Speaker 1: The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and mental flaws. It's late morning on
Speaker 1: the polar ice when Eric Larson unzips his tent to
Speaker 1: find white out conditions obscuring everything from view. He's had
Speaker 1: just a few hours of sleep and he's still overslept. Today,
Speaker 1: he and his expedition partner, Ryan Waters are making their
Speaker 1: final push to the North Pole, less than four miles away.
Speaker 1: But the whipping wind is pushing the big ice flow
Speaker 1: where they set up camp southward, and every moment counts.
Speaker 1: At this point, the two veteran adventurers have spent fifty
Speaker 1: three days inching across the Arctic Sea ice, and today
Speaker 1: will be another slog through slushy leads and over hummocks.
Speaker 1: When they began planning this expedition, they expected it to
Speaker 1: be treacheras that was the point they wanted to show
Speaker 1: the world how climate change was already wreaking havoc on
Speaker 1: the North Pole. In fact, they're calling this the Last
Speaker 1: North Expedition. They predict that their method of reaching the
Speaker 1: Pole on foot will soon be impossible. Now it's the
Speaker 1: ice groans beneath them. They have to fight to gain
Speaker 1: ground in a landscape that wants to undermine their every step.
Speaker 1: The roaring wind pushes ice flows apart, revealing open water.
Speaker 1: If they're going to make it to the North Pole,
Speaker 1: they'll need to down their dry suits, jump in and
Speaker 1: start swimming. After eight hours, they're almost there. Larson whips
Speaker 1: out his camera waters begins to count down the meters.
Speaker 1: At last, the GPS shows the coordinates the two men
Speaker 1: have been longing to see, ninety degrees north. There's no
Speaker 1: flag waiting to greet them, no plaque denoting what is,
Speaker 1: to some explorers the most sought after spot on the map,
Speaker 1: just wind and ice and the knowledge that they may
Speaker 1: be the last two people to ever reach the North
Speaker 1: Pole this way. Once secure in their tent, they tuck
Speaker 1: into a tube of prinkles before indulging in a celebratory
Speaker 1: meal and sleeping for a solid thirty six hours. By
Speaker 1: the time they wake up, the ice has already drifted
Speaker 1: nine miles south. The North Pole, the place at the
Speaker 1: top of the World Bay and so many before them
Speaker 1: have battled to see, is once again out of reach.
Speaker 1: One hundred and twelve years after Perry and Henson allegedly
Speaker 1: laid claim to the pole and fifty three years after
Speaker 1: Ralph Pleistad drove a snowmobile to ninety degrees north. Where
Speaker 1: does the legacy of North Pole exploration fit into our world?
Speaker 1: And would the explorers of the past even recognize the
Speaker 1: Arctic today? We're about to find out from Mental Floss
Speaker 1: and I Heart Radio. This is the Quest for the
Speaker 1: North Pole. I'm your host Cat Long, science editor at
Speaker 1: Mental Floss, and this is our final episode the North Pole. Today.
Speaker 1: There is a real irony about our knowledge of the
Speaker 1: North Pole. People have spent more than four centuries attempting
Speaker 1: to get to the Pole to observe what was there.
Speaker 1: They faced incredibly difficult journeys through ice choked seas and
Speaker 1: over lands carved by massive glaciers. By the time they
Speaker 1: got close in the twentieth century, it was already changing
Speaker 1: dramatically because of human activity. Our idea of the North
Speaker 1: Pole as observed by the most daring explorers and history
Speaker 1: became obsolete and fewer than one hundred years and today,
Speaker 1: global warming is changing the Arctic in every way. The
Speaker 1: impacts of climate change are evident in its geography. It's oceans, lands, animals,
Speaker 1: and people. In our first episode, we said that an
Speaker 1: important goal of early Arctic exploration was to locate the
Speaker 1: magnetic north Pole. We always knew that the geographic north
Speaker 1: pole was at ninety degrees north latitude. That's just the
Speaker 1: spot on the map where all the meridians of longitude converge.
Speaker 1: But the magnetic north Pole is a different beast. Its
Speaker 1: location affects navigational instruments, and when explorers didn't know where
Speaker 1: the magnetic pole was, their navigational readings could be way off.
Speaker 1: During British explorer John Ross's four year odyssey in the
Speaker 1: Northwest Passage from eighteen thirty three, in the ship Victory,
Speaker 1: his nephew and crew member James Clark, Ross walked all
Speaker 1: over Boothia Peninsula looking for the magnetic north Pole. He
Speaker 1: carried a compass with a dipping needle, an instrument that
Speaker 1: responded to the proximity of magnetic north by pointing downward.
Speaker 1: Near Cape Adelaide, on the western edge of the peninsula,
Speaker 1: Ross saw the needle point straight down to the earth
Speaker 1: magnetic ground zero. The coordinates were approximately seventy degrees five
Speaker 1: minutes north ninety six degrees forty six minutes west, more
Speaker 1: than a thousand nautical miles south. Of the geographic North Pole,
Speaker 1: but the coordinates for the magnetic North Pole aren't set
Speaker 1: in stone or an ice. As of its coordinates were
Speaker 1: eighty six point five degrees north and one d sixty
Speaker 1: four point zero four degrees east, hundreds of nautical miles
Speaker 1: north of where it was when James Clark Ross discovered it.
