PODCAST

Earth Wise

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A look at our changing environment.

education natural sciences

All Episodes

2:00

Rats and climate change

Earth Wise ·

2025/03/10

Human activity has made rats one of the most prolific mammals on the planet. Our waste, buildings, and ships provide food, shelter, and transport. In the United States alone, rats cost the country approximately $27 billion each year in damage to infrastructure, crops, and contaminated food supplies. Additionally, rats carry and spread over 50 zoonotic […]

2:00

Fighting harmful algal blooms with harmful algal blooms

Earth Wise ·

2025/03/07

Harmful algal blooms – HABs – occur when colonies of algae grow out of control and produce toxic or harmful effects on people, marine life, and birds. HABs occur naturally but their frequency and intensity are often associated with increased nutrient loading (mainly phosphorous and nitrogen) in bodies of water that is the result of […]

2:00

Wave energy in LA

Earth Wise ·

2025/03/06

Ocean waves form as wind blows over the surface of open water. Globally, waves contain tremendous amounts of energy. Theoretically, the energy generating potential of waves off the coasts of the U.S. would meet more than 60% of the country’s electricity needs. There are a variety of methods and technologies for tapping into this energy […]

2:00

Sharks and rays in a warming world

Earth Wise ·

2025/03/05

Sharks and rays belong to a group of cartilaginous fish called elasmobranchs, which have been swimming in the world’s oceans for 450 million years. The resilient species have survived five mass extinction events, and are older than dinosaurs, trees, and Mount Everest. But despite their resilience, many species of sharks and rays today are threatened […]

2:00

A record warm January

Earth Wise ·

2025/03/04

Americans experienced unusually cold and wintery weather in January. Places like southern Louisiana and Florida saw appreciable amounts of snow. For those who experienced January’s Arctic blast, it was a cold January. But despite that, January was the world’s warmest on record, extending a run of extraordinary heat in which 18 out of the last […]

2:00

Making hydrogen using bioengineering

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/28

Hydrogen has great potential for helping society to reach net-zero emissions. The problem is that the most economical and established production methods for hydrogen depend heavily on fossil fuels and result in roughly a dozen kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions for every kilogram of hydrogen produced.The carbon-free way to produce hydrogen is by splitting water into its component elements. This process generally requires the use of catalysts and lots of energy. Researchers at the

2:00

A new way to help purify water

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/27

Engineers at the University of Michigan and Rice University have developed a new technology for removing boron from seawater, an important step in turning seawater into safe drinking water.Boron is a natural component of seawater that remains a toxic contaminant in drinking water after conventional filters remove salts from seawater. The boron levels in seawater are about twice as high as the World Health Organization’s most lenient limits for safe drinking water and 5 to 12 times higher than

2:00

La Niña has arrived

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/26

After seven months of waiting following the end of the recent El Niño condition, La Niña finally showed up in the eastern Pacific Ocean in early December.El Niño and La Niña are climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean that can affect weather worldwide. Normally, trade winds in the Pacific blow west along the equator, taking warm water from South America towards Asia. To replace the warm water, cold water rises from the depths. During El Niño, trade winds weaken and warm water is pushed back east,

2:00

Reliability of renewable energy

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/25

Naysayers about renewable energy often claim that it is unreliable. It is true that the sun sets every night and sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. But with the growing use of battery banks to store excess power generated by renewables, the lack of reliability of renewable energy is turning out to be a myth.A new study published in the journal Renewable Energy looked at the deployment of renewable energy in California last year. From late winter to early summer, renewable sources supplied 100% of

2:00

Megadroughts

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/24

A new study by Swiss and Austrian scientists has found that persistent multi-year droughts have become increasingly common since 1980 and will continue to proliferate as the climate warms. There are multiple examples in recent years in places ranging from California to Mongolia to Australia. Fifteen years of persistent megadrought in Chile have nearly dried out the country’s water reserves and even affected Chile’s vital mining output. These multi-year droughts have triggered acute water crises

2:00

Mining with plants

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/21

Plants absorb nutrients and minerals from the soil as they grow and incorporate them into their leaves and stems. Such plants can be used to remove toxic elements from soil. Cleaning soil in this way is called phytoremediation. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are trying to go beyond phytoremediation and do phytomining, in which hyperaccumulated minerals from the soil can be harvested from plants for use in industrial or manufacturing applications. One mineral that is

