Transcript

11.27.25 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Hello, this is Kelly Taylor, and I'll be your host
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for Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. I'll have some
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articles on the topics of science and nature. But first
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a reminder that radioe is a reading service intended for
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people who are blind or have other disabilities that make
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it difficult to read printed material. First up, we have
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an article from Popular Science with an interesting title. Without dinosaurs,
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there'd be no Thanksgiving dinner. And this is dated November
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twenty fifth, written by Andrew Paul. It's hard to pick
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a favorite dish on your Thanksgiving plate, but regardless of
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your selection, there's a decent chance its history can be
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traced back to one of the most cataclysmic events in
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Earth's history. Quote. The dinosaur's absence meant changes in the
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forest structure. You went from a more open canopy to
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a more closed can rainforest, explains Mike Donovan, a paleobotanist
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and the Fossil Plants Collections manager at Chicago's Field Museum. Quote.
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This denser rainforest provided an opportunity for plants that grew
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on vines on tree trunks, including things like grapes and legumes.
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Around sixty six million years ago, a six point two
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mile wide asteroid slammed into the present day Gulf of
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Mexico and ushered in the final days of non avian dinosaurs.
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This Cretaceous Paleogene extinction event ultimately wiped out at least
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three quarters of all species, including the planet's raining reptiles.
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But dinosaurs, reptiles, and other animals weren't the only species
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that died off. Plenty of flora from global ecosystems disappeared too.
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According to Donovan, the u ecological gaps didn't remain barren
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for long. Quote. Many of the plants that evolved in
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the years following the extinction of the dinosaurs are foundational
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in the food chain. They make up huge portions of
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our diet and are involved in building, construction, materials, and pharmaceuticals.
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He said, really, we couldn't survive without them. Quote green beans, yams, coffee, cacao.
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All these and more only began developing after Earth's megafauna disappeared,
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granting them the space and time to flourish in what
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eventually became present day rainforests. Like dinosaurs, the ancestors of
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today's beloved Thanksgiving ingredients are often preserved as fossil specimens
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in the geological record. Many examples are currently on display
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at the Field Museum in the temporary exhibit After the
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Age of Dinosaurs. Quote. The fossil record of plants from
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this time shows us how these living plants evolved, where
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they came from, how they changed over time, said Donovan.
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From them, we can also learn about how plants may
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need or may react to things like environmental changes in
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the future by stepping in the past. Now, let's learn
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a little bit more about plants. With an article from
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Scientific America dated November twenty fifth, the headline is this
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fossil is rewriting the story of how plants spread across
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the planet, written by Taylor Mitchell Brown. Around four hundred
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and ten million years ago, terrestrial life was relatively simple.
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There were no forests or prairies. Land was largely dominated
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by slimy microbial mats, the types of plants that would
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eventually give rise to trees and flowers. It only just
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evolved and would take another several million years to fully
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flourish and diversify. A new discovery is rewriting the story
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of how these vascular plants, as they're called spread onto land.
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Researchers may have finally resolved a debate about an enigmatic
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but widespread fossil called spongiophytin. It seems to have been
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a strange life form called a lichen that may have
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helped pave the way for plants to thrive on land.
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The discovery, published recently in Science Advances, settles a question
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that had been opened for over a century, says paleontologist
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Giovan Gaia of the Institute of Geosciences at the State
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University of Campinas in Brazil, who was not involved with
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the research. Quote. Until now, most people thought lichens appeared
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only after vascular plants, but this study shows they were
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already there at the beginning, literally helping prepare the ground
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for plant life. Lichens are the symbiotic result of fungi
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and photosynthetic algae or sinobacteria working together. Today that amalgam
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helps churn lifeless rocks and sediments into nutrient rich soil everywhere,
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from polar deserts to tropical forests, says study lead author
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Bruno Becker Kerber, a palaeontologist at Harvard. Vascular plants have
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tissues that funnel those soil nutrients from the ground to
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their stems. And leaves. Because lichen's soft body tissues are
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rarely preserved in the fossil record, their origins have remained mysterious.
