Stories Sustain Us #27 – Ocean Chemistry, Wave Energy, and Climate Change

Summary
In this conversation, Dr. Burke Hales shares his journey from growing up in Washington State to becoming a prominent figure in oceanography and wave energy research at Oregon State University. He discusses his childhood experiences, academic path, and the evolution of his research interests, particularly in ocean chemistry and climate change. Dr. Hales also highlights his involvement in the PacWave project, which focuses on developing wave energy technologies, and the importance of applying scientific knowledge to real-world challenges. He discusses the development and operational phases of the PacWave project, emphasizing the importance of community engagement in ocean energy projects. Dr. Hales highlights the transition from electrical engineering to ocean infrastructure, the future of carbon remediation, and the significance of wave energy as a reliable renewable source. He calls for a collective approach to renewable energy solutions, stressing the need for awareness and understanding of the complexities involved in addressing climate change and carbon emissions.

About the Guest
Burke Hales, PhD, is a Professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, and he is the Chief Scientist at PacWave. Dr. Hales specializes in Biogeochemical Oceanography and his current research is focused on coastal ocean carbon cycles, ocean acidification, and measurement and experimental manipulation technology. 

Show Notes
PacWave: https://pacwaveenergy.org

Takeaways
•Dr. Hales grew up in Washington State and has a diverse background in education.
•His research has focused on carbon dioxide dynamics in ocean sediments.
•Dr. Hales emphasizes the importance of independence and self-sufficiency in childhood.
•He discusses the challenges of academia and the decision-making process in career choices.
•His work in ocean chemistry has significant implications for understanding climate change.
•Dr. Hales built instruments for real-time monitoring of ocean conditions.
•He played a crucial role in saving the shellfish aquaculture industry through applied research.
•The PacWave project aims to develop wave energy technologies for sustainable energy.
•Dr. Hales believes in the importance of storytelling in communicating scientific work to the public. Community engagement is crucial for successful ocean projects.
•Transitioning to ocean infrastructure requires collaboration and expertise.
•The operational phase of PacWave marks a significant milestone.
•Future work will focus on carbon dioxide remediation in oceans.
•Wave energy technology is still in the testing phase.
•Understanding the environmental impact of wave energy devices is essential.
•Renewable energy solutions must be diverse and collective.
•Carbon dioxide is a globally distributed problem that needs addressing.
•The easiest mess to clean up is the one you don't make.
•Awareness and education about renewable energy are vital for progress

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Transcript

Steven 
Hello and welcome back to Stories Sustain Us, where we explore the incredible journeys of individuals dedicated to making our world a better place. I'm your host, Steven Schauer, and today's episode promises to be both enlightening and inspiring. Joining us is Dr. Burke Hales, a brilliant mind whose career spans from chemical engineering to oceanography, driven by a deep passion for understanding our planet's oceans.

In this episode, we'll learn about Dr. Hales' groundbreaking research on the dynamics of carbon dioxide in ocean sediments and the development of real-time monitoring instruments which are contributing to the health of marine ecosystems and even help save the shellfish aquaculture industry from collapse. Additionally, we'll dive into his leadership role in the PacWave project aimed at harnessing wave energy for sustainable power.

Dr. Hales will also share his insights on the importance of storytelling in science, the challenges of academia, and the collaborative efforts needed for future ocean infrastructure projects. Dr. Burke Hales is a professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, and he is the chief scientist at PacWave. He specializes in biochemical oceanography,

and his current research is focused on coastal ocean carbon cycles, ocean acidification, and measurement and experimental manipulation technology. His dedication to understanding and mitigating climate change through ocean chemistry and renewable energy technologies highlights the critical need for diverse and collective solutions. Stay tuned as we uncover the fascinating story of Dr. Burke Hales and his mission

to turn the tide on climate change, one wave at a time. Here on Stories Sustain Us, where we are inspiring action through the power of storytelling.

Steven 
Good morning, Dr. Hales, how are you this morning? I'm also doing well. Thank you for joining me on Story Sustain Us. I appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on and talking to us about wave energy and some of the interesting work that you're doing with PacWave down in Oregon. So looking forward to jumping into that. But first, let's jump into your story. Tell me a little bit about yourself, Dr. Hales. Where'd you grow up and how'd you get to?

Burke 
I'm good. How are you?

Steven 
Eventually, we'll get to Oregon State University and the work you're doing there.

Burke 
Yeah.

Well, I grew up mostly in Washington state. I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan while my dad was finishing his PhD and he moved quickly over to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. And so from my age two and a half maybe up through, depends on when you say you left home, right? But so I...

Steven 
nice.

Sure.

Burke 
I was an undergrad and a graduate student at the University of Washington.

And so I ended up spending a long time at the University of Washington because I moved from my bachelor's degree in chemical engineering right into my graduate work in oceanography. And then certain twist of events. did the first year of my postdoc, which was actually hosted at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. And so I spent over a decade in Seattle through my undergrad.

graduate and first year postdoc. And then spent a couple of years in New York at the LaMont Dornier Earth Observatory before landing the job at Oregon State. And I've been there ever since. it's, you know, I still feel like the new guy, but it's been almost 27 years.

Steven 
Wow, wow, yeah. That's a little bit of time, but feeling new is still good. There's some excitement that comes with that. So let me take you back in time a little bit and tell me, so growing up then here in Washington, I'm actually in Seattle. Moved here a couple of years ago myself from San Antonio. So I'm still the new guy here in the Seattle area. But what was life growing up? Brothers and sisters? Were you outdoors a lot?

Burke 
That's right.

Okay.

Right.

Yeah

Steven 
what was kind of some of your childhood experiences growing up in the Pacific Northwest.

Burke 
Well, you know, mean, as I'm sure you're realizing, you know, the Pacific Northwest is not monolithic. And growing up in Eastern Washington is very, different than the time I spent in Seattle. And so, yeah, you know, as a school kid, as a teenager, you know, living in the Columbia Basin and on the

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Burke 
spent a huge amount of time outdoors, know, hunter gatherer, lots of fishing, lots of exploring, lots of time on the water. And then of course, when you live in a town like that, you know, you have to play football and, and, you know, so, so I, you know, was living the redneck dream and in a lot of ways. And, but you know, at the same time, you know, my folks were educated and, and, you know, we traveled, my dad.

Steven 
Sure.

Burke 
ran the Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratory at Battelle and the BNNL Richland. He had a couple of not quite sabbatical stints with the University of Stockholm, and so we were able to travel with him there. then both my mom and dad's families were in Seattle. They grew up as Seattle kids, and so we spent lots of times, lots of holidays, and lots of times there in Seattle.

Steven 
Thanks. Yeah.

Burke 
I really didn't have any culture shock transition when I became a Seattleite. And so yeah, very different, but I appreciate that diversity in sort of lifestyle and perspective for sure.

