PODCAST

Earth Wise

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A look at our changing environment.

education natural sciences

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2:00

The year in energy

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/05

Last year saw some major trends in the global energy sector. Perhaps the most dramatic was the shift to renewable power, which continued to outpace the projections of both financial analysts and industry experts. 2024 saw new highs in renewable installation, largely due to China, which accounted for more than half of all the solar power installed globally. Huge solar installations also came online in California and Nevada during the year. On the other hand, the amount of coal burning for the year

2:00

Storing carbon in buildings

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/04

According to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis and Stanford University, construction materials used in buildings have the potential to lock away billions of tons of carbon dioxide. The study, published in Science, shows that storing CO2 in buildings could be a major contributor to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Overall efforts in carbon sequestration take carbon dioxide – either as it’s being produced or once it’s already in the atmosphere – and store

2:00

Curbing food waste

Earth Wise ·

2025/02/03

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as much as 40% of the food supply in the United States is wasted. In fact, Americans generate more food waste than all but two countries. To address this problem, the federal government announced a goal nearly a decade ago to cut food waste in half by 2030 compared to 2016 levels. Doing so would bring food waste down to approximately 164 pounds per person annually. However, according to a new study led by researchers from the University of

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A big year for battery storage

Earth Wise ·

2025/01/29

A decade ago, the ability of utilities to store large amounts of electricity in batteries was basically nonexistent. In the past several years, growth in battery storage systems has exploded. As of the end of November, the US had about 24 gigawatt-hours of storage capacity in place. This is 71% more than just a year ago. Nearly half of the battery storage in the US is located in California. Texas, Arizona, and Nevada are also leaders in deploying battery storage.Battery storage allows solar and

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Is de-extinction possible?

Earth Wise ·

2025/01/28

Advances in genomics have created the possibility of bringing back extinct species from the past by making use of recovered DNA from preserved specimens. Companies attempting to “de-extinct” iconic species have received hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists. These companies are trying to bring back iconic species that include ivory-billed woodpeckers, Tasmanian tigers, dodos, passenger pigeons, and woolly mammoths. Efforts to recreate extinct species are controversial. The

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Saving the Great Salt Lake

Earth Wise ·

2025/01/27

For many years, scientists have warned that the Great Salt Lake in Utah is headed toward a catastrophic decline. While the size of the Great Salt Lake fluctuates naturally with seasonal and long-term weather patterns, the lake has been experiencing significant and steady declines for decades. In fact, the Great Salt Lake has lost more than 15 billion cubic yards of water over the past three decades, and it’s getting shallower at the rate of four inches a year. This reduction is primarily due to

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Tourism and greenhouse gas emissions

Earth Wise ·

2025/01/17

Tourism is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 9% of the global total. Over the past 15 years, its emissions have grown more than twice as fast as those of the rest of the global economy.Unless the tourism industry finds ways to slow down its growing emissions, those emissions will continue to increase by 3 to 4% each year, meaning that they will double every 20 years. The major drivers behind tourism’s growing emissions have been slow improvements in

2:00

Fertilizer from thin air

Earth Wise ·

2025/01/16

Ammonia is one of the largest-volume synthetic chemicals produced in the world. Globally, manufacturing plants produce about 200 million tons of it each year. About 70% of ammonia is used to produce fertilizers.Most ammonia is produced using the Haber-Bosch process, which converts hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia. The process is energy-hungry, running at over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and therefore results in lots of greenhouse gas emissions – about 1% of the world’s annual CO2

2:00

Artificial intelligence and lost oil wells

Earth Wise ·

2025/01/02

There have been commercial oil and gas wells across the United States for 170 years. Researchers estimate that there are between two and three million wells that have been abandoned. There are hundreds of thousands of them, across 27 states, that are "orphaned," meaning that they are uncapped, unproductive, and nobody is responsible to manage their leakage or pollution.Many are undocumented orphaned wells – UOWs – that are not listed in formal records and are basically out of sight and out of

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A solar peaker plant

Earth Wise ·

2025/01/01

Peaker plants are power plants that the grid makes use of during times of particularly high electricity demand. The power they supply is typically high in cost and usually high in greenhouse gas emissions. When operating the electricity grid, power sources are generally called upon in order of marginal cost. Only when demand is very high do grid operators make use of the highest-cost assets that tend to be fossil-fueled power plants that can start and ramp up quickly.For years, there has been

