Episode Transcript

Penny Vlahos
This experiment that we’re doing on our planet has accelerated things so fast that I can’t believe that we’re going to see this in our lifetime – this is 15 years, 20 years away.

Tan Deleon
On behalf of the members of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, welcome to this episode of Learning and Living STEMM in Connecticut, the podcast of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. My name is Tan Deleon. I’m an elected member of the Academy and serve on its governing council. For more information about the academy, please visit www.ctcase.org – that’s C-T-C-A-S-E dot O-R-G. I am pleased to have as our guest, Epipandi “Penny” Vlahos. professor and Associate Head Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut. The topic is “A Changing Arctic,” and we’ll be talking about the rapid change underway in the Arctic Ocean with projections that by 2040, it will experience its first ice-free September. What will be the impacts of these rapid changes on global and regional climates? Welcome Penny.

Penny Vlahos
Hello, thanks for having me!

Tan Deleon
Can you share a bit about yourself, please?

Penny Vlahos
Sure. I’m originally from Toronto, Canada. My background is in chemical engineering from the University of Toronto. In my senior year there I took a class on environmental thermodynamics and was extremely inspired by it and ended up deciding that that’s what I wanted to keep pursuing. So following that, I did my PhD at the University of Massachusetts looking at carbon cycling, specifically the carbon that was exported from continental shelves in the Mid-Atlantic Bight into the open ocean. And since then, have been working on similar projects around the world for different kinds of compounds. And, of course, have done a lot of work in the Arctic as well.

Tan Deleon
Wow, yeah, that’s, that’s a pretty impressive resume. So so let’s let’s jump right into this a bit. What are the changes anticipated in the Arctic Ocean?

Penny Vlahos
Yeah. So we know that this is a very sensitive region where we can see signals before we may be able to measure them averaged out over the entire planet. So the Arctic and the poles are a bit of a canary in the cage. And right now, the rate of warming in the Arctic is twice as much as it is for the average around the entire planet. So again, we can see the changes there earlier than we would if we were looking at, say, at the equator or somewhere else. And that’s insightful because it’s an early warning call. It’s also an indicator of some of the changes that we might be anticipating ahead.

Tan Deleon
So what is – I’ve heard this term – about sea ice or multi-year sea ice? What is multi-year sea ice and what purpose does it actually serve?

Penny Vlahos
Okay. Yeah, excellent. So in the Arctic Ocean – the Arctic is like the opposite, in a sense of what the Antarctic is. The Antarctic is a continent that’s surrounded by ocean and has a little bit of sea ice that all melts in the summer. The Arctic Ocean is an ocean surrounded by land. And so yeah, and so it is equal and opposite in a way and there all of that permanent ice cap that we’ve associated with the North Pole is actually not land at all. It’s all multi-year ice. So it’s ice that always is there, it freezes and thaws with annual cycles, but it’s significantly thicker than the annual ice. Annual ice gets to be about a meter thick that we see freezing, forming, and then completely thawing. And the multi-year ice, it can be about four meters thick, it can get a lot thicker because when two four-meter thick slabs of ice or plates of ice hit together, they can actually converge and get a little thicker, you can see it going up to 15 meters even. But that’s because of collision, but the growth and the thawing that it undergoes on annual cycles are usually limited to about four meters. Now, that is a holding space for cooling our planet, just like when we put ice in the cooler, right? So as long as you have that regular ice supply up there, you have a really great sink for heat. And it’s working for us. And that’s what has been happening, it’s accepting or absorbing this extra heat that’s been added to the planet. However, the concern is, and it’s going to happen, that we’re losing that buffer. So that annualized will still be there. But the multi-year ice, which is like our long-term cooling is going to go extinct. And one of the things that we really wanted to understand in our research is, well, can we at least get the chemical record of the multi-year ice to see what we’re losing? How it differs from the annual ice that is going to be our future in our generation? And what does this mean for the chemistry changes in the Arctic as this progresses?

Tan Deleon
Wow, that’s a that’s a great way to put it where you say it’s like your ice in your cooler. Because like you don’t really think about it – yeah – you don’t think about it from that perspective. But it actually makes a lot more sense to me now. But wow. So it is vital source that if it does not happen, because otherwise, it’s going to just be in an accelerated warming trend?

Penny Vlahos
That’s right. So all the latent heat that can absorb the latent heat, of course, is that supplies that heat sink. That’s what we’re losing all that energy that the warming would transfer into just melting ice instead of changing temperature.

