for,
06:59
extreme weather events,
07:01
a potential for an increase in things like
07:04
hurricanes or tornadoes.
07:06
Those one in hundred year events
07:07
are gonna become one in a decade events,
07:10
will then become annual events,
07:12
and we’re not prepared for that.
07:14
And there’s no uncertainty around the cause and effect
07:17
of climate change.
07:18
We’re burning fossil fuels,
07:20
that’s contributing to an increase in greenhouse gases,
07:23
and that’s warming the planet.
07:26
– How warm is it getting in the Arctic?
07:27
– Right, so–
07:31
– [Rainn] Whoa!
07:32
We got a big wave too from that crashing ice.
07:36
– Globally, the Arctic’s about two degrees warmer
07:39
then the warming we’ve seen in the rest of the planet.
07:41
– [Rainn] So we’ve seen warming in the rest of the planet–
07:43
– [Dr. David] We have, right.
07:44
– [Rainn] But the Arctic is even warmer, why is that?
07:47
– Partly because of this phase transition
07:48
from frozen to thawed.
07:51
And partly because the surface of snow and ice
07:55
is getting darker.
07:57
The transport of what we call black carbon,
07:59
it’s a type of pollution
08:01
that’s a result of say, forest fires, or burning coal,
08:03
or oil, or gas, or diesel fuel,
08:06
and it’s fine, particulate matter that accumulates
08:10
in the Arctic.
08:11
And so if you look around us,
08:13
look at the surface of some of the glaciers ,
08:15
they’re dark on top,
08:17
and part of that is just the seasonal melting,
08:20
and part of it is this accumulation of soot,
08:24
black carbon.
08:25
– So we wouldn’t have seen that 100 years ago?
08:27
– Not to the same extent.
08:29
I mean, there’s always been forest fires
08:30
and people have burned wood,
08:33
but there’s a lot more of that happening right now.
08:35
– [Rainn] What this carbon accumulation contributes to
08:38
is called the Albedo Effect.
08:39
– And all that means is that from a value of one
08:43
would be a bright white surface
08:45
and reflects all of the solar radiation back into space,
08:49
and a value of zero would be like an asphalt highway,
08:52
all of that solar radiation just gets soaked in
08:54
and it doesn’t reflect anything back.
08:57
– So the darker the surface area,
08:58
the more it warms and the faster it melts.
09:01
Why don’t we make white highways?
09:03
– Well, we should.
09:04
We should have white roofs,
09:05
and we should have white highways,
09:06
we should just reduce the–
09:08
We can reflect more of that radiation back.
09:11
– Wow, okay, that’s a good place to start.
09:14
Just, there we are kids, paint your roof white.
09:17
– Even better, have a living roof,
09:19
’cause plants and vegetation do an even better job
09:22
than just a plant surface.
09:23
– Okay, great.
09:24
– But the Arctic is getting darker.
09:27
And we’ve been progressively losing ice.
09:29
It’s pretty much a tipping point now
09:32
where we predict by the middle of next decade
09:35
the Arctic ocean could be seasonally ice-free.
09:39
Almost entirely melted.
09:41
The other thing is, you have a shift
09:43
from an ice covered ecosystem
09:47
to an open water or pelagic ecosystem.
09:49
That changes the whole food web.
09:51
So things like polar bears or seals,
09:55
that rely on sea ice, they’re not there anymore.
09:58
There’s also an entire ecosystem
10:00
of small organisms, microorganisms, algae, zooplankton
10:04
that live on the bottom of sea ice.
10:06
– No ice means no plankton under the ice
10:09
means certain fish don’t get to eat that plankton
10:11
may die or go away,
10:13
and then seals that eat those fish may die or go away,
10:17
and then polar bears that eat those seals
10:19
may die or go away.
10:20
– That’s right.
10:21
So the whole system will shift to something new.
10:24
– So polar bears and seals are .
10:27
– They need sea ice.
10:33
– It’s ancient, powerful, beautiful,
10:40
and as we gather more and more facts
10:43
about what’s going on, it’s also tragic.
10:49
I feel like the host of a travel channel show,
10:54
but I’m pretty good at it, I think I’d be good.
10:59
So we’re crunching through the Arctic ice
11:02
on our way to this little settlement.
11:05
We’re kind of stuck on a harbor in Greenland.
11:10
Keep your thoughts and prayers coming please,
11:13
thoughts and prayers coming, and a boat.
11:15
You know what this glacier calls for?
11:17
♪ Five, four, three, two ♪
11:39
Coming up on, An Idiot’s Guide to Climate Change.
11:44
Looks like we’re here.
11:46
Kangerlussuaq.
11:47
– You just need that scholoooch.
11:49
– Kangerlussuaq?
11:50
– What is happening in the Arctic
11:51
is effecting all of our lives.
11:53
Droughts that we’ve had–
11:55
– Which cause the forest fires.
11:56
– Which cause the forest fires.
11:57
– There it is, a big red bird.
11:59
– How much more of the science do you want?
12:01
– I want a good amount of the science.
12:03
I’m just a dumb actor, what do I know?
12:05
Is there some kind of cafe where we’re landing?
12:07
I feel like I’m expecting the Mars Rover
12:09
to roll over the horizon.
12:12
I truly feel like I’m on another planet.
—
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
