Note: I'll be back during the winter of 2025 with season 6 on the theme of 'art and culture in times of crisis and collapse'. Also, this episode was published on October 23, 2024 : our daughter Clara Schryer's 23rd birthday. Bonne fête chère Clara!
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(arctic soundscapes: Clara and Noa Caspi talking about drones + daily check in with Resolute + candle ice breaking + plane arriving)
This is the final episode of the fifth season of the conscient podcast.
(arctic soundscapes: Clara trying to imitate Claude’s style of simplesoundscapes recording while searching for candle ice)
This season began on February 21, 2024 with e154 featuring my son Riel’s research on ethics in science:
(arctic soundscapes: Clara and Noa talking about recording technology)
This last episode features field recordings that Noa Caspi and Clara recorded during a 2-month field research project at the Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory on Melville Island in Nunavut during the summer of 2024.
You’ll hear Clara talk about some of her favorite sounds, including the unique vibrations of ‘candle ice’:
(arctic soundscapes : Clara and Noa talking about candle ice + Clara walking around in moss)
In between soundscapes from the arctic, you’ll hear Clara talk about the rapid changes in the Arctic and some of the challenges of envisioning a new future and how art might help us imagine possibilities amidst uncertainty.
(arctic soundscapes : bird song, wind)
(arctic soundscapes : Clara and Noa talking about recording in the field)
My conversation with Clara reminded me that scientific knowledge can be transformed into poetic narratives and that we benefit from both scientific and artistic creative work.
One might even speculate that they are more or less the same thing.
(arctic soundscapes : walking on the tundra)
And at any rate.
All of this requires a lot of listening.
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Sections of the episode (generated by AI and reviewed by Claude Schryer)
Welcome
In this introductory chapter, Clara joins Claude marking the season finale. They discuss the unique perspective of younger generations on pressing issues and the intersection of art and science.
A Scientist’s Journey
Clara shares her background, detailing her journey from Ottawa to studying earth system science at McGill. She highlights her passion for the outdoors and how her academic pursuits led her to a master’s program at Queens.
The Young Person’s Dilemma
Reflecting on a pivotal conversation from Clara’s past, they discuss the challenges young people face when choosing careers that can address climate change. Clara reveals her evolving mindset about making a difference in the world.
Eco-Anxiety and Climate Change
Clara talks about her feelings about eco-anxiety and the complexities of climate change. She emphasizes the importance of focusing on local solutions and the challenges of balancing personal and global concerns.
Fieldwork in Nunavut
The conversation shifts to Clara’s fieldwork at the Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory in Nunavut. She explains the project’s focus on hydrology, soil, and greenhouse gas fluxes, contributing to a better understanding of the global carbon cycle.
Journey to the Arctic
Clara describes the logistical challenges of reaching her field site, detailing the multiple flights and stops along the way. She shares insights about the isolation and unique experiences of conducting research in such a remote location.
Soundscapes of Nunavut
Clara introduces her recordings from Nunavut, highlighting her experiences doing field recording. She shares her favorite sounds, including the unique ‘candle ice’ and the soothing ambiance of the tundra.
Artistic Moments in the Arctic
The discussion turns to the artistic expressions Clara and her team engaged in during their time in Nunavut. From sketching to singing, they explore how creativity flourished amidst the challenges of fieldwork.
Navigating Inuit Territory
Clara reflects on the complexities of conducting research in Inuit territory as a southern researcher. She discusses the importance of understanding the historical context and the need for meaningful community engagement.
Imagining New Worlds
As they explore the theme of preparing for the end of the world, Clara shares her thoughts on the rapid changes in the Arctic and the challenges of envisioning a new future. They discuss the role of art in imagining possibilities amidst uncertainty.
The Poetic Side of Science
Clara discusses the intersection of art and science, emphasizing how scientific knowledge can be transformed into poetic narratives. She reflects on the importance of creative thinking for scientists and the value of storytelling in conveying complex ideas.
Hope Amidst Despair
The conversation shifts to the often bleak outlook on climate change. Claude highlights the potential for regeneration and adaptation in the face of environmental challenges.
Candle Ice: A Metaphor for Change
Clara shares a poetic metaphor about ‘candle ice’ as a representation of climate cycles, illustrating how dramatic changes can be part of a natural process. This discussion leads to a deeper exploration of destruction and renewal in ecological systems.
The Jaded Scientist
Clara talks about the challenges and joys of working in earth science, expressing feelings of futility in the face of the complexity of earth science research. She discusses the importance of transparency in scientific communication and the limitations of research methods.
Shifting Focus: From Global to Local
Clara reflects on her evolving interests within the scientific field, expressing a desire to focus on local environmental issues rather than global ones. This shift highlights the interconnectedness of local and global processes in understanding climate change.