Steven
Yeah, I haven't had a chance to explore too much of Eastern Washington yet myself. I know kind of some of the high plains, desert kind of feel of it. I know it has some feel probably to the West Texas aspect of what I am familiar with a little bit.

Burke 
Okay.

Right.

Well, know, I, I, I,

people have asked me this question before, you know, what's it like growing up over there? know, so the, the Battelle PNNL, they're all, you know, affiliated, you know, in some ways more loosely than others with the, with the nuclear facility, you know, the Hanford project. And so, you know, the huge, huge energy and defense, drivers of, of the identity of that.

of that community. And at the same time, also a lot of, you know, very conservative religions out there. and, and, and, you know, certainly back then, towns were much smaller. You know, the Tri-Cities is probably quadrupled since I lived there. And so, you know, the football games, high school football games were these huge deals, you know, thousands of people would show up to watch the

Steven 
Yeah. Friday night lights.

Yeah.

Burke 
Yeah,

exactly. as I said, it's probably about as close to growing up in Texas as you can be without being in Texas. know, energy defense industry dominance, you know, dry, rural sort of conservative social perspectives. So, you know, there were there were things about it that I loved. There are things about it that I really didn't miss. And so.

Steven 
Yep, yeah.

Burke 
So yeah, that's that background. And I think my sister is an educator and she works at what they call a student curriculum driven high school where essentially the students do projects that

Steven 
self-driven

projects. Yeah.

Burke 
Yeah, and the projects

they don't necessarily have a set curriculum, but the projects have requirements to meet all of the state mandated metrics for English language, history, science, math, etc. And so she's working with, you know, some very, you know, different learning perspective kids and, you know, it's very, very fascinated by the sort of, you know, how, how do our brains mature? And, you know, where I'm coming back around to is that, you know, she said,

People's brains mature sort of by making mistakes and, and that, know, kids don't make mistakes in the same way we used to. And so, you know, the things that I did that, you know, not illegal, but, know, things that, yeah, you know, we, yeah, you know, we, we did things, you know, on the river in the winter.

Steven
Yeah.

Right on the edge, right on the edge. Yeah. Probably my story, similar.

Burke 
as kids unsupervised, backing the pickup down on the gravel bar and running the boat out to hunt ducks on islands in the middle of the river in January. And sort of, not quite free range kids, but there were no cell phones telling anybody where we were. And you think, we never got really in trouble, but looking back on it now, especially

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Burke 
you know, thinking about my kids and how I would never have let them do those things alone. I would have participated with them had they been interested. But yeah, you so it's, you grew up in a different way. You gained sort of an independence and self-sufficiency. And, you know, I think you see a lot of the Gen Xers out there talking about how, you know, our parents really had no idea what we were doing.

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Burke 
And so that really is important. again, thinking about how kids' brains develop, I felt like I could pretty much fend for myself by the time I went away to college.

Steven 
Yeah, take on the world,

Burke 
And, you know, again, a lot of accidents in there, narrowly averted disasters that probably shaped that.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah. I've thought often about the, difference between my childhood and, and like said, now, you know, with the cell phones, thank goodness there wasn't photographic evidence of some of the things, yeah, that I was probably doing that was, again, on the edge of probably shouldn't have been doing, but you know, but survived. Exactly. So talk about that a little bit about that.

Burke 
Yeah.

Right, right. Yeah, right. Nobody died, right?

Steven 
transition and moving from, you know, the, Eastern part of, of Washington and more conservative part of the state for, for those who are under the mythology that Washington state is this solid blue monolith. It is not. so you're moving from a conservative part of the state to, you know, the, the heart of blue Washington, King County, Seattle area. So what was that transition like as a 17, 18, 19 year old?

Burke 
Yeah.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you like I said, you my parents were educated, they were progressives. And, and I had lots of, know, the one of the, one of the trips to Sweden, you know, to Sweden that my dad did, my, best friend came with us on that trip. and, know, we did things like, you know, bought your rail passes and just left for three weeks and, you know, kicked it off with a David Bowie concert in Gothenburg and things like that. And so.

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Yeah, nice.

Burke 
And it was quite a, you know, we were obviously teenagers and Americans and, know, when, when David Bowie saying young Americans, all the Swedes in the stadium around us were, you know, pointing at us and, and, and so, you know, in a lot of ways, I, like I said, I didn't really, and I knew Seattle somewhat, right. But, you know, I had, I had exposure to things like public transportation.

Steven 
planet.

Burke 
navigating crowded city streets and those sort of things. So that was in some ways not much of a culture shock. The thing that was interesting is that I kind of went from being the most liberal person in my old community to being the only one in my new community that really had those kinds of Eastern Washington experiences. And so, and again, that's fine, right?

Steven 
exposures, right?

Burke 
I never seemed to quite land in the, you know, at the mode of the population. I'm on one end of it or the other, depending on sort of where it goes. And that really, wasn't, I didn't find that to be, you know, problematic either. yeah, and then, you know, I got my bachelor's degree in chemical engineering and had started down that path, you know, from thinking from an early age, you know.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Burke 
pre-teen that I wanted to do something environmental. And I was good at math, I was good at chemistry. And then I had one of these rare moments of good judgment where I thought, well, probably I don't want to become a marine biologist as an 18-year-old. I should probably think about something with an employment potential to it.

Steven 
Sure, that's

some good judgment for an 18 year old.

Burke 
thought, well, you know, can, yeah, right,

uncommonly, you know, there are a couple of times where I made the right decision that I don't honestly know, you know, how I how I managed to do it. But, you know, so certainly getting that training was important. And then, you know, for your Seattle compatriots, and for my fellow, you know, undergraduate engineers, engineering is really hard, right? It's a really

really challenging curriculum. you know, sometimes your fellow engineers are maybe not the most social people. I'm a little bit of an introvert myself. so then, you know, you end up on that massive campus in, you know, winter term when, you know, you're broke because you're trying to save all the money you can to, you know.

buy a six pack of beer on the weekend and it's cold and it's dark. And I remember that we had these all day laboratories that were in the basement of the chemical engineering building. And you would go in there, walk across campus, cold and wet, and you'd go down into the basement of this building and do these all day laboratories and windowless. And then you'd come back out.

you know, at four o'clock and it was already dark again, it was still cold and it was still rainy and I really, you know, just thought, man, I don't know if academia is for me and I don't know if Seattle is for me. You it really was a challenging time. And so I just decided, you know, forget this advanced degree stuff. I'm going to get a job. need

Steven 
Back into the darkness,

Burke 
to make some money, need to not be on a college campus, I need to not be cold and wet all the time. And so, you know, I bought a suit and interviewed, you know, with Exxon and, you know, the chemical companies and, you know, was basically, you know, okay with the idea of, you know, moving to, you know, refinery build Mississippi.

