WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.020 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.020 --> 00:00:03.710 align:middle line:90% Questions. 00:00:03.710 --> 00:00:06.690 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.690 --> 00:00:07.770 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:07.770 --> 00:00:11.220 align:middle line:84% How do you record and how do you shift frequencies down 00:00:11.220 --> 00:00:14.340 align:middle line:84% into human range with ultrasonic? 00:00:14.340 --> 00:00:15.660 align:middle line:90% Can you repeat the question? 00:00:15.660 --> 00:00:17.940 align:middle line:84% The question is, how do I actually 00:00:17.940 --> 00:00:20.430 align:middle line:84% go about the process of recording 00:00:20.430 --> 00:00:22.920 align:middle line:84% these ultrasonic sounds and how do they 00:00:22.920 --> 00:00:28.080 align:middle line:84% become dropped or brought down into our human hearing range. 00:00:28.080 --> 00:00:31.510 align:middle line:84% The microphones that I use are my own invention. 00:00:31.510 --> 00:00:32.490 align:middle line:90% In fact, I'll use that. 00:00:32.490 --> 00:00:35.100 align:middle line:84% This is an occasion to talk about them just 00:00:35.100 --> 00:00:37.770 align:middle line:90% as a general principle. 00:00:37.770 --> 00:00:43.080 align:middle line:84% These are all handmade out of commonly found materials. 00:00:43.080 --> 00:00:45.930 align:middle line:84% I have sort of four basic principles 00:00:45.930 --> 00:00:49.350 align:middle line:84% that I use in the transducer designs that I build. 00:00:49.350 --> 00:00:52.680 align:middle line:84% They have to be cheap enough that virtually anyone can 00:00:52.680 --> 00:00:53.910 align:middle line:90% build them. 00:00:53.910 --> 00:00:57.150 align:middle line:84% They have to be, oh, I'd say 85%, 00:00:57.150 --> 00:01:00.720 align:middle line:84% 90% as effective as their equivalent scientific 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:02.580 align:middle line:90% instrumentation. 00:01:02.580 --> 00:01:04.920 align:middle line:84% They have to be easy enough to be built 00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:06.720 align:middle line:90% by children and young adults. 00:01:06.720 --> 00:01:10.300 align:middle line:90% 00:01:10.300 --> 00:01:14.250 align:middle line:84% And there's a fourth one that I don't remember. 00:01:14.250 --> 00:01:16.890 align:middle line:90% It'll come to me. 00:01:16.890 --> 00:01:20.430 align:middle line:84% Basically, things that can be found. 00:01:20.430 --> 00:01:26.910 align:middle line:84% Home Depot, RadioShack, easily derived materials. 00:01:26.910 --> 00:01:30.090 align:middle line:84% None of the transducer systems to record any of these sounds 00:01:30.090 --> 00:01:32.970 align:middle line:84% that you've heard tonight cost, the most expensive of them 00:01:32.970 --> 00:01:37.340 align:middle line:90% cost maybe $35 to build. 00:01:37.340 --> 00:01:41.460 align:middle line:84% The ultrasonic microphones are probably the most expensive. 00:01:41.460 --> 00:01:44.750 align:middle line:90% They cost the $35 to build. 00:01:44.750 --> 00:01:46.940 align:middle line:84% And it's simply using a principle 00:01:46.940 --> 00:01:50.120 align:middle line:84% that was patented by Crown Microphones. 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:52.490 align:middle line:84% Patent is now run out, which is what's called a boundary 00:01:52.490 --> 00:01:55.190 align:middle line:90% microphone principle. 00:01:55.190 --> 00:01:59.570 align:middle line:84% They're very cheap because the basic transducer 00:01:59.570 --> 00:02:03.770 align:middle line:84% system costs around $27 ordered from an electronic parts store. 00:02:03.770 --> 00:02:05.690 align:middle line:84% It took me a few months of research. 00:02:05.690 --> 00:02:09.169 align:middle line:84% I had an intuition that small tiny hearing aid 00:02:09.169 --> 00:02:12.740 align:middle line:84% transducers would propagate into the ultrasonic range. 00:02:12.740 --> 00:02:14.690 align:middle line:84% And I did finally track one down, 00:02:14.690 --> 00:02:17.810 align:middle line:84% where the challenge amongst electronic designers is 00:02:17.810 --> 00:02:20.390 align:middle line:84% to eliminate all that high frequency information, 00:02:20.390 --> 00:02:22.910 align:middle line:84% but I wanted it and it was a very cheap way of doing it. 00:02:22.910 --> 00:02:25.310 align:middle line:84% By mounting it in this particular principle, 00:02:25.310 --> 00:02:30.080 align:middle line:84% I can create a 6 dB increase in sensitivity, which is 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:32.360 align:middle line:90% very dramatic for a microphone. 