Transcript

3.19.26 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Hello, this is Kelly Taylor and I'll be you reader
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for Radio Wise. Diary of Science and Nature have articles
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on the topics of science and nature. But first a
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reminder that RADIOI is a reading service intended for people
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who are blind or have other disabilities that make it
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difficult to read printed material. The first article is going
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to come from Wired magazine. Get Ready for a year
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of chaotic weather in the US. This is dated March nineteenth.
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Despite being being declared the third hottest year on record,
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twenty twenty five was a relatively quiet year for climate
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disasters in the US. No major hurricanes made landfall, while
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the total number of acres burned in wildfires last year
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a way of measuring the intensity of wildfire season, fell
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below the ten year average. But starting this week, the
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West is experiencing what looks to be a record breaking
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heat wave, while forecasting models predict that a strong Alninio
1:06
event is likely to emerge later this year. These two
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unrelated phenomena could set the stage for a long stretch
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of unpredictable and extreme weather reaching into next year, compounding
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the effects of a climate that's getting hotter and hotter
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thanks to human activity. First, there's the heat. Beginning this
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week and heading into next, a massive ridge of high
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pressure air will bring record breaking temperatures to the American West.
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The National Weather Service predicts that temperature records across multiple
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states are said to be broken in dozens of locations,
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stretching as far east as Missouri and Tennessee. The National
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Weather Service has issued heat warnings for parts of California, Arizona,
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and Nevada, as well have fire warnings, and for parts
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of Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Colorado. Quote. This will
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be the single strongest ridge we've observed outside of summer
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in any month, says Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the
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University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. The other remarkable
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thing about this heat wave, Swain says, is just how
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long it's going to last. This is not a day
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or two of extreme heat. He says, We've already in
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some of these places been seeing record high as every
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day for a week, and we expect to see them
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every day for another at least seven to ten days. Quote.
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The later end of the latter end of March will
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be much more intense, with temperatures in some places breaking
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April and make records. Quote, there aren't that many weather
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patterns that can result in an eighty five or ninety
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degree temperature in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Denver
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in the same week. Quote. This late winter heat wave
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is adding on to an already warm winter in the West,
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with big implications for the summer. A month ago, snowpack
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levels across multiple states where at record lows thanks to
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warmer than average temperatures. According to data provided by the
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Department of Agricultures, snowpack levels were still sitting below fifty
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percent of average across many Western states. Snowpack is a
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critical natural reservoir for rivers in the West. Between sixty
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to seventy percent of the region's water supply in many
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areas comes from melting snow. Low snowpack is a bad
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sign for already stressed rivers like the Colorado, which supplies
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water for forty million people in seven states. The ongoing
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heat wave, Swain says, will more than likely make conditions
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even worse. Quote. April first is typically the point at
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which snowpack would be, at least historically at its peak.
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He says, even if temperatures cool off until summer, these
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low snowpack levels are also a warrisome sign or the
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upcoming fire season. Snow Droughts the one the West is
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experiencing can dry out soil, kill trees, and lessens stream flow,
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ideal conditions for a wildfire to grow. Meanwhile, the water
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supply in the Colorado River could drop. Even lower states
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that rely on the river are already facing a political
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crisis as they attempt to renegotiate water rights. A drought
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would only up the ante. Then there's El Nino. Last week,
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the National Weather Service announced that there is more than
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a sixty percent chance of an al Nino event emerging
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in August or September. Various weather models suggest that this
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al Nino could be particularly strong. While we likely won't
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know for sure until summer, quote the fact that all
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the models are moving upwards is worth watching, says Zeke Housefather,
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a research scientist at Berkeley Berkeley Earth. El Nino is
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a natural cycle of climate variability, usually concentrated in the
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tropical Pacific, that pushes heat from the ocean into the
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atmosphere and towards the western coast of the US. El
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Nino years are typically warm. An average Alnino can increase
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yearly global temperatures by one point two degree ce. No
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one can predict for certain what impact exactly al Nino
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will have in the coming months. The phenomenon has a
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variety of effects on weather around the world Quo It's
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not always super consistent. Some areas get wetter, some areas
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get drier, says south Housetuck. In the US, Alnino is
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generally associated with cooler and wetter conditions in the southeast
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and Southwest, with warmer conditions in western Canada and Alaska.