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A twenty nineteen genetic analysis suggested they evolved well after
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the emergence of vascular plants, indicating they likely played little
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to no role in early land colonization. Scientists have long
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debated whether spongiophytin, which flourished around four hundred two million
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years ago, was lichen or algae. To determine the fossil's identity,
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becker Kerber and his colleagues analyzed the underlying chemical properties
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of lingering organic material within the fossils. Unlike algae, which
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are lined with cell walls, lichen contain fungi lined with kitan,
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the same material that makes up the exoskeletons of insects.
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Kitan is loaded with nitrogen, and the team's results turned
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up an unmistakable nitrogen signal. Quote. The more we tested it,
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the more consistent the signal became. It was genuinely exciting.
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Becker Kerber says there were other fungal traits present too,
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such as a distinct branching pattern exhibited by growing fungal
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cells called hyphi. The results suggest liken evolved around four
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hundred ten million years ago, shortly after the initials spread
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of vascular plants four hundred twenty million years ago, and
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just before the earliest known forests around three hundred and
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ninety million years ago. Quote. It's a major shift in
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how we view the complexity of life's first steps onto land.
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Becker Kerber says spongiophytin likely weathered rocks, stabilized sediments, cycled nutrients,
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and contributed to the formation of protos soils just before
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forests developed. Matthew Nelson, an evolutionary biologist at the Field
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Museum of Natural History, says, if spongiophytin was a lichen,
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it may have enabled the expansion of land plants into
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areas previously uncolonized. The new picture suggests like an emerged
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near the beginning of terrestrial plant history, and the unique
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fungi algae relationship may have been essential to the spread
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of plants. Quote. People often tell the story of life's
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move onto land as a plant story. Becker Kerber says,
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what our study shows is that fungi and lichens were
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also part of it. Now we have an article from
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Wired magazine and the headline is the Climate impact of
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owning a Dog by Claire Elise Thompson on November twenty second.
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I've been a vegetarian for over a decade. It's not
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because of my health or because I disliked the taste
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of chicken or beef. It's a lifestyle choice I made
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because I wanted to reduce my impact on the planet.
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And yet, twice a day, every day, I lovingly scoop
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a cup of meat based kibble into a bowl and
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set it down for my fifty pound rescue dog, a
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husky mix named Loki. Until recently, I hadn't devoted a
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huge amount of a thought to that paradox. Then I
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read an article in the Associated Press headlined people often
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miscalculate climate choices, a study says, one surprise is owning
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a dog. The study, led by environmental psychology researcher Danielle
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Goldwork and published in the journal PNAS Nexus, examine how
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people perceived the climate impact of various behaviors options like
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adopt a vegan diet for at least one year, or
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shift from fossil fuel car to renewable public transport. The
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team found that participants generally overestimated a number of low
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impact actions like recycling and using efficient appliances, and they
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vastly underestimated the impact of other personal decisions, including the
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decision to quote, not purchase, or adopt a dog in quote.
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The real objective of the study was to see whether
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certain types of climate information could help people commit to
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more effective actions, But mere hours after the AP published
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its article, its aim had been recast as something else,
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entirely an attack on people's furry family members. Quote climate
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change is actually your fault because you have a dog,
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one ready user wrote. Others in the community chimed in
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with ire, ridiculing the idea that a pet chihuahua could
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be driving the climate crisis and calling on researchers and
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the media to stop pointing fingers at everyday individuals. Goldwert
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and her fellow researchers watched the reactions unfold with dismay.
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Quote if I saw a headline that said climate scientists
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want to take your dog away, I would also feel upset.
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She said, they definitely don't. You can quote me on that.
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The study set out to understand how to shift behavior
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by communicating climate truths instead, its media coverage revealed a
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troubling psychological trade off. When climate related messaging strikes a nerve,
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it may actually turn people off from the work of
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shifting its societal norms. It's an instinct I understand on
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some level. I love Loki, and my knee jerk reaction
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is to defend the very personal choice of sharing one's
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life with a dog. I also so sympathized with redirecting
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the blame toward the biggest polluters, billionaires and fossil fuel companies.