And then the fall of my senior year, the stock market crashed and, you know, huge, was the black Tuesday. think that's what they called it in October of 87. and, you know, just every big company stopped hiring, you know, and so, you know, the, the three or four best students in my cohort were getting an offer here and there.

Steven 
Yeah, I remember that. Yep.

Burke 
And I was not one of those three or four best. And so I thought, you know, man, what do do here? And coincidentally, during one of these all day laboratories, one of the professors from oceanography came up and gave a talk about the suitability of chemical engineers for chemical oceanography, which I didn't really know there was such a thing as chemical oceanography. And I missed that seminar.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Burke 
because I was in this lab. But I wandered down the hill, down to South Campus and stuck my head in the student admissions office and said, so, you know, what do I do? And they said, well, send us your GRE scores. And I said, I don't know what the GRE is. And ended up, you know, taking it on a week's notice on standby. went into...

Steven 
Sure.

Burke 
I'm trying to remember the Kane Hall there on the University of Washington campus, huge thousand student auditorium, waiting for somebody to not show. So I go in and take my test and basically didn't have any time to get stressed out about it. And so I did pretty well on the exam and then started applying to graduate schools. in one of my

Steven 
So you can jump in. Yeah.

Burke 
Maybe this is my third good decision in this conversation is I was getting interest from some other schools and I won't name locations or names, but in the South and I was thinking, wow, warm sounds really good. And I went into an interview with one of the faculty members there who...

sort of the first thing he said was, you noticed how beautiful the women on our campus are? I said, you know, yeah, I'm 22 years old, you know, I have eyes. And then he said, so are you single? And I said, yeah. And he said, this is a great place to be single. And, know, my 22 year old male brain wasn't necessarily just rejecting that out of hand.

Steven 
Interesting recruiting tactic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Burke 
but I got back from that trip and thought, you know, there are many reasons that people make decisions and I should probably not make a career decision based on the appeal of that location. and, and so, you know, after swearing, I'd never set one more minute foot, more minute on a college campus than I had to, and, and wanting to get out of Seattle as soon as I could.

Steven 
Sure.

Burke 
I just walked the half mile down the hill to the oceanography campus and spent the next 10 years there. Sorry, not the next 10, the next seven. And here I go. The stock market crash really forced my hand. I don't know if I can take credit for that being a decision, but I do every once in a while.

Steven 
We

had some choices to make there, yeah.

Burke 
peer. Yeah,

I do every once in a while, peer into the, you know, get a chance to look into the, you know, sort of corporate engineering world and think, man, it would have killed me. And so, you know, it was really, you know, the bad fortune for all those investors was really good fortune for me because I would have taken one of those jobs, you know, without questioning it and probably would have realized, you know, three or four years later that I had made a mistake. So anyway, yeah, that

that more or less got me in the oceanography field. then, again, fortuitously, my thesis project was looking at carbonate chemistry, carbon dioxide chemistry dynamics in deep ocean sediments.

And then my postdoc I transferred to work with Dr. Taro Takahashi, who's sort of one of the icons of the ocean CO2 measurement world, and worked with him on a surface ocean CO2 project. Got to go to Antarctica. And ultimately sort of throughout that process, my

sort of engineers sensibility stuck with me. And so I ended up building most of the tech that I used for my measurements and developing the numerical computational tools to analyze that data, which was kind of, all of it was kind of a new way of looking at things. And you had to think about how to analyze that data in different ways. And so,

Steven 
Okay.

Burke 
I was, you know, again, I was maybe the most applied scientist in this community of basic researchers. so, you know, it's, again, sort of, you know, not quite being right there in the one sigma distribution of perspectives. Right.

Steven 
Yeah, well it gave you, I'm sure some...

Right, it gives you a different way to look at the world when you're

collaborating with those peers. It gives you a different perspective, which I'm sure served you well.

Burke 
Right, right.

Well, yeah, and then, you know, I get started in with PacWave and, you know, that's very much an engineering project. And so, you know, then now I'm suddenly, you know, the more pure scientist in the room full of engineers. And so, so yeah, it's been it's been a fun project.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let me ask.

Let me ask you one, before we transition into Pacquay, we're kinda at a good place here, but before we do that, thought I wanted to dig a little deeper around, you'd mentioned your thesis work and some of that work around carbon dioxide and deep ocean sediment. So, if I'm following the timeline, this is late 80s, early 90s, mid 90s, you're doing this work and this research and.

Burke 
Sure.

Okay.

Steven 
What was the thought process in deciding that that's the direction you wanted to go in as you got into your graduate work and doctoral work? The story I'm imagining right now is climate change is already a thing at that time. We weren't necessarily paying attention to it. And I'm thinking of the Rio Summit in 92 where it really started to get into

Burke 
Yeah

Yeah.

you

Steven 
a bit more mainstream media, if not still being ignored largely, but at least, you know, we were starting to have conversations, at least, you know, scientifically and a little bit, a little bit globally at that time. Is that kind of what was the, the, the direction for you or what was that draw to get into that, that line of study?

Burke 
Mm-hmm.

right.

Well, you know, again, you know, those of you who have gone into grad school know that, you know, at some level, you don't just go in there and, you know, pull some pie in the sky idea and say, you know, this is my destiny, you know, this is my special purpose. And so, you know, there were a couple of projects available that I could have worked on and, you know, that was the one I chose, which again, ended up being

you a good decision. and, you you talk about when I started graduate school, you know, handed in my, my term, final term project and, and, and of course, you know, in bad study habits and, you know, personal health considerations, I, I had worked probably two or three days without sleeping.

much to get that thing handed in on time, but then had an opportunity to get on a research cruise. And essentially, you know, I stuffed a duffel bag with enough things to get me through the trip and went down and met up with these folks and, you know, went out to sea before I even really started graduate school. you know, at that time in 88,

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, nice.

Burke 
we were still at the point of saying, well, you we know that we can measure the increasing atmospheric CO2. But we didn't really at that time have a perspective of, you know, how significant those changes were in the global and, you know, sort of last a million years context. And so, you know, Dave Keeling, who was actually a postdoctoral colleague of Taro Takahashi,

he had established the Monolo Observatory and he had built the instrumentation that had the appropriate level of sensitivity and stability to be able to say, we really actually do know what the atmosphere is doing. We can measure it effectively. We can see long-term trends. And the people that...

mark their birth year by what the atmospheric CO2 was. I'm trying to think. I think it was about 335. Yeah, it was probably about 335 when I started grad school, maybe a little higher than that. Of course, the rise is accelerated. People were still saying, well, we know that

You know, having more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does in fact have this, you know, thermal radiative effect that does in fact cause warming. But we're not really sure if we can measure it yet. We're not really sure if it's, you know, if something else is going to mask that effect. and, and so, you know, most of the people studying the CO2 cycle at that time were really doing for, you know, basic science considerations. And so, you know, I was looking at sort of global ocean,

balances of alkalinity and carbonate as driven by the reactions within the ocean, particularly on the ocean floor. But it really wasn't, I didn't think, I'm helping address a global environmental challenge. And then by the time I get into grad school, Takahashi had published his first big compendium

Steven 
global concern. Sure, it's still too early to kind of think about that. Yeah, yeah.