Speaker 1: This change isn't unusual, because, as we mentioned in episode one,
Speaker 1: the location of magnetic north has always fluctuated. In the
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century, the magnetic North Pole shifted around nine
Speaker 1: miles per year, but in recent years it's changed much
Speaker 1: more rapidly. As of the early adds, magnetic North was
Speaker 1: galloping about thirty four miles per year. The Arctic is
Speaker 1: changing rapidly in more noticeable ways. On June, the temperature
Speaker 1: in the Siberian village of Verryansk hit one hundred point
Speaker 1: four degrees fahrenheit, about thirty degrees above normal. This was
Speaker 1: reportedly the hottest temperature ever recorded inside the Arctic Circle,
Speaker 1: and it was part of a larger trend. The Arctic
Speaker 1: is the warmest it's been in three million years. The
Speaker 1: region has warmed around two times faster than the rest
Speaker 1: of Earth. In the temperature was at least one point
Speaker 1: eight degrees fahrenheit above average in nine out of ten years.
Speaker 1: This may seem like a small amount, but it has
Speaker 1: massive consequences. It's forcing the region into a positive feedback loop, which,
Speaker 1: despite how it sounds, is actually a negative thing. Usually
Speaker 1: sea ice reflects up to eight of the sunlight that
Speaker 1: strikes it. But as the Arctic warms, ice is replaced
Speaker 1: by dark open water, which absorbs light and heat, and
Speaker 1: as that open water sucks in more heat from the sun,
Speaker 1: more ice melts, and the scary cycle continues. Over the
Speaker 1: course of hundreds of years, or you know, the hundreds
Speaker 1: of years of this podcast covers, the Arctic has definitely
Speaker 1: undergone fluctuations. There's been cold periods and warm periods. There's
Speaker 1: there's variability in the system, meaning some years are colder
Speaker 1: and summer warmer. That's Kristin Lydra a marine biologist at
Speaker 1: the University of Washington. She's been studying Arctic marine mammals
Speaker 1: around Greenland for about twenty years, looking at how mammal
Speaker 1: populations are adapting to climate change. But what we really
Speaker 1: started seeing in the nineteen hundreds, and you know, at
Speaker 1: the start of industry and and kind of human activity.
Speaker 1: Basically releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is a distinct
Speaker 1: warming trend, and the unidirectional warming trend that is is
Speaker 1: caused by humans, so basically anthropogenic climate warming, and we've
Speaker 1: seen that really manifests itself very strongly. In the Arctic.
Speaker 1: The warming trends are are amplified. The Arctic is warming
Speaker 1: twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and
Speaker 1: you know, big part of that is because the Arctic
Speaker 1: is covered in in sea ice and not sea ice
Speaker 1: is smelting and breaking up early and really just changing
Speaker 1: the whole system for animals and for people that live there.
Speaker 1: Record high tempts have also led to record low snow cover,
Speaker 1: and that increases the risk for whild fires. Wildfire season
Speaker 1: also kicked off earlier than usual. The blazes might have
Speaker 1: been triggered by so called zombie fires, which are fires
Speaker 1: that's smolder in the dense layer of pete underneath the
Speaker 1: snow and ice. Pete lands happened to be the world's
Speaker 1: most important terrestrial ecosystem for carbon storage, and when they burn,
Speaker 1: tons of greenhouse gases are released into our atmosphere. Higher
Speaker 1: attempts are melting permafrost too. While this sometimes reveals cool
Speaker 1: fossils like mammoth bones, it also releases a ridiculous amount
Speaker 1: of carbon and methane, not to mention super bad stuff
Speaker 1: like anthrax, infectious viruses, and other dangerous microbes. And when
Speaker 1: permafrost becomes unstable, the ground doesn't hold together as well.
Speaker 1: Along Alaska's coast, the equivalent of thirty football fields of
Speaker 1: land disappear each year due to erosion. Though past explorer
Speaker 1: would definitely have appreciated less ice in their way, climate
Speaker 1: scientists cite the decrease in sea ice as one of
Speaker 1: the most worrying changes in the Arctic today. In two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, after a century of steadily warming temperatures, the
Speaker 1: Northwest Passage was completely ice free in summer for the
Speaker 1: first time in recorded history. The years since then have
Speaker 1: also seen ice free summers, and justice past February, a
Speaker 1: commercial ship successfully made a midwinter voyage across the Northeast
Speaker 1: Passage that winds around Russia and China, the same route
Speaker 1: that defeated William Barrens in the sixteenth century. Here's Andrea Pitzer,
Speaker 1: author of Ice Bound Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World,
Speaker 1: which tells the story of Barrens's three voyages. In she
Speaker 1: retraced Barrens's steps to his hut on Nova Zembla, where
Speaker 1: he and his men were forced to spend the winter
Speaker 1: in fifteen nine. When I sailed this in August, I
Speaker 1: faced no ice at all. We would get to some glaciers,
Speaker 1: but there were not icebergs floating out in the water.
Speaker 1: But within a week of when I was there is
Speaker 1: when they were frozen in more than four years ago.
Speaker 1: So that tells you that the entire terrain was ice.
Speaker 1: And now there was literally no ice in that region
Speaker 1: in August. Now they'll still be ice in the winter,
Speaker 1: and there'll be a lot of ice, and it will
Speaker 1: still be really difficult to navigate a lot of places.
