Extreme Environments, Climate Change, and Permafrost with Dr. Kimberley Miner

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Dr. Kimberley Miner, Scientist and Systems Engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab about Extreme Environments, Climate Change and Permafrost.   Read her full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes:
2:05 Nic & Laura talk about the Guinness Book of World Records
14:27 Permafrost
17:26  Climate Change
20:10 Extreme Environments

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Dr. Kimberley R. Miner at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkimberleyminer/ 

Guest Bio:

Dr. Kimberley R. Miner is a Scientist and Systems Engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in California, where she researches and forecasts climate risks. Her work has taken her to the most extreme environments in the world- from Antarctica to Mt. Everest- where her team secured a Guinness World Record for identifying the highest altitude pollutants. Dr. Miner’s research has been highlighted by CBS, the New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, and Sports Illustrated. Before coming to NASA, she worked with the Department of Defense in Washington DC, assessing climate risks to national interests.

Dr. Miner is a Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security and Co-chair of the NASA HQ Interagency Forum on Climate Risks, Impacts, and Adaptation. She is a graduate of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (MPA) and the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute (Ph.D.), where she was a Fulbright, Switzer, and Department of Defense fellow. She is a Black belt, certified Wilderness Firefighter and First Responder, and mom to a lively cattledog.

Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa

Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Nic and I discuss trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. We talk to Dr. Kimberley Miner about extreme environments, climate change and permafrost. And finally, today's and finally, brought to you by Nic, space tastes like raspberries. What?

Nic
Keep reading.

Laura
In 2009. Yes, I'm going to keep reading. In 2009, astronomers were able to identify a chemical called ethyl formate in a big dust cloud at the center of the Milky Way. Ooo, raspberry Milky Ways.  Okay, Ethyl formate is the chemical responsible for the flavor of raspberries. It also smells like rum. Interesting.

Nic
How cool is that?

Laura
The snozzberries taste like snozzberries.

Nic  
That's a good one I thought. No? Is it still too dad?

Laura
No, it's good.

Nic
Is it Dad science? Alright. Alright.

Laura 
Dad Science? Is that a new thing. I haven't heard that before.

Nic 
I just that's what I feel like whenever I do one of these.

Laura
You just made it up. Dad Science?

Nic
Yeah, I just made it. It's like when you guys don't like what I'm talking about. Space smells like raspberries. Nobody cares Dad.

[NAEP Event News]

Nic
Registration is now open for NAEP's 2022 annual conference and training Symposium on May 16. Through the 19th in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Sunny Fleming. The Environmental Conservation and Natural Resources industry lead for ESRI will be delivering a keynote address to kick off the conference. She's amazing and going to be on the show next week. So it's super fun. It's such a great interview and we're really excited for our keynote. It's going to be really great, so please check it out  at www.naep.org. We also appreciate all of our awesome sponsors and they will keep the show going. If you'd like to sponsor the show, please head over to www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com and check out the sponsor form for details. Let's get to our segment

Laura 
What would you if you had to get in the Guinness Book World Records? What what do you want to get in there for?

Nic  
Okay, there's like there's ways to get in right where it's basically like you have to be super weird, right? Like, grow your fingernails out for like 1000 years. You know, I mean like I don't want to like guy that held his arm up for like 35 years or whatever. You gotta want to be like guy who holds arm up longest that doesn't.

Laura
Right?

Nic
That's not for me. So, but I don't know, like I'm not like, I just don't learn that way. Like I get really excited about something. I'm like, This is really neat. Okay, I'm done and then move on. Right like I don't I feel like if you want to be in that book, you have to be like, I love matches. And I'm going to put the most amount of matches into my mouth more than anyone else. And that's how I get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Right and then it's just that's just not me. I'm like matches are neat. Okay, I'll see you later. I know they work now. You know what I mean? So

Laura 
Okay, so Nic is the guy who tried the most number of Guinness book of world records and failed?

Nic 
Yeah, it wasn't anywhere close. Exactly. Right. I'm like, Wait, he thought how many No, I'm not doing that takes forever. You know? Like, it just they're so far away. Like there's one like the guy who held a plank for the longest right like longest amount of time. And it was something like eight days or something ridiculous. I'm not I'm not doing that. I don't want to do it for eight minutes. So are you kidding me? So yeah, there's no there's none of those because you got to do really crazy physical feats as well. And I'm not doing one of those. So I don't know if you guys want,

Laura 
I have a question. So, how do you know so many I don't even know what's in the Guinness Book of World Record. I can imagine like, longest running distance or something and

Nic 
no,  I don't know why I know this. But you know, I had like I got a book of it when I was younger. Write a Guinness. Book of World Records. Say there you go. You're a nerd. You're like this.