Transcription of e208 clara schryer - science as story
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca
Claude Schryer
Clara, welcome to the conscient podcast.
Clara Schryer
Thank you very much for having me.
Claude Schryer
Yeah, well, to be here, I have full disclosure. You're my daughter.
Clara Schryer
That's true.
Claude Schryer
And this is going to be the last episode of the season.
Clara Schryer
What an honour.
Claude Schryer
Well, it's my pleasure, because I started the season with your brother Riel, and I've interviewed a few younger people on the season, a few scientists as well. So, there's a group of you, and I'm interested in the point of view of younger people on the issues that we face and the role of art. And in your case, you're a scientist. So let me just explain a bit, people to people, why I'm interested in talking to scientists about art, because I don't see that big a difference between science and art. And we can debate this, I'm sure, but fundamentally, art is a reform of research. So, with scientists, there's different methods, and one can get into that whole art science things, but it's somewhat artificial to say that science is completely different from art.
Okay, what do you think of that?
Clara Schryer
Yeah, sure. I agree.
Claude Schryer
Okay. And we are going to listen to some recordings that you made in Nunavut this summer. And that's really exciting for me because I don't know if you remember when you were a child, your brother Riel did a couple of shows for out front, which CBC Radio had. It was a great show, and we were starting to do one, you and I, and they cancelled the show.
Clara Schryer
Yes. I was very jealous. I wanted to be a radio star like him.
Claude Schryer
And now you're going to be a podcast star on my podcast. But it's sort of picking up from that idea of doing something creative. In your case, you recorded field recordings in Nunavut, and we're going to talk about them, and I'll interlace different soundscapes into our conversation and that's also kind of fun because you picked up on some of the things that I did when I was recording simple soundscape, like the term ‘sync point go’, you know? And so I think you're kind of making fun of me, or imitation is...
Clara Schryer
The highest form of flattery.
Claude Schryer
All right, let's start at the beginning. Who are you? What's your background? What so people need to know.
Clara Schryer
Well, my name's Clara. I was born in Ottawa. I lived in Sandy Hill for my entire childhood, up until I graduated high school. And then I moved to Montreal, did my undergrad at McGill, and there I studied earth system science, which was a sort of strange degree that mixed a whole bunch of different disciplines. So, it was a good amount of geology and then also some atmospheric and oceanic science, geography, and then kind of tied together with a little bit of environment and sustainability and some of the more kind of human aspect of all those things. And then with a big focus on how all these different kinds of disciplines interact and how we can do kind of interdisciplinary work. So, it was a bit of a broad undergrad and then I did a couple of undergrad research projects which led me to be interested in doing grad school.
So I'm now, I just finished my first year of my master's at Queens and as you mentioned, part of my master's research involves doing fieldwork in the high arctic in Nunavut. So I was able to go last summer. And then again, this summer was like my proper, my proper fieldwork season. I've been interested in earth sciences kind of since high school. I was always interested in the outdoors and still am, you know, when I'm not in school, I spend a lot of time outside, hiking, climbing. Most recently slacklining and highlining as well. And then from there… when I started studying science at McGill, I realized that earth science was an interesting discipline. And there's kind of more to that.
Claude Schryer
Story, but I think we'll, we'll get to that later. Well, I was going to ask you what interests you in science, but I think you just, you just answered that…
Clara Schryer
Yeah, I mean, I was always interested in science. Just like as of high school, it was what I was good at and what I found interesting. Earth science specifically, though, I liked because it kind of was a combination of all the other types of science. You can do as much physics, chemistry or biology or whatever as you want, but it's all applied like it's not any of this kind of super hard to grasp theoretical chemistry, physics stuff. And then of course, I was interested in climate change and how actually studying the earth system could be used to help understand it and the changes that it's going through and all that kind of thing.
Claude Schryer
And as your father, I remember driving you to a lot of dance shows. You did do some art.
Clara Schryer
I did some art, yeah, yeah, I danced, and I still do. Not formally, but it's still in me for sure.
Claude Schryer
Well, we'll come back to that artist.
Clara Schryer
You wouldn't have let me get through my childhood without doing some art. I don't think.
Claude Schryer
I don't know, do whatever you want. But you were quite motivated. We did circus together and lots of things that.
Clara Schryer
Yeah, and that kind of brought me into my, my whole slack lining, highlining thing, which is kind of a combination of circus and outdoors and stuff, and.
Claude Schryer
A little bit of science because you have to know how tight to put the rope.
Clara Schryer
You sure do. Yeah.
