WEBVTT

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(Sound of iceberg crumbling
and running into the ocean)

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What you just witnessed was an iceberg
about the size of Manhattan

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breaking off a cliff in Greenland
to drift out and melt into the ocean.

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The Arctic region is melting
as it's heated twice as fast

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as the rest of the planet,

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and science every day brings us news,
alarming news, from the North.

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Science tend to always bring us
bad news from the North.

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Just yesterday it was announced

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that this April is the warmest
we've ever experienced.

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In certain parts of Greenland,

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it was not one degree warmer,
not two degrees warmer,

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it was nine and a half degrees warmer
than normal April's would be.

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So I think the Arctic has become a symbol
of global change and pending disaster.

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I was myself born in Greenland
a very long time ago.

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I came from Greenland to Denmark
and the U.S. to become a scientist,

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to study geology with the one purpose
of being able to come back

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and do my fieldwork every summer
in the vast Arctic nature.

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I think it's kind of misleading

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that the Arctic has gotten this emblem
of being a symbol of disaster

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because the reason why we,
as scientists, go into the Arctic

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is because the Arctic is the most
wonderful region on the planet.

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It is the most beautiful place
and every scientist I know,

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they go to the Arctic
with that one particular reason:

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to be in this beautiful place.

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In contrast to what we see, those of us
who live in the Arctic, of course,

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industries see another property
of the Arctic: they see opportunity.

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The heating of the Arctic
is supposed to give access

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to new mineral resources;
oil, gas, gold, fish, whatever,

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and the business plan seems to be,

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"Let us go and exploit and scavenge
the last drop of everything

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that is left in that last place on Earth

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that has not yet
been destroyed by humankind."

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I think the question
that I would like to pose today is:

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Is that really the best idea
we can come up with

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and do exactly the same
that has destroyed everywhere else

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in the last place
that has not been destroyed yet?

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My suggestion is that we cannot risk
to do those vast expanses

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of undestroyed nature
that the Arctic still possesses,

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and we have to use our research capacity
to try and come up with something

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that is more smart, and more sustainablem
and more long-term benefit for mankind.

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I suggest that instead of doing
what we had done everywhere else,

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we should do something new,

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and we should find out
what are the true values of the Arctic.

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I have a specific suggestion,

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a method that I think could be a way
of using the melting of the Arctic region

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to actually fight problems
otherwhere on the planet.

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One of the major problems we have
beside the climate change, of course,

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is inequality and food security.

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If we look at the wealth on Earth, we know
it's unevenly distributed on the planet,

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some regions are rich, some are poor.

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The rich regions, which are not
what's shown on this map,

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but could as well have been,
this map shows soil quality.

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It shows where the crops that,
as coming from the fields,

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are richest on the planet.

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You see that richness couples completely
with where the soil was good.

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The reason for this is not
that the soil has always been like that,

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it is because the soil was replenished
with minerals during the last ice age.

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Ice came down from the north,
scoured the rocks,

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turned it into a fine powder
and dumped it in front of the glaciers

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and fertilized the grounds across
North America, Europe, and Asia,

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and that's where everything
that feeds humankind today grows.

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On the other hand,
if you look into the tropics,

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you have red barren soils
with very poor fertility,

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and that is the reason
why people in the tropics are poor,

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why we have malnutrition
and undernutrition,

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because these soils are basically
impossible to grow crops on.

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My suggestion is very simple.

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In Greenland, where we have the last bit
of the ice cap in the Northern Hemisphere,

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and it's melting right now,
it's been melting forever,

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but now it's melting faster,

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it's flushing out billions of tons
of very finely ground rock flour

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that contains all the mineral nutrients
that are missing in the tropics.

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The idea is that we take that mud,
this material from Greenland,

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transferred to the tropical regions
and spread it on the ground,

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where it will re-fertilize the soil
and provide for new wealth

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and new development in these countries.

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At the same time the Arctic region

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is also, of course, needing
development and new trades

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but rather than doing the same again
as we have done everywhere else,

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we could do something
to develop the Arctic

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that at the same time does something good
in the rest of the world.

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My suggestion is again
that we take the mud

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coming out of the glaciers in Greenland
and take it to the tropics,

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because the mud that you find in Greenland
is unlike any other mud you find.

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The mud you have in the Amazon,
the Mississippi, or any other major river,

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is what's leftover after all the nutrients
have been sucked out of the ground,

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and the leftovers
are flushed down the river.

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Whereas in Greenland, it has,
intact all the minerals

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that plants need to grow in.

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In Greenland this is dumped by the rivers
in the fjords, the valleys, and the lakes,

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and it's very easy to take it
without making a large industry

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without having
any chemical treatment, anything.

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You basically just take up this stuff
and take it to where it's needed.

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That, of course, begs a new question:

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Is that really a good idea to take
millions of tons of something

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from someplace on Earth
and take it to some other part of Earth?

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Isn't that another climate threat?

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Is that not something that's going
to make our problem even greater?

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My suggestion is that it's not,
because the good news is

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that the mechanism by which
the nutrients are released

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from this material to the plants
is a process we call "weathering":

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weathering is when something, minerals,

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react the carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere.

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We take this, spread it
on the tropical soils.

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What happens is that it will start
reacting the CO2 from the atmosphere

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and draw it out of the atmosphere.

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We can calculate that
by transporting this material

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from the Arctic to the tropics,

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we actually emit less CO2 in the process

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than we consume by the reaction
of this material with the atmosphere.

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My suggestion is that Greenlandic
glacier mud can be a solution

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to problems like hunger
and poverty in the tropics,

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also it will lower the incentive

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to cut rainforest to make
new land for agriculture.

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Therefore I will suggest

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that the Arctic could be
a source of good news finally.

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I will say that Greenland
is not called "Greenland" for nothing,

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it's actually the place
that could make parts of the Earth

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that is now barren green
as we see Greenland is here.

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So it's time for good news from the North.

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(Applause)