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This could be potentially good news for some areas in
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the Southwest that, following a parched summer due to a
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lack of snowpack, need more water, but says Swain, an
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al Nino event could also increase the chances of dry
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thunderstorms in some areas, which up the chance for wildfires
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from lightning in already dry terrain. During the last strong
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Alino event at twenty sixteen, heavy rain triggered mudslides in
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some areas of drought stricken California. Heavy storms in areas
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affected by both wildfires and drought have been linked to
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increased likelihood of mud slides. Quote people talk about climate chaos,
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I don't love the term in the context of climate
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change because we still have a very structured climate, says Swain.
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But a very strong Alino event really does induce chaos.
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It induces patterns that are very different from typical historical
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norms in quote, and there's no denying that human caused
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climate change is upping the antifot heat increases from natural
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events like Alina. Quote. Obviously, any Alino event that happens
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is happening on top of human caused climate change. Houselich says, quote,
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we warmed the planet one point four degrees celsius, so
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you're going to have a much bigger impact from heat,
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for example, if you start at that level versus one
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hundred and fifty years ago. And now we'll turn to
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BBC Wildlife. The world's largest reptile is a deadly apex
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predator that's five meters long and weighs half a ton.
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This is dated March eighteen. There are a lot of
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exaggerated reports of the size of crocodiles, including chris It's
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Krys the crot from Queensland in Australia, which was reputed
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to have measured eight point six meters. Actual evidence for
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Chris's size is very thin. But what isn't disputed is
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that saltwater crocodiles are the largest reptiles on Earth. While
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adult male salt ease that's in quotes average five meters
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and five hundred kilo, females are much smaller, typically under
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three meters long and way less than one hundred kilograms. However,
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the largest saltwater crocodile ever recorded was around six point
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three meters long and estimated to have weighed between fifteen
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hundred and two thousand kilograms. It is also generally accepted
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that crocodiles of up to seven meters probably lived in
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the past. This apex predator can be found in many
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saltwater habitats from India's east coast to Southeast Asia and
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northern Australia. Saltwater crocodiles can live for more than seventy years,
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although there are reports of a nile crocodile living significantly
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older in captivity. Closely followed by the saltwater crocodile for
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size is the nile crocodile and the orinoco crocodile. And
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then we have an article from Vox We're discovering new
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species faster than ever, and it might be our best
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chance to save them. This is dated March second. When
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the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus published Systema Naturae in seventeen
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thirty five, he set out to classify every living thing
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on Earth, inventing the naming system we still use today
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and personally describing more than ten thousand species of plants
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and animals. Nearly three centuries later, with satellites mapping every
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continent in AI, models that can identify a bird by
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its song, you might assume we'd pretty much finished the
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job Linnae has started. We've been to the bottom of
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the ocean. We've sequenced the human genome. Surely we've cataloged
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our roommates on this planet. We have not not even close.
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Scientists estimate we've identified somewhere around one tenth of all
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species on Earth, meaning for every species with a name,
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roughly nine more are waiting in an unsampled river or
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an unexplored cave, or even museum drawer where they've been
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gathering dust for decades. Hundreds of thousands of unnamed species
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are already sitting in museum and arvarium collections right now.
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A quarter of new species descriptions involves specimens more than
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fifty years old. As a University of Arizona ecologist John
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Ween's put it, it's a poorly known planet that we
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live on, and now many of the planet's residents are
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in trouble. The Intercovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
10:31
Economic Services that's the IPBES, estimates that around one million
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animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, and that
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extinction rates are at least tends to hundreds of times
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higher than the background norm. The current extinction rate is
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somewhere between one hundred and a thousand times the natural rate,
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and the species vanishing fastests are disproportionately the ones we
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haven't cataloged yet, small invertebrates, tropical fungi, deep sea organisms,
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and habitats. We've barely surveyed the race to describe what's
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out there as real stakes. You can't protect what you
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haven't found. So here's the good news. When it comes
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to the species on Earth, we're not actually falling behind.
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We're speeding up. A study published in December in Science
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Advances by Weens and colleagues analyzed one point nine million
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species from the Catalog of Life and found that between
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twenty fifteen and twenty twenty, scientists describe more than sixteen
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thousand new species per year, the highest rate in the
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two hundred and seventy year history of modern taxonomy. Weens
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argues that fifteen percent of every species known to science
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has been discovered in just the past two decades. This
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was supposed to be going the other direction. Earlier research
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had suggested that the rate of species description peaked around
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nineteen hundred, back when naturalists in helmets were tramping through
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the tropics and shipping specimens back to European museums in
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wooden crates. The assumption was that the easy discoveries had
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been made and we were in the long tail of
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diminishing returns. Ween's data says otherwise quote. Some scientists have
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suggested that the pace of new species descriptions has slowed
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down and that this indicates we are running out of
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new species to discover. But our results show the opposite.