Tan Deleon
I see. Okay.

Penny Vlahos
Yeah, that’s going away.

Tan Deleon
I see. Okay, so no more melting of the ice… now it’s just going to warm the ocean because there’s no ice to melt.

Penny Vlahos
Exactly. Well, we’re still going to have it in the winter because there will be no sun will still get the annual ice. Okay. But that is, imagine the changes because as you lose that, you know that ice in your cooler, and now the water in the cooler starts to warm up. And so over time, the Arctic Ocean is start is going to – it’s not going to have that protective shield of ice over the surface – so it’s just going to be storing more energy, which means it’s going to be heating up. And of course that translates to a thinner and slightly different nature of annual ice that will be forming.

Tan Deleon
My goodness.

Penny Vlahos
I know. And in our generation, that’s the crazy part, you know? Usually, these kinds of things we’re used to hearing about ice ages and geological timescales. But we have, you know, this experiment that we’re doing on our planet has accelerated things so fast that I can’t believe that we’re going to see this in our lifetime… this is 15 years, 20 years away.

Tan Deleon
Wow. I’m a bit nonplussed just by what you’ve said. It’s pretty stark, and it’s a good reminder that we really need to act now and not wait. So, I’m assuming that, you know, if you’re getting this warming, the ecosystems are going to change and how is that going to affect I guess the the biodiversity up there? Is that going to affect it?

Penny Vlahos
Yeah, absolutely. So okay, so this is the complicated part. We don’t know what the changes are going to be exactly. Because all of these changes have positive feedbacks and negative feedbacks to them. So the final result is all going to be about how fast each one of these changes is happening in either direction and which one dominates. So for example, one of the other changes that’s going to be happening is, you know, a lot of you’ve all heard about the loss of permafrost, right? And the idea was that well, as the permafrost melts, then we’re going to have more inputs of soil detritus, organic matter, and nutrients going into the system. Right? But a recent study has looked at the freshwater systems going into the Arctic Ocean. And the Arctic Ocean, again, it’s very small. So this is why it’s also a great place to study this canary in the cage, because it’s only 3% of the ocean volume, but 10% of the CO2 uptake on the planet, and it gets 10% of the freshwater inputs to the planet. So you can study freshwater changes, and you can study acidification because of the uptake of CO2, with pretty high signals up there. So that recent study found that – they looked at over more than 10 years, what were the nutrient profiles going in? What were the carbon flows going in? And, basically, it wasn’t exactly what would be expected that it didn’t actually have more nutrients going in because those nutrients even though there were more that were freed up and released from the permafrost, they get taken up really quickly.

Tan Deleon
Okay.

Penny Vlahos
So yeah, so it meant that that means that you’re going to have a different ecology balance because the organisms that are going to be able to take that stuff up really quickly are going to win until they deplete them. And there are going to be shifts, and the winners and the losers. The other thing is, that acidification is going to be significant in the Arctic. And that’s a place where you would see it again faster than you’ll see it in the average open ocean. And we don’t know, because with the warming waters, that’s going to lead to zonation and shifting. So species that normally would have been found at lower latitudes are now going to either seasonally migrate up there because they can, and the waters are going to be warmer. They’ll probably find a way to not stay there or have to adapt to the very harsh winter darkness. But there will be shifts. And there’ll be you know, biological winners and losers. So a lot of that is just unknown. But one of the reasons we’re doing this work, our research, is to try to understand what the intensity of the freshwater mouth is going to be now. What that delivers – what that means – to the surface ocean in terms of nutrients, organisms, and so on. And then try to help to figure out and make these predictions for the next, you know, 50 to 100 years of what we might anticipate to see. So that’s really where our research wants to go. To try to prepare for those things, right? To say that this train has left the station, we know that these are the changes that are happening and that we think these are the implications. So even though we’ve got really improved global circulation models and climate models, the poles are one of the places where we don’t have a lot of data. And they’ve been pretty stable for a long time. So the dynamics of those responses are some of our biggest unknowns right now. So it’s going to be important to constrain those over the next decade.

Tan Deleon
Okay, so just just a couple of things that you said that, just want to make sure I clearly understand. When you mentioned the permafrost and the annual ice? Those are obviously two different things.

Penny Vlahos
Yes.

Tan Deleon
Okay.

Penny Vlahos
So the annualized that I’ve been referring to, is the ice that forms in the ocean…

Tan Deleon
Okay.