00:02:32.360 --> 00:02:33.830 align:middle line:84% But it makes something very cheap, 00:02:33.830 --> 00:02:35.480 align:middle line:84% but it also has a characteristic that 00:02:35.480 --> 00:02:38.840 align:middle line:84% other ultrasonic microphones don't 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:42.020 align:middle line:84% have and ultrasonic microphones tend to be very expensive 00:02:42.020 --> 00:02:45.560 align:middle line:84% instruments in the $4,000 to $6,000 range. 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:47.450 align:middle line:84% They're all highly directional, you've really 00:02:47.450 --> 00:02:50.210 align:middle line:84% got to point them at the source, whereas my design is 00:02:50.210 --> 00:02:52.968 align:middle line:84% omnidirectional, which is why in the bat recordings 00:02:52.968 --> 00:02:55.010 align:middle line:84% you can hear all these beautiful deflections that 00:02:55.010 --> 00:02:58.970 align:middle line:84% are occurring off of the rock crevice surfaces 00:02:58.970 --> 00:02:59.870 align:middle line:90% within the Canyon. 00:02:59.870 --> 00:03:02.330 align:middle line:84% The secondary echoes and things which 00:03:02.330 --> 00:03:04.220 align:middle line:84% are able to be produced because these 00:03:04.220 --> 00:03:07.010 align:middle line:90% are omnidirectional devices. 00:03:07.010 --> 00:03:08.930 align:middle line:84% The process of dropping them down, 00:03:08.930 --> 00:03:11.060 align:middle line:84% however, is a much more expensive process. 00:03:11.060 --> 00:03:15.110 align:middle line:84% That requires a computer, which can just simply change 00:03:15.110 --> 00:03:19.580 align:middle line:84% the sample rate so that I can drop them down, maybe 10 times 00:03:19.580 --> 00:03:21.950 align:middle line:84% the frequency and that, of course, 00:03:21.950 --> 00:03:24.110 align:middle line:84% also stretches them 10 times longer. 00:03:24.110 --> 00:03:27.830 align:middle line:84% Any of the bat sounds you heard, the actual events are occurring 00:03:27.830 --> 00:03:32.990 align:middle line:84% in 1/10 the time frame that you're actually hearing, 00:03:32.990 --> 00:03:35.480 align:middle line:84% way above our particular hearing range. 00:03:35.480 --> 00:03:37.970 align:middle line:84% I wouldn't say that I've addressed it as a research 00:03:37.970 --> 00:03:40.580 align:middle line:84% question, but I certainly have thought about it 00:03:40.580 --> 00:03:43.380 align:middle line:90% as an inspiration. 00:03:43.380 --> 00:03:44.940 align:middle line:84% The mockingbird piece, for instance. 00:03:44.940 --> 00:03:46.700 align:middle line:84% One of the things that really inspired 00:03:46.700 --> 00:03:50.540 align:middle line:84% that was research done on how many generations 00:03:50.540 --> 00:03:54.060 align:middle line:84% of mockingbirds, not generations in the sense 00:03:54.060 --> 00:03:57.710 align:middle line:84% of reproductive generations, but how many sequences 00:03:57.710 --> 00:04:00.170 align:middle line:84% of mockingbirds have been tracked 00:04:00.170 --> 00:04:03.200 align:middle line:84% to respond to a stimulus repeated 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:05.990 align:middle line:84% in another mockingbird, picks that up and then repeats it, 00:04:05.990 --> 00:04:08.390 align:middle line:84% and it's been tracked to as many as maybe seven 00:04:08.390 --> 00:04:11.390 align:middle line:84% mockingbirds that will pick up on some stimulus 00:04:11.390 --> 00:04:12.390 align:middle line:90% and continue that. 00:04:12.390 --> 00:04:16.160 align:middle line:84% So the idea here that really excited me 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:18.980 align:middle line:84% was this notion of sending a signal 00:04:18.980 --> 00:04:21.890 align:middle line:84% into the physical environment, the natural environment. 00:04:21.890 --> 00:04:24.980 align:middle line:84% Sort of like the stone and the ripples 00:04:24.980 --> 00:04:28.430 align:middle line:84% in the pond in which I could imagine, 00:04:28.430 --> 00:04:31.550 align:middle line:84% and these were done in San Diego, 00:04:31.550 --> 00:04:38.570 align:middle line:84% that I could imagine somewhere in Florida 20 years later, 00:04:38.570 --> 00:04:41.480 align:middle line:84% there's some mockingbird making square waves that 00:04:41.480 --> 00:04:45.530 align:middle line:84% had no idea where they came from, but had been passed along 00:04:45.530 --> 00:04:47.420 align:middle line:84% as an oral tradition in that fashion. 