Burke 
maps of ocean CO2. And we were starting to say, wow, it really looks like now the ocean, rather than breathing CO2 off, is actually breathing it in. Not because of anything it's doing biologically, but because we're increasing the atmospheric CO2 levels. And so while the ocean used to be a source of CO2 to the atmosphere, it's become a sink. so understanding how to make the measurements and map these things.

Steven 
Absorbing it, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Burke 
became really important. And, and yeah, so that sort of got me in the carbon cycle world. And, and, you like I said, I was, you know, building instrumentation and observation and sampling platforms so that we could, you know, make these measurements more exhaustively and with higher resolution and that kind of thing. And that really ended up, you know, having me pretty well poised to,

think about how to observe and consider what's going on in the ocean in ways that aren't maybe necessarily your 30 of your closest friends get on a research vessel for six weeks and you all take your turns taking samples from the sample bottles. So I was building devices that you could tow behind you while it pumped water up to the ship and while it would swim up and down. then of course we had to build new

Steven 
Yeah.

Burke 
chemistry and little chemistry tools because we were generating signals so fast that the old methods really wouldn't capture them. And where it really started to become applied for me is that the Pacific Northwest aquaculture, shellfish aquaculture industry almost died in the late 2000s.

Steven 
and keep up, yeah.

Burke 
And one of the hatchery managers from one of the hatcheries in Oregon, Whiskey Creek, happened to go to a meeting where sort of the godfather of ocean CO2, Noah Dickfeely PMEL gave a talk about some research that I'd been involved in looking at the chemistry of the water that up wells on our coast. And Alan Barton at Whiskey Creek started saying, you know, I think I see, you know, in my

commercial data, think I see a link between the CO2 chemistry and the problems we're having. And so we built an instrument for them that could monitor those things in real time. And then we worked really hard with them on the remediation piece. So are things you can do to change that chemistry. And in the context of doing that, we did some experimental work that really nailed down the mechanisms of those responses.

And what ended up happening is that by putting that instrument in the hatchery and knowing how to do the chemical buffering appropriately, that effectively saved that industry. So those hatcheries were, they were deeply in the red. They were nearing bankruptcy and collapse. And now they're, because they know how to look at the ocean conditions and how to mitigate them.

Now they're back up above maybe what they were doing before. And so really it was the first time that I'd gotten into, this is a problem. It is caused by us. We do understand that chemistry. We do understand how to mitigate that and applied that with industry. And in a lot of ways, it wasn't the hardest work I've ever done, but it certainly was the most famous.

you know, recognize that there was all sorts of, you know, lay person attention to that kind of work. And so, so, you know, there's absolutely no shame in gathering some lying fruit, you know, if there's, if there's something you can do within your capability and it's got an application somewhere, you know, you should do it and you shouldn't worry too much about, you know, the flute music, so to speak.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think that's really kind of the spirit of this show is that story is that it's it's taking, you know, some incredibly complicated work that requires you and other really talented, knowledgeable experts in using that knowledge in a way that then is can be told in a story that benefits just an average lay person. I can understand.

Burke 
Right.

Steven 
know, job creation, saving jobs and hatchery and the economic benefits of having, you know, the seafood industry alive and the food sources. And so it's, it's that, you know, how do we tell those stories of, you know, deeply complex work that you and others at a conference can understand, but the average citizen might not be able to understand. But that story right there ties it all together in a way that an average person can go, that's why this matters.

Burke 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Steven 
This keeps people

employed, keeps food on the table, keeps economies going. There's obviously more to it than that, but that in a simplified way is what helps people understand the important work that you're doing.

Burke 
Right. Yeah, one of the.

Yeah, one of the funny anecdotes about that whole Whiskey Creek hatchery story is that, you know, we built this instrument in my lab and installed it out there, but I had research cruises, you know, grants that I had to work on that depended on me having, you know, those instruments to make those measurements. And so we put the instrument in the hatchery in spring and it got around, you know, late August, September.

said, Hey, I gotta, I gotta take it back because I gotta go to see, and Sue Cudd, the hatchery owner there at whiskey Greek said, you can't have it. If you take that instrument away from me, I'm going out of business. And so, so, you know, we, we ended up, you know, sort of continuing to, you know, tweak and, and, you know, fine tune that system. And so, yeah, she's, she's got, you know, basically model.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, wow.

Burke 
maybe model one in that hatchery, still working there. We've produced a couple of master's degrees out of those data sets. But also, know, basically led the way in showing that industry how do they respond to this problem.

Steven 
Nice. Well, doctors, how do you transition then from doing this work, know, ocean chemistry and carbon capture and all the studying that you're doing there, how do you transition from that into PacWave at Oregon State University and into kind of some of the energy work that you're doing now?

Burke 
Good luck.

Yeah.

Right, right. Well, yeah, so, you like I said, was sort of humming happily along doing what I was doing. But, you know, there's sort of in academia, there's these different pathways you can take as you get to become a senior scientist. You know, you can keep doing what you're doing or you can figure out how to sort of climb into the mahogany row of the administration buildings and

And I don't know that, you know, that never really, you know, was something that motivated me a lot. But I also felt like, you know, it's okay if I do what I do until I, you know, fall off my lab stool. But, you know, there's also a lot of capability in the senior faculty that, you know, can help sort of build programs and.

And I had been talking to my dean at the time and saying, you know, look, you've got all these resources with the senior faculty and you should really tap those resources. you know, we're we sort of, you know, at these senior professor levels, we kind of run out of, you know, professional development, you know, and so, you know, you should take advantage of this. It'd be good for us, be good for the faculty. And I didn't really have any idea about.

at time I was just saying, what do you think? Well, sort of, you know, in parallel, independently, PacWave started in the College of Engineering, really led by Belinda Madden, the professor in engineering there, but also on the foundation of work that others at Oregon State University had done, you know, looking into the potential of wave energy. And so, you know, going back into the...

you know, late 90s, early aughts OSU faculty were already doing this thinking about wave energy and wave energy extraction. And really Oregon State, you know, we definitely have a little bit of a, you know, little brother syndrome sitting between, you know, the big institutions in Washington, California. But Oregon State was really the lead on this. were doing this work sooner than anybody else. And so Annette Bonjuan and

Bob Pash, we're really trying to build up these capabilities before PacWave was even considered. And then Department of Energy started saying, well, okay, there's this bottleneck. Some of the wave energy developers call it the Valley of Death, where you can design and you can build one-tenth scale devices. can test them in the bathtub or a...

a legitimate wave test facility like the Hinsdale Laboratory here at Oregon State University. But before you can commercialize, you have to prove to somebody that you can work at full scale in a fully energetic ocean and producing the kinds of power that are, know, municipally required, right? So we're talking about something that can withstand, you know, the 45-foot waves that we dealt with during this last bomb cyclone, which are, you know, not all that uncommon.