Speaker 1: But there is an expectation that we will actually see
Speaker 1: an ice free North Pole a part of the year,
Speaker 1: which is really just staggering to think about. And I
Speaker 1: say in the book that this open polar see that
Speaker 1: Barns imagined came to exist. He just sailed four years
Speaker 1: too soon. In the best case scenarios, ice made navigation
Speaker 1: difficult for explorers of the past. In the worst cases,
Speaker 1: see ice would bash into their ships squeeze them until
Speaker 1: they sank or surround them in a solid mass. This
Speaker 1: might be less of an issue today because the sea
Speaker 1: ice extent, which the United States Environmental Protection Agency defines
Speaker 1: as the area of ocean where at least fifteen percent
Speaker 1: of the surfaces frozen, is dwindling. Those satellites have been
Speaker 1: tracking the conditions only since nineteen seventy nine. Century old
Speaker 1: ships log books reveal the sea ice used to be
Speaker 1: much more extensive. Satellites have captured drastic changes in the
Speaker 1: sea ice minimum. That's the point usually at the end
Speaker 1: of the summer when sea ice covers the smallest area
Speaker 1: for the whole year. Since nineteen seventy nine, its minimum
Speaker 1: has decreased by roughly thirty two thousand square miles every decade,
Speaker 1: according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's an
Speaker 1: area roughly four times the size of Maine. The lowest
Speaker 1: sea ice minimum ever recorded happened in sept and was
Speaker 1: the second lowest no ice escapes this cycle. Take the
Speaker 1: gigantic slabs of paleocristic ice that George strong Naires observed
Speaker 1: on his attempt at the North Pole. In These huge
Speaker 1: masses are important for seals which make their burrows in
Speaker 1: the ice, and polar bears, which hunt the seals for food.
Speaker 1: A current called the Beaufort Gyre sends the oldest, thickest
Speaker 1: ice churning towards Canada and Greenland's northern shore. It forms
Speaker 1: a protective dam across the Nares Strait, blocking older ice
Speaker 1: from drifting south to warmer waters. It's what Nears thought
Speaker 1: would forever block explorers progress to the north. It's a
Speaker 1: nook took name is to vat, which translates to the
Speaker 1: place where the ice never melts. But warmer temps make
Speaker 1: the barrier weaker, and more of the paleocristic ice, which
Speaker 1: we once took for granted would be permanently frozen, is
Speaker 1: escaping from the narrow strait and melting away. As a result,
Speaker 1: the sea route to the Pole that Nares in the
Speaker 1: Alert and Discovery found completely blocked is more open today,
Speaker 1: and the ice that remains throughout the year is thinner
Speaker 1: and more vulnerable than in the past. The well trodden
Speaker 1: American route blazed by Charles Francis Hall, Alicia kent Kine
Speaker 1: and Robert Peary in the nineteenth century now looks completely different.
Speaker 1: Here's Susan Kaplan, a professor of anthropology and director of
Speaker 1: the Pierry McMillan Arctic Museum at Boden College. We had
Speaker 1: been working on the centennial of Peri's North Pole expeditions
Speaker 1: and had read so many of the journals, and so
Speaker 1: we secured National Science Foundation funding and went to the
Speaker 1: northeast coast of Ellesmere Island, a place called Cape Sheridan,
Speaker 1: where Peery in nineteen o five oh six and nineteen
Speaker 1: o eight oh nine had taken the S. S. Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: which was his expedition vessel, and frozen it into the
Speaker 1: ice off of Cape Sheridan. That part of Elsmere Island
Speaker 1: is really a polar desert. It's very very little plant life,
Speaker 1: very few animals. When we got there, the coast was
Speaker 1: just choked full of ice that was not moving. We
Speaker 1: saw one fox, We saw a few geese. We saw
Speaker 1: a number of seals. Although it occurred to us that
Speaker 1: it was just one seal we saw repeatedly it was.
Speaker 1: We saw some polar bear tracks and one musk box.
Speaker 1: Do you get the sense that the amount of ice
Speaker 1: and the temperature and that kind of thing was similar
Speaker 1: to what Perry might have experienced, or do you have
Speaker 1: a sense that perhaps there's less ice now than what
Speaker 1: he might have seen. There's definitely less ice than what
Speaker 1: he would have experienced. We flew from Resolute to Cape Sheridan.
Speaker 1: This amazing pilot landed us on on a beach ridge.
Speaker 1: But as we flew over of that part of the Arctic,
Speaker 1: you could just sea water pouring away off of glaciers
Speaker 1: and there was almost no sea ice. And the amount
Speaker 1: of sea ice in that part of the Arctic is
Speaker 1: greatly diminished, and the temperatures are higher. And we know
Speaker 1: this because Puri had some of his crew taking temperature
Speaker 1: readings two and three times a day, and so you
Speaker 1: can compare them to the contemporary readings, and it's a
Speaker 1: transformed Arctic. A consequence of less ice is that more
Speaker 1: tips have an easier time getting around the Arctic. Between
Speaker 1: and shipping along the Northeast passage increased fifty eight percent.
Speaker 1: Not only does this mean more noise, pollution and traffic,
Speaker 1: but also invasive species that hitch a ride on the ships,
Speaker 1: more efforts to extract Arctic natural resources, and even commercial cruises.
Speaker 1: In a cruise traversed the Northwest passage, allowing rich tourists
Speaker 1: to browse the same places that explorers had fought tooth
Speaker 1: and nail to reach in previous centuries. And some tour
Speaker 1: operators really know how to sell the romance of it all.
