4.3.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Radioized Dinary of Science and Nature. Here's Kelly Taylor.
I have articles related to the topics of science and nature.
But first a reminder that radiois a reading service intended
for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
make it difficult to read printed material. So from the
Wall Street Journal, we have an article that's entitled the

(00:24):
next Big Thing in carbon capture Trash. This is from
April first, a group of technology companies is investing in
a new form of carbon capture that aims to cut
emissions from household waste in an effort to reduce landfill
use and to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in

(00:46):
the atmosphere. Frontier, an umbrella group of tech companies including
payments from Stripe, internet giant Google and software company Salesforce,
is investing just under thirty two million dollars in a
carbon capture and storage project in Norway in the hope

(01:06):
of removing one hundred thousand metric tons of carbon from
the atmosphere between twenty twenty nine and twenty thirty. Under
the plan, carbon dioxide emissions that are generated when trash
from the Norwegian capital Oslo is burned to produce energy
for heating will be captured and then stored under the

(01:27):
north sea. The initiative is part of a larger carbon
capture project known as the Northern Lights Project. The project
is being put together in conjunction with the Norwegian government
and Halfsland Celco, Norway's largest supplier of district heating, which
runs the waste to energy site. At the site in Norway,

(01:50):
household waste is sorted into fossil waste and biogenic waste.
Fossil waste includes materials like plastics which can't be broken
down quickly. Biogenic waste includes trash that has come from
organic sources such as food scraps or garden waste. After sorting,

(02:12):
the waste is then burned by Hafsland Celsio, with the
energy created used to heat the city of Oslo. The
company is retrofitting the plant with a carbon capture system
to collect an estimated ninety percent of the emissions from burning.
Those emissions are then compressed and shipped to be stored

(02:34):
under the ocean floor in massive caverns left from oil
and gas exploration. By burning and storing the emissions from
the biogenic waste, Halfsland Celsio creates high value carbon removal credits,
which it plans to sell to frontier. Plants naturally draw
down carbon dioxide or CO two from the atmosphere when

(02:58):
they are burned. The CO two is res least, but
at the Norwegian incinerator the carbon is immediately captured and
CO two is thus taken out of the atmospheric cycle.
When biogenic waste is sent to landfill, methane is emitted
once it breaks down. Methane is much more potent in
terms of its effect on global warming than CO two. Meanwhile,

(03:21):
avoidance carbon credits are created by capturing the CO two
from burning the plastics and other products made from fossil fuels.
This is because the emissions that would have been emitted
from burning the plastics are largely avoided. That said, these
credits are much lower in value because no carbon dioxide

(03:43):
is actually removed through the process.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
The two main options of dealing with waste either involve
land filling or incineration. According to Hassan Mussulamani, head of
Carbon Management research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
The issue with landfilling, he said, is that this eventually
creates methane, which is about thirty times worse for the
atmosphere from a global warming potential quote. With incineration, CO

(04:12):
two directly enters the atmosphere. This is where CCS comes in.
It brings the best of both worlds. No CO two
entering the air today or methane in the future. You're
also producing low carbon energy, electricity and heat, which can
potentially be sold at a premium. Muslimani said this process

(04:32):
could be replicated across five hundred other sites in Europe alone,
with places such as Germany and the UK particularly suited
for waste to energy carbon capture. According to Frontier, by
doing so, some four hundred million tons of carbon dioxide
could be removed from the atmosphere by twenty fifty. The
Frontier group of buyers was set was set up to

(04:56):
scale carbon removal. Experts say that more than ten billion
tons of carbon will need to be removed from the
atmosphere to help limit the effects of climate change. However,
the carbon removal market is very much in its early
days and most technologies are limited in deployment, cash flow,
and maturity. Frontier says that by buying forward commitments for

(05:18):
removal projects, it helps to provide finance and get the
market off the ground. Quote there are new technologies that
exist in the lab or exist at small scales and
they're really expensive today. But there's a lot of technology risk,
says Hannah Babington, head of deployment for Frontier. The group