Steven 
Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Burke 
along with, you know, sometimes hurricane force winds and strong ocean currents. You know, can your device just, you know, persist? Yeah. And, you know, let alone corrosion and sea life growth and, you know, marine mammal haul out and, you know, all those sorts of things that you don't simulate in the testing. And then the other thing is that, you know, you have to generate megawatt scale power.

Steven 
Yeah, withstand that abuse, right? Right.

Right, right.

Burke 
And that has to be transmittable, right? So you can't have a megawatt of nine volt batteries because you can't send that power any distance. so the Department of Energy sort of commissioned this feasibility study of what would a full-scale grid-connected test facility look like? And Belinda essentially

Steven 
Yeah, has to be useful, right?

Right.

Burke 
embarked on this really awesome process where she engaged the local community. and her team, we're talking with the commercial fishermen before they even submitted a proposal. And going out and working with the different communities and trying to figure out which community really wanted this and did that groundwork ahead of time. And so our test site, for example, the location in the ocean,

Steven 
be okay with it, right? Yeah.

Burke 
That was chosen by the commercial fishermen in Newport. And more or less it happened really rapidly. This is folklore for me because I wasn't there. But the telling was that the group got together with a group of fishermen in Newport and they laid out the charts and the fishermen said, you know, don't really want to give up anything. But if this is coming, put it here. And so they essentially, in the span of, you

Steven 
lose any space, sure.

Burke 
under an hour, looked at the charts, drew the rectangle, and that was over 10 years ago. And that's where the site is now. And so essentially, Oregon State had won the proposal, won the grant, and it had been more or less predetermined by the feasibility studies that it would be at Newport.

And then at the time, it really stopped being an electrical engineering project and became an ocean infrastructure project. And so it naturally made sense for the project to have a home in the college of oceanography. The college here is called Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. But we run ships and we run large array observation systems.

Steven 
Sure, makes sense.

Burke 
and deep ocean core programs. And so we really had the ocean infrastructure know how to do that. And at the same time, Belinda, who's a powerhouse, the folks on Mahogany Row were saying, hey, we think you should be moving up this chain. And so she took over at a dean level and essentially didn't have the bandwidth to keep doing this.

Steven 
know-how. Yeah.

Burke 
At same time, my dean remembering me saying, you should take advantage of us senior faculty, made a play with the university saying, oceanography will take it on, but I have to get to pick the new chief scientist for this project. And that was me who she had in mind. so it came about really, really quickly. I was actually, I sort of knew it was happening.

knew that it had been finalized, but I had a big elk hunting trip in the Elkhorn Mountains out of La Grande in Oregon. so I was unsuccessful, but had a really wonderful unplugged week. But essentially, I came out of the mountains, and within a couple of days, I was back in DC talking with undersecretaries.

Steven 
Good time outside. Yeah. Yeah.

Burke 
And saying, okay, this is what it's going to take. And so that transition was pretty cool, right? To think that out there on your own, in the old growth timber and in the high country, then being talking with the DOE leadership and water power technologies in span of a couple of days, that was quite a transition as well.

Steven 
Yeah, walk in the halls of DC.

Yeah.

Burke 
And so, you know, I had the oceanographic perspective. I had done a lot of my work locally with local communities on the coast. Oregon State University had sort of the credibility with the coastal communities to be viewed as a positive partner. And so, you know, that basically is where it started. And of course, you know, having the, you know, the engineer's perspective.

quantitative rigor and applied science really helped me at the same time as that it was also really an oceanographic problem. And so that's how I got there. again, it may be, I'll say it took almost all my bandwidth. And well, yeah.

Steven 
Yeah. Well, it's a big task. I mean, that's not surprising. Yeah.

Burke 
And I still was teaching and still trying to maintain my research program. And so it's been a really, it's been seven years since I joined the project. And in that time, we've gotten DOE's approval to go from the feasibility and permitting studies to the construction. finished the construction. Basically, there are a few loose ends that we're tying up.

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Burke 
facility is built and then we're in the process of getting DOE's approval to move into the operational stage. As part of that, we promoted a facility director from within. Dan and Lene has been with the project since before I was, now the facility director and the chief scientist role is really starting to diminish. What you do...

Steven 
We're moving into

the operations now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Burke 
Yeah, when you become operational,

you know, it's just much more focused on, you know, okay, you know, are the electrons flowing? Are the devices staying put? Yeah, yeah. And so this is, know, I'm, you know, obviously invested in the project, but it's kind of a time where I'm sort of thinking about, okay, so now how do I, how do I transition, you know, back into my ocean carbon cycle work?

Steven 
Yeah, keep the O of the process live, right? Right.

Burke 
And really the way things are moving now is that we're thinking.

You know, we're thinking that.

more applied ocean engineering scale. Carbon dioxide remediation is where we go next. And I and colleagues at Oregon State and the University of Minnesota have a project to do effectively what we showed worked with the oyster atries, but on a sort of automated and real time scale in the building.

Steven 
or larger

scale, yeah.

Burke 
building electrolysis systems that could be powered by renewable energy to.

alkalize the ocean and mitigate the harmful effects of ocean acidification. That's where I'm refocusing. It's a pretty exciting time to transition back out of pack weight, back into ocean carbonate chemistry science, but not really in the pure science way that I thought about it before. Really thinking about, how do we clean up this mess?

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a giant question. Giant question. Well, let me just for the sake of the audience and my own knowledge as well, I want to make sure going back to the Pacwave and then I have you just on about this other topic because I know we're getting close to time too, but the whole idea of that you were talking about your next vision of work is fascinating to me as well.

Burke 
Right. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Steven 
while we're on the pack wave and the energy generation, as I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, so we, myself and the audience know, what you're really doing is gathering the energy from the waves of the ocean. So as I understand it, you have a field, a system of buoys floating.

on the surface of the ocean. as they rise and fall, by the, passing waves, that energy is, is basically captured in that motion. and, and then transferred to the shore via, you know, cables and whatnot. That's obviously incredibly simple, explanation of what it is, but just for the average layman again, who might be watching this or listening to this.

Burke 
you

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Steven 
That's essentially the idea is that buoy energy, the up and down rise and fall of the wave generated motion is what we're trying to capture here with this exercise. then if it proves out, you have the possibility of ocean communities. It's not going to be necessarily viable.

Burke 
Right.

Yeah.

Steven 
everywhere on coastlines, it will certainly provide a potential renewable source of energy for coastline communities that may be without right now. Am I capturing that accurately in simple terms?