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And then we'll turn to USA today. Kona storm a
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Stown's forecasters with astronomical rain in Hawaii, just four days
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after storms swept Hawaii with flooding rains in more than
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one hundred mile per hour winds. The islands are bracing
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for another round, arriving March nineteenth and lingering through the weekend.
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Another subtropical cyclone, known as a Kona storm or ConA Low,
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is forming and forecasts to bring more rain and flooding,
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but without the highest winds of the previous storm, said
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Matthew Foster, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Honolulu.
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The heaviest rain is expected on Oahu, Maui, and the
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Big Island, according to Weather Service reports. While this storm
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may not be as strong as last week's ConA Low,
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individual areas may be impacted differently depending on where rain
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bands set up. The Weather Service added. The system is
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forecast to drag moisture over the region into the night
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of March nineteenth and into the twentieth. Foster said, then
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a trough will move into the area and intensify on
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March twentieth and twenty first. Kona is the Hawaiian word
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for leeward, and these subtropical cyclones often form on the
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west or northwest of the archipelago, considered the leeward side
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of the islands, and typically sheltered from the trade winds
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and intense rains. The low pressure systems are a winter phenomenon,
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worse some years than others, with origins in a series
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of planetary waves that move around the globe. The systems
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appear every year, but don't always hit Hawayi, said Matthew Foster,
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a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Honolulu. We will
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see them every year, but it's not every time they
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hit us, Foster said. We're a small target in the
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Big Ocean. They may be six hundred miles to the
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west or the east. Officials are still working to assess
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and address damage from the March thirteenth to the sixteenth
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storm that dropped up to four feet of rain on
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the island of Maui. The winds, blowing at hurricane speed
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gusts took down some of the power high tension wires
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that go across mountain ridges, said Stephen Businger, University of
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Hawaii professor. Hawaii Electric is still reconnecting people on the
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Big Island. At least eighteen hundred customers remained without electricity
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on March eighteenth, with a total of nearly twenty four
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hundred across the archipelago. Flooding washed over row odes in
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the island eroded a home that washed away and caused
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sinkholes and other damages, according to Hawaii Civil Beat, but
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no deaths have been reported. Widespread winds gusting fifty to
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eighty miles per hour were reported across the islands, with
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even higher gusts in a few locations. Winds gusted to
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one hundred and thirty five miles per hour at kailulupuh
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Waha on the Big Island in the early morning hours
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of March fourteen, and to one hundred ten miles per
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hour at the Monarchy's Summit the next morning. On Maui,
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the winds gusted to one hundred and eight miles per
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hour at kula on O Wahu, gusts to eighty one
15:40
miles per hour and to seventy eight miles per hour
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at historical Schofield Barracks. In addition to the winds, rainfall
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amounts were astronomical. Usinger said a similar, but worse ConA
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system occurred in two thousand and six, with seven fatalities.
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The rain started in February and continued through March, with
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four days and forty nights of precipitation, prompting comparisons to
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the biblical event associated with Noah, Alninia pattern in the
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eastern Pacific tends to favor stronger loads. The two thousand
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and six event happened as a La Nina was fading.
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So did flooding in April twenty eighteen. In March twenty
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twenty one, Fortunately, the end is at least in sight
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for this event, Messenger said, I'm quite sure that in
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two weeks this pattern will have changed sor diminished greatly.
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You know, March comes in like a lion and goes
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out like a lamb, he said, adding to the folklore
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stems from the maximum changes occurring as Earth moves towards
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its spring equinox. Quote, we are at a time when
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the sun is increasing in strength more from one day
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to the next than at any other time of year.
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The length of day increases the fastest around the equinox,
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with a peak change in day to day's solar radiation.
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Because temperature ing gradients at various levels in the atmosphere
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are a primary source of energy for these storms. When
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the sun begins to warm the cold air, it steals
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the thunder out of the low pressure systems. Although daily
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rainfall records were broken in several gages throughout the islands.
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Only one of three major climate stations has reported record
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rains so far in March. It's possible that climate change
17:24
could influence the subtropical cyclones in the future. Warming temperatures
17:28
could increase the potential for heavier rainfall, but so far,
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Hawaii has been spared most of the worst of the
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increases in sea surface temperatures seen in other regions because
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the ocean currents carry warmer water into other regions. The
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state is seeing two trends that are pretty clear in
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the data. The islands are getting drier, with higher elevations
17:49
seeing the dryness faster than the lower elevations, and the
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state is getting warmer. Will go down to New Sance
18:00
Dentist magazine and this article's headline reads Earth is now
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head heating up twice as fast as in previous decades.
