Tuktoyaktuk: Canary in the Coal Mine

[@oriolesfan7807]

I was there in June 2019 too. Drove around exploring the area. Stop at the DEW line, even smiled at the security camera. Stopped at Grandma's Kitchen to get a flat tire repaired and ate lunch there. Splashed around like a little kid in the bathtub in the Arctic protected by a rock breaker wall. Took pictures of the various churches too. Could not beleive I traveled all that way from the USA East Coast. Thank you Ice Road Truckers for the inspiration to travel the Dempster and the Canadian government for building a dry road to the community. I had a fun visit there. One for the memory books.

[@Blind_of_Colour]

Andy - I have been gorging my brain with all your videos. As a Canadian I feel a bit embarrassed you do not have a vastly greater volume of followers. Your work is so informing about so many things in this country. You are a human being of wonderful personal qualities. You always show respect for peoples. You have that wonderful curiosity and delight in knowledge. You so carefully credit all who contribute to your efforts. And you love nature in its many manifestations. I have NEVER enjoyed a KZbin channel as much as I enjoy the wonderful work on this KZbin channel. It has to be because I so much love so many of the things you do and your wonderful descriptions of these things. I think you should be recognized as a real hero in this country and your works should be widely promoted - following which geology departments from coast to coast would be choked with numbers of applicants never before imagined - maybe more flower loving biologists too lol.

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

Very kind words, Neil. I appreciate those. There are many people contributing really interesting KZbin content. I personally find it hard to keep up with them! Regarding credits to others, I am reminded by the many I have learned from: "we are nothing without those who walked with us and helped us see the world through a broader set of eyes" :) . Be well and thank you.

[@lawrencehearn6080]

James Bay is a bay of Hudson Bay which is a bay of the Arctic Ocean. Eastmain, Quebec is on James Bay and is accessible by road. So technically Tuk isn't the only Arctic Ocean place to which one can drive

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

Yes, you are correct. I agree. I should have stated that Tuk is the farthest north you can drive, using a continuous road system, without leaving mainland Canada. Thanks very much for the catch.

[@wakkawakka7624]

Cool video. I found you somehow. And now I have a bunch of content to watch. Cheers!!

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

David: Hope you enjoy it. Cheers, Andy

[@gaetanocontato6994]

I really enjoyed the video and the issue of climate change highlighted

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

Glad you enjoyed the video. Climate change is the "elephant in the china store", but I think many more people are slowly coming to accept the empirical evidence that it is a real threat.

[@gaetanocontato6994]

@@rambleswithrobinandruby9422 I agree with you (I'm from Italy)

[@jessicawelsh7819]

Those are not sled dogs, that is a "pound." Lived in Northwest Territories, saw it in Inuvik, Aklavik and looks the same. lol

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

Thanks. Just sharing what I learned on the street. Always helpful to receive multiple sources. Thanks for sharing.

[@Brian-bp5pe]

Installation of park benches at the waterfront plus burgeoning tourism... Polar Bear bait? It's just a thought.

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

Tourism is an interesting topic. Visiting to improve mutual awareness and understanding can be important. I share my learnings through presentations to others who are not able to travel to help raise awareness about the realities faced by others. Perhaps those new insights may empower others, as well as myself, to seek change. Thanks for raising an important issue. Regards, Andy

[@Brian-bp5pe]

@@rambleswithrobinandruby9422 You're welcome, Andy and thankyou, too. It must be a major preoccupation for those living in Churchill and similar places; keeping polar bears away from people (especially kids) and pets. This has always been a concern (human interface with wildlife), but climate change is exacerbating everything.

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

@@Brian-bp5pe I have not been to Churchill, but I have been to Fort Severn and Peawanuck (Ontario) and polar bear awareness and defense is an important preoccupation for those communities. It is also a "normalized" way of life in those areas, much like trying to cross a bust street in rush hour in a major city. Climate change has, is, and will continue to profoundly impact the far north more profoundly than southern areas.

[@BreckTaxi]

Your graph at 8:53 figures Mauna Loa CO 2 after 1958. Volcano eruptions emit more CO 2 than anything man produces. Climate change is natural and not man made. In our day to day lives it's aka....the weather.