Burke 
Right. Yeah, I mean, that's

well, yeah. And, you know, really nice job of that, by the way. That's that's great. The things that I would, you know, add to that is that Pacwave, I don't want to say all we are, but what Pacwave exclusively does is provides the infrastructure, environmental permitting, pre-authorization.

and conditional characterization of the site and the impact of the devices. Packway doesn't build or deploy any devices. And so the analogy that I've used, depending on who I'm talking to, when I was talking to CBC about it, I was saying, we build the ice rink, but we don't actually play hockey. And I was talking to somebody.

ABC New York and is saying, you we, build the opera house, but we don't actually, you know, sing any solos. and, and so, yeah, right. Right. And so, you know, football field, basketball court, whatever, right. You know, there are lots of people who are involved in, you know, rebuilding the Oregon State University football stadium, who, you know, have no idea, you know, what too deep coverage means or, you know, how to.

Steven 
Yeah, Taylor the story to the audience, right.

Whatever it is, right, you gotta connect.

Right, right.

Burke 
how to coordinate special teams getting on and off the field. Right. And so, really that we have to keep that in mind. So we don't do the devices, we are supporting the people who do that work. And what we're doing is providing a level playing field for all the potential developers and all the potential different ways of capturing this power from the waves.

Steven 
Yeah, or even if they do know, they're not capable of doing it. It might not be in the prime of their young athletic life.

Okay.

Burke 
And we have to do it obviously with without bias, right? We can't say, well, you know, we think this technology will work and this technology won't work because we're, you know, we're an accredited test facility. We're not accredited yet, right? But, you know, essentially we're validating that these devices survive the ocean, that they don't drag their anchors across the seafloor, that they don't produce acoustic signals that interfere with, you know, gray whale migration patterns, that they don't, you know,

Steven 
Right, you're testing.

Burke 
damage the seafloor in such a way that it's harmful to the Dungeness crab fishery. So that's what we do. And then we provide the cable.

Steven 
and all those things and ultimately

producing enough energy that makes it a viable source, right? So keeping all of those other downside factors in mind while you're also looking for the upside, which is are you adequately capturing a renewable resource, right?

Burke 
Right. Right. And so

then, yeah, so then we've got the subsea cables. I'm trying to remember what the number is, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 kilometers of subsea cables that are each capable of transmitting. think, you know, we're rated for five megawatts. The cables themselves are, were permitted for five megawatts per cable.

four separate cables, so that's a 20 megawatt capable facility. Looks to us like the cables could withstand maybe eight megawatts running at what the industry calls medium voltage, which is in our case up to 35,000 volts. And then able to transmit those megawatt scale outputs from the devices back these 20 kilometers per cable.

on the seafloor, under the beach, under Highway 101, up to our shoreside facility where the power gets conditioned and then ultimately connected to the local grid. And in that process, what comes out of these developers conditioning and device production numbers is something that we meter with industry standard power metering systems. And we verify that it is in fact what

Steven 
transitioned out right well

Burke 
the developers say it is, and we ensure that what goes onto the grid is in fact grid compatible. Yeah, so that's really an important point there. And then to talk about how that power is converted from the oscillatory motion of the waves into electrons, that's kind of the Wild West right now. And if your listeners or you spend...

15 minutes Googling wave energy converter, what you'll see is that there's no convergence on a best design. Yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, there's a whole, yeah, I did a little bit of that before this episode.

There is a number of, yeah, it's testing, right? mean, it's everybody coming up with their engineering concept and putting it into practice to see what might rise to the surface as the most viable.

Burke 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, and

yeah, then, you know, circling back to sort of me growing up in eastern Washington and thinking about renewable energy. It's really windy there. And, you know, the the way Seattleites think about rain impacting their lives, you know, folks in the Columbia Basin think about wind impacting their lives and the people who there was a T-shirt at one point that says the Tri-Cities.

It doesn't suck in the Tri-Cities, it blows. But I remember as a kid out pheasant hunting, duck hunting, driving around with my dad. And once in a while, you'd see these weird contraptions. he'd say, yeah, that's a wind turbine. But there was really no convergence then. There things that looked like old school Dutch windmills, things that looked like sort of vertical spiraling ribbons. So really, there wasn't.

Steven 
blows.

wind turbine, yeah.

Burke 
convergence there and what got that convergence was folks being able to test and they tested the places like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Boulder. And now you look at any turbine anywhere, the turbines that you see off of Kihei and Maui, the turbines that you see in the Columbia River Gorge, they're all the same. They've all got that same three blade design and ultimately they've optimized what

Steven 
Yeah, West Texas.

Burke 
works best and there's this convergence. So ideally what we hope is that a wave energy test site will allow folks to go from saying, this concept, if you put it in some waves, it makes some electrons, but maybe it's not the most optimum. Maybe it's got too many movement parts. Maybe it's got some inherent inefficiencies that can't really be realized until you're in a real ocean. Or what we say is that because Oregon's got this really diverse wave climate,

We say, you know, hey, this kind of device works great on the big swells that come off the North Pacific in the wintertime. And this kind of device works really great in the wind waves that we see in the summertime. And so you can target technologies for, for, for environments. And then, yeah, the last thing I'll say in that regard is that, you know, in the Northwest, we've got sort of a, you know, embarrassment of riches of,

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Burke 
And so there are some people who would argue that the hydropower industry isn't quite green, but it is renewable and it makes our electricity incredibly cheap, which is great for us. It's terrible for a wave energy developer who can't compete with the hydro products. And so ultimately, our wholesale energy price is three and a half cents per kilowatt hour. And that's

Steven 
Right.

Can't compete. Sure. sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Burke 
more or less the Bonneville Power Administration prohibits anyone from charging more than that, even if there was a client who wanted to spend more. But if you look at Hawaii, Hawaii is about 50 cents a kilowatt hour. You think about Kodiak Island in Alaska. And so it's very likely that the devices that we test here, the PacWave tests off Oregon, it's very likely that that technology doesn't produce municipal power in this region. It goes somewhere where

Steven 
it reside here. Right. Right.

Burke 
where it's economically feasible for the developer and fits a need for the communities.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, but we got to have a place to like test it and standardize it so that you can prove proof of concept and make sure it works. yeah. Well, Dr. Hales, thank you so much. I know we're getting close to an hour of chatting and I could keep chatting with you for much longer. I'm fascinated by your, by your work and, and yeah, maybe someday I'll, I'd love to have you come back and talk about your next phase of career work. Cause that

Burke 
Right. Right.

Yeah.

I'm

Steven 
that is very intriguing to me as well. I want to kind of wind this conversation down out of respect for your time and ask you what's your call to action now that everybody's listened to this or watched this episode and have learned a bit more about the PacWave research and testing that's going on for wave energy. What do you want folks to do with this information? What's your call to action?