(05:39):
says that by purchasing credits in advance, it sends a
signal to the market that there will be demand for
carbon remowals in the future. Quote. We will be the
customer of the product if you build it to the
speck that we're interested in. Bevington sid Norway is an
ideal place to run a project like this Musliman. He

(06:00):
said the country's long had a carbon tax in place,
incentivizing projects such as this one, and with the funding
from the Norwegian and local governments, this helps to provide
cash to get projects up and running. He added that
similar projects in the UK could copy this, with the
country eyeing carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes to provide

(06:21):
incentives for this. In terms of revenue from the carbon credits,
the removal credits could be sold for as much as
two hundred dollars a ton. All the avoidance credits for
twenty dollars a time, which, along with the green energy production,
makes projects like this financially viable. Muslimani said, Now we'll

(06:42):
turn to the Weather Channel. The articles headline reads, Cicadas
set to emerge again in thirteen states. Want to know
about Brood fourteen. It's one of the biggest broods and
if you're in one of these thirteen states, you're likely
to hear their noisy mating calls soon enter the cicada

(07:04):
Noisy and large. These insects only emerge from the ground periodically,
but in twenty twenty five it's Brood fourteen's term. We
haven't seen this particular brood since two thousand and eight,
but they return above ground to mate once every seventeen years.
Expect these red eyed buggers to show up by the
billions in parts of the East and South in late

(07:28):
May or late April or early May. They head towards
the surface once the soil temperatures reach sixty four degrees
according to Cicada Mania, so they could appear a little
sooner in the Southern States. Brood fourteen is the second
largest of the fifteen periodically emerging broods according to the

(07:48):
University of Connecticut. Only brood nineteen, which popped up last
year across vast stretches of the Eastern US, is larger.
It's important to note that cicadas won't flank every corner
of all thirteen states when Brewed fourteen emerges, but they're
expected to be seen in at least parts of Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland,

(08:13):
North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia,
and West Virginia. If you like to get up close
and personal with big bugs, you're in luck. Cicadas aren't
harmful to humans in any way, so feel free to
get a good look when they arrive. In fact, they're
great for your yard, as they airate lawns and can

(08:35):
help with filtering water into the ground, according to the
US Environmental Protection Agency, and once they've made it and
died off, their decomposition is also nutritious for the soil.
There's no need for pesticide sprays, but the UPA does
warn that if you have young trees, protect against damage

(08:57):
that could be caused by egg lane. This can be
a mesh covering with small openings. Now let's turn to
BBC Wildlife This strange animal survives winter by stopping its
heart for eight months and dying in quotes before leaping
back to life in spring. This is from March the

(09:20):
thirtieth the only amphibian to live north of the Arctic circle.
The wood frog has an amazing ability to undergo freezing
and thowing to survive cold winters. As you might guess
from its common name, it lives mainly in woodland, only
taking to shallow pools in springtime to breed, the males

(09:41):
uttering a distinctive quacking call to attract mates. The most
recognizable characteristic of this small frog is a band of
dark brown or black running from the tip of its
snout out over its eyes like a mask. Otherwise, the
wood frog is well camouflaged for its woodland environment, its
coloring varying from tan to dark brown, rust red to

(10:04):
greenish with splotches or bands of darker pigmentation. Thanks to
pigment containing cells in their skin called chromatophores, wood frogs
are able to change color in response to environmental acues
such as temperature, light, and surrounding vegetation. Unlike with famous
color changers like chameleons or octopus. However, this transition takes

(10:28):
place over hours and days rather than seconds. Female wood
frogs tend to be more brightly colored. Adult wood frogs
typically grow to between three point seven and eight centimeters
in length, weighing up to eight grams. Females are larger
than males. Wood Frogs live on the ground in woodland,
forested swamps, tundra, and grassland areas across Alaska, Canada, and

(10:53):
the northeastern states of the United States. There are small
populations living as far south as the state of Alabama.
They are the only frog, and indeed the only amphibian
to live north of the Arctic Circle, capable of doing
so because of their abilities to survive being frozen solid
during winter, unlike most amphibians, who spend much of their