00:04:47.420 --> 00:04:51.380 align:middle line:90% 00:04:51.380 --> 00:04:53.720 align:middle line:84% Besides that, the question of scaling, 00:04:53.720 --> 00:04:57.770 align:middle line:84% both in terms of evolution and in terms of sound, 00:04:57.770 --> 00:04:59.850 align:middle line:90% is a growing question. 00:04:59.850 --> 00:05:01.880 align:middle line:84% It's something that's kind of just 00:05:01.880 --> 00:05:05.010 align:middle line:84% at the threshold of how we deal with some of these things. 00:05:05.010 --> 00:05:09.380 align:middle line:84% And it's a fascinating observation 00:05:09.380 --> 00:05:12.440 align:middle line:84% to see how these sound production mechanisms repeat 00:05:12.440 --> 00:05:15.212 align:middle line:84% themselves over and over at different levels of scale. 00:05:15.212 --> 00:05:16.670 align:middle line:84% It's one of the things that I think 00:05:16.670 --> 00:05:20.000 align:middle line:84% is the clue to the recording that I played of the bats 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:20.690 align:middle line:90% in Mexico. 00:05:20.690 --> 00:05:23.870 align:middle line:84% And you could hear what is apparently 00:05:23.870 --> 00:05:25.940 align:middle line:90% an amphibian croaking. 00:05:25.940 --> 00:05:28.400 align:middle line:84% Well, you also have to imagine that 10 times 00:05:28.400 --> 00:05:31.850 align:middle line:84% higher in frequency in much, much shorter. 00:05:31.850 --> 00:05:34.760 align:middle line:84% And yet, those principles, the repetition 00:05:34.760 --> 00:05:36.982 align:middle line:84% of the generative principles and mechanisms 00:05:36.982 --> 00:05:39.440 align:middle line:84% that keep repeating themselves throughout the natural world 00:05:39.440 --> 00:05:41.850 align:middle line:84% scale really well in all sorts of ways. 00:05:41.850 --> 00:05:46.100 align:middle line:84% So if you take birds and you slow them way, way down 00:05:46.100 --> 00:05:47.900 align:middle line:84% in frequency and time, they begin 00:05:47.900 --> 00:05:50.210 align:middle line:84% to sound like whales and vice versa. 00:05:50.210 --> 00:05:52.070 align:middle line:84% You take the sounds of humpback whales 00:05:52.070 --> 00:05:54.780 align:middle line:84% and you speed them up and shorten them. 00:05:54.780 --> 00:05:57.110 align:middle line:90% They sound virtually like birds. 00:05:57.110 --> 00:06:03.380 align:middle line:84% So the sorts of mechanisms and how the ecological adaptation-- 00:06:03.380 --> 00:06:05.840 align:middle line:84% adaptive mechanisms function in order 00:06:05.840 --> 00:06:10.670 align:middle line:84% to tear us to create differentiation of envelope 00:06:10.670 --> 00:06:13.880 align:middle line:84% of pitch and amplitude, how do things 00:06:13.880 --> 00:06:17.930 align:middle line:84% establish communication through a dense fabric of other life. 00:06:17.930 --> 00:06:20.330 align:middle line:84% And that's one of the really big burning questions 00:06:20.330 --> 00:06:21.830 align:middle line:84% that we're just starting to look at, 00:06:21.830 --> 00:06:24.320 align:middle line:84% most bioacoustic research out of necessity 00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:28.190 align:middle line:84% has focused primarily upon single species behaviors 00:06:28.190 --> 00:06:30.300 align:middle line:90% or interspecies behaviors. 00:06:30.300 --> 00:06:33.350 align:middle line:84% And one of the new frontiers is to really ask 00:06:33.350 --> 00:06:35.390 align:middle line:84% the larger question, what sorts of things 00:06:35.390 --> 00:06:37.590 align:middle line:84% are occurring in terms of species wise 00:06:37.590 --> 00:06:41.670 align:middle line:84% and within an ecology of sound that has significance. 00:06:41.670 --> 00:06:45.420 align:middle line:84% It's an ongoing frustration for anyone 00:06:45.420 --> 00:06:46.780 align:middle line:90% that does this kind of work. 00:06:46.780 --> 00:06:48.360 align:middle line:90% It's just the nature of things. 00:06:48.360 --> 00:06:52.600 align:middle line:84% There are very few quiet places anywhere in the world. 00:06:52.600 --> 00:06:54.630 align:middle line:84% And of course, it is the nature of sound 00:06:54.630 --> 00:06:58.500 align:middle line:84% that, since we, unlike the bats, don't have shutters 00:06:58.500 --> 00:07:03.720 align:middle line:84% on our ears, our way of dealing with the constant barrage 00:07:03.720 --> 00:07:07.980 align:middle line:84% of sound is a kind of psychological and cognitive 00:07:07.980 --> 00:07:11.070 align:middle line:84% control mechanism where we shove our oral perception 00:07:11.070 --> 00:07:12.463 align:middle line:90% off into the background. 