Penny Vlahos
… in the Arctic Ocean, when the fall comes, and there’s no light anymore. And then that it’s annual, because by September, the following year, between July and September it melts. Because it can – it’s one, it’s only a meter thick, and that’s just enough, it gets just enough heat over the summer to melt the whole thing. And then there’s the land ice and the permafrost that’s in the adjacent, you know, land that surrounds – remember, it’s surrounded by this – right – as opposed to the Antarctic. So the Antarctic, because it’s surrounded by ocean, it’s more buffered or more protected because water is a really good heat sink, so it has really good heat capacity. So it kind of slows down the changes you might see in the Antarctic. The Arctic’s changes, and land very quickly responds to heat changes, so it’s going to translate into rapid changes in the Arctic.

Tan Deleon
And then you mentioned zonation. So is that like, you’re talking about the zones that animals normally travel to?

Penny Vlahos
Right, yeah, exactly. So, you know there – who are the winners and losers, I think is going to be a very important story over the next 10 years.

Tan Deleon
Okay. So the projection for the future Arctic is, I mean, you’re looking 10 years out?

Penny Vlahos
10 years out is going to be – we’re gonna see huge changes over the next 10 years. And, of course, ideally, you want to be able to project to the next 50 to 100 years, right?

Tan Deleon
Sure.

Penny Vlahos
But we also don’t know what our CO2 trajectories are going to look like, and how they’re going to shift. So based on just the changes we have right now, the next you know, 40/50 years are pretty set.

Tan Deleon
Okay.

Penny Vlahos
And then how we respond with alternative energies and things like that will help make the projections far beyond that.

Tan Deleon
So regardless of what they’re doing right now with COP28 and all this, it’s the next 50 years are pretty much predestined. And then whatever happens with COP28, and all the other climate solutions, that will affect the next 50 years after that.

Penny Vlahos
Yes.

Tan Deleon
Wow!

Penny Vlahos
Exactly. And COP28, they called it a bit of a success, because they were able to put the word fossil fuels in there. But it really is non-binding…

Tan Deleon
Sounds like a Band-Aid.

Penny Vlahos
Yeah, it’s a Band-Aid. And it doesn’t really take us much further. Because, again, it’s not binding. So countries are free to respond as they wish to it. And that’s, you know, that’s the way the UN works, that, you know, you decide what the best way forward is, and you can’t force anybody into any actions. But what I do think it’s doing is at least getting people to think about reducing their CO2 emissions, right from the source to do more treatment on-site. Ideally, what you’d want to see is a closed system that every manufacturer, or every source, releases air and water the way they found it.

Tan Deleon
Sure. Okay.

Penny Vlahos
And as opposed – because the way we exist, right now, in our current practices, we put the cost – that a manufacturer of energy or of a product – puts the cost of the environmental economy onto society. It’s not integrated into their operational costs.

Tan Deleon
Okay.

Penny Vlahos
So in a way, they get an environmental freebie.

Tan Deleon
I see.

Penny Vlahos
So ideally, what you’d want to see is that our standards change so that manufacturers really have a zero-sum game, and so that their net footprint is zero on the environment. That should be logically you know, they’re benefiting from the air and water that they’re using. Right? And so having an obligation to put it back, you know, the way it was, is reasonable. It is just that in our past, right now, legislative-wise, CO2 wasn’t considered a pollutant. So it’s not, you know, obviously, if they’re putting lead or mercury, that’s something that they did have to address a little bit in the past. But I think, understanding what we call, putting it back in a safe or putting it back safely, has to change a little bit. And obviously, CO2 emissions are, are part of that.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, I think fundamentally, I don’t think society really, truly comprehends that the next 50 years are literally predestined. I think people still think that you’re going to do a bunch of things now and it’s gonna change stuff over the next – like in the short term – right? I don’t think we really understand that. No, this is done like, this is it.

Penny Vlahos
Exactly. So a good example of that was the ozone problem, right with the CFCs in the 80s. And even though they were – that was 85 – and even though they were phased out, we’re still seeing the recovery today, right? It’s still not back to where it was before. So we did that damage over a very short period of time. But the recovery takes a long time. And that was one of our probably best success stories as a human species because we reacted to that quickly when we realized what the problem was. It took only like five / six years for industry to find alternatives and for the compounds to be legislatively phased out. The CO2 – we haven’t been as successful with CO2. So you know, phasing that out still remains a challenge and really it’s going to be up to alternative energy sources. You know, there’s so many factors, obviously, that you know about that or go into these choices, but hopefully alternative energy technologies and this recognizing CO2 as a pollutant in emissions, in stack emissions, so that people do have to remove it. Or, you know, the directions forward, that’s what we need to do.