Speaker 1: Tourists are expecting a certain experience. That's p J. Cappellotti,
Speaker 1: author of the Greatest Show in the Arctic, The American
Speaker 1: Exploration of Francios off Land to five, which recounts expeditions
Speaker 1: to these islands and the Russian Arctic. When he visited
Speaker 1: Nonsen and Johansen's dugout shelter on francio of Land, he
Speaker 1: started photographing some walrus bones next to the hut, thinking
Speaker 1: they had been left behind by the explorers in and
Speaker 1: one of the Russian guides took me aside and said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we put those there a couple of years ago. Because
Speaker 1: the tourists are really disappointed that there were no walrus
Speaker 1: bones on the site. It wasn't enough that you were
Speaker 1: seeing one of the most sacred sites in the history
Speaker 1: of Arctic exploration, you know, they had to dress it up.
Speaker 1: Before that famous expedition, Nonsen and his hardy band of
Speaker 1: Norwegian comrades crossed the Greenland ice sheet, the largest in
Speaker 1: the northern Hemisphere, from its east to west coast. In
Speaker 1: Robert Pierry and Matthew Henson traversed the ice sheet from
Speaker 1: west to east in in Peery's case, they barely made
Speaker 1: it back alive. That ice sheet is melting faster than
Speaker 1: it has in the last twelve thousand years. Today it's
Speaker 1: losing ice seven times faster than it did in the
Speaker 1: ninety nineties, and this trend goes way beyond the Arctic lands.
Speaker 1: Between and seventeen, Earth lost twenty eight trillion tons of ice.
Speaker 1: It is really difficult to imagine how much twenty eight
Speaker 1: trillion tons actually is, but here's an attempt at a comparison.
Speaker 1: In one of the largest icebergs ever recorded broke off
Speaker 1: from Antarctica. It weighed about one trillion tons and it
Speaker 1: was a size of Delaware. In the last decade, Earth
Speaker 1: has lost a Delaware sized massive ice each year. All
Speaker 1: that melting ice gets dumped into the ocean, raising sea
Speaker 1: levels around the world. Melt water pouring off Greenland's ice
Speaker 1: sheet is one of the largest contributors to rising sea levels.
Speaker 1: All that fresh cold water is altering ocean currents, the
Speaker 1: type of thing that nonsense second an expedition in the
Speaker 1: from was meant to study, We'll be right back. Climate
Speaker 1: change is having a major impact on Arctic flora and fauna,
Speaker 1: and what would Arctic literature be without encounters with potentially
Speaker 1: lethal wildlife. From the polar bears that stalked William Barrens
Speaker 1: and the castaways on Nova Zembla, to the walruses and
Speaker 1: our walls hunted for their tusks, to the musk ox
Speaker 1: that saved Peary and Henson from starvation. Arctic animals provided sustenance, clothing, shelter,
Speaker 1: and fuel for every generation of polar explorer and the
Speaker 1: Inuit whose entire cultures depend on them. But climate change
Speaker 1: is challenging the animals survived vol polar bears, those ferocious
Speaker 1: carnivores that menaced explorers, are more often portrayed as victims
Speaker 1: of climate change today. The image of an emaciated polar
Speaker 1: bear swimming great distances between chunks of sea ice, shaggy
Speaker 1: white fur draping from two prominent ribs is a staple
Speaker 1: of environmental activism. Some scientists estimate that almost all of
Speaker 1: the nineteen polar bear subpopulations across the Arctic could disappear
Speaker 1: by the end of this century. Polar bears depend on
Speaker 1: sea ice for hunting seals, their main source of food.
Speaker 1: The bears need the energy they store from the fat
Speaker 1: seals to be able to survive during times when food
Speaker 1: is scarce. As more and more ice disappears, the bears
Speaker 1: are forced to retreat onto land, where the meals are
Speaker 1: few and far between. Fewer foods RUSS means the animals
Speaker 1: must go longer without it, and that hurts their ability
Speaker 1: to reproduce and raise cubs. Walruses also needs the ice.
Speaker 1: It's important for their mating and when they're not hunting food,
Speaker 1: these one ton mammals lounge on it in huge groups,
Speaker 1: soaking up the Arctic sun. But if there aren't enough
Speaker 1: flows to go around, walruses have to swim farther to gather.
Speaker 1: In these groups called haulouts. On land, hundreds of walruses
Speaker 1: pile onto one spot, which is not ideal when most
Speaker 1: of the walruses have a pair of up to three
Speaker 1: foot tusks sticking out of their mouths. As anyone who's
Speaker 1: ever found themselves stuck in a mosh pit knows, this
Speaker 1: type of situation can get very dangerous very fast. Sometimes
Speaker 1: these land based haulouts become so large and unwieldy the
Speaker 1: walruses trample each other. All of these marine mammals are
Speaker 1: closely tied to the sea ice for all the functions
Speaker 1: of their lives, as Kristen Lydra explains, for example, the
Speaker 1: ice dependent species like the polar bear, all of the
Speaker 1: ice seals, which includes the walrus, all of those species
Speaker 1: need ice to live. And so when we see this
Speaker 1: climate warming in the Arctic happening and increasingly basically making
Speaker 1: that ice platform go away or making it break up early,
Speaker 1: we see negative effects on all of those species that
Speaker 1: require that platform for their life. So they don't have
Speaker 1: the kind of foundation for bear and young for example, exactly,
Speaker 1: I mean you know they need you know, in the
Speaker 1: case of ice seal, they need see ice to make
Speaker 1: their dens, which are called layers where they give birth.