Claude Schryer
Okay, so I want to tell now, listeners of this program - those brave listeners - the very first episode I did was called terrified, and I told a story about you as a 17-year-old. Now play a bit of it:
Claude Schryer
And so the story, as I remember it, is that we were driving in a car and you were 17, and you asked me about what should I do in my career. You were not sure about engineering or earth science and that, but there was a more existential side to it around what does my generation need to do to address climate change? And at the time I was doing environmental policy at Canada Council and I hadn't started the podcast yet. I was just still working. And you really influenced me because that conversation remains clear in my mind. But I want to know what you remember from it. Did I get it right?
Clara Schryer
Yeah, something like that. I remember that whole time. I mean, deciding where to go to university and what to study was like really tough for me. I mean, I think I was just pretty bad at making decisions overall at the time. But also I was, you know, very conflicted because I didn't, couldn't really see how it was going to lead to a career path. And I, at the time, my thinking was pretty oriented around, like, how useful is what I'm going to do actually going to be, which I think I've evolved past that a little bit now. And, you know, part of the thinking is that it's kind of impossible to know by the time that I'm in the peak of my career, what work is going to look like. And so you just kind of have to pick something and go with it. And then also, you know, what I'm going to want and what I'm going to anyways. But yeah, at the time, I think I knew that I was interested in earth science, but I thought maybe I should do engineering because maybe that's actually more useful. And I didn't end up doing that. I ended up doing what I wanted to do, which I think was probably an okay choice. But anyways, that was kind of the context. But I remember that conversation as being one of the first times that you really expressed to me that you were interested in participating in this kind of climate and environment work and that you were kind of, you know, I guess to me that part of that conversation was like, well, you have to make changes in whatever world you are inand you were in the art world, so that's what you kind of focused on. And.
Claude Schryer
Yeah, well, I think that's right. And what stuck with me is the young person's dilemma on what to do with their skills and their time to help the world that they know is in trouble. They can feel it, they hear about it, but they can also feel. And now you're engaged in a scientific career and you are making a difference in the work, the kind of work you're doing.
Clara Schryer
Yeah. And I think my mindset as to what that kind of looks like has definitely also shifted. I think when I was younger, you kind of have this idea that you're gonna do something really big that's gonna save the world somehow or like, what's the thing that we can do? And I think now I'm kind of more just thinking of on, I guess, a smaller scale, on a more local scale, you know, is there like any part of the solution that you can be part of is pretty good, you know, because especially when you think about research, like, sometimes there's really crazy breakthrough things, but no single piece of research is going to be the paper that solves the world. Like, that's not how it works. And so if you can work towards being part of a part of it, then, like, that's great. And especially if you work in an area that's like on a local scale, like, if you can make a difference in a single community, then that's really like a job well done.
Claude Schryer
Well, that's been a reoccurring theme this season about locality and hyperlocality. But of course, you flew, you know, 5000 km north to do your research. That's not exactly local, but you'll explain that in a minute. I think you have to do what you have to do to get the data then to be able to. Anyway. I just wonder about echo anxiety. Do you feel that sometimes?
How do you deal with that?
Clara Schryer
Yeah, I guess so. I think I.
I don't know. It kind of all depends on the mindset that you have. It kind of gets. Gets bottled up with all the rest of the anxiety, I think, for me, and it's hard to. It's now harder for me to separate anxiety that I have about what climate change is going to do to the future and what any other problems that we're facing is going to do in the future. And I think I see more than ever that climate change kind of isn't really a problem in and of itself. And there are very few problems that we're going to experience from it that aren't already around and are more likely to just kind of get exacerbated.
So I don't know that I can separate it as much as maybe I used to. And then also at a certain point you just have to keep going.
Claude Schryer
Well, that or that Orlando get depressed. But then there's a mix of the two, I guess. So thanks for that. That clarifies and I just want to acknowledge that. And thank you because that helped me retire when I did and start the podcast and work with scale and all that stuff. I'm doing it for you kids. I'm doing it for whomever it might benefit. Yeah. So let's get into bounty because we're going to start listening to sounds now from Nunavut that you recorded, but start by telling me, us listeners, what you were doing up there.
What's the project?
Clara Schryer
Yeah, so I work at the Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory, which is on Melville island in Nunavut, which is an island that shares, it's shared between Inavut and the Northwest Territories, and it's an uninhabited island. So the work that we do there is not linked to a specific community, but they've been working there for about 20 years now, and it's a combination of kind of hydrology and watershed scale hydrology. But then there's also tons of people who work on other stuff, including there was a lot of limnology. So studying lakes and how they, like how high arctic lakes work, basically, and then also soil and vegetation and greenhouse gas fluxes and all that sort of stuff. So my project is kind of a mix of the hydrology and soil and greenhouse gas fluxes. So I study from the watershed scale, like carbon budgets. So I'm looking at how much carbon is being lost from watersheds, both in the form of greenhouse gases emitted from the land and also carbon that's dissolved into streams and kind of exits the watershed that way.