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Not bonbond the pet shuawei in question. But is it
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irresponsible to shrug off any conversation about the environmental impact
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of our pets, something far more within our control than, say,
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the overflow of the overthrow of capitalism? Is there a
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way to have a frank discussion about the climate impact
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of our own personal lives without going to the dogs. Oftentimes,
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when I'm questioning how a particular climate behavior might fit
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in my life, I try to imagine how it looks
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in my vision of a sustainable future. It's why, for instance,
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I don't own a car and am dedicated to writing
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public transit, even though it isn't always super convenient. I'm
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keen to be an early adopter of systems I believe in,
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but I struggle to imagine a future without companion animals.
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Even knowing about their environmental impact, which is admittedly substantial.
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Dogs and cats eat meat heavy diets, which is where
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the bulk of their carbon pawprint comes from. A twenty
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seventeen study from UCLA found that dogs and cats are
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responsible for about twenty five to thirty percent of the
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environmental impact of meat consumption in the United States. That's
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equivalent to a year's worth of driving by thirteen and
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a half million cars. For pets that eat traditional kibble
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or wet food, that protein may come from meat byproducts
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otherwise wasted animal parts such as organs and bones not
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approved for human consumption, but an increasing number of pet
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owners are opting to feed their fur babies human grade
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meat products, which requires additional resources and generates extra emissions.
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After they eat, of course, they poop a lot, at
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least for dogs. That poop typically gets bagged in plastic
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and sent to the landfill, and it turns out all
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of biodegradable poop bags I've diligently bought over the years
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don't help matters much. They also release greenhouse gases in landfills,
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and most composting programs don't accept pet waste. With more
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dogs around than ever before, the US dog population has
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steadily increased from fifty two million in nineteen ninety six
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to a new peak of ninety million in twenty twenty four.
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Their overall climate toll is more than a chihuahua sized issue.
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But pets are also more than just sources of carbon pollution.
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According to a twenty twenty three Pew Research poll, ninety
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seven percent of owners say they consider their pets to
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be part of their families, with fifty one percent of
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respondents saying they are on the same level as a
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human family member. So whenever their climate impact crops up
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in the discourse, as it has periodically, it makes sense
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that people tend to get defensive. This don't you dare
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take away my dog? You horrible environmentally backlash is certainly
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not the first time the climate movement has been accused
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of depriving people of the things they love. Climate policy
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has long been painted as a force for austerity, coming
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for your burghers, your gas stoves, your coal mining jobs.
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That framing has been politically potent used by fossil fuel
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interests in their allies to stoke resentment and delay government action.
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Big oil at once wants us to believe that the
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climate crisis is our fault and that we shouldn't have
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to give up anything to fix it. For some climate advocates,
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the solution has been to shift messaging away from individual
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responsibility and focus instead on big systemic changes like overhauling
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our electricity and transit systems through governmental investment and clean energy.
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In her essay I work in the environmental movement, I
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don't care if you recycle, author and podcaster Mary Annace
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Hegler wrote, quote, the belief that this enormous existential problem
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could have been fixed if all of us had just
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tweaked our consumptive habits is not only preposterous, it's dangerous.
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Its victim blaming, plain and simple. Egler and others have
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taken a strong stance against environmental purity, the idea that
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you can't care about or advocate for systems level change
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if you aren't first changing your own habits. But not
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everyone agrees that individual actions should be completely de emphasized.
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In the Climate conversation, Kimberly Nicholas, a climate scientist and author,
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of the popular book Under the Sky We Make has
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argued that wealthy people living in wealthy countries and globally
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wealthy is a lower bar than you might think do
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have a responsibility to slash their outsized carbon emissions, and
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particularly for those of us living in democracies, personal action
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isn't just about the choices we make as consumers. Quote,
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there's still an ongoing tension between personal and system change,
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or individual and collective action. Nicholas said, it's really hard
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to get that right, to get the right balance there
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that acknowledges the role and the importance of both, and
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to talk about and study and describe both in a
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way that motivates people to take high impact actions. In
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Ute Goldwortz saw that tension play out in her maligned
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climate communications study. In the experiment, participants reviewed twenty one
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individual climate actions like eating less meat, and five systemic
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actions like voting, and rated their commitments to taking each action.
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Two test groups then received clarifying information about the relative
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impact of the twenty one individual actions. One group was
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asked to estimate their ranking before learning how they actually ranked.