Laura 
And so nobody ever thought I was nerdy enough to like. I didn't get one as a gift.

Nic  
But it was like definitely from one of my relatives. They're like, you know, it's like, like an aunt or uncle or something. Like here, here. Here's a here's the thing that we assume kids like, you know, and I mean, I looked through it so but you have to like there's like official things you have to do you have to like literally, like commission them to come out has to be interesting enough for them to want to come out and then they have to officially record the thing happening. And so yeah, bunch of weird random stuff.

Laura 
We should look to see, like what is in there for environmental stuff? Maybe there's something we could like collectively do as environmental professionals.

Nic 
Oh man, that would be crazy. I honestly don't know. Environmental experts, let's see, nope. That's not it. Goodness. But yeah,

Laura 
Oh, so you're going to look it up right now, huh.

Nic  
I'm looking at the best 10 Best environmentally friendly world records I mean, why not? I mean we're here, right. Let's see the largest solar powered boat not doing that. I'm not building anything.

Laura  
I'll go on it. Who's got that?

Nic 
It's yeah. The tour on our planet solar is apparently the name of the boat. So I don't know. I'm sure I said that wrong. But yeah, so

Laura 
how about the largest grouping of environmental professionals on that boat?

Nic 
Well, let's see in the picture. There's only six so if we get seven people. Done.

Laura 
We're two, and Kara plus, so you only need oh my god maths. How many more? It's four.for

Nic 
It's four. Yeah. Most bottles recycled by a dog.

Laura 
What? Okay, cool. I got cats. We can do cats.

Nic 
Yeah, so we could do cats but it's gonna be like one bottle. If we're lucky

Laura
It's going to take 20 years.

Nic
Yeah, if we're lucky. Cat's like, I'm not recycling this. I'll throw this away. Sure, but I'm not recycling bleep. You know, like that's the cat's. Largest collection of clothes to recycle. But that's from Yeah, it's an owner. It's a company. So that's the first thing. Just take a guess at the number of articles of clothing.

Laura
1 million.

Nic
And it's way less than that. And I realized,

Laura 
okay, collectively as a group of environmental professionals, we could do better than that. I have friends who donate and give away like 20 pieces of clothing a week.

Nic 
So yeah, we just need to get over 117,376 articles.

Laura
Easy peasy.

Nic
Yes, and I'm very excited to be part of two thirds of it. And then

Laura 
yeah, we can remember Gab was a Thrifter.  We can get her back on the show and we get.

Nic 
 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oldest alternative fuel. That's not a record. Come on. What are we doing there? That doesn't make sense. Most steel cans collected in the month was like 2.6 million. That's crazy. That's so many.

Laura
That is.

Nic
yeah, there's you can see most trees planted in an hour. It's 100 people.

Laura 
Oh, that's funny. We used to do it with seagrass.

Nic  
So maybe we can do most seagrass planted in our I don't know what the record is. Largest sculpture plastic bags is not an environmental, environmentally friendly world record. That's weird.

Laura
I don't like that one.

Nic
You know, I don't like that one either. But that's pretty much it. Those are the ones.

Laura 
okay, we can totally. So how does one like, say to Guinness, like cool. We have a new one we want to add and we're going to start with two, you know, how does that,

Nic 
I think there's like a competition like you have to like, petition for it. Like it's not like they don't just go whenever anyone's like, I'm gonna put like 18 hotdogs in your mouth and just say that it's okay. Like, you can't just you know, like, that's not a record that anybody wants, you know, it's, you got to do a lot

Laura
Well, that's probably in there.

Nic
But yeah, you're probably right. It probably is.

Laura 
Okay, we could come up with an idea. Verify it with people that we think we could do it and then submit it to Guinness, and that could be Earth Day thing next year because, you know, this year we didn't do anything too crazy.

Nic 
That would be really fun. We should try to do that. We should absolutely try to do an Earth Day Guinness record. That would be really great.

Laura 
Alright, people, we want to hear your ideas. What can we do?

Nic
Yeah, yeah, let us know.

Laura
Awesome. Well, we solved a problem today, let's get on to our interview.

Nic
All right, sounds good.