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Since dated March the sixth, global warming has accelerated and
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is now happening twice as fast as in previous decades,
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meaning major climate catastrophes could happen sooner than expected. Earth
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was warming by about zero point one point eight degrees
18:25
c per decade prior to twenty thirteen fourteen Since then,
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it has been heating up by about zero point three
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six degrees c per decade, according to an analysis at
18:38
the University of Potsdam, Germany. If warming continues at this rate,
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humanity could reach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming
18:47
to one and a half degrees in twenty twenty eight,
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even sooner than other research has projected. Every tenth of
18:56
a degree matters and makes the impact of global warming
18:59
worse in terms of extreme weather events, in terms of
19:02
ecosystem impacts, also the risk of crossing tipping points. The world,
19:08
apart from the US, is trying to halt global warming,
19:11
reduce it, and that's why the fact that it's now
19:14
actually doing the opposite, accelerating is of great concern. After
19:19
a string of record hot years, climate scientists began widely
19:22
debating in twenty twenty three whether global warming is speeding up.
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The natural fluctuations such as al Ninio climate phase, which
19:30
caused additional warming in twenty twenty three to twenty four,
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made it difficult to tell if the faster rise in
19:36
temperatures was due to climate change or just random weather.
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The study is the first to find a statistically significant
19:45
acceleration due to climate change, making that attribution with ninety
19:49
eight percent confidence. The team analyzed five different data sets
19:54
of global temperature, some of which show a higher number.
19:57
According to the analysis of the data set from the
20:00
European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, global warming could
20:05
reach one and a half degrees see above the pre
20:08
industrial period this year, based on a twenty year average
20:12
warm water coral reefs are starting to collapse and breaching
20:17
the one and a half degree celsius risks, crossing other
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tipping points like irreversible melting of Greenland and West Antarctica
20:26
and the die back of the Amazon rainforest. Many scientists
20:31
think the acceleration of global heating was caused mainly by
20:35
a cracked down in twenty twenty on sulfur dioxide and
20:42
shipping emissions. While that substance is harmful to human health,
20:47
it also formed a haze of aerosols that was blocking
20:50
sunlight and cooling the planeting. Now that this sunlight has
20:54
been unblocked, the warming rate may slow down, but it's
20:57
hard to say for sure. The transition away from fossil
21:01
fuels will continue to diminish air pollution that is masking warming. Quote.
21:07
There will be further aerosol reductions, but probably not as
21:11
rapid as those shipping emissions were reduced. It's quite possible
21:16
that the warming rate will be lower in the next decade.
21:19
In addition to al Nino, the authors estimated the effects
21:23
of volcanic eruptions, which also create sun blocking haze and
21:29
increased solar radiation during cycles of high sunspots. After excluding
21:34
these effects, they fitted two types of curve to global temperatures,
21:38
both of which showed in acceleration and warming, although at
21:41
different times. It's unlikely, however, that the researchers were able
21:45
to completely remove the temperature effects of Alninio, volcanoes and sunspots.
21:51
That means they could be slightly overestimating how much global
21:54
warming has sped up, but the study does offer condensing
21:57
proof that it has quickened. The broader takeaway is that
22:03
we have strong evidence for acceleration, even if we don't
22:06
know precisely how much the rate of warming has increased
22:10
as of yet. We'll need to wait a few more
22:12
years to get more data. Now we have an article
22:17
from Grist magazine, The AI boom has plunged a small
22:22
Pennsylvania town into chaos. This is from March nineteenth quote.
22:28
I don't like to see anyone upset, said Nick Ferris
22:32
of Prominent Real Estate Advisors. He was sitting in front
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of a crowd of roughly one hundred and fifty inside
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Valleyview High School's auditorium in Archbald, a town of about
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seventy five hundred puddled between two mountain ranges and Pennsylvania's
22:48
Lackawanna Valley. Ferris was there to represent the developer for
22:52
Project Scott, one of many data center campuses coming to town. However,
22:58
he said, I think that this is the best data
23:00
center site in this area of the country by far.