2:00

Climate change and an iconic Florida bird

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/31

The Florida scrub-jay is a medium-sized bird native to Florida, known for its striking blue plumage and distinctive call. It is the only bird species that is entirely endemic to Florida, found mainly in the scrubby, sandy habitats of the central and southern part of the Sunshine State. But extensive development, habitat fragmentation, and habitat degradation have caused the scrub-jay population to decline significantly over the past century. Another threat facing the Florida scrub-jay is

2:00

Neighborhood geothermal energy

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/30

Residential geothermal energy makes use of the constant, year-round temperature of the earth below the surface to efficiently provide both heating and cooling for a home. In the summer, the cool earth beneath a house sits at about 55 degrees and can be tapped into with a heat pump to provide cooling. In the winter, that 55-degree underground expanse provides a much warmer source of air to heat instead of the often freezing-cold air outside. Geothermal systems are appealing because they use far less

2:00

Unexplained heat wave hotspots

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/27

2023 and 2024 have been the hottest years since records have been kept. But above and beyond the upward march of average temperatures around the globe, there has been the phenomenon of distinct regions across the globe experiencing repeated heatwaves that are so extreme that they cannot be accounted for in any models of global warming. A new study by Columbia University’s Climate School has provided the first worldwide map of such regions, which have emerged on every continent except Antarctica

2:00

Reducing methane from cattle

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/26

Livestock is responsible for almost 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Most of that is in the form of methane that cattle release when they burp. Grazing cattle produce more methane than feedlot cattle or dairy cows because they eat more fiber from grass. There are 9 million dairy cows in the U.S. but more than 64 million beef cattle.Beef cattle spend most of their lives grazing in pastures and producing methane. Controlling the food of pasture-raised cattle is difficult because they often

2:00

Faster electric vehicle charging

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/25

One concern that people have in replacing gas-powered vehicles with electric vehicles is the time it takes to charge them. Charging an EV at home from an ordinary 110V electrical outlet is a slow process; installing a 220V outlet speeds things up considerably but it still can take all night to fully charge a car. The driving range of electric cars has increased over the years so that now there are many cars that can go 300 miles or more on a charge. For most people, so-called range anxiety is mostly

2:00

Corals and climate change

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/24

Climate change is a major threat to coral reefs around the world. Ocean warming triggers coral bleaching - a stress response where corals expel the symbiotic algae essential for their survival. If coral bleaching is severe, it can lead to coral death.A new study led by scientists from Newcastle University in England suggests that corals are unlikely to adapt to ocean warming quickly enough to keep pace with global warming, unless there are rapid reductions in global greenhouse gas

2:00

Giant batteries in the Earth

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/23

The wind and the sun are inexhaustible sources of energy, and we are tapping into them to produce electricity at a growing rate around the world. But neither of them is always available when we need them. When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, they don’t work. An opposite problem also exists. When our energy needs are low, but it is sunny or windy, solar and wind power are all dressed up with nowhere to go. Energy storage is the answer to both of these problems. When there is

2:00

Manatees are not Florida natives

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/20

Florida is very proud of its manatees. It has a county named after them and has pictures of them on license plates. These gentle creatures are part of Florida culture. But recent research indicates that manatees – also known as sea cows – might only be relatively recent residents of the Sunshine State. Manatees have been spotted in Florida waters for several centuries but might have only been tourists visiting briefly before returning to their home waters in the Caribbean in places like

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When is a heat wave just a heat wave?

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/18

There are lots of extreme weather events of all kinds these days. But there have always been extreme weather events. Climate change results in more extreme weather but not all extreme weather should be attributed to climate change. So, how do we know if an extreme weather event is a result of the changing climate? Communities that are affected by extreme weather events need to know whether they are likely to see more such events in the future, or if they are anomalies like a “500-year storm” or

2:00

Regrowing forests naturally

Earth Wise ·

2024/12/17

Deforestation is one of the major causes of climate change and restoring and enhancing forests is a major activity around the world as a way to mitigate its effects. There are high-profile initiatives to plant millions of trees, but these projects are often ill-conceived and poorly managed.One of the most dramatic failures was the planting of over a million mangrove seedlings on the Filipino island of Luzon back in 2012. A study 8 years later found that fewer than 2 percent of the trees had

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