[Interview with Dr. Kimberley Miner Starts]

Nic 
Hello, and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Dr. Kimberley Miner, a climate scientist joining the show. Welcome, Kimberly.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Hi, thanks.

Nic
So can you give us the elevator pitch on the work that you're currently doing?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Sure. So I look at climate change impacts all over the planet and try to get ahead of some of the consequences of what's happening with a change in our climate system. So that looks at tipping points in different ecosystems. Sometimes I'm looking at stuff in the Arctic. But as we're using remote sensing, so there's lots of different ways to look at the problem of climate change and lots of different tools. And I tried to do a variety of methods and perspectives.

Laura
That's so cool.

Nic 
It really is. And you've kind of worked like you say you work all over the world and absolutely extreme environments from fighting wildfires to camping on glaciers, which which is super cool. Did you imagine traveling the world like that when you were a kid?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
 Oh, for sure. No, I chose this career on purpose. There's a lot of hiking and a lot of exploration. And this is exactly what I wanted to do. It took me a while to get here. It wasn't like I was a kid and I decided to be a climate scientist. But yeah, I'm very excited where I landed.

Nic 
Oh, man. So what was that journey? Like? How did you get to where you are now?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Well, I didn't want to go to college and then my godmother talked me into it. Threatened me into it. I like to say. And then I didn't want to go to grad school. So I took four years off and then decided, hey, what I really want to do is fight for the environment. So back to grad school, and then I didn't want to go for a PhD and took four more years off and worked, and then a dear friend of me who convinced me to go to PhD, was going through maps on Google Earth one day in the office and I ran into him, and he was plotting his trip to go to Mongolia and he was going to hike a bunch of different things looking for climate signals. And that was it. I was hooked.

Nic 
Oh my gosh, that's really wild. And it's it's really cool to hear and you mentioned how you've gone all over the world and all kinds of different things. I mean, I'm just gonna rattle off like the things that you've done in your in your career. You were a farmer, beekeeper, firefighter, glaciologist, climate scientist, emergency planner,  and many other things I'm sure. So you say you do this from different perspectives, how did this all kind of come together?

Dr. Kimberley Miner  
I guess for me, they're always about the same thing, which is the Earth . I have always said that I would not go out for the astronaut program. I'm really excited about the planet and living on the planet and engaging with it in a bunch of different ways. So I guess the common denominator for all of that is that they all focus on really interesting Earth Systems.

Nic 
Yeah, so there's got to be something about scientific mysteries that fascinates you, right?

Dr. Kimberley Miner  
Yeah, any kind of mystery. I'm one of those people. Who like watching the mystery shows as well. I love Sherlock Holmes, so being able to do the earth stuff that I love and the mystery stuff, which comes together in earth science beautifully. I think it's just stunning.

Laura 
Okay, Sherlock Holmes, the movies or the shows.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
No, no well the books but

Laura 
The books, okay. I forgot about those.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
If we were going to do popular culture, I would probably say the show. Those are absolutely stunning. The BBC versions.

Nic
Oh, yeah. It's great.

Laura 
Awesome. So you mentioned your godmother and the friend and these people that have been helping you know, nudge you through your your career and helping you kind of explore yourself and things that you're interested in. Do you specifically have any role models that have influenced you in your life and your career?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
I don't know what I would call them role models. I have a lot of mentors. A lot of people that I really look up to and I take their advice very, very seriously. I've been really lucky in this way. But people who are a little bit further or sometimes a lot further down the path that I want to be on are open to talking about their lives, their experiences, and open to brainstorming. You know what next steps are like for me, I think that ally ship and mentorship is really becoming an important part of my generation science experience. And I'm really trying to make it a part of Generation Z science experience as well, because that that mentorship is absolutely critical.

Laura 
Right? And I think so you mentioned earlier that you didn't want to go to school, you didn't know when you were little you wanted to be a climate scientist. I think now there could be, you know, middle school, elementary school kids who are like, I want to be a climate scientist. So do you consider yourself or ever think of how what you're doing is being a role model for younger women or kids?

Dr. Kimberley Miner  
Yeah, for sure. I'm on the AAAS If/Then ambassador. And there's 120 women who were chosen to be role models in a really lots of public pop culture locations. So on TV, we just had a huge exhibit at the Smithsonian. And we're working very, very hard to share what science is right? But it's not just sitting in a lab. Like I thought when I was little, and that anyone can do it, that science is something that everyone is able to do.

Laura
Yeah, it's great.

