5.29.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader
is Kelly Taylor. I have some articles on the topics
of science and nature. But first a reminder that RADIOI
is a reading service intended for people who are blind
or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
printed material. First up is an article from Axios, and

(00:25):
the headline is America's summers keep getting warmer. This is
from May twenty eight. Summers are getting warmer nearly nationwide.
A recent updated analysis finds hotter summers are one of
the most tangible ways we're experiencing climate change, and they're
a health risk for vulnerable groups like children, pregnant women,

(00:49):
the elderly, and homeless people. Average summer temperatures between nineteen
seventy and twenty twenty four rose in ninety seven percent
of the two hundred and forty two cities analyzed in
a new report from Climate Central, a climate research group.
Among those cities, summers are now two point six degrees

(01:12):
fahrenheit hotter on average. The analysis uses NOAH data that's
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and defines summer as June
through August. Reno, Nevada, eleven point three degrees, Boise, Idaho
six point three degrees, and El Paso, Texas six point

(01:35):
two degrees saw the greatest rise in average summer temperatures
between nineteen seventy and twenty twenty four. Over sixty percent
of the cities analyzed now have at least two more
weeks worth of hotter than normal summer days compared to
nineteen seventy. Many cities suffer from heat islands, areas of
especially high temperatures caused by roads, parking lots, buildings, and

(01:59):
other heat trapping features. Heat islands tend to be more
common in low income neighborhoods and ones with predominantly black
and Latino residents. Researchers have found some cities have been
hiring chief heat officers and taking steps to keep streets cooler,
like planting more trees and using reflective road coatings. Summer

(02:24):
twenty twenty five is likely to be hotter than normal
for much of the country, according to the National Weather
Service's seasonal Outlook. Now to BBC News and this article
is headlined coastlines in danger. Even if climate target met,
scientists warn the world could see hugely damaging sea level

(02:49):
rise of several meters or more over the coming centuries.
Even if the ambitious target of limiting global warming to
one and a half degrees celsius is met, scientists have warned.
Nearly two hundred countries have pledged to try to keep
the planets warming to one and a half degree sea,
but the researchers warned that this should not be considered
safe for coastal populations. They drew their conclusion after reviewing

(03:13):
the most recent studies of how the ice sheets are
changing and how they have changed in the past, But
the scientists stress that every fraction of a degree of
warming that could be avoided would still greatly limit the risks.
The world's current trajectory puts the planet on course for
nearly three degrees of warming by the end of the century,

(03:34):
compared with the late eighteen hundreds before humans began burning
large amounts of planet heating fossil fuels. That's based on
current government policies to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels
and other polluting activities. But even keeping to one and
a half degrees sea would still lead to continued melting

(03:55):
of Greenland and Antarctica, as temperature changes can take centuries
have their full impact on such large masses of ice. Quote.
Our key message is that limiting warming to one and
a half sea would be a major achievement. It should
absolutely be our target, but in no sense will it
slow or stop sea level rise and melting ice sheets,

(04:17):
said lead author Professor Chris Stokes, a glaciologist at Durham University.
The twenty fifteen Paris Climate Agreement saw the world's nations
agree to keep global temperature rises well below two sea
and ideally one point five seed. That has often been
oversimplified to mean one point five sea is safe, something

(04:39):
glaciologists have cautioned against for years. The authors of the
new paper, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment
draw together three main strands of evidence to underline this case. First,
records of the Earth's distant past suggest significant melting, with
sea levels meters higher than present. During previous similarly warm periods,

(05:04):
such as one hundred and twenty five thousand years ago,
and the last time there was as much planet warming
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as today, about three million
years ago, sea levels were about ten to twenty meters higher. Second,
current observations already show an increasing rate of melting, albeit
with variation from year to year. Quote pretty dramatic thing.

(05:29):
Dramatic things are happening in both West Antarctica and Greenland,
said co author Professor Jonathan Bamber. East Antarctica appears from
now at least more stable. Quote We're starting to see
some of these worst case scenarios play out almost in
front of us, added Professor Stokes. Finally, scientists use computer

(05:52):
models to simulate how ice sheets may respond to future climate.
The picture they paint isn't good quote very very few
of the models actually show sea level rise slowing down
if warming stabilizes at one point five sea and they
certainly don't show sea level rise stopping, said Professor Stokes.