So it's kind of working towards kind of understanding the global carbon cycle better, you could say. So, yeah. The work that happens at that site is a mix of stuff that's kind of, you could say, relevant to global climate change in that understanding one little tiny part of the global carbon cycle better. But then the other focus of some of our work there is understanding permafrost environments and how they're changing with warming and how watersheds are changing as they warm and as the permafrost thaws, and how that might kind of change, specifically water chemistry and water quality and that kind of thing, which is not really my focus, but that's one of the other things that happens at that site.
Claude Schryer
And the trip to get there. Tell me about that.
Clara Schryer
Well, so Queens is in Kingston. So we first had to come to Ottawa, and then from Ottawa you fly to Iqaluit, and then the flight from Iqaluit to resolute Bayou stops in Arctic Bay, another community. And then from there we're at the Polar Continental Shelf project in Resolute Bay, which is the kind of governmental organization that oversees all of the logistics of all the research that happens in the high Arctic. So whether that be government. So parks or fisheries and oceans, environment, climate change, any of those departments that work in the north or not in the north, but in the, in the Arctic or government researchers, also all the military operations. So they kind of have a base in Resolute Bay in Nunavut that's kind of separate from the community, and that's where you'll fly up there and they have all the logistics. And you stay there for a few nights while you're waiting for them to fly you out to your field site.
So that's kind of another stop on the journey, and that's a, a cool place to be because you do get to meet other researchers and folks working in the Arctic.
Claude Schryer
So with the sound recorder, you sort of became a soundscape artist a little bit.
Clara Schryer
Yeah. Yeah.
Claude Schryer
Because you had the intention. Well, it sounds good. People are hearing now different sounds. So what were some of the, your favorite sounds, lets say.
Clara Schryer
Well, the best sound for sure is the candle ice on the lake.
Claude Schryer
Candle like a candle ice, like chandelle?
Clara Schryer
Yeah. So when we get, so I get to the field in early June, and on the lake, there's two to 3 meters of ice and that only melts. Like, the lake is ice free for like, maybe a couple weeks max, sometimes not even at all, depending on the year and how much ice there was and the temperature and stuff. But this really thick ice as it melts, and I don't know exactly how, but it forms into these kinds of candles. And it's the same thing that would happen on a lake further down south for a little while. In kind of the end of July, there's just these big chunks of ice, and they get pushed along the lake by the wind and the sound of it kind of collapsing, like the big chunks will fall off the sheets of ice and the candle ice collapsing. Sounds really cool.
So there was a day that the candle ice had all kind of washed up onto shore, and we were able to go and record some of the sounds of what it's like, this kind of squeaking of the ice against itself. And that was, for sure the best sound.
But there's also some. Some other ones. I liked the streams and just the sounds of, like, walking around on the tundra, on the moss. Yeah, I think those are the best ones.
Claude Schryer
What about the tent?
Clara Schryer
Oh, the tents. Yeah. So there's a couple of sounds that I recorded. One was. So we have these permanent tents. They're called weather havens. So they stay up throughout the winter but they're tents. They have kind of a layer of insulation. Like, it's basically bubble wrap is what the tent is made of. But it always. When it did rain, and it rained quite a lot this year compared to last year, at least, you'd be sitting in the tent, and it sounded like it was raining so much based on the, you know, the sound on the tent. And then you'd go outside, and it was like a couple tiny little raindrops, because it doesn't rain very much up there, like, compared to down here. So that was.
That was kind of a fun sound. Just like it sounded way worse than it was every time. And then the other one was the flapping of the sleeping tents. At night. There were often just really high winds, so the tents would flap around, and it was kind of. I liked the sound. It put me to sleep.
It was kind of soothing, but it also kept a lot of people up at night.
Claude Schryer
I can tell you some of the favorite sounds that I listened to that you recorded are the kind of beeps and the machines, the.
Clara Schryer
Oh, yes, we had a drone. So I recorded the sound of the drone coming back at one point. And the generator. Actually, the generator is a really funny one, because we do have a generator that we run for a couple hours every day. And it's funny because one of the reasons that people want to go there, I should say, it's an uninhabited island, and there's, like, five to eight of us at the site at once. So, it's really an experience in, like, isolation. And it's pretty much as far from human activity as you can get. So one of the big reasons people like going up there is because of the quiet. So you're like, ah, it's so quiet, except that the generator is running, going. So it's nothing always that peaceful. But when the generator's not. But sometimes that's part of it, too. You're like, okay, this is just part of the sounds, part of the experience.
Can't ignore it too much.
Claude Schryer
Well, another sound that I liked is that you guys sang like a bridge. No, that wasn't. What song did you guys sing?