Tan Deleon
Okay, so it’s, you know, some of the, like carbon capture technologies, is that something that’s viable? I’ve heard, I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it bantered around, and I’m not really too sure exactly how, how viable it really is.

Penny Vlahos
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there are a lot of these people thinking, “Well, okay, we’ve made this mess. Now let’s capitalize on it, we can come up with these carbon capture technologies and remove it from the atmosphere.” But that puts us a bit great risk for you know, greenwashing. That they say, yeah, because it’s so dilute by the time it’s made it to the atmosphere, that removing it from the atmosphere is a very inefficient process. And then you have to find a sink to put it in. I mean, the best example is probably the carbon dioxide removal that they do in Iceland, where they actually put it into mineral form. So it’s going into like 1000s and million-year timescale burial. But it’s, you know, the analogy is, you’ve got the tap on the water is running, and you’re mopping the floor without turning on turning off the tap. And, so you can’t, you know, pulling it from the atmosphere while the smokestacks are still putting in so much just doesn’t make sense. Taking it from the atmosphere after you close the taps, and make them remove their CO2 from their emissions. Now, that’s a reasonable next step. But the first step should be turning off the tap.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, that would that would logically make sense. I guess. I mean, and I’m kind of putting you on the spot here. You may not be able to answer this. And that’s perfectly fine. But you mentioned you mentioned, you know, the ozone layer and how we responded so quickly to that issue. Why do you think we’re not responding so quickly to the current circumstances? Like, it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Penny Vlahos
Yeah, I’ll tell you because unfortunately, first of all, I think it’s urgency. With ozone, it was so urgent that they realized that within a couple of years, people were going to be burned, you know, getting skin cancer all over the place. And, that put people in a panic and it was relatable because it was going to be a global problem, where within a few years, people were going to start and they did see elevated skin cancers, right? And all the products that were related to that as well.

Tan Deleon
And people capitalize…

Penny Vlahos
On that, too. Right? So this is the irony. So you know, now, no, we’re gonna ruin the ozone, then we’re gonna get you all to wear sunscreen. But we’re going to fix the ozone. Thank goodness, they did turn off the tap, right? So they repaired the ozone. But then the other added thing is okay, now everybody wears sunscreen, and now you need vitamin D supplements. So buy this and this instead of just make your vitamin D, you know? So, we really need to be educated. We’re so removed from our actions and our daily lives to some of these real problems and stories. And it’s so tragic, right? Because people are very well-meaning, all of us, you know, are adding to these problems without knowing without realizing that we’re part of them. So, you know, we’re looking for people who are looking for leadership, honesty, and education. And hopefully, with this information age, that’s what we can do, right? But you know, you’ve seen how it can be misused for other purposes. And even in the ozone, there was a lot of industry kickback, they tried, but they denied the ozone science for they delayed it for a good five years. So it wasn’t a perfect story there either. We just were able to actually contradict and go back and prove you know, what the actual science was. And it was acute enough that it was successful in the sense that people responded, listened, and responded. Co2 is less than a five-year problem. And most, you know, electoral cycles are on five-year cycles, so you can get In a way with not dealing with it, and not having any consequences in your short term. Our consequences are long-term. And it’s hard for people, to invest in that.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, it’s it’s a, um, just I’m just blown away. Because and, you know, I think having you speak on this, you know, in this forum is one way of, you know, providing that education to the public, because, I mean, I was under a different impression as to what was going on. And, you know, you’ve just sent me straight, I feel like, you know, and I had no clue that, you know, it was 50 years and that’s it, you know, what I mean? Like, you expect, oh, yeah, we can fix it in the next 10 years, or 20 years, do X, Y, and Z. And again, I keep repeating myself, but I really think like, that’s, the public just keeps thinking, oh, yeah, we can change it in the next 10 years and the next 20 years, because it’s, it’s not predestined, it’s, you know, we can fix everything. Right? And, and, you know, we obviously can’t, so…

Penny Vlahos
We’re doing a geoengineering experiment right now. So, there are a lot of observations that we need to be making to understand the whole system because we’re going to learn from this as well. But, I mean, we know, the train has left the station. And, again, I don’t mean that you know, it’s too late to do anything. Of course, still it’s going to be a lot worse than 100 years if we don’t do anything. So what we’re supposed to do now is, accept that we haven’t responded fast enough. So there are going to be changes. And we kind of know what those changes are going to be some of them. Some of the ecosystem level stuff, that’s so complicated, we don’t know, like the Arctic System ecosystem and stuff like that. But with the right technologies and changes, you know, maybe our great-grandchildren can experience something much better.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, I truly hope so and, you know, I feel like it may get compounded by the fact that, you know, there’s probably going to be, if it’s melted, there may be greater shipping traffic going that way. Right?