23:04
The audience had been fairly quiet, bundled in thick coats
23:07
against the late January cold, but as Ferris spoke about
23:10
data centers as a boon for communities, they began to laugh,
23:14
drawing a review from town officials. What about the children,
23:18
someone shouted from the crowd. The children were watching from
23:21
the walls. Long banners of Valley View Performing Arts students
23:26
hanging around the auditorium like Championship Pennance. Project Scott and
23:31
four other data facilities will sit just a few thousand
23:34
feet from the middle and high schools. Isn't there a
23:39
missile plant next door, Ferris said, getting aggravated. He was
23:43
referring to Lockheed Martin's three hundred and fifty thousand square
23:46
foot missiles and fire control facility directly next to the
23:50
high school, parts of which are highly contaminating. That sucks too.
23:55
Another attendee yelled back, this was nothing to worry about.
23:58
Ferris tried to convince the audience this would bring in
24:02
tax revenue. He said it was just an office park,
24:05
albeit one with roughly four hundred and fifty diesel backup generators. Quote.
24:10
It's going to be away from everyone, Paris kept repeating
24:13
to rising Jeters, who is wearing a knit turtleneck with
24:17
a large American flag emblazing across the chest. Quote, it's
24:21
not going to bother anyone in the specifications say something different.
24:27
Five developers are planning to build six data center campuses
24:30
in arch Malt which will cover a full fourteen percent
24:34
of the town Evictor Trailer Park and border many residential properties.
24:39
One campus alone, as the Scranton Times Tribune reporter Frank
24:43
Lensky pointed out, is expected to use more power than
24:47
the region's largest power plant is able to produce. Pennsylvania
24:51
has become an epicenter of the data center boom in
24:53
the United States, with over fifty campuses in development, eleven
24:58
of them are slated for Lakawanaka alone. Archbald, with six
25:02
campuses composed of fifty one massive buildings, as the most
25:07
of any municipality in Pennsylvania. Despite the public outcry, it
25:12
has been surprisingly difficult to learn what Archbald's elected officials
25:16
think of the massive industry moving in. None of the
25:20
town's seven council members responded to emails, so I stopped
25:26
by the borough administration building in person a few weeks
25:29
before Christmas and was told to wait in the lobby
25:32
while they held an informal, closed meeting. When the door opened,
25:36
it was clear that anyone who actually had the power
25:38
to make or break the data center plans and quietly
25:41
filed out the back, leaving me with Archbald's unelected borough manager,
25:46
Dan Marky, who essentially runs the town but cannot vote
25:49
for or against development. What did he think about artificial
25:54
general intelligence, the idea that eventually these efforts will produce
25:58
something like a computer god capable of solving climate change,
26:02
ending hunger. Revealing the full breadth of science and performing
26:05
any number of other miracles. Quote. I believe in one god,
26:09
and it's not a computer mark, he told you. Evenly.
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By now, hundreds of towns across the country have been
26:15
caught up in the rush to build large language models
26:19
that can parse unfathomable amounts of data, to write, copy
26:23
answer any query, develop new vaccines, and likely render a
26:27
large number of jobs obsolete. That rush accelerated into an
26:31
all out arms race over the past year. What it
26:34
means in practice is an enormous amount of data centers,
26:37
enough to approximate a minor deity, and enough, as OpenAI
26:42
co founder and former chief scientist Idiot sutz Keeper once
26:47
speculated to quote cover the Earth. Quote, Markey told me
26:52
he had check GPT on his phone, but didn't use
26:54
it much. I don't think anyone in the right mind
26:57
wants to see the world covered in data centers, he said.
27:00
But according to Pennsylvania law, we have to have a
27:03
zone for everything. An adult bookstore, a strip club, a
27:07
concrete and asshole plant, anything that wants to come here,
27:10
we have to have a zone for it. If it's
27:12
not zoned, it's allowed to go anywhere. In most states,
27:17
towns have the right to exclude businesses that they find disagreeable.
27:21
A wealthy suburb, for example, would likely reject a landfill
27:25
or gas plant, but in Pennsylvania, towns must allocate some
27:30
patch of land to these quote unquote undesirable industries. Some
27:35
municipalities deal with this by forming what are called zoning collaboratives,
27:40
which allow them to plan as a region for pollution.
27:44
Markley approached nearly the nearby boroughs of Blakely and Dixon
27:49
City to discuss the possibility that the data center development
27:53
rush has outpaced him. Well, that'll be all for today's
27:58
Diary of Science and Nature. Your your reader is Kelly Taylor.
28:01
Now stay tuned for further programming on RADIOI