Burke 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I think one of the things we say about WAVE is that it's 20 years behind WEND. And so, do I think PacWave will test a device that appears to be commercially viable that is ultimately deployed in another location? Absolutely. When do I think that's going to happen? Well, not next year. Do I think it's going to happen in five years? That's my guess is that we will have a device that at the end of...

couple of years of testing at our facility will be shown to be viable to augment power sources elsewhere. So the first thing is that people need to understand that all of this takes time. the other thing that people need to understand is that when we're talking about renewables, there is no single solution. And so people say, well, Wave might produce 15 % of

Steven 
All

Burke 
US electricity demand. Well, it's not going to happen tomorrow. And people will say, well, if it's only 15%, why bother? And the thing about that is that, and I've used this analogy ad nauseam, but the renewables require this diversified portfolio of contributors. And the thing about WAVE is that it's predictable and it's much more persistent than wind or solar.

Right. And so, you know, we know that the solar systems don't produce power when the sun is down, but the waves don't stop. And so, you know, we often talk about wave being sort of, you know, the tortoise to the solar's hair. Right. And, and or, you know, wave being your guaranteed low yield component of your retirement account and, and, and, you know, wind being the, you know, the volatile tech stock and

And so, you know, that people need to understand that, you know, we have to have this, you know, collective level solution to, know, what really is really is a problem. You know, I mean, we're in a we're in a space where, you know, objective truth is being challenged. Right. And and you have to understand it is objectively true.

Steven 
Yes. Yes it is.

Burke 
That we have a carbon problem and it's causing impacts to people's lives and pocketbooks and we have to figure out how to move beyond that and saying, well, we're not going to try this one thing because it's only the sixth or a fifth of what we need. We have to have this diversity of sources. so that's really sort of where we are as far as WAVE is concerned. Now, is that a call to action?

you know, yeah, I guess it is, right? If you want people to be, you you want people to increase their awareness and, you know, facilitate the connection to objective truth. Yeah, that's a call of action, right? It's just, hard to imagine that that, that is challenged, but that's where we are, right?

Steven 
Yeah, I see one in there.

where we are. Yeah,

absolutely. That's the call that that's what I heard in your call is is, you know, for people to educate themselves on these objective truths. Be patient but persistent with the implications of an implementation of renewable sources. Because that that's where we are. That's what that's what's needed. And recognize those

different percentages are valuable, even if they might seem small. If we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by 15 % along our coastlines, that actually adds up. That starts having a compounding benefit.

Burke 
Well, yeah, right. And

again, you know.

The, this carbon dioxide remediation, you I think that's gonna be the next sort of high profile, you know, environmental engineering undertaking we do. And, you know, it's harder than people think it is. And there's a huge number of charlatans out there pitching their next thing on this.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Burke 
And it's something that we have to do, right? You have to be able to figure out how to mitigate these effects that are out there. But you also have to understand that the easiest mess to clean up is the one you don't make. And so these things go hand in hand. So if you're out there shoveling dog poop out of your yard and your neighbor is throwing it right back over the fence, then

then you really haven't solved any problems, And so we need to figure out, you know, okay, these things go hand in hand. How do we help people who are most impacted in ways that don't end up having, you know, negative blowback on the back end? How do we keep ourselves from making this mess continue to grow?

Steven 
Right, right.

Right. Well, could not agree more with that assessment. So let me transition you here, Dr. Hales, into the last little bit of the show. Every episode ends with me asking the guests the same three questions. We talk on this show about hard subjects, right? Climate change is difficult. How are we going to solve?

Burke 
Sure.

Steven 
some of the dilemmas that we find ourselves in. are hard challenges. They can be full of anxiety and worry and real life consequences that are damaging and deadly, in fact. looking at hope, not as a fuzzy emotion, but more in the sense of how hope has been studied to be shown as if you have a vision for a better future, you have a.

Burke 
Thank you.

Steven 
a plan of action that you can take to get there and you have a sense of agency that you have something that you can do to make it happen, that hope can be very powerful. So I want to talk to you a little bit about hope. I'm going to ask you three questions just to ask you to give your kind of gut reaction to these questions and would love to kind of get your sense about what you're hopeful for. So if you're ready, here are the hopeful questions. Question.

Burke 
Right.

Steven 
Number one for you is, what is your vision for a better future? It can be for you personally, professionally, or for the world. What's your vision for a better future?

Burke 
You

wow. Well, that's hopelessly pun intended, wide open. Well, you know, I think ultimately, you know, these are problems of scales that have to be collectively solved, right? And so, you know, that's what I hope is that, you know, people figure out how to, you know, how to move beyond the, you know, what directly

Steven 
You

Burke 
and exclusively addresses one thing to thinking about how, okay, the carbon dioxide, which is great statistic that my colleague David Archer shared with me, but carbon dioxide, it's a locally produced problem, but it's globally distributed. And so the idea that a carbon dioxide that you encounter in Seattle came from Seattle is extremely low.

Steven 
Yeah.

Burke 
And so carbon dioxide, once it's emitted, it's got a lifetime in the atmosphere of something like 40 years. And so the mixing time of the atmosphere is weeks. And so as soon as that CO2 is emitted, it's effectively distributed globally. And so it can't be just, we're going to go electric. We're going to do ocean alkalization.

to draw down the CO2. has to be the sort of global approach and figuring out how to do that in a way that the socioeconomic global powers come together and agree on. That's what we have to do to solve this problem. And it's not.

That's not that far-fetched, right? mean, you know, people have come together to solve problems like disease and, you know, in some cases more successfully than others, famine, and, you know, and so it's something that we have to understand, you know, it's not an American problem, it's not a Chinese problem, it's, know, everybody's got to figure out how to make this work together. And the really great statistic that Archer shared with me is that the

Carbon dioxide that's released when you burn a tank of gas in your car stays in the atmosphere so long and traps so much energy over its lifetime that if you could capture the energy that the carbon dioxide trapped, that one tank of gas traps enough energy for you to drive the car around the world. And so, you know, again, it's this really extended lifetime.

Steven 
Wow.

Yeah, wow, hadn't heard that statistic before. Yeah.

Burke 
globally distributed issue. so that's, yeah, right.

So, so yeah, I guess that's my hope is that, you know, we figure out this collective approach to solving the problem and, you know, recognize that it's, you know, solving it, you know, is the rising tide that floats all boats, not something that, you know, benefits one geopolitical regime versus another one.

Steven 
Right. So you touched on this a little bit in what you've already described, but your answer to the second question may have already been stated, but just to give you a chance to elaborate, if you will, is that the second question is, why is it your hope that we need to look at these problems and solutions holistically and collectively and globally?

I know you touched on it already, but is there anything else you want to add to the why of that hope?

Burke 
Yeah.