Penny Vlahos
Absolutely!

Tan Deleon
And how is that going to affect the ecosystem even… it’ll make it worse?

Penny Vlahos
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So there are, you know, other interests… there are going to be winners and losers, right? Every time there’s a change, like, people who live in some of these more extreme environments are going to be experiencing more moderate climates, right? And, and for the first time now, there’s going to be complete open shipping channels across the Arctic. So yes, that’s also going to be exploited, for sure. Now, there is talk right now of trying to design electric ships that have lower footprints and things like that. And those things are underway right now. So will it be done in the next 10 years?

Tan Deleon
So yeah, so if there’s, you know, the addition of shipping traffic, etc. And I heard Inklings that there may be resource exploration up there potentially. Is that true or…

Penny Vlahos
Sure. Absolutely. It’s actually it’s already going on right now. Norway is taking advantage of it. Russia is taking advantage of it. And the US is taking advantage of it, there’s a lot of exploration. Because imagine that the whole area has been avoided because it’s a hard area to work in, and now it won’t be, right? So people are making plans for that too. The other big concern associated with this is, you know, that winners and losers analogy that there are going to be… imagine our history now, we’ve already seen these problems, but we’re gonna have displaced populations associated with this. And that’s another level of complexity that we’re going to be facing too over the next few decades.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, no, absolutely. Maybe, maybe we can leverage the plight of the polar bear. Right? Like, you know, because I mean, people around Christmas time, especially, speaking of Christmas time, holiday season, like people associate, you know, very well with polar bears, and, you know, all their plight and stuff and, you know, maybe that can be the, you know, the symbol to try to help, you know, save the Arctic hopefully, or something,

Penny Vlahos
Hopefully, and the other thing that I think is very interesting is that there has been evidence to – and this is the zonation – that polar bears and grizzly bears have started to converge, and they’re actually mating.

Tan Deleon
Uh-oh.

Penny Vlahos
Yeah. And so they’re new bears that have been sighted that have been products of that overlap of the two species.

Tan Deleon
Wow, okay.

Penny Vlahos
Yeah. So they don’t know what to call them growler bears or…

Tan Deleon
Yeah, yeah. It’s like the liger, right? So it’s like…

Penny Vlahos
Yeah, exactly!

Tan Deleon
A bigger bear. Yeah, that’s stark implications. And who knows what’s gonna what that’s going to do for, you know, the new the new ecosystem that comes about? But, man, this has been very, very informative.

Penny Vlahos
Thanks. It’s changing rapidly. And there’s going to be a lot of knowledge gained and research done over the next 10-20 years, I think, to try to figure all of this out.

Tan Deleon
So in the next year, like, what’s your, what are you guys trying to do with this with this research? So we can try to, you know, get some more immediate gains, potentially? Is there one shining thing that you guys are trying to put forth? Or are there several, a couple of things that you’re trying to put forth?

Penny Vlahos
We’re still analyzing the results from the cruise we were just on in the eastern Arctic. We were there in May and June on the Swedish icebreaker, the Oden, with a great group of people. And a lot of the countries that surround the Arctic, like Sweden and Norway, have just signed an agreement to prioritize polar research. Because it’s so important to their economy, and they have to understand what’s happening. But another thing we’re very concerned about right now, is this carbon dioxide removal, the CDR wave that’s happening, and the concern that people think, oh, it’ll all be okay if we can continue doing what we’re doing if we use the CDR technology to take it out of the atmosphere. And that’s not the right way to go. Like, again, you’ve got to turn off the tap. And, yeah, so we’ve just created a little educational series for the American Chemical Society with my graduate students, Lauren Barrett and Samantha Rush. And so we’re trying to do outreach like that to spread the word, in addition to, of course, the science that we’re doing.