00:07:12.463 --> 00:07:14.130 align:middle line:84% And even though we are perceiving things 00:07:14.130 --> 00:07:16.260 align:middle line:84% and processing that as information by the brain 00:07:16.260 --> 00:07:19.620 align:middle line:84% actively, our conscious awareness 00:07:19.620 --> 00:07:22.140 align:middle line:90% often pulls away from that. 00:07:22.140 --> 00:07:26.430 align:middle line:84% So any of us, as we go about our business during the day, 00:07:26.430 --> 00:07:28.710 align:middle line:84% we shut out the sounds of airplanes. 00:07:28.710 --> 00:07:31.170 align:middle line:84% We shut out the sounds of all of these things, 00:07:31.170 --> 00:07:33.600 align:middle line:84% and it's something that when you have 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:38.220 align:middle line:84% extremely sensitive microphones attached to a recording device 00:07:38.220 --> 00:07:43.860 align:middle line:84% and you're desperately trying to pick up the natural soundscape, 00:07:43.860 --> 00:07:46.620 align:middle line:84% it's a constant, constant frustration. 00:07:46.620 --> 00:07:50.850 align:middle line:84% It's something that a colleague, the [INAUDIBLE] Bernie Krause, 00:07:50.850 --> 00:07:53.855 align:middle line:84% has sort of generalized, because one 00:07:53.855 --> 00:07:55.980 align:middle line:84% of the things you find constantly nowadays that you 00:07:55.980 --> 00:07:59.970 align:middle line:84% didn't find many, many years ago, with the sounds of cows 00:07:59.970 --> 00:08:00.900 align:middle line:90% everywhere. 00:08:00.900 --> 00:08:05.940 align:middle line:84% Even if the planes and human motors aren't annoying you, 00:08:05.940 --> 00:08:06.857 align:middle line:90% the cows are. 00:08:06.857 --> 00:08:08.940 align:middle line:84% So he just sort of generically refers to all of it 00:08:08.940 --> 00:08:12.210 align:middle line:90% as cow shit. 00:08:12.210 --> 00:08:15.540 align:middle line:84% But it's a problem even at the scale 00:08:15.540 --> 00:08:18.480 align:middle line:84% of, I remember doing recordings in Africa 00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:23.310 align:middle line:84% a couple of decades ago, I was doing some work for hire 00:08:23.310 --> 00:08:24.900 align:middle line:84% for the London and San Diego zoos 00:08:24.900 --> 00:08:27.630 align:middle line:84% to do water record sounds of water whole habitats 00:08:27.630 --> 00:08:32.409 align:middle line:84% that were going to be used in some really interesting ways. 00:08:32.409 --> 00:08:37.110 align:middle line:84% And I remember coming out in Hwange, the second largest game 00:08:37.110 --> 00:08:40.409 align:middle line:84% park in Africa, after days of travel 00:08:40.409 --> 00:08:42.990 align:middle line:84% out into some remote site in a Land Rover 00:08:42.990 --> 00:08:47.220 align:middle line:84% and getting out to these remote, just fantastic waterhole 00:08:47.220 --> 00:08:49.830 align:middle line:84% habitats rich with all this diversity of wildlife. 00:08:49.830 --> 00:08:52.530 align:middle line:84% And all of this is going on and I set up my microphones 00:08:52.530 --> 00:08:55.137 align:middle line:84% and I put my headphones on, and I'm hearing all of this. 00:08:55.137 --> 00:08:57.720 align:middle line:84% But in the background I can hear this little thump thump thump 00:08:57.720 --> 00:08:59.178 align:middle line:84% thump thump thump thump thump thump 00:08:59.178 --> 00:09:02.430 align:middle line:84% sound that I had no idea what this possibly could be. 00:09:02.430 --> 00:09:03.730 align:middle line:90% And I tracked it down. 00:09:03.730 --> 00:09:06.360 align:middle line:84% And it turns out that in many of those game parks, 00:09:06.360 --> 00:09:12.930 align:middle line:84% because of there being an imposed area where 00:09:12.930 --> 00:09:14.970 align:middle line:84% the wildlife would normally, and their migration 00:09:14.970 --> 00:09:17.250 align:middle line:84% pathway seasonally to find water, 00:09:17.250 --> 00:09:19.380 align:middle line:90% would move in tremendous range. 00:09:19.380 --> 00:09:22.770 align:middle line:84% That they're now isolated into much more constrained 00:09:22.770 --> 00:09:24.660 align:middle line:90% territory. 00:09:24.660 --> 00:09:30.240 align:middle line:84% And that sound were the actual sound of kerosene driven pumps 00:09:30.240 --> 00:09:32.910 align:middle line:84% that operate all year round to bring water 00:09:32.910 --> 00:09:35.670 align:middle line:84% from the aquifer up to these natural, otherwise 00:09:35.670 --> 00:09:37.020 align:middle line:90% natural waterholes. 