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The other group received the information straight up, but participants
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didn't receive any data about the carbon mitigation potential of
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the five collective actions, which would be far more difficult
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to quantify. What Goldort's team found surprised them. The teachings
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did nudge people toward higher impact personal actions, but their
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stated likelihood of engaging in collective ones actually went down,
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a backfire effect that hints at the perils of focusing
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too much on personal lifestyle choices. Quote. It might be
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kind of like a mental substitution, Goldward said. People feel like, Okay,
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I've done my part individually. I kind of checked the
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box on climate action. Participants were also asked to rate
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the plasticity of each of the actions, or how easy
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it would be to adopt, and those measurements revealed another
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nuance in how people view different forms of climate action.
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For the individual focused options, participants were more likely to
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commit to actions they saw as requiring little effort. For
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the systemic actions, they were more interested in whether it
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would have an impact, something researchers are still working on quantifying. Quote.
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If you think voting or marching is just symbolic or ineffective,
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you're not going to engage. Goldwort said. We have to
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show people evidence that their voice or their vote can
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shift policy, corporate practices, or social norms in quote, I,
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for one, was surprised to see that participants rated the
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commitment to quote not purchase or adopt a dog as easy.
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When I asked Goldwort what might be behind that, she
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noted that dog ownership is a decision people don't make
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very often. It also doesn't require any action at all
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for people who already don't own dogs. The results surely
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would have been different if the listed action was get
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rid of your existing dog, which it was not a
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point that readers seemed to miss. Based on comments about
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the study and there emails Goldwort said she received. Still,
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for an animal lover like me, the idea of never
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adopting another dog doesn't feel easy to commit to at all.
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It feels like an immense sacrifice. The sadness I feel
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at the thought of a future without dogs points me
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to another important factor when it comes to motivation for
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climate action. Joy. Actions we take to try to mitigate
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a climate crisis may be partially driven by how easy
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they are for us or how effective we believe them
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to be, but any choice we make is also driven
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by what we find joy in. It's an essential part
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of staying committed and resilient in the fight for a
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better future. In this way, carbon intensive activities like dog
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ownership have value beyond their weight in emissions. Quote. People
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have an emotional attachment to the people in animals and
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creatures that we love, Nicholas said, and that is actually,
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I think very powerful. We're not only going to solve
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climate change by life up all the numbers. We certainly
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need to do that, but we have to tap into
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what people really care about and realize all those things
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are on the line and threatened by the amount of
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climate change we're heading for with current policies. Would I
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fight to ensure that dogs like my beloved Loki can
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continue wagging happily on this planet. Heck yes I would.
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I've always felt that being a pet person goes hand
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in hand with a sense of altruism and responsibility. And
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if not giving up our pets means fighting climate change
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by voting, marching, donating, advocating, and consuming like our pets
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lives depend on it, I think we can all get
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on board. That might also mean adjusting your pets diets.
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While making my dog a full vegetarian seems challenging. Though
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technically possible, just cutting out beef has a significant impact.
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Shifting to lower carbon meats was even one of the
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high impact actions included in gold Wort's study. That's he
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can easily commit to, and we already buy insect based
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treats which leave a pungent odor in my pockets but
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seem to please his taste buds. There are also ways
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that dog ownership intersects with other climate related behaviors and
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icdotally I would say I travel less because I have
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a dog whose care I need to think about walking
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him every day. Has also made me vastly more connected
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to my local environment, the goings on in my neighborhood,
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and my neighbors themselves, all of which are important aspects
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of building climate resilience. Some dogs have even been trained
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to sniff out invasive species and help identify environmental contaminants,
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though I'd never thought about it quite this way before
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I've read Goldwort's study. The climate actions I take have
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a lot to do with the love I feel for Loki.
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Not because I want to leave a better world for him.
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I recognize reality that I will almost certainly outlive him,
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but because my feelings for him bring me closer to
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the love I feel for all living things on this planet.
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This ice age predator who shares my home, as the
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anthropologist and comedian David aan Howe puts, it, is a
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living reminder of the relationship humans have with other species
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going back many thousands of years. Now. Here's an article
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from the San Francisco Chronicle. California's coastal waters are transforming
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at a surprising rate. Here's what the future could look like.