(06:12):
The major concern is that melting could accelerate further beyond
tipping points due to warming caused by humans, though it's
not clear exactly how these mechanisms work and where these
thresholds sit. The strength of this study is that they
use multiple lines of evidence to show that our climate
is in a similar state to win several mers of

(06:35):
ice was melting in the past, said Professor Andy Shepherd,
glaciologist at Northumbria University. This would have devastating impacts on
coastal communities. He added, an estimated two hundred and thirty
million people live within one meter of current high tidelines.

(06:56):
Defining a safe limit of warming is inherently challenging because
some populations are more vulnerable than others. But if sea
level rise reaches a centimeter a year or more by
the end of the century, mainly because of ice melt
and warming oceans, that could stretch even rich country's abilities
to cope. If you get to that level, then it

(07:16):
becomes extremely challenging for any kind of adaptation strategies. And
you're going to see massive land migration on scales that
we've never witnessed in modern civilization, argued Professor Bambert. However,
this bleak picture is not a reason to stop trying,
they say, quote the more rapid the warming, you'll see
more ice being lost and a higher rate of sea

(07:39):
level rise much more quickly. Every fraction of a degree
really matters for ice sheets, said Professor Stokes. And now
we turn to the Atlantic and the article is headlined
the man eater screwworm is coming. This is dated May seven.

(08:01):
The United States has for seventy years been fighting a
continuous aerial war against the New World screwworm, a parasite
that eats animals alive, cow, pig, deer, dog, even human.
Its scientific name C. Hominovorax translates to man eater. Larvae

(08:26):
of the parasitic fly chew through flesh, transforming small nicks
into big, gruesome wounds. But in the late nineteen fifties,
the US Department of Agriculture laid the groundwork for a
continent wide assault. Workers raised screwworms in factories, blasted them

(08:47):
with radiation until they were sterile, and dropped the sterile
adult screwworms by the millions, even hundreds of millions weekly
over the US, then farther south in Mexico, and eventually
in the rest of North America. The sterile flies proceeded
to well screw the continent's wild populations into oblivion, and

(09:11):
in two thousand and six, an invisible barrier was established
at the Darien Gap, the jungle that straddles of Panama
Columbia border, to cordon the screw worm free north off
from the south. The barrier, as I observed when I
reported from Panama several years ago, consisted of plains releasing

(09:32):
millions of sterile screw worms to rain down over the
Darian Gap every week. This never ending battle kept the
threat of screw worms far from America in this article
By the Ways, written by Sarah Jiang z h A
n G. But in twenty twenty two, the burial barrier
was breached. Cases in Panama, mostly in cattle, skyrocketed from

(09:56):
a dozen year a year to one thousand despite ongoing
drops of sterile flies. The parasite then began moving northward,
at first slowly and then rapidly about twenty twenty four,
which is when I began getting alarmed emails from those
following the situation in Central America. As of this month,

(10:19):
the parasite has advanced one thousand, six hundred miles through
eight countries to reach Wahaka and Vera Cruz in Mexico,
with seven hundred miles left to go until the Texas border.
The US subsequently suspended live cattle imports from Mexico after
this latest use broke. I spoke with Wayne Cockrell, a

(10:42):
Texas rancher, who fears the screwworm's return to Texas is
now a matter of wind, not if the anti screwworm
program cannot produce enough sterile flies to stop the parasite's advance,
much less beat it back down to Panama. Cockrel explained
that he has followed the outbreak closely as the chair

(11:02):
of the Cattle Health Committee for the Texas and Southwestern
Cattle Raisers Association, even visiting the sterile fly factory recently. Quote,
there's a sense of dread on my part now. He
told me at sixty he is too young to remember
screw worms himself, but he's heard the horror stories. Every cut,

(11:22):
every scratch, every navel of a newborn calf threatened to
turn fatal in the pre eradication era if the parasite
does not take If the parasite does take hold in
the US again, it could take decades to push screwworms
back down to Panama. That is, after all, how long
it took the first time. Decades of screwworm vigilance have