Nic 
Yeah. It's almost like the science diplomacy, right? You're taking what you know, and giving it out to people all over the world, really. So how do you take like what you do as a climate scientist and give that, teach that to other people who maybe hadn't thought of that perspective or hadn't thought how this influences them?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Lots of different ways. I engage in an absolutely huge amount of outreach. So I do a lot of interviews and podcasts, like these, at least once a week. Usually, I'd have multiple social media accounts, and I try to keep active with those. I've got a pretty good following on some of them. I do outreach on behalf of all the places they work. So you U Maine and NASA on their Twitter account and on their Instagram account. I do interviews, I do TV shows, so really working hard to get the message out. And that's all in addition, you know, peer reviewed publications and conferences. That are  to more of a scientific audience.

[Permafrost]

Nic  
Right, of course. And so climate science, you know, does impact the world in really unique ways. And I think one of the more fascinating ones is what's happening when we lose permafrost Do you mind kind of walk us through how that can impact everybody in the world? Because it seems like it's just so what's happening up north but that's not really true, is it?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Yeah, so the Poles are super duper important both the North and the South Pole, right. So the North Pole and Antarctica is functionally what that means, for a lot of different reasons. They keep a lot of systems going. The way that our air moves, our winds move, the ways that our ocean circulation moves, the way that some of the biotic so, animals and plants move. The poles are really a critical part. And the fact that they're frozen is a critical part of our stable climate that we've gotten used to in the human times the Holocene. So underlying, you know, 25% of the planet is permafrost, which is this frozen, soily stuff. So it's soil and leaves and sticks and dead plants and dead material. It's like, we call it substrate and just a bunch of different things that it's frozen. And it's a really, really long time ago, 2 million years ago to today, it's been there freezing. And what's happening is the more that it thaws, the more that the little microbes that live in the permafrost start to wake up and they get hungry, and they start eating all the carbon so all the plants and matter that's left in the permafrost is starting to get warmer. And when they eat it, they fart out methane, and in some cases CO2 is released as well. And that basically means that there could be, we believe there is carbon dioxide and methane CH4 gas that's being emitted from the permafrost and it can be you know, really, really old permafrost which means that it's functionally carbon from a different period from before humans.

Laura
Wow.

Nic  
Yeah, and so Okay, so it gets released and then gosh, like, what does that even mean for us long term, just just just perpetuating an even faster growing, warming of the planet? Is that what's going to happen?

Dr. Kimberley Miner  
Well, if you think about the carbon cycle that we have right now, so basically the amount of carbon that goes up into the atmosphere and the amount of carbon that comes down and goes somewhere, whether it's the oceans or plants is about equal, and then you've got humans starting to put more and more carbon into the atmosphere from fossil fuels, you know, which are functionally liquefied dinosaurs are really, really old and if you've got this additional burst of permafrost, that's a whole bunch of carbon that's not part of the current system. That now is is part of the current system. So it has a potentially destabilizing impact on the atmosphere and everything that's in the atmosphere. So all the oceans of the land the vegetation, and yeah, would have would have a warming impact if that were to occur.

[Climate Change]

Nic 
Yeah, so there you go. Do you see other issues in climate science, things that you're finding out now that we need to start addressing?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
I mean, I think that could be a whole nother day of podcast. Think there's lots of things that we need to start addressing. I think the most recent IPCC report came out and really shared the urgency that not only do we need to deal with climate change immediately, we need to start removing carbon from the atmosphere as rapidly as possible because we've already put way too much up. And something that I've been making sure folks know recently because I've running into a lot of folks that don't know is that even if we started stopped emitting carbon right now, today, we would still have a lag of emission and warming, because of the way that the natural systems deal with carbon for 30 to 40 years. So even if we stopped emitting today, we're still on a warming trajectory. Now, if you can add to that, what we keep emitting today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day. So we're definitely on a very poor trajectory right now and that is affecting and will affect everything on earth. Elephants, bees, irises, tulips that affect everything, everything on Earth

Nic 
is really incredible. I think it's one of the biggest challenges with science is it's very slow processes. And so it's like you can't see it every day. Right. So how do we get people to listen to a message that doesn't it doesn't like it doesn't seem bad right now, right? Like one degree. Changing the temperature of the earth one degree doesn't seem that but it can have really crazy effects. So how do we what's the messaging? How do we get the messaging to be where people do start taking these measures?