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This is by Jack Lee, updated November twenty fifth. Waters
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off the California coast, part of one of Earth's richest
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marine ecosystems, have acidified faster than most of the rest
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of the world's oceans over the past century, according to
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a new study. The author's report that the broad swath
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of coastal water that flows southward from British Columbia to
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the Baja California Peninsula known as the California Current System,
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and the adjacent sally along the border of the US
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and Canada could also become far less supportive of marine
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life in the coming decades. Based on modeling using a
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worst case climate change scenario, the region is sitting at
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the leading edge of ocean acidification impacts, says Mary Margaret Stoll,
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who recently earned a doctorate in oceanography from the University
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of Washington. Quote, it provides a window into future conditions
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predict predicted in the coming decades for the rest of
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the ocean end Quote. Since the Industrial Revolution, the amount
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of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has skyrocketed amid surging
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human produced greenhouse gases. That's had impacts on the world's oceans. Quote.
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The ocean is a tremendous sponge for that carbon dioxide,
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said Tessa Hill, professor of oceanography at UC Davis's Bodega
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Marine Laboratory, who wasn't part of the new study. About
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a third of what we put into the atmosphere ends
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up in the ocean. This absorbed carbon dioxide chemically reacts
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to acidify seawater, which can disrupt marine life. Organisms like
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dungeness crabs, oysters, and corals face difficulty forming hard shells
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and skeletons. Such impacts could have ripple effects through marine
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ecosystems and threaten fisheries. Scientists have projected that the world's
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oceans will continue to become more acidic over time, but
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it hasn't been clear what to expect specifically for the
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California current system, said coethor Alex Gagnum, and associate professor
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of oceanography at University of Washington. Waters in this region
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are naturally more acidic than those of the open ocean
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because of upwelling. This natural process is a distinct feature
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of the California current system and brings nutrient rich water
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up from the ocean depths, fueling the growth of marine life.
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But this water is also extra acidic due to the
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decomposition of organic matter in the deep ocean. Quote there's
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been sort of a scientific debate about whether this really
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productive region is going to be moderated from ocean acidification
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or amplified, Gagnut said, the answer seems to be amplified.
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Climate simulations from the new study indicated that carbon dioxide
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increases in the California current system over approximately the past
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century outpaced atmospheric carbon dioxide by fifty percent on average.
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By contrasts, most of the world's oceans have added carbon
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dioxide at about the same rate as the atmosphere. The
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authors found a similar pattern in the Salish Sea, which
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includes Puget Sound and the strait of one to Fuca.
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The modeling results were reinforced by a separate analysis of
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historical coral samples collected by the research vessel Albatross in
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the California Current System and Salash Sea between eighteen eighty
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eight and eighteen ninety four. The scientists quantified levels of boron,
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a chemical element that builds up in different forms depending
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on the acidity of surrounding seawater when the corals formed.
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In twenty twenty, the researchers revisited some Salash Sea sites
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where samples had previously been collected and gathered present day
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corals for analysis. We were able to compare old corals
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from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution with modern corals
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collected from the same locations and figure out how much
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acidification had happened, Cagnum explained. The authors uncovered that carbon
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dioxide increases in the Salash Sea out gained the atmosphere
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by about forty percent. They proposed that the intrinsically high
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acidity of the California Current makes it more sensitive to
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atmospheric carbon dioxide increases than other parts of the ocean.
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The researcher's project, project I'm Sorry the researchers project continued
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rapid escalation of carbon dioxide in the California Current through
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the end of the twenty first century, as the ecosystem
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continues to outpace increases in the atmosphere and other ocean
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regions that could mean sooner than anticipated consequences for marine life.
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The projections rely on extreme greenhouse gas emissions scenario involving
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dramatic increases in coal use. Climate change mitigation efforts, while
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far weaker than climate experts had sought, have meant such
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an extreme scenario isn't actually likely to play out, but
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one of the authors, agreeing with the One scientist agreeing
27:58
with the authors said that it's still quote useful to
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see what those outer bounds look like. End quote. Well,
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that'll be all for today's Diary of Science and Nature.
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Your reader's Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for further programming
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on RADIOI