(11:16):
lives in water. Amphibian is derived from a Greek word
meaning living a double life. The wood frog lives mostly
on the forest floor, only seeking out pools to breed
in springtime. With the coming of winter in northern climates,
most frogs will hibernate under water, where temperatures get very

(11:37):
cold but crucially stay above freezing. Not wood frogs, who
instead take shelter in leaf litter. Ready to undergo an
extraordinary transition. As the temperature drops below freezing, the frog
freezes solid, with up to seventy percent of the water
in its body turning to ice. Crucially, though, it is

(11:58):
the liquid outside itself and organs that freezes, rather than inside,
where freezing would cause irreparable damage. The frog prevents its
cells freezing by producing substances called cryo protectants, essentially anti
freeze made from glucose and urea. More cryoprotectants are produced

(12:23):
in populations in colder locations. This adaptation means that the
wood frog can survive at temperatures as low as negative
sixteen degrees celsius. During this time, the frog stops breathing,
its heart stops beating, and its kidneys stop functioning. Wood
frogs have been recorded staying frozen for as long as

(12:43):
eight months. As temperatures rise in the spring, the frog thaws,
starting with its heart and brain. Within ten hours, it
is back to normal function. Scientists are studying this freeze
through freeze process in the hope of developing technology for

(13:04):
the storage and transportation of human organs or transplants. Human
organs cannot survive the freezing process. Currently, breeding takes place
in so called vernal pools areas of wetland that only
fill up in the wet season Because they are dry
the rest of the year. These pools tend to be

(13:24):
free from predatory fish that would feed on the frog's eggs.
Male wood frogs make duck like calls to attract females
from early springtime. Female frogs will follow the sound of
the calls to the center of the pool, where a
mating frenzy takes place, with males grabbing onto other frogs

(13:45):
indiscriminately until they find one large enough likely to be
a female. Females are grabbed by multiple males, forming a
mating ball of up to more than a dozen individuals.
A male who holds on on the longest, using thumbs
that have swollen up during breeding season for the purpose,

(14:05):
wins mating rights. The male then wraps his forelimbs around
the female's torso, a move known as amplexus, and squeezes
her until she lays a mass of up to three
thousand eggs into the water, ready for him to fertilize.
Wood Frog eggs hatch into tadpoles after between nine and

(14:29):
thirty days. It takes a further two months for the
tadpoles to turn into froglets, during which time they tend
to associate with siblings from their own egg mass. Scientists
don't know why wood frogs reach sexual maturity at around
two years old and have a lifespan of around three years.
In the wild, adult wood frogs enjoy a varied diet

(14:52):
of small invertebrates, including insects, spiders, snails, slugs, and worms.
Tadpoles meanwhile, tend to be herbifer us, mainly feeding on
algae and plant detritis. They will, however, sometimes feed on
the eggs or tadpoles of other amphibians. As adults, wood
frogs are prey for a wide range of predators, including snakes, raccoons,

(15:15):
snapping turtles, coyotes, foxes, and birds. Tadpoles are preyed upon
by salamanders, beetles, wood turtles, and adult wood frogs. Wood
Frogs are a species of Least Concern on the International
Union for Conservation of Nature Red List with a stable population.

(15:38):
Next we have an article from Axios Rainstorms are getting
more intense amid climate change. Rainstorms are getting more intense
in many US cities amid human driven climate change, and
new analysis signs. More intense precipitation events can cause flash flooding, landslides,

(15:58):
dangerous driving conditions, and other potentially deadly hazards. Hourly rainfall
intensity increased between nineteen seventy and twenty twenty four in
nearly ninety percent of the one hundred and forty four
locations analyzed, per a new report from Climate Central, a
research and communications group. Among the cities with an increase,

(16:21):
hourly rainfall intensity rose by an average of fifteen percent.
The researchers divided each location's total annual rainfall by its
total hours of annual rainfall using Noah weather station data.
That approach quantifies how much rain fell for each hour
it was raining in a given year, in other words,

(16:44):
rainfall intensity. Some locations were not included because their stations
haven't consistently collected hourly precipitation data. Human driven climate changes
resulting in warmer air, which holds more more fisture and
thus can drive more intense precipitation. Hotter temperatures also evaporate