(11:45):
been undone in just two years. You only have to
glance at a map to understand why the screwworm outbreak
is now at an alarming inflection point. Central America is
shaped like a funnel with a long bumpy tail reaches
its skinniest point in Panama. Back in the day, the
US Department of Agriculture helped pay for screwworm eradication down

(12:09):
to Panama out of not pure altruism but economic pragmatism.
Establishing a one hundred mile screwworm barrier there is cheaper
than creating one at the two thousand mile wide US
Mexico border. Even after screwworms began creeping up the tail
of the funnel recently, the anti screwworm campaign had one

(12:33):
last good chance of stopping them in a narrow isthmus
in southern Mexico, after which the funnel grows dramatically wider
it failed. The latest screwworm detections in Uaca and Vera
Cruz are just beyond the isthmus. The wider the new
front of the screwworm war grows, the more sterile screwworms

(12:55):
are needed to stop the parasite's advance, but the supply
is all already overstretched. The fly factory in Panama has
increased production from its usual twenty million flies a week
to its maximum of one hundred million, which now all
being dropped or dispersed over Mexico, but planes used to

(13:16):
drop one hundred and fifty million flies a week over
the Isthmus in Mexico during the first eradication campaign in
the nineteen eighties, and when the front was even farther
north in Mexico, a factory there turned out as many
as five hundred and fifty million flies weekly to cover
the huge area. That factory, as well as one in Texas,

(13:37):
has long since shut down. The Texas and Southwestern Cattle
Raisers Association is asking the USDA to build a new
sterile fly plant in the US, one big enough to
produce the hundreds of millions that may soon be necessary.
We are working closely with Mexico to re establish a
biological barrier and prevent further geographic spread in quote, says

(14:04):
the USDA spokesman. If the fly spreads further geographically, we
will need to reevaluate production capacity in quote. Several Texas
lawmakers recently introduced the Stop Screwworms Act, which directs the
USDA to open a new factory, but the whole process

(14:24):
could still take years. Quote. The facility needs to start tomorrow.
Cocker said. The US cattle industry is unprepared for the
screwworm's return, he said, rattling off more reasons. Certain drugs
to treat screwworm infection are not licensed in the US,
having been unnecessary for half a century. Branches used to

(14:46):
employ fifty cowboys who regularly inspected cattle, and now they
might have only five, and routine industry practices such as
branding and ear tagging leave the animals vulnerable to screwworm
in infection. To face the screwworm, the cattle industry will
have to adapt quickly to a new normal. The parasite

(15:07):
could propel propel beef prices, which already are sky high
due to drought, even higher. How screwworms managed to jump
the barrier in twenty twenty two is not fully clear,
but in the years immediately before, the coronavirus pandemic reportedly
created supply chain snarls at the fly factory in Panama

(15:31):
and disrupted regular cattle inspections that might have set off
the alarm bells earlier, and the border between Panama and
Columbia got a lot busier. The dairy and Gap, once
a notoriously impenetrable jungle, became a popular route for migrants. Still,
the screwworm advanced relatively slowly through Panama and Costa Rica

(15:53):
for the first couple of years. Then it hit Nicaragua,
and over just ten weeks in twenty twenty four, it
shot from the country's northern border through Honduras and Guatemala
to reach Mexico. Its rapid advance was because of the
illegal cattle trade. Jeremy Radakowski, director for Mesoamerican and Western

(16:14):
Caribbean in the Wildlife Conservation Society, told me his organization
has tracked the practice in Central America, where eight hundred
thousand cattle a year are raised illegally in nature reserves
and then smuggled by boat and truck up to Mexico.
This allowed the screwworm to spread much faster than it

(16:35):
can fly. The line of new screwworm cases followed known
smuggling routes. The constant northward movement of infected cattle could
now make re eradication more difficult. It's like trying to
empty a pool when the spigots still open. Decades of
screwworm free existence meant that even ranchers whose livelihoods are

(16:58):
directly affected were slow to recognize the growing emergency. We
were so successful that literally people forgot a US official
in Central America told me inspections, timely reports of infection,
and restrictions on cattle movement are important pieces of eradication.