00:09:37.020 --> 00:09:40.800 align:middle line:84% In the absence of that technology, 00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:43.075 align:middle line:84% a lot of the wildlife wouldn't survive. 00:09:43.075 --> 00:09:44.700 align:middle line:84% So it's one of the things that I became 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:46.830 align:middle line:84% aware of very early on during this kind of work 00:09:46.830 --> 00:09:53.580 align:middle line:84% that, what we often ascribe this characteristic of wilderness 00:09:53.580 --> 00:09:57.150 align:middle line:84% to aspects of the world we live in, 00:09:57.150 --> 00:10:02.220 align:middle line:84% it's really more accurately described as global park, 00:10:02.220 --> 00:10:05.740 align:middle line:90% even game parks in Africa. 00:10:05.740 --> 00:10:08.460 align:middle line:84% That's how seriously we do affect and constrain 00:10:08.460 --> 00:10:09.390 align:middle line:90% the natural world. 00:10:09.390 --> 00:10:13.350 align:middle line:84% And it's a mixed thing, because in many ways, 00:10:13.350 --> 00:10:16.860 align:middle line:84% it raises that question of, just what is 00:10:16.860 --> 00:10:18.480 align:middle line:84% our responsibility of maintenance 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:21.030 align:middle line:84% and is this something that we're imposing 00:10:21.030 --> 00:10:23.850 align:middle line:84% or something where we have so already altered 00:10:23.850 --> 00:10:26.430 align:middle line:84% the fabric of the natural world that it actually 00:10:26.430 --> 00:10:29.940 align:middle line:84% necessitates our intervention to keep it alive. 00:10:29.940 --> 00:10:33.090 align:middle line:84% And it's very much the metaphor, I used to think about that. 00:10:33.090 --> 00:10:35.790 align:middle line:84% There was a case, I can't remember the names of back 00:10:35.790 --> 00:10:38.580 align:middle line:84% in the Renaissance, they were, I think, English. 00:10:38.580 --> 00:10:45.510 align:middle line:84% Alchemists, a couple that, so much of alchemy 00:10:45.510 --> 00:10:48.550 align:middle line:84% involved almost kind of yogic practice. 00:10:48.550 --> 00:10:50.460 align:middle line:84% And they had learned how to subvert 00:10:50.460 --> 00:10:54.630 align:middle line:84% their own autonomic nervous system around their breathing 00:10:54.630 --> 00:10:55.890 align:middle line:90% cycle. 00:10:55.890 --> 00:10:59.700 align:middle line:84% And they thought this was an extraordinary achievement 00:10:59.700 --> 00:11:02.220 align:middle line:84% that they could consciously stop their breathing 00:11:02.220 --> 00:11:06.270 align:middle line:84% and they got so good at it that they both died in their sleep 00:11:06.270 --> 00:11:08.640 align:middle line:90% when they stopped breathing. 00:11:08.640 --> 00:11:13.020 align:middle line:84% They had learned how to shut off the autonomic function, 00:11:13.020 --> 00:11:16.650 align:middle line:84% but once they did so, they couldn't go back. 00:11:16.650 --> 00:11:19.440 align:middle line:84% And that's, I think, an interesting metaphor 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:21.780 align:middle line:84% for the nature of where we stand in relationship 00:11:21.780 --> 00:11:28.380 align:middle line:84% to the planetary and ecological diversity and richness. 00:11:28.380 --> 00:11:34.410 align:middle line:84% Well, the bark beetle recordings were a major watershed event 00:11:34.410 --> 00:11:35.920 align:middle line:90% in my life. 00:11:35.920 --> 00:11:39.720 align:middle line:84% It started with simply asking the question 00:11:39.720 --> 00:11:43.350 align:middle line:84% in the midst of the massive die off 00:11:43.350 --> 00:11:46.620 align:middle line:84% that was occurring near where I live, Santa Fe, New Mexico. 00:11:46.620 --> 00:11:54.750 align:middle line:84% And the piñon die off was so dramatic that it took me 00:11:54.750 --> 00:12:00.210 align:middle line:84% a while before I realized just that this was not a seemingly 00:12:00.210 --> 00:12:01.425 align:middle line:90% singular event. 00:12:01.425 --> 00:12:04.050 align:middle line:84% And as I began to look into it, as many people did at the time, 00:12:04.050 --> 00:12:07.350 align:middle line:84% that most bark beetle infestations really 00:12:07.350 --> 00:12:10.530 align:middle line:84% have been characterized as due to local drought conditions. 00:12:10.530 --> 00:12:12.270 align:middle line:84% And the thing that became very clear 00:12:12.270 --> 00:12:14.580 align:middle line:84% is how many local drought conditions were all 00:12:14.580 --> 00:12:18.030 align:middle line:84% occurring simultaneously across the entire Western United 00:12:18.030 --> 00:12:20.370 align:middle line:90% States and Western Canada. 