(17:06):
more water vapor from lakes, oceans, and vegetation. Wichita, Kansas
plus thirty eight percent, Reno, Nevada plus thirty seven percent,
and Fairbanks, Alaska plus thirty seven percent had the biggest
gains in hourly rainfall intensity between nineteen seventy and twenty

(17:27):
twenty four. That Reno is in the top three underscores
Climate Central's point that rainfall intensity is rising in places
that are generally dry, not just those that get at
least a decent amount of annual rainfall. Flooding costs the
US economy up to nearly five hundred billion dollars annually

(17:49):
and is creating climate abandonment zones as people flee for
safer areas. Researchers have also found that predominantly black coastal
commune unities may be particularly vulnerable to increase flooding risk
over the coming decades. The group recommends that people stay
aware of their area's flooding risks and suggests homeowners carry

(18:13):
flood insurance and improve their homes resiliency against flooding as
they are able. Now we have an article from the
Los Angeles Times and the headline is the most important
part of the ocean You've never heard of. This is
from March twenty eighth. The most important place on Earth

(18:37):
that virtually no one has ever heard of is called
the Saya de Mala Bank, among the world's largest sea
grass fields and the planet's most important carbon sinks. This
high seas patch of ocean covers an area the size
of Switzerland, more than two hundred miles from land. The

(18:58):
submerged bank is situated in the Indian Ocean between Mauritius
and the Seychelles. It has been called the world's largest
invisible island, and it is formed by a massive plateau
in some spots barely hidden under thirty feet of water,
offering safe haven to an unprecedented biodiversity of seagrass, habitats

(19:22):
for turtles, and breeding grounds for sharks, humpback and blue whales.
Researchers say that the bank is one of the least
scientifically studied areas of the planet, partly because of its remoteness.
The area's unpredictable depths have also meant that over the centuries,
merchant ships and explorers tended to avoid these waters. It

(19:44):
has long been the type of fantastical realms so uncharted
that on the old maps it would be designated quote
here be monsters. More recently, though, the bank is traversed
by a diverse cast of characters, including sharp pinners, bottom trawlers,
seabed miners, stranded fishers, starving crews, wealthy yachters, and libertarian seasteaders.

(20:13):
The tragedy, however, is that since the Saya de Mala
Bank is mostly located in international waters where few rules apply,
its biodiversity is being systematically decimated by a huge fleet
of industrial fishing ships that remain largely unchecked by government oversight.

(20:33):
The bank remains unprotected by any major binding treaties, largely
due to an anemia of political will by national authorities
and of profits now costs later outlook of fishing interests.
The question now who will safeguard this public treasure. More

(20:54):
than five hundred years ago, when Portuguese sailors came across
a shallow water bank on the high seas over seven
hundred miles east of the northern tip of Mauritius, they
named it Sayat de Malha or mesh skirt, to describe
the rolling waves of sea grass below the surface. Sea

(21:14):
grasses are frequently overlooked because they are rare, estimated to
cover only a tenth of one percent of the ocean floor.
They are the forgotten ecosystem, said Ronald Jumeaux, the Seychelle's
ambassador for climate change. Nevertheless, sea grasses are far less
protected than other offshore areas. Only twenty six percent of

(21:36):
recorded sea grass meadows fall within marine protected areas, compared
with forty percent of coral reefs and forty three percent
of the world's mangroves. The Saya de Mala Bank is
essential existentially crucial to the planet because it is one
of the world's biggest carbon sinks. Much like trees on land,

(21:58):
sea grass absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores
it in its roots and soil, but seagrass does it
especially fast, at a rate thirty five times that of
tropical rainforest. What makes the situation in the Sia de
Malabank even more urgent is that it's being systematically decimated

(22:19):
by a multinational fleet of fishing ships that virtually no
one tracks or polices. Often described as the lungs of
the ocean, seagrasses capture about a fifth of all its carbon,
and they are home to vast biodiversity. Sea grass also
cleans polluted water and protects coastlines from erosion. At a