Dr. Kimberley Miner  
Well  you're saying it doesn't seem bad, but it seems really really bad to me. We are having stronger hurricanes every year. We're having huge flooding incidents every year. You know what we used to call 100 year floods every year. If you remember, there was a tornado recently that went through multiple states. And that was in part a function of the energy and the warmth that was in the clouds. I think, you know, there's drying in California. There's wildfires in the east, there's a heat pulse in Portland, there's a freeze in Texas. I think we're definitely seeing the consequences. And I think it's very, very easy for the general public to see what's going on. And because of that, you're definitely seeing an increase in interest to the point where like I said, I'm doing you know, at least an interview or a talk a week. to folks who are interested in finding out more about climate change and kind of what we're in for.

[Extreme Environments]

Nic 
Yeah, that's great to hear to know I have a really important question for you here. So how did you get into the Guinness Book of World Records?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Oh, that's through our Everest expedition. There we go. That's from our Everest expedition. The director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine where I'm Assistant Professor, Paul Majewski, he invited me to join their expedition that they were doing with National Geographic, and a team went up to the top of Mount Everest. And we sampled that snow for PFAS, which is Teflon and microplastics. And found it and so we got into the Guinness Book of World Records for finding plastic at the highest point on Earth, which is a little sad, but you know, also important to realize that plastic is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere now already.

Nic 
Yeah. And so how do we make sense that sounds kind of wild and crazy to think this all the way on Everest. So how do we mitigate? It was up there, right. It's up there. Now, how do we minimize the reliance on these materials? How do we mitigate the damage that we've already done?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
I think plastics are really tough one you know, plastic is pervasive now. They just found it conclusively in blood and in lung tissue of humans. We know that on every ecosystem on Earth and in our food and water. I think plastic is a really big challenge because it's not very clear yet how to biodegrade it on large scale, even though there have been some breakthroughs by some groups. I think that you know, there's a lot more movement needed in that direction. And, you know, the fact that we're still getting our heads around that it's not really recyclable. When that was kind of a misnomer. I think that there's a lot of challenges to deal with around plastic now and in the future.

Nic 
I mean, definitely, I definitely agree.

Laura 
Well, climate change, it's tough. Do you ever feel like a little daunting taken over how do you stay positive?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Oh, I don't. I don't stay positive. No it's a really daunting

Laura 
I was hoping to get some tips from you.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
No, it's a really challenging thing, but it's definitely a huge burden on me and my family, emotionally, and psychologically, to be constantly thinking about climate change and constantly dealing with it. I see it as kind of a really helping and altruistic thing to be a climate scientist, whether it's, you know, anyone working in the field, it has to take on this heavy, heavy burden of what's happening and what's going to happen. And I think we all just deal with it the best we can you know, whether it's exercising, or spending time with friends and family doing art we really love to plant trees and flowers and make sure that we're part of the solution. But yeah, no, it's a huge burden. It's an absolutely huge burden.

Laura 
Okay good, well, thanks for sharing that. I think that's probably helpful for people to hear that they're not crazy or you know, especially early on in their careers if they're feeling like oh my gosh, like this is depressing to me that they're not alone. So we do always like to talk to our guests about what they do for fun for this specific reason. And I know you've already mentioned hiking but you also sea kayak. So I was curious, because a guy, I'm good with water, but how far out do you go and then do you go to specific coasts.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Well, I went out so we got a new inflatable kayak because sometimes the big ones are hard for me to carry you know from the car down the beach and and put it in by myself. So I got an inflatable wind so I can carry it in by myself and easily go sea kayaking whenever I feel like it. I usually try to stay pretty close to the coast because this thing's a little wobbly wiggly. Also certain but it looks like a seal from you know, that makes me a tiny bit nervous.

Nic
Of course.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
I do try to skirt the coast pretty closely. And then in Maine where I went to graduate school. There's a lot of folks who like to paddle the rivers out there as well. So that's a really neat way to engage with kayaking as well.

Laura 
Cool. So Nick works for Hawaiian company, so I think you'd be interested in the Hona leuke?  I don't know how to say the

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
The Hōkūleʻa.

Laura
Yes.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Oh, the Hōkūleʻa. Sure. Okay, so the Hōkūleʻa  is a sea kayak that a bunch of Hawaiian anthropologists and nativists started working on I think, a little over 40 years ago to try and regain a lot of the history that they lost through colonialism. Because the Hawaiian used to be incredible seafarers. I'm sure a lot of people got the impression of Moana that they had incredible star navigation that was just super precise, really strong ecosystem science and ecosystem knowledge culturally embedded. And so the Hōkūleʻa is a double hulled canoe that they have now sailed multiple times to Tahiti and all over the world and they're just about to start another world tour, I think in 2024 and they are going to sail using star navigation and taking scientific measurements along the way. The whole planet.