Speaker 1: They need ice to basically sit on top and nurse
Speaker 1: their young. They rest on the ice. Walrisk will actually
Speaker 1: passively use ice to be kind of transported around over
Speaker 1: shallow areas where they can dive for food. Polar bears
Speaker 1: do everything on the ice, including find their primary prey,
Speaker 1: which are these ice seals, so they need ice to
Speaker 1: walk around and hunt. Know, it's just basically a really
Speaker 1: important platform of life for for animals that are uniquely
Speaker 1: adapted to that system. It's an interesting thing to think
Speaker 1: about in terms of animal adaptation. They're completely dependent on
Speaker 1: the ice that a lot of European explorers or American
Speaker 1: explorers really just didn't want to have in their way,
Speaker 1: and yet it's so critical to the ecosystem there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the c ice is extremely harsh, you know, and very
Speaker 1: dynamic kind of structure, and you know, it is really
Speaker 1: animals that live in the Arctic and use the ice,
Speaker 1: they're they're really special. You know, they've really evolved to
Speaker 1: basically exploit that ice for everything that can give them.
Speaker 1: But there's no doubt that that ice is, you know,
Speaker 1: for humans, definitely a challenge. And of course the indigenous
Speaker 1: communities that have lived there for thousands of years have
Speaker 1: figured out how to use that ice for transportation and
Speaker 1: for hunting platforms and things like that. So it's it's
Speaker 1: really kind of many, many thousands of years of kind
Speaker 1: of learning how to use the ice best. Probably no
Speaker 1: animal is more associated with the North Pole than Santa's reindeer,
Speaker 1: but even these herbivores are in trouble. In recent years,
Speaker 1: reindeer populations have dropped by over fifty and the likely
Speaker 1: reasons are not pretty. For instance, longer summers give parasitic
Speaker 1: flies like bot flies, more opportunities to lay their eggs
Speaker 1: in the cariboos skin or its nose. As you might imagine,
Speaker 1: this forces the caribou to spend more time fending off
Speaker 1: flies and less time eating, which has a terrible effect
Speaker 1: on their populations. Losing caribou would be devastating for the
Speaker 1: indigenous people who have a deep cultural connection to them
Speaker 1: for food and skins, which are used to make clothing, tents,
Speaker 1: and other necessities. Arctic explorers of the past may not
Speaker 1: have relied on reindeer to travel Santa style across the ice,
Speaker 1: but like the peoples of the far North, they also
Speaker 1: relied on them for sustenance. Like the intrepid humans before them,
Speaker 1: some animals are extending their ranges northward as the planet warms.
Speaker 1: Red foxes, those wily canaids found across vast regions of
Speaker 1: the world, have begun their own Arctic expeditions. Their northern
Speaker 1: expansion is displacing the native Arctic fox. The opportunistic red
Speaker 1: foxes compete for dense sites and food sources and at
Speaker 1: times kill the native foxes. This trend is happening in
Speaker 1: marine environments too. Here's Kristin Lydra. The ice structures the
Speaker 1: whole ecosystem. It structures the plants that bloom in the
Speaker 1: water column and the dough plankton or small fish that
Speaker 1: basically can of form the base of the food chain.
Speaker 1: And so as we see the Arctic changing, it's looking
Speaker 1: less and less like the Arctic and more and more
Speaker 1: like the Subarctic or in some cases kind of temperate areas.
Speaker 1: And so what happens is as the ice breaks up early,
Speaker 1: it enables some of these Subarctic species to move into
Speaker 1: the Arctic sooner ice is extending further and further north,
Speaker 1: So those animals can extend their range northward and occupy
Speaker 1: areas that they otherwise would have been excluded when there
Speaker 1: was sea ice present, and they can basically stay for
Speaker 1: longer periods in the Arctic. And so what that means is,
Speaker 1: you know, we're seeing Subarctic species kind of move in
Speaker 1: and expand their ranges, possibly compete for resources with some
Speaker 1: of the Arctic species. In some cases they are directly
Speaker 1: a problem, like for example, killer whales that are moving
Speaker 1: further into the Arctic and they predate on small whales
Speaker 1: like blucas and our walls. So there's there's really a
Speaker 1: shift happening where what we used to think of as
Speaker 1: the Arctic and in a system that only had Arctic species,
Speaker 1: is really transforming into something different. We're on a trajectory
Speaker 1: towards the sea ice free Arctic in the summer, and
Speaker 1: that's going to have huge implications for all of these
Speaker 1: animals that depend on that ice. Inoit and other Arctic
Speaker 1: peoples have the most to lose from all of these
Speaker 1: dramatic shifts intoit assisted explorers and save their lives over
Speaker 1: the course of four centuries. Now they're on the front
Speaker 1: lines of climate change. All of the threats we've mentioned
Speaker 1: so far to animals, ice, sea levels, and more have
Speaker 1: a direct impact on polar communities survival. Part of the
Speaker 1: work that I do is is working really closely with
Speaker 1: communities in Greenland because all of the animals I study
Speaker 1: are natural resources and food for them. The animals that
Speaker 1: live in the Arctic um you know, the marine and
Speaker 1: the trust for animals are just inherently linked to the
Speaker 1: people for many thousands of years, you know, those species
Speaker 1: have been the source of life for people and biological
Speaker 1: resource and provide food and clothing and tools and even
Speaker 1: vitamin C, so that they're really, really is a kind
Speaker 1: of very close link between people animals in the Arctic. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I've made it a point in my career
Speaker 1: to talk to people in the community to document what
Speaker 1: they're seeing, to basically collect knowledge from people who are
Speaker 1: out on the ice and hunting animals. There's no doubt
Speaker 1: that all of the you know, changes in the system
Speaker 1: that are affecting the animals are also affecting the people,
Speaker 1: and they affect people in different ways. Routes that that
Speaker 1: hunters would take on their dogs sledges to get to
Speaker 1: kind of key hunting grounds are are no longer available
Speaker 1: because they've broken up early or or unsafe. People have
Speaker 1: had to change some of their strategies for hunting. So,
Speaker 1: for example, instead of hunting out on the sea ice
Speaker 1: with a team of dogs, they might need to use
Speaker 1: small boats because the ice is you know, not present
Speaker 1: and they can more easily sail around in a boat
Speaker 1: than run dogs on the ice. You know, in some cases,
Speaker 1: hunting seasons are truncated or or lost. Storms come in
Speaker 1: and blow out the ice and reduce the hunting possibilities
Speaker 1: for people. All of these changes shift the distribution of animals,
Speaker 1: so sometimes animals you know, are are coming in and
Speaker 1: in conflict with people. Polar bears are coming on land
Speaker 1: more often and coming into communities. The changes we document
Speaker 1: for the animals affect the people, and we really try
Speaker 1: to talk to people in communities in Greenland and understand
Speaker 1: those changes. Indigenous peoples have also left behind evidence of
Speaker 1: their thousands of years in the Arctic. More than one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty thousand archaeological sites are scattered across the Arctic.
Speaker 1: Because the region is so cold, items like bones, fabrics,
Speaker 1: and skins were once remarkably well preserved in permafrost, but
Speaker 1: the warming ground exposes these treasures to decay. Coastal erosion
Speaker 1: is also wiping out ancient settlements and burial sites, some
Speaker 1: of which contained traces of the earliest known migrations to
Speaker 1: North America. One of them was Nuvuka, a smattering of
Speaker 1: sod houses and a communal building used by Anuviello at
Speaker 1: Whale hunters that the explorer John Franklin observed in Less
Speaker 1: than two hundred years later, that site has been laimed
Speaker 1: by the sea. Rising seas and falling prima frost are
Speaker 1: wiping away Arctic explorer's own marks on the region. Here's
Speaker 1: p J. Cappellatti. You know there's still half a dozen
Speaker 1: sits in France, Joseph Flann. I've never seen that I'd
Speaker 1: love to see, and of course some of them will
Speaker 1: be long gone within the next couple of years because
Speaker 1: of global climate change. On Francios of Fland, evidence of
Speaker 1: Walter Wellman's ill fated North Pole expedition has escaped erosion
Speaker 1: thus far. The American journalists turned explorer let an expedition
Speaker 1: across Frontios of land in As part of that, they
Speaker 1: constructed a hut at Cape Heller, located at the first parallel.
Speaker 1: What you can experience in France, Joseph Flant is a
Speaker 1: function of what's still left, and typically that involves sites
Speaker 1: that were built on hard ground using stones, like Wellman's
Speaker 1: Fort McKinley, from where Norwegian who was on the front expedition,
Speaker 1: Burn Benson died froze to death, basically starved and froze
Speaker 1: to death during Wellman's expedition on New Year's Day. In
Speaker 1: After Benson died, his sole companion that winter, spent weeks
Speaker 1: living alone in the fort, sleeping beside the corpse of
Speaker 1: his dead comrade. Those huts were built out of stone.
Speaker 1: They were built up on higher ground, like the Nonsen
Speaker 1: hut on at Cape Norwegia. Those sites will survive for
Speaker 1: a bit. Other sites that are close to the shoreline,
Speaker 1: like the Baldwin huts, those are gone or will be soon.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Explorers from as recently as the eighteenth, nineteenth,
Speaker 1: and twentieth centuries found it impossible to sail to the
Speaker 1: North Pole. Ice completely blocked their way and put the
Speaker 1: age old theory of an open polar seat to rest.
Speaker 1: William Edward Perry off Nonsen, Robert Pierre and others tried
Speaker 1: to walk, ski or dog sled to the pole over
Speaker 1: solid sea ice. As late as nineteen sixty eight, Ralph
Speaker 1: Plystead and his buddies were able to drive snowmobiles to
Speaker 1: the North Pole, but today those modes would be virtually impossible.
Speaker 1: One of the last human powered expeditions to the Pole
Speaker 1: took place inten on their expedition, dubbed Last North American
Speaker 1: adventurers Eric Larson and Ryan Waters departed from the coast
Speaker 1: of Ellesmere Island, just like Pearry had done in nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine, over four hundred nautical miles from the pole.
Speaker 1: But that was about all they had in common with
Speaker 1: the explorers of a century before. Larson and Waters traded
Speaker 1: the traditional sled dogs for skis and snowshoes. They dragged
Speaker 1: their three hundred and seventeen pounds sleds behind them across
Speaker 1: the ice. They were alone and entirely unsupported. There was
Speaker 1: no team of explorers helping them break ground, no strategically
Speaker 1: planned food drops to replenish their supplies. They worked like
Speaker 1: the human versions of a dog sledding team, hitching themselves
Speaker 1: to one sled at a time to lug them up
Speaker 1: and over the twenty foot tall ice ridges that fragmented
Speaker 1: their root. Instead of donning handmade for suits like Perry
Speaker 1: and Henson, Larson and Waters looked as though they just
Speaker 1: stepped out of ri i. They wore layers and layers
Speaker 1: of marino wool and down garments and heavy duty boots
Speaker 1: to stave off the freezing temperatures rather than ration pemmican
Speaker 1: and ship's biscuit. Their food provisions included state of the
Speaker 1: art dehydrated meals, plus some things anyone could pick up
Speaker 1: at a local grocery store. To ensure they could scarf
Speaker 1: down over seven thousand calories per day, they packed energy bars, salami, cheese, nuts, sprinkles,
Speaker 1: and three bags of cheese buffs, which were designated as
Speaker 1: a celebratory treat. Perhaps most surprisingly, the two men also
Speaker 1: packed twenty five servings of freeze dried ice cream, because
Speaker 1: nothing creates a craving for ice cream like spending weeks
Speaker 1: in a frozen landscape. But even with high tech gear
Speaker 1: and abundance of high calorie food, Larson and Waters battled
Speaker 1: for survival on their journey to the pole. Like Robert Pierry,
Speaker 1: they didn't take kayaks or rafts with them to cross
Speaker 1: open water. They had dry suits, and they swam. Those
Speaker 1: waterproof suits were crucial to their success. Cracks in the
Speaker 1: ice revealed great ribbons of open water all the way
Speaker 1: to the horizon, where these gaps blocked their progress. The
Speaker 1: two men swam, pulling their buoyant sledges while paddling and
Speaker 1: kicking with their limbs. They had to act as their
Speaker 1: own icebreakers to shatter ice that was too thin to
Speaker 1: walk across but too thick to easily swim through. Air
Speaker 1: trapped in their dry suits kept them afloat, but smashing
Speaker 1: a path forward then pulling themselves back atop solid ice
Speaker 1: like seals flopping on shore was exhausting. Even the miles
Speaker 1: they trekked across solid ice were perilous. It's hard to
Speaker 1: keep a steady pace when the ground beneath your feet
Speaker 1: is always changing. Ice that in some places was thick
Speaker 1: and solid was in other areas so deceivingly thin. One
Speaker 1: wrong step could send an explore plunging into freezing water.
Speaker 1: It cracked around them as they slept, and threatened to
Speaker 1: shatter beneath them as they inched forward. Relentless wind sent
Speaker 1: the ice flows careening southward as the men fought to
Speaker 1: continue north. In the time it took them to pause
Speaker 1: and down their dry suits before swimming across the lead,
Speaker 1: the ice flows would drift south and set them back
Speaker 1: by as much as a quarter mile. Polar Bear prints
Speaker 1: in the snow were unnerving reminders that in the Arctic
Speaker 1: it's not just the ice and coal that can leave
Speaker 1: a man fighting for his life. On day five of
Speaker 1: the expedition, a mother polar bear in her cub came
Speaker 1: within fifteen feet of Larsen and Waters. As they slogged forward,
Speaker 1: their noses twitched as the men's sense wafted through the
Speaker 1: crisp air. Waters fired its flare, but the bears remained unfazed.
Speaker 1: The yearling cub, which weighed several hundred pounds, started forward,
Speaker 1: investigating what must have seemed like strange looking seals lumbering
Speaker 1: upright across the frozen ground. Larson, realizing his gun was nearby,
Speaker 1: shot into the air and was finally able to scare
Speaker 1: the bears away. Their muscles ached and sores speckled their skin.
Speaker 1: Stress and exhaustion frayed their nerves. Even worse, they were
Speaker 1: low on food. The thin, erratic ice slowed their forward
Speaker 1: progression to a crawl. By day forty, the two realized
Speaker 1: they need to rastically increase their pace if they had
Speaker 1: any hope of setting foot at the top of the world.
Speaker 1: But since they couldn't ski any faster, they'd have to
Speaker 1: go harder. They slept for just four hours at a
Speaker 1: time and spent up to fifteen hours a day, attempting
Speaker 1: to gain miles across the dicey landscape. Each step was
Speaker 1: like playing Russian Roulette with the ice. On day fifty three,
Speaker 1: Larsen and Waters finally reached the North Pole a mirror.
Speaker 1: Forty two hours later, a small plane dropped from the
Speaker 1: sky to scoop them up and ferry them back to civilization.
Speaker 1: Within moments of liftoff, the limitless patchwork of ice and
Speaker 1: water they had traversed vanished beneath the clouds. The dangerous
Speaker 1: conditions they encountered reinforced the assumption at the last North
Speaker 1: Expedition would be one of the final human powered trucks
Speaker 1: to the Pole. Adventurers of the future who want to
Speaker 1: follow in perides, plasteads, or even Larsen's footsteps are likely
Speaker 1: out of luck. The sea ice that forms at the
Speaker 1: pole each year rarely touches land, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: the North Pole is out of reach. Today's adventurers, scientists,
Speaker 1: and even tourists regularly visit the top of the world,
Speaker 1: but their modes of travel are thoroughly modern. Most arrived
Speaker 1: near the Pole by research ship or cruise vessel. After
Speaker 1: a few hours, they returned to the ship. The price
Speaker 1: for this momentary contact runs about thirty dollars a pop.
Speaker 1: The recent Mosaic expeditions sought to recreate Frit Jeff Nonsen's
Speaker 1: famous voyage in the From which we talked about in
Speaker 1: our third episode, to study polar ocean currents. Nonsen purposefully
Speaker 1: got his small ships stuck into polar ice and let
Speaker 1: the currents take it where they may. The international team
Speaker 1: of scientists on the Mosaic expedition did the same thing
Speaker 1: with their modern icebreaker Polar Stern. The vessel remained ice
Speaker 1: bound while the researchers made scientific observations of climate change
Speaker 1: and compared their data to nonsense from the eight nineties.
Speaker 1: Nonson eventually realized the currents wouldn't take the from to
Speaker 1: the Pole, so he attempted to get there by dogs lad.
Speaker 1: In contrast, in August, the Polar Stern sailed easily to
Speaker 1: the North Pole amid slushy flows, not the solid ice
Speaker 1: fields of yesteryear. A series of aerial photographs taken on
Speaker 1: the day the ship reached ninety degrees north shows the
Speaker 1: surface of the Arctic Ocean as well a mosaic of thin,
Speaker 1: patchy ice, streams of slush, and blue water. Climate scientists
Speaker 1: are fond of saying what happens in the Arctic doesn't
Speaker 1: stay in the Arctic. It's easy to think of the
Speaker 1: Arctic or the North Pole as a place that's not
Speaker 1: only geographically distant, but someplace far away from modern civilization.
Speaker 1: That's how Europeans in the early nineteenth century were able
Speaker 1: to romanticize the Arctic. They projected their hopes and dreams
Speaker 1: upon what they considered a blank slate, those empty spaces
Speaker 1: on the map. The polar regions appeared pure, sublime and tantalizing,
Speaker 1: something to be celebrated in poetry and tamed by technology.
Speaker 1: But today we know that isn't the whole picture. Explorers
Speaker 1: went ever farther into uncharted territory. They observed the people,
Speaker 1: the animals, the climate. They mapped coastlines, islands, and waterways,
Speaker 1: and as they studied and learned more about the Arctic,
Speaker 1: they realized it was not as remote as they had thought.
Speaker 1: I believe we're still learning this lesson. The actions that
Speaker 1: we take today have a direct effect on the Arctic,
Speaker 1: and those effects will reverberate back to us. Here's Kristin
Speaker 1: Lydra I mean, what happens in the Arctic influences the
Speaker 1: whole world. The fresh water that melts off of for example,
Speaker 1: the England ice cap plays a big role in ocean circulation,
Speaker 1: and that circulation is linked to major currents that basically,
Speaker 1: you know, control our our climate system throughout the globe.
Speaker 1: Something like the Greenland ice cap is kind of an
Speaker 1: important reservoir of frozen fresh water, and as that melts,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of things you hear about our
Speaker 1: sea level rise and so increasing warming and the Arctic
Speaker 1: accelerates melt of that ice cap and will affect coastlines
Speaker 1: around the world. Those are just two simplified examples of
Speaker 1: how connected we are to the Arctic, no matter where
Speaker 1: we live or whether we'll ever go there. I became
Speaker 1: interested in Arctic history because of my familial connection to it.
Speaker 1: Reading about explorers and their expeditions was how I came
Speaker 1: to understand some of the perils that region is facing now.
Speaker 1: My hope is that by listening to the daring adventures
Speaker 1: and complex personalities of the past, we all learn to
Speaker 1: care more about the present and future Arctic. Caring about
Speaker 1: something is the first step towards protecting it and we
Speaker 1: need to include everyone in that story. An inescapable fact
Speaker 1: of polar exploration is that it was conducted mainly by Westerners,
Speaker 1: who were mainly white and mainly men. Many explorers left
Speaker 1: a harmful legacy among the native communities they encountered and
Speaker 1: places they went. Because of that, people who aren't in
Speaker 1: this privileged group might feel like the story of exploration
Speaker 1: isn't theirs or has no relevance to their lives. But
Speaker 1: climate change in the Arctic affects everyone, and only collectively
Speaker 1: can we try to stop it. We must tell stories
Speaker 1: that are more inclusive and about why the Arctics, past, present,
Speaker 1: and future is important, so everyone is engaged in protecting
Speaker 1: the natural heritage of our planet. The quest for the
Speaker 1: North Pole is more than the people who tried to
Speaker 1: reach it or succeeded in conquering it. It's a doorway
Speaker 1: through which we can examine our own history and human nature.
Speaker 1: It's a symbol for the human desire for knowledge and
Speaker 1: the struggle to understand ourselves. It reveals our shortcomings and
Speaker 1: urges us towards action. Whether we learn from the past
Speaker 1: and take action now is the choice we face. The
Speaker 1: quest for the North Pole is hosted by Me Cat Long.
Speaker 1: This episode was researched by Me and Carrie Wolf and
Speaker 1: written by Carry Wolf, with fact checking by Austin Thompson.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang. The
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Dylan Fagin. The show is edited by
Speaker 1: Dylan fa Again. Thanks to our experts Andrea Pitzer, p J. Cappellotti,
Speaker 1: Susan Kaplan, and Kristen Lydra for transcripts, a glossary, and
Speaker 1: to learn more about this episode, visit Mental flaws dot
Speaker 1: com slash podcast. The Quest for the North Pole is
Speaker 1: a production of I heart Radio and Mental Flaws. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
Speaker 1: podcasts m M. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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