Clara Schryer
The sound of silence.
Claude Schryer
The sound of silence?
Clara Schryer
Oh, yeah, we were just messing around.
Claude Schryer
Why did you sing the sound of silence?
Clara Schryer
I don't know. I don't remember. We were trying to.
Claude Schryer
Well.
Clara Schryer
Cause the microphone's quite cool when you have the headphones on and you can hear yourself through the microphone and the headphones. So I just was kind of wanted to sing a song to see how it sounded. I don't remember why, though.
Claude Schryer
It's quite lovely because you're a little bit out of tune and don't remember all the words. But it's very. And you can imagine being, you know, in Nunavut with, you know, after many weeks of focusing on research, that a song would be quite wonderful to hear and to play with. And were there other artistic moments like that?
Clara Schryer
Yeah, I mean, we had to entertain ourselves somehow. So there was a good amount of kind of sketching and crafts and that kind of thing. And I guess photography would be the other one. There was, you know, everybody's trying to capture. Capture the landscape however they can, and whether that be through sounds or photos or whatever. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's lots of opportunities for other things. It depends who's up there and what they're interested in. I can imagine that some people would want to write about it or whatever. I was doing the sounds. That was the thing that I was kind of focused on doing.
Claude Schryer
Runs in the family.
Clara Schryer
Yeah. And that's what I had, you know, the equipment and the ability to do. But, yeah, you gotta do your best to try to record what's around you and remember it somehow.
Claude Schryer
And it was certainly enjoyable for me to hear because it was hard for me to imagine. Right. Especially the very delicate sounds that you recorded quite well. And so, to me, it's part of the experience of being in the north is to experience that isolation, but also the richness and the finesse of the sound. Like when you were walking on the moss.
Clara Schryer
The moss, that's another one of the best ones. And I think that that's quite representative of what my experience of being up there was, which is that you spend all of your time just looking at tiny stuff and observing as much. Well, at least I do, is observing as much as I can about what's around me, because it's such a different environment. There's so much from the vegetation to the soil to just like, how the landscape looks. That's totally different to what you'd see down here. And so, yeah, the moss was really cool because there's, in all these kinds of wetter areas, there's moss and the moss, there's tiny little air bubbles that kind of hold on. And so every time you step, you kind of release a bunch of air bubbles into the water, which is actually interesting scientifically. Partly one of the things that I measure is dissolved CO2 in those waters. And so, the little air bubbles that get caught on the moss are kind of interesting, but they're just really mostly just cool to look at. And then, yeah, it makes a lovely little sound, like it's like a little squish, and you can kind of see the bubbles bubbling up. But, yeah, it's all very. There is a lot of very small and delicate sounds and just the visuals. Everything is. You have to look pretty close sometimes to see the cool stuff.
Claude Schryer
And how do you feel about being in Inuit territory doing work as a white southerner? How do you square that?
Clara Schryer
Yeah, well, so there's definitely a lot to unpack there in terms of the, you know, the history of researchers working in Nunavut and in Inuit lands. The research that we do isn't, is, like I said, on an uninhabited island, so there isn't that element of working specifically with a community to meet their needs, though we do consult with the community in Resolute and have some of our work kind of match their interests and the things that they want to work on. But there is definitely a history of scientists being very unaware of the land that they're working on and the impact that they're causing. That's important to be aware of while working there.
Claude Schryer
Well, it's a complicated issue.
Clara Schryer
Yeah.
Claude Schryer
And I'm glad to see, I know you had an Inuit person as part of the team later on, and that.
Clara Schryer
Yeah. There was a student who came up who had just graduated from the environmental technician program at the college in Iqaluit and she was able to come up, and that was really great, both for her to get that experience and for my team to just learn more about Nunavut and what the young people kind of think of the research and that kind of thing. It's definitely a complicated topic, and there's a lot of. It's a whole other conversation that we could have because there's a lot of changes right now happening in the kind of northern research landscape that are making it better, but then also, it's tricky, and particularly with the community, that because in Resolute, everybody has to fly through there to get to their field sites. It's a very different community in terms of what scientists meaningfully engaging with them might look like. Because if everybody who goes through there wants to engage with the community at some point, that becomes more of a burden on the community than anything else. And if, you know, there's a lot of funding and stuff that start to include, you know, interaction and consultation of northern communities as a requirement. But it does also kind of just create this, like, box ticking exercise where researchers will do it because they have to.
Claude Schryer
But that's not necessarily genuine. Yeah.
Clara Schryer
Necessarily genuine or not necessarily what's best for that? You know, I don't know.
Claude Schryer
Yeah, well, we'll pick that up in another conversation, but I'm glad we touched upon it because it's a dilemma for scientists going into the field to know what they're doing and who it's going to benefit and what harm might come to animals and life.