Tan Deleon
Okay. Yeah, so definitely, some steps being taken – folks that are listening in – and, there’s big opportunity too for you, you know, to try to help stem your your carbon footprint, as well. So I guess, just just for our listeners out there, is there, like one piece of advice that you would have for them? Just based on your expertise?

Penny Vlahos
Yes. My advice would be to keep learning, and listening, and using as many diverse news sources as you can. And, and talking to people about these things. We have much more impact than we think we have. We’re not as helpless as it might seem sometimes.

Tan Deleon
Sure. No, no, that’s very, very good advice. And, and I will, I will heed that advice myself. So just on a lighter note, I guess, you know, I heard you’d like to travel, obviously, you like to travel a lot. So what are some other things you’d like to do for fun when you’re not super busy working on your research?

Penny Vlahos
So I, yeah, adventure, I guess. And so one of the things that I like is to work travel into these projects because there’s nothing better than to be alongside the people that live somewhere, and to understand how they’re living and what problems they’re facing. So a lot of the projects that we do, you know, I always say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Yeah. And that’s how I feel like these things are even though if they’re exhausting, you just feel like your footprint or your ripple effect in the world is as as good as you can make it. And so I do a lot of that and then my family’s involved in it too, well take my kids. They’re a little bit older now, but my daughter was our field photographer when we’re in one of our Sri Lankan projects. And my son as well, as they were talking about these things all the time, they’ve joined me in a lot of these places. And that’s fun because, of course, they’re the next generation, right? So educating them about these things. So and then, other fun? Do you want to know what my hobbies are?

Tan Deleon
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s always nice to, you know, because when you think of someone of your caliber, you know, people kind of remove the human aspects of like, the things that, like, yeah, you’d like to have fun, you’re not always working all the time. So it just helps for people to say, oh, you know, and they can associate with you a lot a lot better.

Penny Vlahos
Yeah. Okay, so yeah, I think I try to do a lot of things that are like mindful things that like my parents or grandparent, old fashion, what the world would have done to keep it will keep life simple. So we do a lot of just walking around. Because we can’t walk to village square anymore to get our milk and cheese. So we do a lot of hiking and I crochet.

Tan Deleon
Oh, nice… knit anything good?

Penny Vlahos
I’m making Christmas presents right now for my kids, but I’m not gonna say what they are. Because it’s too early because they haven’t opened them yet. Yeah. So yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. And reading, of course, but yeah, because that’s a little escapism, too. But yeah, I try to sometimes go back and do a lot of things that are very hands-on, that our ancestors would then, because in our age, we do things, everything’s moving so fast. So we’re in front of screens all the time. So I try to, you know, balance it off by doing things that are totally not like that.

Tan Deleon
Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense – balances. The Earth seeks balance, you know, yeah, human beings should seek balance as well.

Penny Vlahos
And yeah, even things like the crocheting it’s so funny because it’s, it’s a simple thing that calms you down. But it’s not like watching a film or a movie, because you’re actually you’re doing something active, not passive. And I think that’s something we’re losing. Because we have so much passive involvement in things, and it’s always information at us as opposed to producing and contributing to so when I’m done with that, you know, I actually feel proud that I have something to show for it. As opposed to I don’t know what I just did for the last two hours, you know, yeah, I just saw a lot of flashing or something like that, which, you know, I think that comes at a cost over time. Yeah, just like our Co2. It’s accumulating. Yeah. So you accumulate all this passive angst, it probably makes people more stressed, because they’re not doing, you know, some of the things that they were meant to do. Well, that we’ve evolved to do.

Tan Deleon
Sure. No, it certainly certainly makes sense. And, and there’s a lot of great advice in the things that you’ve said, and…

Penny Vlahos
And I want to be a grandmother too, but I’m not gonna I’m not gonna rush my kids on that one, too. But yeah, that’s the next big mountain to climb. I hope, I hope.

Tan Deleon
Well, I’m sure I’m sure you will. You’ve you’ve you’ve submitted many mountains, and I’m sure you will definitely get to that one as well. So with that, I would like to thank our guest, Epipandi “Penny” Vlahos. Thank you so much, Penny.

Penny Vlahos
Thank you!

Tan Deleon
For those living in Connecticut, and others tuning in from outside our state, thank you for sharing your research and for helping us to understand the impacts of the rapidly changing Arctic Ocean. I encourage you to subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, or YouTube and visit the Academy’s website again at w-w-w dot C-T-C-A-S-E dot O-R-G to learn more about our guests, read the episode transcript, and access additional resources, as well as to sign up for the CASE bulletin.