Well, you I think, you know, philosophically, right, you look at the things that human engineering have done. And, you know, you really can't you can't argue that those have been exclusively negative. Right. And so, you know, you think about, you know, the Bornhaber process, right, where we learned how to capture nitrogen, which is in

vast abundance in the atmosphere to make fertilizer. And so effectively, that's an engineering process that gives us at least the technology to effectively end hunger. And you think about ultimately the internal combustion engine. And so you think about things that we talk about like horsepower.

And a horsepower is a unit of power that was defined back in, I think, the 1700s. I should know that number. But essentially, it's the amount of power that these early engineers thought a good horse could produce continuously throughout the day. And if anybody's ever done this, this happens in classes all the time. You can actually figure out what it takes for you to produce a horsepower.

Right. So you can get on your, you know, your assault bike, right. Or you can, you know, time yourselves running up and downstairs in the building and that kind of thing, you know, for, sort of an average human to produce a horsepower. It is, it's exhausting. Right. And to think that, you know, number one, a horse can do that steadily throughout a day is kind of mind blowing. And then you think about, you know, the, what the internal combustion engines are doing, right. You know, the

the big diesel pickups that are commercially available. I think they're running like 550 horsepower, right? And so the ability effectively to build infrastructure, to build transportation, again, have the will to eliminate coal stress upon humans.

Steven 
Right, right.

Burke 
That ultimately comes back to harnessing internal combustion. Internal combustion is this dependence forming because not only is the energy inherent in fossil organic fuels, but it's so storable and transportable. We can do things that have benefited society.

Steven 
Right, right.

Burke 
because we've harnessed the internal combustion system, right? In ways that are just unthinkable to people, you know, a few hundred years ago, right? And then, you you also think about, you know, the go back to health, right? And the understanding of the microbial world, right? And going back to, know, Pasteur and Florence Anderson and salt, right?

Steven 
energy right right

Right, right.

Burke 
And so you think about our understanding of infectious disease, right? And how that has changed, know, lifespans, know, quality of life.

You know, are the positives of human ingenuity. Now, where we run into trouble is that we sometimes don't understand our excesses, and we don't think far enough down the road about the consequences of things that we do. And then following on that, we often clean up messes in ways that

Steven 
Sure.

unintended consequences, right? Right.

Burke 
Ultimately create more messes, right? And so, you know, I'm sure you and I'm sure many of your listeners know the, you know, the rat and the mongoose problem in Hawaii, right? And so, you know, rats got introduced to these tropical communities, you know, via shipping. They don't have natural predators. They take over. Somebody said, well, you know, mongooses will kill anything. Let's bring mongooses in. And then it turns out that

Steven 
Just move it around. Right.

Burke 
the mongooses are diurnal and the rats are nocturnal and so the mongooses don't eat the rats and now we've got a mongoose problem. Again, it's one of these things where what you really hope people do when they're thinking about solving these problems is that they don't, like I said, throw the dog poop over the fence and just move the problem elsewhere. Many of these carbon dioxide remediation approaches are

Steven (
Yeah, yeah.

Burke 
very, very poorly vetted from the end to end, right? Where you say, okay, we're going to take out this much carbon dioxide and that's good. But it's like looking at the deposits side of your ledger sheet and your bank account and not thinking about the withdrawals. So can you do this CO2 removal without producing CO2 elsewhere, right? That end to end quantitative objectivity about these processes is what you have to maintain.

Steven 
That's what you're doing,

Right. Well, let me ask you then the third question here. So we've got a hope of a better future where people are looking holistically and globally. They're doing that, you know, for the betterment of humanity and betterment of our only home, the world we have to live on and share with other creatures. they're really trying to look end to end and find solutions that don't create new problems.

Burke 
Right.

Steven (
So let's now imagine for a moment that that's actually the world that we're living in. That your future hope is actually come true and that's the world that we're living in right now. So how does that make you feel that that's the world we're living in right now?

Burke 
Well, yeah, I mean, is there any answer other than good? Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, that would be tremendous, right? If we could do that and figure out ways that, know, you know, broker our combined use of resources because all these problems are becoming global and we manage that in an effective way.

Steven 
Whatever answer you have is the right answer. There's no wrong answer. It's just, it's just kind of.

Burke 
You know, yeah, I feel great about that. And, you know, I'm sure there's some Orwellian downside that somebody could think of, right? But, you know, I'll take it.

Steven 
Yeah, I would take it too. I'll take it to you. That's, that is what we're working towards. That's, that's certainly the future that I'm trying to work towards as well. So, well, Dr. Hales, thank you so much for your time and your expertise and, and helping me understand what you're working on, the great work that you're doing. and really I'll probably follow up with you at some point. I do want to pick your brain about some of the other work that you're transitioning into. And, and I wish you all the best with.

Burke 
take that risk.

Steven 
PacWave and your future endeavors with going back into the carbon side of oceanography work.

Burke 
Yeah,

well, thank you very much. you know, if there are questions, technical, you know, things that I didn't, you know, left you thinking, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense. Feel free to reach out again.

Steven 
Perfect. And I'll put the PacWave website on our show notes for anybody else to do their own research and get to know you a little bit better that way as well. So with that, Hales, I wish you all the best. All right. Happy holidays as well. Take care.

Burke 
All right. All right. All right. Thanks. Happy holidays. All

right. We'll see you.

Steven 
And that brings us to the end of another fascinating episode of Stories Sustain Us. I want to extend my deepest gratitude to Dr. Burke Hales for sharing his incredible journey with us today. From his roots in Washington State to his pioneering work in oceanography and wave energy research, Dr. Hales has provided us with invaluable insights into the complex world of ocean chemistry and renewable energy.

His dedication to addressing climate change through innovative projects like PacWave and his emphasis on the importance of community engagement truly underscore the power of applied science in tackling real world challenges. Dr. Hales' vision for a sustainable future grounded in collective efforts and a diverse approach to renewable energy is both inspiring and essential. Please join me in thanking Dr. Hales for his groundbreaking work.

and for reminding us all that the easiest mess to clean up is the one we don't make. Dr. Hales' commitment to creating a healthier planet is a beacon of hope and a call to action for all of us. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends and family, leave me review, and subscribe to Stories Sustain Us wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you as always for your support, and I encourage you to stay curious, stay inspired,

and continue to embrace sustainability in your own lives. And be sure to join me next week on Stories Sustain Us when I'll be speaking with the CEO of a metal recycling company. Now, most people I imagine are very familiar with recycling plastics and paper, but the significance of recycling metal is often not fully understood or appreciated.

So join me on February 4th to be inspired by the personal story of my guest as we talk about social justice programs in the United States and Latin America, the circular economy, and the metal recycling industry's important role in local and global sustainability efforts. It's an incredible story about my guest's career supporting sustainability around the world. You're not gonna wanna miss it, so check it out on February 4th at storiessustainus.com.

wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. Until next time, I'm Steven Schauer. Please take care of yourself and each other. Take care.