Clara Schryer
And it's particularly interesting when doing northern research that is not actually necessarily… A lot of the work we do is aimed at helping northern communities, but some of it isn't. Some of it is just like, for example, when you're thinking about global carbon cycle stuff, it's kind of just a question of, well, we need to measure everywhere in the world to understand the global carbon cycle and the Arctic is particularly interesting because of the permafrost and because of the rapid warming and the large stocks of carbon and all that. But that's not actually. I mean, and there's, of course, understanding climate change better will be helpful to arctic communities. But to say that the research that we're doing is to benefit their communities specifically would. This would not be true. Like, it's not. It's to benefit the world. But that makes it a little bit more complicated, I think, because you are going onto their land with any risks that that might bring. But, yeah.
Claude Schryer
Well, on a related note, I think, you know that the theme of this season is how to prepare for the end of the world as we know it and how to create the conditions for other possible worlds to emerge. What does that make you think of? Or how do you respond to that?
Clara Schryer
Well, I mean, from the arctic perspective, I think that. Well, so normally I tend to be not a fan of the end of the world lingo,
Claude Schryer
Doomism and all that.
Clara Schryer
Yeah. Just because I think it gives people a pretty good reason to kind of give up or also to see the issues that we're facing as sort of a, like, one day it's going to happen where it's not that it's just going to be kind of a gradual shift, and a lot of the issues we're already facing are just going to get worse. Like, so that you can't really be like, ah, well, it'll be like this, and then suddenly a new world will appear.
Claude Schryer
And some things might get better in other ways, you know?
Clara Schryer
Sure. But I just mean that I think that thinking of it as the end of the world is, I've seen it kind of. That kind of mindset allows a lot of people to kind of check out and give up and stop engaging at all, because how the hell are you supposed to deal with the end of the world? But that said, being in the Arctic, I think that's one of the places in the world where that's the most true, where there's really, really rapid changes in what the landscape looks like, both physically, like, literally what the landscape looks like. And also, you know, like, with shipping routes opening and there's, like, so many cruises that go through there now and, like, all that kind of thing that's, like, pretty new. And so northerners are facing a new world a lot faster than the rest of us are. And I'm not sure what to say other than figuring out how to.
What's the word? In create the conditions for the new.
Claude Schryer
World, for other, other possible worlds to emerge.
Clara Schryer
Imagining what that new possible world could look like is tricky. And that's what art does. That's what art does.
Claude Schryer
It's one of the things that's.
Clara Schryer
Sure, yeah, and, yeah, and it's tough because people might have different ideas of what the future of the Arctic might look like and what the best possible future of the Arctic is.
Claude Schryer
Well, that's a good point, but how do you see, and I know this is a tough question, but how do you see the role of art in life?
Clara Schryer
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think all the things that you say about art as a kind of a tool for imagining or even just kind of. I mean, a lot of what my interest in science, I do think is quite poetic. Like, I think that the things that I find the most interesting about science are when it can kind of be woven into a story that makes sense. And I think that's kind of artistic in a way. Like, just when it's the, you take the scientific knowledge and make it into a kind of a more abstract, kind of poetic thing and so just being from a scientist perspective, for scientists to be exposed at least a little bit, to that way of thinking and of viewing your things kind of creatively or poetically is useful, I guess.
Claude Schryer
Fair enough.
Clara Schryer
But I am not.
Claude Schryer
No, you're not.
Clara Schryer
By your best efforts. I'm not an artist.
Claude Schryer
No. Well, I'm not trying to make you an artist. I'm just trying to bring out the artist in you. It's different. My job as a father. Well, I don't know if it's my job, but it's something I've seen. I see your potential in many ways, anyway. Clara Schryer, let's wrap this up soon. You said to me once, I asked you, are you discouraged about the world? And you said something like, I think there's enough of the world left for me to work with or for my generation to work with, which sounds optimistic to me, but what do you really think?
Clara Schryer
See, I don't remember saying that, but I believe you. And I think that, again, that would have been me dealing with this kind of counteracting the end of the world narrative, because that really was, I feel like for a while, that was the dominant narrative that I was getting, was like, you know, we're doomed and people, it's interesting, people say that to me all the time when I explain my research to people or when I say that I'm a client, like, I'm working in science and it's related to climate change, the first thing they say is, ah, so we're all doomed, right? Like, that's what your, that's what your research is finding. Or they're like, what's even the point of your research? Don't we already know that we're all doomed? And it's like, well, I don't, I guess, but, were like, weren't we always doomed? I don't know. The world has always been bad. Like, I guess not that, but. So I guess that was kind of me trying to counteract that narrative a little bit and to say that even if, like, there's always going to be more of the world left to work with and you shouldn't ever kind of cut your losses and be like, well…
Claude Schryer
Well, because there's regeneration, there's rewilding, there's slowing down, there's local life, there's regenerative economies, there's circular economy. There’re so many things that we are either starting to do at a larger scale or have done in previous civilizations or times we're just in a weird bubble right now of panic, in a way, with technology.