00:12:20.370 --> 00:12:24.330 align:middle line:84% We're now facing a situation where, 00:12:24.330 --> 00:12:28.410 align:middle line:84% a very good example of this is, despite all the bark 00:12:28.410 --> 00:12:32.430 align:middle line:84% beetle devastation you've seen in Arizona, Colorado, virtually 00:12:32.430 --> 00:12:35.850 align:middle line:84% every Western State and every Western province in Canada, 00:12:35.850 --> 00:12:39.360 align:middle line:84% we're now beginning to see something that is, 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:41.790 align:middle line:84% the evidence suggests, a fossil record. 00:12:41.790 --> 00:12:43.350 align:middle line:84% Evidence even suggests that we've 00:12:43.350 --> 00:12:47.430 align:middle line:84% never in Earth's history, never experienced 00:12:47.430 --> 00:12:50.700 align:middle line:84% something at the scale of insect infestation in North America 00:12:50.700 --> 00:12:53.970 align:middle line:84% that we're now witnessing due to the bark beetles. 00:12:53.970 --> 00:12:56.730 align:middle line:84% And that's only one of many species of insects and tree 00:12:56.730 --> 00:12:59.130 align:middle line:84% invasive insects in particular which are having 00:12:59.130 --> 00:13:02.430 align:middle line:90% really devastating effect. 00:13:02.430 --> 00:13:06.330 align:middle line:84% Just one species, the mountain pine beetle, 00:13:06.330 --> 00:13:08.640 align:middle line:84% which has tended to be one of the most destructive 00:13:08.640 --> 00:13:12.750 align:middle line:84% in North America, has, in the past two years, 00:13:12.750 --> 00:13:16.320 align:middle line:84% managed to breach the Rocky Mountains 00:13:16.320 --> 00:13:19.260 align:middle line:84% into the boreal forests of Canada. 00:13:19.260 --> 00:13:22.600 align:middle line:84% They've been in British Columbia for quite a while. 00:13:22.600 --> 00:13:24.540 align:middle line:84% British Columbia conservatively will probably 00:13:24.540 --> 00:13:29.280 align:middle line:84% lose 70%, 80% of its entire forest conifer mass 00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:33.390 align:middle line:90% within another decade easily. 00:13:33.390 --> 00:13:35.010 align:middle line:84% Those beetles have made it across. 00:13:35.010 --> 00:13:37.890 align:middle line:84% They are now beginning to enter into the Jack 00:13:37.890 --> 00:13:41.320 align:middle line:84% pine, a genome of trees which have never faced them 00:13:41.320 --> 00:13:43.320 align:middle line:84% because the beetles never could have established 00:13:43.320 --> 00:13:47.340 align:middle line:84% a complete life cycle before because it was too cold. 00:13:47.340 --> 00:13:51.610 align:middle line:84% The recent research paper just published fairly last year, 00:13:51.610 --> 00:13:54.990 align:middle line:90% in fact, in Nature by Kurz. 00:13:54.990 --> 00:13:59.580 align:middle line:84% The computer modeling shows that just this one 00:13:59.580 --> 00:14:02.310 align:middle line:84% species of beetle, the amount of tree death 00:14:02.310 --> 00:14:06.360 align:middle line:84% that it will most likely be responsible for by the year 00:14:06.360 --> 00:14:10.650 align:middle line:84% 2020, the amount of carbon release 00:14:10.650 --> 00:14:14.660 align:middle line:84% from dead trees and subsequent fires, 00:14:14.660 --> 00:14:18.230 align:middle line:84% will completely negate all the attempts 00:14:18.230 --> 00:14:22.670 align:middle line:84% of the Canadian government to conform to the Kyoto Protocol. 00:14:22.670 --> 00:14:26.030 align:middle line:90% One species of beetle. 00:14:26.030 --> 00:14:31.210 align:middle line:84% There are 7,500 species of bark and ambrosia beetles worldwide. 00:14:31.210 --> 00:14:34.480 align:middle line:84% Now most of those are nowhere near that destructive, 00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:38.410 align:middle line:84% but what's, I think, is an important thing 00:14:38.410 --> 00:14:40.300 align:middle line:84% and what I've dedicated the last for years, 00:14:40.300 --> 00:14:43.330 align:middle line:84% one of the things I've dedicated a lot of my life to, 00:14:43.330 --> 00:14:48.820 align:middle line:84% is trying to understand this aspect of what 00:14:48.820 --> 00:14:50.980 align:middle line:84% this physicist is collaborating, and I have coined 00:14:50.980 --> 00:14:53.200 align:middle line:90% as entomogenic climate change. 