2:00

Soaring coffee prices

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/20

Wholesale coffee prices hit record highs in the midst of the Trump administration’s deportation and tariff dispute with Colombia. But coffee prices have already been trading near 50-year highs for a while as a result of shortages related to extreme weather and increased global demand.In recent years, repeated droughts and flooding have put pressure on the global supply of coffee. These climate swings have caused prices to soar, much as they have for other staples like cocoa, olive oil, and

2:00

Vertical-axis wind turbines

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/19

Nearly all wind turbines in use today are horizonal axis wind turbines. They are a familiar sight with their three giant rotor blades spinning about an axis high above the ground attached to a nacelle containing the gearbox and generator.A vertical-axis wind turbine has its rotor shaft transverse to the wind; that is, the shaft rises up from the ground and the gearbox and generator are located close to the ground. This type of wind turbine does not need to be pointed into the wind, which

2:00

Thawing permafrost in the Arctic

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/18

Permafrost covers about a quarter of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere. It stores vast quantities of organic carbon in the form of dead plant matter. As long as it stays frozen, it is no threat to the climate. But as permafrost thaws, microorganisms start breaking down that plant matter and large amounts of carbon are released into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide and methane. Scientists estimate that there could be two and a half times as much carbon trapped in Arctic

2:00

Electricity demand from data centers

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/17

Data centers are dedicated facilities containing computers and their related hardware equipment such as servers, data storage drives, and network equipment; they are the physical facilities that store digital data. Data centers are one of the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per floor space than a typical commercial office building. With the explosive growth of artificial intelligence technology, data center energy use is expanding rapidly. A new report

2:00

Empire Wind moves forward

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/13

Empire Wind 1, the first offshore wind project that will connect to the New York City grid, has received the financing needed to move forward. Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company developing the project, closed on a more than $3 billion financing package.The wind farm will span 80,000 acres in an area 15-30 miles southeast of Long Island. When completed, it will have a capacity of 810 megawatts. Equinor has executed a Purchase and Sale Agreement with the New York State

2:00

Native plants and road salt pollution

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/12

Applying salt to roadways lowers the freezing point of water and prevents slippery surfaces, which makes it safer for people to drive in wintry conditions. In the U.S., more than 22 million tons of road salt is spread every year.But road salt harms infrastructure and the environment. In fact, road salt damages cars and metal infrastructure by accelerating rust and corrosion. Road salt can also leach into soil and waterways, disrupting ecosystems, degrading soil, contaminating water, and damaging

2:00

A green battery from industrial waste

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/11

Flow batteries are rechargeable batteries in which liquid electrolytes flow through one or more chemical cells from one or more tanks. The electrolytes are redox pairs, that is, chemical compounds that can reversibly undergo reduction and oxidation reactions. The most common redox electrolytes include elements like vanadium, chromium, iron, zinc, and bromine. Flow batteries can provide large amounts of both electrical power and stored energy based on the size of the electrolyte tanks. As a result,

2:00

Cold spells and global warming

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/10

January saw some major bouts of subfreezing temperatures across much of North America and significant snowfall in places like Pensacola, Florida and New Orleans. This spate of frigid weather undoubtedly prompted many people to question whether global warming is really happening. But such cold spells quite likely are not happening in spite of global warming, but actually as a result of it. The polar jet stream is a slim band of westerly winds that circles the Arctic. It is formed where cold air

2:00

The human footprint on Earth

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/06

The Earth is a pretty big place, and it is easy to think that humans and their activities occupy very little of it. But the impact of human activities on our planet continues to grow. Recent satellite images from NASA’s Earth Observatory show the staggering extent of the human footprint on Earth.Agriculture is a major part of it. Farms and pastures take up almost half of the world’s habitable land – land not covered by ice or desert. Greenhouses have recently proliferated tremendously and now

213 results

Earth Wise

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

Science Talk

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

五分钟心理学

柠檬心理

Daily Facts

Amalia Dupray and Montgomery Jones.

Les dents et dodo

BFMTV

Veterinary Clinical Podcasts

The Royal Veterinary College