Clara Schryer
And, you know, as changes happen, there are always ways to adapt. And that's not to say that the initial change might not be kind of catastrophic, but there's always going to be something left and you have to work with that. I would imagine that that's what I meant, though I don't totally remember saying that.
Claude Schryer
And I remember you at the cottage talking in a metaphoric way about the candle ice. Could you tell me that story?
Clara Schryer
I don't know. This is my attempt at a poetic kind of story. Well, because the canalized sounds are quite dramatic. And it's kind of like on a much smaller scale, you know, these images that people always like when there's these climate doom pieces, it's always like the glaciers falling, you know, like the glacier calving, like big pieces of ice falling into the sea, which on a much smaller scale, the candle ice kind of is that. Like, there are literally pieces that fall into the lake. So it's kind of like, ah, collapsing, but also like, it's fine. It's just what happens every year. It's part of the cycle. Like every year it gets cold and then it gets warm and the sea ice and the. Not the sea ice, sorry, the candle ice collapses. And it sounds very dramatic, but it's fine. I don't know. That was my little poetic interpretation.
Claude Schryer
If you push it a bit further, you could think of this as a period of destruction. We're going through a cycle of destruction. And that sounds the winter will come again, the winter will come again, and maybe the spring will be slightly different or whatever. Something will come. If we can survive our own madness, which people like you are helping a lot, because what I appreciate and what the kind of science you're doing is that it sets baselines for us to measure, and that's really helpful, but it also gives us nuance, like what exactly is happening and why? And then how is, say, vegetation responding to the change kind of resilience. Are we finding that? I find much more hopeful in just saying it's really, really bad. Worse than we thought.
Clara Schryer
A lot of science is actually quite like. I think people often think of science in a very utilitarian way, which, you know, fair enough, we've got problems to solve. We have to use that.
Claude Schryer
How do we become that?
Clara Schryer
Yeah, well, so, you know, when I explain to people what I. The research that I do, I try the first thing you try to do is explain why. Because people are always going to ask you that. And it's like, well, because we want to understand the global carbon cycle, so we need to monitor the greenhouse gas emissions from arctic soils. Okay, there's that. Or we want to inform northern communities on how their water quality is going to change with flying permafrost. Okay, there's that. But to be honest, a lot of the work that we do is there isn't, like, a specific, like, application always. Sometimes it's just kind of fueling our curiosity. And that work can be quite poetic, for example, if we want to study. Exactly. I think a lot of ecology is like that. You want to study what's happening to this species or that species and how it's changing, and it's kind of a story of how plants are adapting to change and stuff like that. And it doesn't strictly matter, you know, like, what flowers are growing in the Arctic. People might not care, but it is kind of beautiful just to understand it and to see the earth as a really evolving system and to see what happens to it is just kind of interesting and kind of poetic, I suppose.
Claude Schryer
Possibly hopefully.
Clara Schryer
Yeah. Well, with every kind of ecological study, it's always. It's never everything that's going to die. It's always this thing. You know, there's less of this and more of this, which, depending on your position, you might see as a bad thing or as a good thing. I mean, that's what happens with invasive species and stuff, right? If you were. If you happen to be on the invasive species side, then it might be just fine. But either way, it is a change that is outside the realm of the kind of natural fluctuations. So that's for sure, that humans have caused a change, and that might be upsetting to people inherently, just that we've pushed the earth outside of its natural fluctuations.
NOTE: THIS SECTION WAS RECORDED AFTER THE MAIN CONVERSATION
Claude Schryer
You were just saying that science sucks what do you mean?
Clara Schryer
Oh, I don't know. I guess you start working in research and you do become a little jaded perhaps, or just, I guess my point of view on the role of research has changed and the role of scientists as well. Just by seeing how, I mean, earth science is just so hard to do. The earth is so big, and any attempt that we can make at measuring it is going to capture such a small part of what's happening. And any attempt we're going to make at modeling it is going to be based on such a small part of what's happening. And so it's just, you know, sometimes it feels a little bit, the work that I do feels a little bit futile because we can try to understand the system, but it's so complicated. And I, you know, to make any statements that we know what's going on is, yeah, is bold. And then I get nervous with kind of the public perception of that because people are out here going, oh, you need to trust scientists and what they're saying, which is true enough, but scientists also need to be really good at expressing when they know something and when they don't. And that's really hard to do because it's hard to say, oh, I've done all this research, but it's just a guess. Don't trust it at all, you know, because that's not, you know, then nobody's going to listen to you at all. But to say, here you go, I've done this study and it's for sure true. And you need to listen to every word of it is really dishonest, especially with the methods that we use are so just, I mean, we do our best, but it's, there's so much variability. And, for example, the work that I do in the Arctic, we can only be there from June to mid-August. So we don't have measurements of what's happening the rest of the year, pretty much. We're maybe going to get some this year, but everything that we know is based on the summer, basically.