00:14:53.200 --> 00:14:59.420 align:middle line:84% The potential for agents that small to, 00:14:59.420 --> 00:15:04.700 align:middle line:84% once activated, that it's almost insignificant what 00:15:04.700 --> 00:15:06.860 align:middle line:90% the original causal agent was. 00:15:06.860 --> 00:15:10.760 align:middle line:84% That they can take on a positive feedback of behavior 00:15:10.760 --> 00:15:13.640 align:middle line:84% that decouples from the original causal agent. 00:15:13.640 --> 00:15:16.880 align:middle line:84% And I think this is one of the real pressing problems we face 00:15:16.880 --> 00:15:20.690 align:middle line:84% in terms of climate change issues, 00:15:20.690 --> 00:15:24.690 align:middle line:84% is that we focus a great deal on modeling the things we can see. 00:15:24.690 --> 00:15:27.830 align:middle line:84% But what we're facing are extraordinary changes 00:15:27.830 --> 00:15:30.580 align:middle line:90% which are yet to be seen. 00:15:30.580 --> 00:15:32.550 align:middle line:84% And micro ecological events which 00:15:32.550 --> 00:15:36.030 align:middle line:90% can have devastating impacts. 00:15:36.030 --> 00:15:38.310 align:middle line:84% It's driven me into this whole direction, 00:15:38.310 --> 00:15:42.630 align:middle line:84% we have no control systems for bark beetles, nothing. 00:15:42.630 --> 00:15:47.250 align:middle line:84% You can spray pesticides on a few trees prophylactically 00:15:47.250 --> 00:15:50.430 align:middle line:84% but even there like in Santa Fe, the piñons where people tried 00:15:50.430 --> 00:15:52.980 align:middle line:84% to protect their property and they sprayed prophylactically 00:15:52.980 --> 00:15:55.890 align:middle line:84% to avoid the infestation of beetles, 00:15:55.890 --> 00:15:57.310 align:middle line:90% the beetles didn't invade. 00:15:57.310 --> 00:15:59.280 align:middle line:84% But now two years later, virtually every one 00:15:59.280 --> 00:16:03.170 align:middle line:90% of those trees has mistletoe. 00:16:03.170 --> 00:16:05.090 align:middle line:84% So we've altered the hormonal structure 00:16:05.090 --> 00:16:08.480 align:middle line:84% to make them vulnerable to other kinds of parasitic agents. 00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:11.270 align:middle line:84% So the only other thing we've had 00:16:11.270 --> 00:16:15.860 align:middle line:84% are pheromone traps, and that's just immensely controversial 00:16:15.860 --> 00:16:18.020 align:middle line:84% because in many cases, the evidence would suggest 00:16:18.020 --> 00:16:19.820 align:middle line:84% that where we place these traps trying 00:16:19.820 --> 00:16:22.520 align:middle line:84% to move the beetles to some location for collection, 00:16:22.520 --> 00:16:26.540 align:middle line:84% actually increases infestation in some other domain 00:16:26.540 --> 00:16:27.900 align:middle line:90% of the forest. 00:16:27.900 --> 00:16:30.960 align:middle line:84% So we really don't have an answer. 00:16:30.960 --> 00:16:33.890 align:middle line:84% So the hope is that we can come up with something. 00:16:33.890 --> 00:16:37.640 align:middle line:84% And it's looking very good, at least at the level of tree 00:16:37.640 --> 00:16:41.060 align:middle line:84% to tree protocol, although something unforeseen just like 00:16:41.060 --> 00:16:42.350 align:middle line:90% with the pesticides may occur. 00:16:42.350 --> 00:16:44.990 align:middle line:84% I have this sort of terrible science fiction 00:16:44.990 --> 00:16:48.620 align:middle line:84% vision in my mind that we'll put sounds into these trees 00:16:48.620 --> 00:16:51.050 align:middle line:84% and the beetles will be controlled 00:16:51.050 --> 00:16:53.060 align:middle line:84% and instead we'll stimulate tree growth 00:16:53.060 --> 00:16:56.150 align:middle line:84% and mutate them into some form of something that 00:16:56.150 --> 00:17:04.250 align:middle line:84% looks much more like, what was the one tree is walking around. 00:17:04.250 --> 00:17:06.020 align:middle line:84% But that's the nature of something, 00:17:06.020 --> 00:17:08.359 align:middle line:84% that I can just sort of maybe summarize 00:17:08.359 --> 00:17:10.220 align:middle line:84% some of this in terms of what I think 00:17:10.220 --> 00:17:11.605 align:middle line:84% is a very important insight, it's 00:17:11.605 --> 00:17:13.730 align:middle line:84% something I mentioned in the radio interview, which 00:17:13.730 --> 00:17:17.210 align:middle line:84% is that one of the most important aspects I think, 00:17:17.210 --> 00:17:20.180 align:middle line:84% of the discourse and the interaction that can occur 00:17:20.180 --> 00:17:22.670 align:middle line:84% between art and science, is something that, again harking 00:17:22.670 --> 00:17:27.610 align:middle line:84% back to Gregory Bateson pointed out in very articulate terms. 