Laura 
Wow. Okay, I'm glad I got to pull that out of you. I know it's really cool. That's awesome. So you, are you following them like on YouTube or their website or something? Or social media?

Dr. Kimberley Miner  
Well, last time they did the world tour, you can follow online. Yeah, they post regularly on social media. I think they had a mapping tool last time. And then they stopped  at a lot of institutions on the mainland of the US mainland, including like [25:43 unintelligible]. This time we're hopefully going to convince them to come visit us at JPL and UCLA, so that we can really make use of some of the excellent science that they're doing from the canoe.

Laura 
Awesome. That's really cool. That's a neat partnership that could potentially happen. And then another fun thing I saw on your LinkedIn that you received what looks like a 3D printed copy of your statue. Is that literally a statue of you?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Yeah. So the IF/THEN initiatives that I was talking about, they made statues of 120 of us, and they were premiered on the National Mall in the beginning of March and we had a huge event 1000s and 1000s people came I was answering questions about climate change in my career for eight hours a day multiple days in a row without breaks, it was very exciting. And then they were moved to the Smithsonian Museum for the month. So mine was in the Museum of Natural History for the entire month. And I'm not sure what we're going to do next with the exhibit, but I think there's a lot of interests to move it around the country.

Laura 
Yeah, that's awesome. That helps with the whole role model thing. I love it.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Yeah, that was that was the intention. And we had lots and lots of little children come by and learn about our science.

Nic 
That's amazing. It really is. And really glad you got that opportunity. Because like you say it's a way to give back. Yeah. And so Laura and I are also big travel buffs. We love to see the world and you've gotten to see so much of it. So I'm going to ask you another supremely unfair question. But do you what do you love the most about travel?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Oh, about travel? Well, it's so different now with COVID I used to love sitting in the airport. And watching people go by and just thinking thoughts, kind of, you know, getting all the energy that from the excitement that everyone was sharing. I find that a little different now. I think for me, it's just extraordinary to think that we're the only place in the universe that we know of that has life. But on this planet, we have such an incredible diversity of life. So I can go you know, eight hours away and be in a place where I don't know the language and I don't really understand the food and I don't really know the smells that well, and I just have nothing but learning. I can learn an entirely new way of thinking and being and eating and it's only 8 hours away. Which is insane.

Nic 
Yeah, So when I said I was gonna ask you an unfair question I meant to. So the second one is, do you have any favorite spots?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
Yeah, I was worried that was gonna be the question. I think. I mean, I think everywhere that I've been has been extraordinary for lots of different reasons. I think it kind of depends. Because I like things for different reasons. As far as the ecosystems go, like I usually really enjoy places because of the kinds of trees or the birds, the butterflies or you know, maybe they've got a really nice ocean inlet there. And I think that's always what drives the experience for me is I want to make sure that I'm engaging with the local ecosystem at the same time that I'm part of the human culture there.

Nic 
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's great.

Laura 
All right. This has been so much fun and we really appreciate you taking the time to come and talk to us. We know you're super busy and have so many engagements to do and people can find you everywhere. But is there anything that we didn't get to chat about that you might like to bring up today?

Dr. Kimberley Miner  
I don't think much. Just, you know, I think we talked a little bit about the Poles and how they're changing really rapidly and the most recent IPCC report, I just think there's a lot of resources for folks who are interested in learning more about the climate and climate change in general. And I hope that people are able to take advantage of that and really engage themselves so that they understand what we're looking at what we're facing.

Laura 
Yeah, that's a good point. Do you have any specific like, if you were to point somebody who wants to learn more in a direction, like any specific resources that you particularly like?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
So we have really great NASA climate change pages, and there's also a NASA kids section of NASA Climate Change. And so that's really good if you wanted to introduce littler people to what's going on, or educate yourself that the website is really excellent and we just recently updated it, so highly recommend that.

Laura 
Awesome, that's fantastic. And if people want to get in touch with you, where should they go?

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
I have a Contact Me page on my website is Drkimberlyrain.com.

Laura
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Kimberley Miner 
All right. Thanks so much for having me, guys.

[Outro]

Laura 
And that's our show. Thanks for joining us. Dr. Miner. It was a great time. Be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye.

Nic
See you everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai