Transcript

3.27.25 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Radio Wized Diary of Science and Nature. Your
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reader's Kelly Taylor. I'll have some articles on the topics
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of science and nature, but first a reminder that radio
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y is a reading service intended for people who are
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blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
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read printed material. We'll start off today with an article
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from The Guardian and it's headlined US honeybee deaths hit
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record high as scientists scramble to find main cause. This
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is March twenty fifth. Honeybee deaths have hit record highs
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in the US, with the unprecedented loss of colonies pushing
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many beekeepers close to ruin as scientists scramble to identify
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the main cause of the huge declines. Commercial beekeepers have
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reported losing more than sixty percent of their colonies over
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the world winter, according to an ongoing project APIs survey
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that covers more than two thirds of America's managed bees.
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This enormous rate of decline is higher than record reduction
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seen last year and is on track to be the
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biggest loss of honeybee colonies in US history. According to
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Scott maccart, Associate professor of entomology at Cornell University. Macart
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said that the extraordinary rate of loss became apparent during
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the winter's mass movement of honeybee hives to California to
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pollinate the vast almon crop there. Honey Bees, although introduced
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to the US, have become vital to the agricultural system
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by pollinating half of all crops, including apples, berries, pumpkins, melons,
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and cherries. Bee keepers are increasingly struggling to maintain the
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bee numbers necessary to undertake this work. Quote something real
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bad is going on this year, said Macart. We have
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been and seeing high losses year after year, but if anything,
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it is getting worse, which is troubling. Some places are
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having devastating losses, and there was a shortfall in pollination
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in some almond orchards this year. Whether these impacts will
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cascade to other crops remains to be seen. It's certainly possible. Quote.
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The latest honey bee losses are valued at one hundred
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and thirty nine million dollars and have come as the
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honey price is climbed by five percent amid a drop
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in honey production. Many beekeepers are now struggling to absorb
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these shortfalls, with some going out of business. Altogether. Quote.
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It's all gone, said one beekeeper in response to the survey. Quote.
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The equity on the house is gone, our retirement is gone,
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the family member's money is gone. All that's left are
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empty boxes. We don't even have the dead bees. They
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are gone too. A certain portion of a colony typically
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perishes over their more and more abund winter months, but
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this rate of loss was typically only round ten or
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twenty percent until around two decades ago, when a phenomenon
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called colony collapse disorder, where colonies completely disappear or die,
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started to emerge. In the US. Now, typically half of
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all colonies are lost on average. Scientists have ascertained that
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the climate crisis, habitat loss, and pesticide use have badly
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affected all bees, the vast majority in the US being
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four thousand native wild species rather than honeybees. For managed honeybees,
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a lack of nutrition, poor handling practices, and rampant infestation
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by varroamites, a type of parasite, and diseases have all
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taken their toll. The loss of these, both captive and
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wild in the US is already starting to limit the
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supply of some food and is reducing the yield of
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honey The declines are part of a broader crisis in
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the insect world, where species are being wiped out at
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an alarming rate. Researchers warn that the loss of insects
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imperils basic functions of life on Earth, such as food production,
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the flowering of plants, and waste disposal. The latest record
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leap in honeybee losses is now being investigated by staff
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at the US Department of Agriculture, which is analyzing bees
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wax and pollen to determine if parasites and viruses are
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to blame for the deaths. However, cuts in staff numbers
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by Donald Trump's administration has required Cornell University to step
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in and take on further required research to determine if
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the samples have been affected by pisticides. It will take
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around a month before scientists have a better idea as
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to the main drivers of the latest loss quote. There's
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no one single thing affecting honeybees, but we are trying
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to figure out what the most important stresses are right now,
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said MacCarthy. There are suspicions of a lot of things
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at the moment. You should see my inbox right now.
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There are theories about a new virus being involved, but
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we have to gather the data. We can't rule anything
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out at this stage. Quote. The record loss of honeybees
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follows figures released last year showing that conversely, there are
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now an all time high number of honeybee colonies in
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the US three point eight million, around a million more
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than five years previously. This is down to more people
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becoming interested in bee keeping, meaning that more colonies are
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being split and created. Macart said, quote that is driving
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up colony numbers, but it doesn't mean they are doing well,
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he said, quote the colony loss rates are increasing, if anything,
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even though we are putting more supply into the system.
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Another important point is that we have very good evidence
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of range declines and even extinctions among wild polymears, which
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aren't being managed by anyone. Comparing honey bees and wild
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bees is like comparing a chicken and a woodpecker. That
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doesn't mean honey bees, which are a part of agriculture
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like chickens, aren't beautiful. They bring a lot of joy
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to people, and without their crop pollination, we wouldn't be
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doing well at all. Turning now to popular science, the
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headline for this article reads with sea ice melting killer
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whales are moving into the Arctic. This is from March
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twenty second. In the winter of twenty twenty, Inuit hunters
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in Canada's Central Arctic came across the frozen carcasses of
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eleven beached bowhead whales, enormous marine mammals that have made
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a slow but steady comeback since they were driven to
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the brink of extinction by late nineteenth and early twentieth
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century whalers. Unsure of what killed the whales, the hunters
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contacted officials at fisheries and oceans Canada. Prevented from flying
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flying up by the COVID quarantine, scientists instead examined photos
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and tissue samples. The whales were young, thin, and scarred
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by what looked like teeth marks. Quote. There was no
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smoking gun, according to biologist Jeff Hagden, but he says
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that the perpetrators were very likely orcas also called killer whales,
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which were rarely seen in the high Arctic until sea
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ice began to retreat, opening pathways for other marine life,
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including salmon, to enter. What makes this situation even more intriguing.
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According to the University of Manitoba, evolutionary geneticist Colin Garaway
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is that these killer whales are likely members of an ecotype,
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a genetically distinct geographic variety that has begun migrating farther
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into previously icy regions of the Arctic from as far
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away as Spain. Unlike works in other parts of the
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Arctic which eat fish, this ecotype praise on large mammals.
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If their numbers continue to grow, say scientists who are
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watching this closely, they could up end or shift the
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food web in ways that could affect Inuit subsistence hunting
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and some endangered whale populations. For fisheries and oceans, scientists
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Steve Ferguson, this is another chapter in a multifaceted story.
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With climate change warming the Arctic faster than any other
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place on Earth, reducing summer sea ice almost entirely in
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some regions, killer whales, which have a global range are
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beginning to colonize rather than just periodically visit one of
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the few places in the world they could not historically access. Quote.
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With sea ice retreating in the arm Arctic very rapidly,
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killer whales are finding new pathways to enter regions like
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Hudson Bay and the High Arctic, said Ferguson. Quote along
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with the polar bear, they have become the top predator
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in the region. But while rapid sea ice retreat has
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diminished polar bear numbers by as much as fifty percent
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since the nineteen eighties, the change has only benefited killer whales.
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The fact that there are killer whales in the Arctic
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shouldn't be surprising. A century ago, whalers sometimes spotted orcas
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around the fringes of the Arctic in North Atlantic waters,
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undoubtedly following some of the estimated eighteen thousand bowheads and
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tens of thousands of belugas and narwhals that existed at
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the time. None of them would have been a match
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for killer whales, who approached from all sides in highly
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coordinated attacks, biting and ramming their prey until there is
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little life left in them. Back then, the killer whales
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were reloved to follow prey into icy choke holds during breakups,
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perhaps for fear of injuring their enormous norsal fins. It
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didn't mean that they did not occasionally try. Several years ago,
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Inuit elder Solomon Concatsiak recalled seeing killer whales trapped in
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ice in Fox Mason, at the north end of Hudson
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Bay in the nineteen fifties. He was just a boy then,
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but remembers how much excitement it caused because killer whales
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were so rarely seen. Ferguson got interested in orcus and
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the Arctic sometime around two thousand and five when colleague
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Jack Orr and scientists from Greenland and the US confirmed
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previous Inuit reports of orcus hunting, bowhead, beluga, and narwal
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in the High Arctic. While capturing and tagging narwhale at
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the north end of Baffin Island, where orches were rarely seen,
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they saw a pot of twelve to fifteen orcans kill
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several narwhales. Shortly after and his colleagues reported the killings,
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Ferguson brought a group of scientists and students together to
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do some brainstorming. Jeff Higdon at, a University of Manitoba
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graduate student at the time, was assigned to look at
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the database. He found that from eighteen fifty to two
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thousand and eight, whalers and scientists recorded four hundred and
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fifty credible sightings, most of which made in the nineteen
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nineties and two thousands. When sea ice in the Arctic
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started to retreat in a significant way. Higdon and colleague
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Kristen Westall from the marine conservation organization Oceans North then
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interviewed more than one hundred Inuit hunters from eleven communities.
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Almost all reported seeing orchids. Kyle Lafort, another University of
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Manitoba grad student who has been working with Ferguson, estimated
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in a study that there may be as many as
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one hundred and ninety killer whales in the Arctic one
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thousand narwhals annually, approximately the same number that Inuit that
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the Inuit harvest. Only Canadian Inuit and Greenland hunters can
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legally hunt narwal, while both Canadian and Alaska natives can
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take beluga. There are limits on the number of animals
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each community can harvest. Ferguson does not believe that orcas
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are going to have a big impact on the overall
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population of narwal, beluga, and bohead anytime soon, at least
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not in high Arctic waters, but he believes they could
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adversely affect small endangered populations of beluga in southern Hudson
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Bay and in Cumberland Sound off the coast of Baffin Island.
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They could also drive beluga, narwal, and bowhead away from
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Inuit hunting regions. It's not just the Arctic where killer
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whales are making their presence known. Some orcas are clearly
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on the move in other parts of the world where
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they are not often seen, feasting on large marine mammals
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and shifting the food chain in ways that are catching
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wildlife managers off guard. Killer whales occasionally attacked great white
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sharks when they recently began attacking them off the coast
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of South Africa near the fishing town of Gansbai. The
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great white split and have not come back. In twenty nineteen,
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scientists conducting research off the coast of Australia documented orces
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killing and eating endangered blue whales, the largest animal on earth.
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John Totterdahl, lead researcher for the Cetacean Research Center in Australia,
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says the discovery is important in determining how whale predation
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is affecting the recovery of whale species that were over
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harvested in that part of the world. This has been
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the story in Alaska's Cook Inlet, where orcas may be
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inhibiting the recovery of the region's endangered beluga. No one
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has been able to say for sure, because while shipping noise,
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changes in fish distribution and pollution may also be implicated.
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What scientists do know is that orchesidings in the region
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are on the rise now. To Scientific American in an
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article from March twenty fifth that is headlined, meet some
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of the strangest deep sea creatures, From sea pigs to
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disco worms. An entire world lives deep under the ocean's surface,
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far from human notice and as bustling as any city.
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Animals such as tube worms and clams live crowded around
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plumes of methane that bubble up through cracks in the
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ocean floor. Their residence attracts shrimp, fish and many other creatures.
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These deep sea oases are just some of many areas
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of the ocean floor that scientists are only beginning to explore,
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discovering new species along the way. A recent exploratory expedition
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by the Schmidt Ocean Institute on its research vessel foul Core,
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targeted nearly twenty of these natural underwater gas leaks and
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five deep sea canyons off the coast of Chile. Along
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the way, the research team used its underwater robot to
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spot a trove of fever dream characters come to life,
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including sixty that may be new to science. The scientists
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found methane seeps like this one by combining visual surveys,
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seafloor mapping, and chemical sampling or methane at suspected sites.
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They even traced telltale bubbles using sonar. Clans huddle around
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the methane seep so that the chemosynthetic microbes in their
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gills get a rich supply of food. The microbes convert
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the methane into organic molecules that the clams absorb as nutrients.
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Dense colonies of methane munching bacteria that build up near
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seeps are a tasty snack for other organisms, such as
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busy little shrimp grazing on a bacterial mat, just as
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cows graze on grass. Like clams, tube worms work with
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microbes to get food from upwelling methane. They also offer
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anchor points for other creatures, such as the pink basket star,
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spiky sea urchin, and sea star clinging to brownish stick
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like tube worm casings near a methane seep. Creatures such
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as these sea urchins serve as deep sea recyclers that
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break down bits of dead plants and animals that settle
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on the seafloor and make nutrients available for other organisms.
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They also attract predators, such as sea stars. The deep
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sea anglerfish, which the mission's researchers are still working to identify,
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was found in one of five submarine canyons that scientists
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explore during the same fifty five day expedition. Like underwater
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grand canyons, these formations cut through the ocean floor from
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near the coast out into the deep sea, carved out
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by strong currents. Sediment, nutrients, and organisms are carried out
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by the currents like a buffet on a conveyor belt,
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and attract all kinds of hungry sea creatures. Also found
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on a submarine canyon floor, a deep sea worm called
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a polykeet, which means many bristles, glitters like sparkling steel wool.
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Its bristles contain tiny protein based structures that bend and
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scatter light, which may deter predators the researcher's spot. Recently,
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a recently identified mystery mollusk swimming far from its gnome range.
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The phantom like creature had never been seen in the
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Southern Hemisphere before it was found more than seven thousand
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feet beneath the surface in the ocean's midnight zone. Some
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of the researcher sightings were familiar. A sea star, encountered
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in another underwater canyon, had been seen before. Its many
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tiny tube feet help its suction to surfaces such as
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rocky canyon walls, and help it move along the seafloor.
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As scientists sent an underwater robot into the twilight zone,
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a region of the ocean where sunlight fades to a dim,
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dusky glow even at high noon, they saw a bioluminescent jellyfish.
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It may have been waiting for prey to rise from
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the ocean's depths as part of an enormous daily migration.
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The team turned up some of its most bizarre finds
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in dark ocean expanses between seeps and canyons. A sipho
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siphono four, a collection of single cells that team up
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to form a larger creature, was spotted in shallow water
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near Mocha Island, a small island off the coast of Chile.
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While sigists were hunting for methane seeps, seafloor dwellers must
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survive the crushing near Freezian conditions found deep in the ocean.
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A sea cucumber nicknamed the sea pig, who was seen
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gently drifting more than nine thousand feet underwater. Having that
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much water pressing down from overhead is like having dozens
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of elephants stacked on top of your head at sea level.
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Sea pigs survived the intense pressure partly thanks to their
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flexible body. Quote. Through this exploratory expedition, we were able
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to conduct a raw biodiversity survey and study oases of
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life on the seafloor, including many places that had never
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been explored in detail before, says Jeffrey Marlowe, Assistant professor,
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Boston University and one of the chief scientists on the expedition. Quote.
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Now we'll study the samples we collected back in the
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lab to learn as much as we can about the
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incredible array of life we saw during the expedition, where
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these organisms came from, how they're all connected, and what
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it means for critical functions of this rich ecosystem. Next
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is an article from March the twentieth published in Reuters.
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The headline is Saudi Aramco launched his first direct air
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capture test unit. Saudi Oil Giant A Ramco has launched
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a pilot direct air capture unit able to remove twelve
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tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere. It's
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set on Thursday. The facility, developed with Siemens Energy, is
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Saudi Arabia's first carbon dioxide direct air capture unit and
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will be used to test CO two capture materials. Critics
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of capturing CO two emissions have said the technology is
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expensive and unproven at scale. Quote. The test facility launched
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by Aramco is a key step in our efforts to
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scale up viable DAC systems for deployment in the Kingdom
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of Saudi Arabia and beyond end quote, said Ali Al Mushari,
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a RAMCO Senior vice president of Technology Oversight. Quote. In
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addition to helping address emissions, the CO two extracted through
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this process can in turn be used to produce more
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sustainable chemicals and fuels. Aramco, the world's top oil exporter,
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aims to reduce its so called Scope one and two
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emissions to net zero by twenty fifty. Aramco announced the
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pilot VAC unit with Siemens Energy in October twenty twenty three,
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and said at the time it would be completed in
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twenty twenty four, and was intended to pave the way
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for a larger pilot plant that would have the capacity
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to capture twelve one hundred fifty tons of CO two
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per year. The state oil giant in December signed an
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agreement with oil service firms SLB and Lend to build
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a carbon capture and storage project in Jubail, Saudi Arabia.
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The first phase is expected to be completed by the
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end of twenty twenty seven, capturing and storing up to
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nine million tons of CO two a year. Aramco has
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signed several other agreements to explore carbon captures development, and
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last year took part in an eighty million dollar funding
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round of Los Angeles race based carbon capture. And now
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an article from Rolling Stone and the headline is why
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LA burned. We're in serious trouble. That's the message I
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saw written on the ashes of Los Angeles. And this
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is written by Jeff Goodell. And by we, I mean
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every human on this planet, rich or poor, younger, old,
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black or white or brown. In La, an eighty three
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million dollar house with eighteen bedrooms and six bathrooms burned
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just as fast as fixer uppers next to the freeway
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We're in trouble not because we're helpless or because we
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have broken the planet beyond repair. We're in trouble because
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we live in a world that was built for a
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climate that no longer exists, and the rebuilding of our
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world to adapt to this new, hotter, more dangerous climate
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is a task that we have hardly begun to undertake.
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We are like dinosaurs wandering around after the meteor hit,
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thinking that the axe that is blocking out the sun
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is going to dissipate in any moment and everything will
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go back to normal. We are much smarter than dinosaurs,
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but we are also deeply stupid in our own way.
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Millions of Americans think that because they have their own
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YouTube channel and AI on their phones and overnight Amazon deliveries,
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that they have mother Nature whipped, that she is just
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some old hag. They have vanished to the basement of
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modern life. The Los Angeles fires were burning evidence of
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how dangerous this delusion is. The fires were a bonfire
24:43
of bad ideas that it piled up over decades, from
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suburban sprawl into wildfire zones to the flammable plastics that
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now fill many people's homes. But beyond all that, is
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the larger fact that the Los Angeles fires have demonstrated
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to anyone who can cares to look, how unprepared we
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are for what is coming for us on a superheated planet.
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You could argue that lots of other climate related disasters
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demonstrated that too, from broken levees during Hurricane Katrina in
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two thousand and five to the fire tornadoes during the
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campfire in northern California in twenty eighteen, to the epic
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heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in twenty twenty one.
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But the Los Angeles fires peeled back the fire blanket
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of unpreparedness to reveal a new level of vulnerability to
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the human induced mood swings of Mother Nature. Quote. If
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there has been a single fatal flaw in the design
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of Southern California as a civilization, California historian and urban
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theorist Mike Davis wrote, it has been the decision to
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base the safety of present and future generations almost entirely
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upon short sighted extrapolations from the disaster record of the
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past half century. First, let's get one thing out of
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the way. No climate change didn't cause the LA fires.
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The sparks that ignited The fires were almost certainly human sparked,
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likely by power lines or fireworks, whatever the ignition source was.
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Fires have been a part of the chaparral ecosystem in
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the mountains around LA since the beginning of time. Native
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plants that thrive in the San Gabriel Mountains behind Altadena,
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the community in the northeastern part of the Los Angeles
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County where the Eton fire destroyed more than ninety four
26:38
hundred buildings and at least seventeen people died, as well
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as above Malibu and the Pacific Palisades, where another sixty
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eight hundred buildings burned and at least twelve people died.
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These are exquisitely adapted to fire. The California lilac, a
26:56
common plant in these mountains, drops seeds that only germinate
27:00
in the aftermath of fire. Chemise and manzanita are glossy
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with oils and resins that seal in moisture during hot,
27:09
dry periods and easily explode into flame during wildfire. The
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best way to think about the role of climate change
27:18
in the LA fires is as an accelerant. Last year
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was the hottest on Earth ever recorded by humans. Ten
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of the hottest years have all been in the past decade,
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and the source of all that heat is no mystery.
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It's mostly a consequence of our addiction to coal, oil,
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and gas. With more heat comes more fire. A study
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released a few weeks after the fires found that the hot, dry,
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windy conditions that drove the LA fires were about thirty
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five percent more likely due to warming caused primarily by
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the burning of fossil fuels. Well, that will be all
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for today's Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader was
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Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for the Health Corner on
28:05
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