(22:43):
time when ocean acidification threatens the survival of the world's
coral reefs and the thousands of fish species that inhabit them.
Seagrass is reduced acidity by absorbing carbon through photosynthesis. According
to a twenty twenty one report of the University of California,
seagrasses provide shelters, nurseries, and feeding grounds for thousands of species,

(23:07):
including endangered animals such as dowgongs, stalked jellyfish, and small
tooth sawfish, but the Saya Deemala is under threat. More
than two hundred distant water vessels, most of them from
Sri Lanka and Taiwan, have parked in the deeper waters

(23:28):
along the edge of the bank. Ocean. Conservationists say that
efforts to conserve the bank sea grass are not moving
fast enough to make a difference. It's like walking north
on a southbound train, said Heidi Weiskel, acting head of
Global Ocean Team of the International Union for Conservation Nature.

(23:49):
On May twenty third, twenty twenty two, the United Nations
General Assembly adopted a resolution to declare March the first
as World Seagrass Day. The resolution was sponsored by Sri Lanka.
Speaking at the Assembly, the Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka
to the U N Ambassador Mohan Peiris said sea grasses

(24:11):
were one of the most valuable marine ecosystems on Earth, highlighting,
among other things, their outsized contribution to carbon sequestration. But
recognition is one thing, action is another. As the ambassador
gave his speech in New York, dozens of ships from
his country's fishing fleet were nine thousand miles away, busily

(24:33):
scraping the biggest of those very ecosystems he was calling
on the world to protect. For the past decade, the
mining industry has argued that the ocean floors and essential
frontier for rare earth metals needed in the batteries used
in cell phones and laptops. As company's eye the best
patches of ocean to search for the precious sulfides and nodules,

(24:57):
dubbed truffles of the ocean. The waters near the Saya
del Malhab Bank have emerged as an attractive target. To
vacuum up the treasured nodules requires industrial extraction by massive excavators,
typically thirty times the weight of regular bulldozers. These machines

(25:19):
drive along the seafloor, suctioning up the rocks, crushing them
and sending a slurry of pulverized nodules and seabed sediment
through a series of pipes to a vessel above. After
separating out the minerals, the mining ships then pipe back
overboard of processed waters, sediment and mining fines, which are

(25:42):
the small particles of the ground up nodule ore. Most
of the bank is too shallow to be a likely
candidate for such mining, but cobalt deposits were found in
the mass Karene Basin, an area that includes the Saya
de mal Bank, in nineteen eighty seven. South Korea holds

(26:04):
a contract from the International Seabed Authority, the international agency
that regulates seabed mining, to explore hydro thermal events on
the Central Indian Ridge about two hundred fifty miles east
of Saya Dei Maala. In twenty twenty nine, India and
Germany also hold exploration contracts for an area about eight

(26:26):
hundred miles southeast of the Saya Deimala Bank. All of
this activity could be disastrous for the bank's ecosystem. According
to ocean researchers, mining and exploration activity will raise sediments
from the ocean floor, reducing the seagrass's access to the
sunlight it depends on. Sediment clouds for mining can travel

(26:48):
hundreds or even thousands of miles, potentially disrupting the entire
midwater food web and affecting important species such as tuna.
Research published in twenty twenty three we found that a
year after test seabed mining disturbed the ocean floor in
Japanese waters, the density of fish, crustaceans, and jellyfish in

(27:09):
nearby areas was cut in half. Proponents of deep seabed
mining stress a growing need for these resources. In twenty twenty,
the World Bank estimated that global production of minerals such
as cobalt and lithium would have to be increased by
over four hundred and fifty percent of twenty fifty to
meet the growing demand. However, skeptics of the industry say that,

(27:31):
because of the long transport distance and corrosive and unpredictable
conditions at sea, cost of mining nodules offshore will far
outstrip the price of doing so on land. Other critics
contend that technology is changing so quickly that batteries used
in the near future will be different from those that
are used now. Well, that's all for Today's Diary of

(27:55):
Science and Nature. Your reader is Kelly Taylor. Now stay
tuned for the Health Corner on RADIOI