00:17:27.610 --> 00:17:30.380 align:middle line:90% 00:17:30.380 --> 00:17:33.200 align:middle line:84% And what I believe, that science is probably 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:36.410 align:middle line:84% the most powerful survival adaptation humans have ever 00:17:36.410 --> 00:17:37.640 align:middle line:90% come up with. 00:17:37.640 --> 00:17:40.880 align:middle line:84% It allows us to apply our extraordinary rational 00:17:40.880 --> 00:17:45.710 align:middle line:84% capacities to an understanding of exclusive mechanisms 00:17:45.710 --> 00:17:47.270 align:middle line:90% within the natural world. 00:17:47.270 --> 00:17:51.230 align:middle line:84% That is something incredibly important. 00:17:51.230 --> 00:17:54.320 align:middle line:84% But the dark side of that is that we 00:17:54.320 --> 00:17:57.530 align:middle line:84% tend to apply the nature of the rational mind in such a way, 00:17:57.530 --> 00:18:01.190 align:middle line:84% as Bateson said, that we see only partial arcs 00:18:01.190 --> 00:18:04.400 align:middle line:84% of the circuits of contingency that 00:18:04.400 --> 00:18:09.070 align:middle line:90% link the entire fabric of life. 00:18:09.070 --> 00:18:12.660 align:middle line:84% And in so doing, we often invent things like pesticides 00:18:12.660 --> 00:18:15.220 align:middle line:90% to solve a local problem. 00:18:15.220 --> 00:18:19.030 align:middle line:84% And in many cases, that's the only thing we can do. 00:18:19.030 --> 00:18:21.720 align:middle line:84% But in the absence of an understanding and appreciation 00:18:21.720 --> 00:18:24.780 align:middle line:84% of these larger circuits of contingency, 00:18:24.780 --> 00:18:27.660 align:middle line:84% when we only see the partial arcs, 00:18:27.660 --> 00:18:34.710 align:middle line:84% the danger is that the rational mind turns pathogenic. 00:18:34.710 --> 00:18:37.230 align:middle line:84% It is, I believe, the role of art 00:18:37.230 --> 00:18:41.640 align:middle line:84% to remind us of these larger circuits of contingency. 00:18:41.640 --> 00:18:46.590 align:middle line:84% To bring us back to a more sometimes archaic and sometimes 00:18:46.590 --> 00:18:49.875 align:middle line:84% richer, deeper understanding of the richness 00:18:49.875 --> 00:18:51.250 align:middle line:84% of interrelationship relationship 00:18:51.250 --> 00:18:53.310 align:middle line:90% that life depends upon. 00:18:53.310 --> 00:18:56.190 align:middle line:90% So this is not an either or. 00:18:56.190 --> 00:19:00.210 align:middle line:84% And I'm one person who does not in any way 00:19:00.210 --> 00:19:04.650 align:middle line:84% believe that the dance between metaphor and mechanism 00:19:04.650 --> 00:19:07.350 align:middle line:84% that occurs between the Arts and Sciences 00:19:07.350 --> 00:19:11.720 align:middle line:90% is some kind of dichotomy. 00:19:11.720 --> 00:19:15.400 align:middle line:84% But its posts as such, I think it's a false dichotomy. 00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:17.710 align:middle line:84% And in fact, what we need to understand 00:19:17.710 --> 00:19:20.860 align:middle line:84% is that there are distinct social roles for each 00:19:20.860 --> 00:19:22.300 align:middle line:90% of these human activities. 00:19:22.300 --> 00:19:25.070 align:middle line:84% And they are completely complementary. 00:19:25.070 --> 00:19:27.250 align:middle line:84% And not only are they complementary, 00:19:27.250 --> 00:19:31.660 align:middle line:84% but they serve as a necessary critique, a check and balance 00:19:31.660 --> 00:19:34.010 align:middle line:90% upon each other's activities. 00:19:34.010 --> 00:19:37.060 align:middle line:84% So when Bateson said, in the closing quote 00:19:37.060 --> 00:19:40.360 align:middle line:84% that "Rigor alone is paralytic death, 00:19:40.360 --> 00:19:43.690 align:middle line:84% imagination alone is insanity," I 00:19:43.690 --> 00:19:48.070 align:middle line:84% think that's one of the most accurate statements where 00:19:48.070 --> 00:19:51.100 align:middle line:84% we arrive at the end of the 20th century 00:19:51.100 --> 00:19:54.300 align:middle line:84% and the beginning of the 21st century. 00:19:54.300 --> 00:19:56.790 align:middle line:90% I think we have to end there. 00:19:56.790 --> 00:19:57.680 align:middle line:90% So thank you. 00:19:57.680 --> 00:20:08.550 align:middle line:90% 00:20:08.550 --> 00:20:13.760 align:middle line:84% And in good American fashion, we have things that you can buy. 00:20:13.760 --> 00:20:15.000 align:middle line:90%