Claude Schryer
So they're guesstimates and they are projections. I did a whole episode with a foresight expert, Zan Chandler, who talked about foresight and science does that to a certain extent. It anticipates what might be a pattern, something as complex as the earth. There are so many things that we don't know as well.
Clara Schryer
I guess that's so many things we don't know. But then also we have a tendency to base work on other work, but it just kind of propagates any mistakes that original researchers would have made. And then that's also tough, especially in fields where doing fieldwork costs an unbelievable amount of money, where you kind of just have to work with the data that you have, even if it, you know, you would have gone back and done it differently and, like, you can't. And then also, especially with our knowledge of the Arctic, it's really hard to just go do research anywhere. Like, you have to kind of set up a site. And so just given the vast area of it, like, there's so little of it that we've studied. And so, and there's a lot of, you know, there's also a lot of biases. Like, scientists want to study things that are interesting. And sometimes that means that we only study the things that are really anomalous. And we don't have that many measurements of the things that are just like, normal, ordinary, which is a huge problem.
Claude Schryer
Well, the arts are like that, too. They tend to gravitate towards things that are aesthetically beautiful or, you know, well.
Clara Schryer
For example, the site where I work, in terms of carbon emissions, it's not a lot. If you look at the Arctic, the places where there's really abrupt permafrost thaw and a ton of greenhouse gas emissions is not where I work. There's a lot of research in those places, but we have to research the places that are not as interesting as well, because then we know how, how anomalous those other things really are, if that makes sense. Like, you have to. And it's tough when you're doing the science, but you're kind of trying to tell a story and you want to get the most cool data possible, but then from there you're like also actually trying to represent it accurately. And to do that, you have to spend quite a lot of time looking at really boring stuff.
Claude Schryer
So, so science sucks, but it doesn't.
Clara Schryer
Science sucks, but it's all we have. But, but yeah, to take, like that's, I guess that would be the thing that I would encourage non-scientists out there if they can. Like, that's what I wish there was more of in science communication, as opposed to here's really cool processes, but also like how we study them. Because I think if people knew, like, how we study things, like, okay, we take samples, like we take a couple little samples and like, what we do with that kind of data and how we arrive at the climate models and all those kinds of things. I think that it would be great if people understood that a little bit more and especially understood to take any single scientific study with a grain of salt just because, you know. Yeah, the methods are sometimes, you know, we do our best, but.
Claude Schryer
Well, since we're still talking, I have one more question for you. What do you want to do with the rest of your life as a scientist?
Clara Schryer
I don't know. Get a job, hopefully. It'd be nice if somebody wanted to hire me. I don't know. I mean, like I said, I think my focus has kind of shifted from global to local, both in the science that I was interested in. I used to be really interested in the kind of global scale climate and earth system processes, whereas now I'm not as interested in that. I'm more interested in local, for example, hydrology. I would love to work in a job that had a little bit of research in it that wasn't just totally practical, but I think working, for example, for a local government doing hydrological monitoring, that sort of thing would be interesting to me. Kind of takes the pressure of trying to do something on a global scale. Often I'm more interested in just focusing on a local problem, I guess.
Claude Schryer
Well, coming back to what you said at the very beginning, you talked about how the earth science is an interdisciplinary, in a way, global practice or way of seeing the world, but it has to also be informed by the micro and understanding the micro, and then connecting the dots.
Clara Schryer
Well, it's both. I mean, local processes affect global processes, and global processes affect local processes. Right. And you could be interested in either. You could be interested on what's happening in this location and what's that doing to the global climate, or you could be interested in how's this town being affected by climate change, or both.
Claude Schryer
Well, Clara, I want to thank you for being brave and coming on my art and ecological crisis podcast and talking about your work and this being the last episode of the season. It's been a long season. It started with your brother. It was episode 54. And now we're. You're going to be 200 and something. I can't. I don't know what, but I've done a lot of them, and it's been fascinating for me to learn from so many people, and I've heard themes come back again and again, and you've touched upon some of them today. So there's that sense of conclusion for me, today is like, okay, take a break now. The next season is going to be about how art is used in times of crisis, which we're in now. And I'm going to do some research on that. Thank you.