Yesterday I found myself measuring the lengths of individual wood frog eggs on the computer at the Studies Center. To be clear, these eggs come in groups of hundreds, and they look like tiny black circles, around 1 – 2 millimeters long. Measuring them feels like a never-ending ordeal, and I was ready to throw in the towel after the first twenty eggs. Why can’t we just eyeball the whole egg clutch and decide that they look relatively big or small? I thought to myself.
But that is not how science works. Science is slow, careful, deliberate, patient. Scientists are not quick to jump to conclusions or make sweeping pronouncements, even after all the data has been collected and assessed. I realized this by watching and listening to the researchers here at the Churchill Northern Studies Center, many of whom have been meticulously collecting data for decades without knowing or presupposing what it will add up to.
Knowing about the cautious, meticulous nature of science makes it all the more alarming when we hear Arctic scientists talk about the impacts of climate change. They don’t generalize or jump to conclusions. They don’t talk about the world ending or tell anecdotal stories about hungry polar bears. They simply lay out the data that has been carefully collected over many years, and that alone is shocking: The extent, thickness, and duration of sea ice, glaciers, ice caps, permafrost – all of it is falling off the charts at record rates.
These scientists might seem crazy, with their endless egg-measuring, tadpole-weighing, and dip-netting, but they know what’s up. They’re not just watching the environment change – they’re documenting concrete evidence of it for the world to see.
~Natasha Weidner
climatechangeatthearcticsedge 