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

This important topic would require a much more detailed discussion. Thank you for raising it. I absolutely agree that volcanoes do indeed emit CO2, but key today is that the rate of anthropogenic CO2 is increasing at a rate never seen while humans have walked on the surface of the Earth. The rate of CO2 emission in the last 275 yeas, starting with the the industrial revolution and changes to agricultural land use, has not been seen in the last 800,000 years. The evidence is quite clear. The vast majority of the modern (aka last 275 years) CO2 is contributed by humans - it is anthropogenic. The Earth's atmosphere has absolutely experienced catastrophic CO2 gas emissions in the geological past. Some led to extinction of many life species. But humans were not around during those times. We are here now, out impact is well documented, and the rate of anthropogenic CO2 emission (and other direct and indirect greenhouse gas emission) is one of the main factors that poses the "existential" threat to humans today. The discussion is not whether Earth's atmosphere has experienced high CO2 levels in the past - it clearly has. The discussion today is about the human role today and the consequences of our contribution. It is a really important topic. Thanks again for raising this important topic.

[@Blind_of_Colour]

I commend Andy on his most diplomatic reply. Sir/madam I don't know your background. Some folks are raised to be untrusting of science - perhaps topics like evolution do not fit with traditional thinking. Other folks are victims of profit driven news and social media. Social media algorithms are not designed to educate people but rather to increase their screen time (for greater ad revenue) by feeding them whatever beliefs they may telegraph they prefer - all the while trying to increase the emotional intensity of their view to maximize screen time. Perhaps you have been following the trial of Dominion voting machines versus Fox News where multiple news anchors and talking heads on Fox have confided in emails to each other off screen that they peddle facts based not on truth but rather in accordance with what their audiences are looking to hear - ratings driven "facts". In opposition to these sorts of unreliable information sources Andy is a scientist, inheritor of a studious tradition that comes to conclusions based on painstakingly gathered evidence - logically assembled with theories advanced based on evidence and the work reviewed for its logical soundness by independent fellow experts - reviews of work submitted to learned journals do not even tell the submitting author who the reviewer is - it is up to the management of the journal (overall guidance managed by a team of known, highly esteemed experts) to ensure competent reviews of submitted papers. And all conclusions are preliminary until subsequent work may further refine them. This is the discipline of the scientific process. The overwhelming bulk of the world's climate scientists absolutely agree we are dealing with HUMAN CAUSED climate warming. Air bubbles trapped in ice from long ago and more recently inform history. Vast arrays of instrumentation in the oceans and in the atmosphere measure conditions and trends. The overwhelming majority of the world's countries agree. Contrary voices are in my estimation largely derived (mostly unknowingly) from profit driven misinformation specialists. Misinformation is HIGHLY profitable, especially in the US. The New York Times had an article of the biggest Anti-vaxer in the US - who turned out to be a medical doctor from Illinois who had moved to Florida and was promoting all sorts of nonsense products on foreign based websites he controlled from Florida. Misinformation for profit is something we all must be very careful about. I love KZbin but it dishes things up for me at times that make me very suspicious I have had grad studies in both the US and UK and have maintained a high level of technical awareness all my life in certain areas - but ALL of us are quite limited individually - even so, I have a better chance than many (at least in my own mind) of sniffing out sources that are not apt to be dependable - and I ignore such sources. How a person with no post graduate education would ever do that, I cannot imagine. But that is the treacherously unreliable information world in which we now reside.

[@lutherthompson8314]

I enjoy the videos. However, if you are terribly concerned about climate change, you should probably not be making trips. Your car and any aircraft or other transportation other than a canoe you use are contributing greatly to any problem that may occur. I also do not think I shoud try to tell the native person that they should not have a fire to cook their meager food supply. That is hypocrisy. Jost sayin".

[@rambleswithrobinandruby9422]

I agree. But, we must minimize our carbon footprint and that includes travel. We tried to offset our carbon footprint by buying trees through an accredited organization that are planted to temporarily sequester carbon. That is not the best way, I agree, but it is a start. Seeing the world through the eyes of others is one of several different ways to appreciate the impact we have had since ca. 1750 (start of industrial revolution), but sometimes it has greater impact to see first hand. It is an important issue and your question is highly relevant, given the amount of business travel many of us have done over the years. Thank you for raising the issue. Regards, Andy