(17:19):
In addition to the release of sterile flies. Over the years,
scientists have also proposed more advanced ways of controlling the
screw worm through genetics, though none is yet ready for
prime time. The USDA supported research by Max Scott, entomologists
at North Carolina State University, to create a male only

(17:41):
strain that could reduce the number of flies needed for dispersal,
but funding ended last summer. He is also proposed using
gene drives, a still controversial technique that could rapidly drive
genetic material that makes females sterile into the wild population.
The USDA wasn't interested, he told me. A spokesperson says

(18:06):
the USDA continues to research and investigate new tools, including
genetically engineered male only screwworms. But he did strike up
a collaboration several years ago with scientists in Uruguay studying
a gene drive for sterile screwworms. Uruguay is interested because
it never got to benefit from screwworm eradication. The country

(18:27):
is located about halfway down South America, deep in screw
worm territory. A retired USDA scientist, even Scota, told me
that he and his colleagues used to dream of a
world totally free of screwworm but eradication never reached South America,
and now even the barrier protecting North America is no
longer intact. A campaign to push screwworms from the south

(18:50):
of Mexico roughly where the parasite is right now, to
the southern edge of Panama took twenty one years. The
way things are going, Cockrel said some of his longtime
colleagues in Panama might not see screw worms eradicated again
in their country in their lifetime. And now we have

(19:11):
an article from May the twenty first in Popular Mechanics,
A hidden blob beneath Africa is fueling volcanoes and it
could split the continent in two. In East Africa, geothermal
energy is big business and that's all thanks to the
East African Rift System EARS, one of the largest rift

(19:36):
systems on Earth, stretching four thousand miles from Ethiopia in
the north to Malawi. In the south, Ears is filled
with rift valleys and active volcanic regions that form some
of the world's most famous volcanoes, including Mount Kilmajaro. This
volcanic activity also means that Eastern Africa is a geothermal hotspot.

(20:00):
For example, a large majority of Kenya's electricity is of
geothermal origin. Geothermal being so lucrative in the region has
some positive side effects for scientists studying the ever fascinating Ears.
Because companies do so much experimental drilling for locating and
running geothermal fields, scientists can use that data to gain

(20:22):
a better understanding of what's driving these geologic processes in
the first place. Although the running theory is that hot
blent deep mantle upwelling drives the rift process, it's been
very difficult to figure out if this comes from one
deep sourced plume or multiple plumes along the Ears four

(20:44):
thousand mile expanse. Now, in a new study, scientists at
the University of Glasgow, armed with data gathered at the
Maringay geothermal field in Kenya, analyzed of the Noble gas
neon and determined that it originates in the deep mantle,

(21:05):
likely between the outer core and the mantle using high
precision mass spe spectrometry. The team also determined a common
fingerprint of gases across a far distance, which supports the
idea that EARS is powered by one singular superplume rather

(21:27):
than multiple shallower processes. The results were published in the
journal Geophysical Research Letters. Quote. We have long been interested
in how the deep Earth rises to the surface, how
much is transported, and just what role it plays in
forming the large scale topography of the Earth's surface, says
Finn Stewart, senior author of the study. Quote. Our research

(21:51):
suggests that a giant hot blob of rock from the
core mantle boundary is present beneath East Africa. It is
the plates apart and propping up the Africa continent, so
it's hundreds of meters higher than normal. To investigate whether
EARS is in fact powered by a super plume, Stuart

(22:15):
and his team first needed to analyze neon isotopes, as
noble gases can reveal deep Earth behavior. However, these gases
are also easily contaminated by the atmosphere and by other
noble gases found formed in the lithosphere. Luckily, by analyzing
noble gases from the Kenyon geothermal field, scientists found that

(22:37):
contamination was minimal. Additionally, they discovered that these same neon
isotopic features that had been observed in other parts of
the rift system and in the Western Rift valley between
Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Condgo. This study provided
the first geochemical evidence for a common deep mantle between

(22:59):
the of the East African rift system. This data also
aligns with a twenty twenty three study from Virginia Tech
that investigated why EARS displayed deformations parallel to the rift
rather than perpendicular, which is more typical. Their analysis supported

(23:20):
the idea that a deep rooted superplume must be driving
northward moving magma flow in order for these strange deformations
to take shape. While Ears appears somewhat static, at least
to our lifespan limited perspective, the rift could eventually tear

(23:40):
Africa in two so what we're now witnessing could one
day result in the birth of an entirely new ocean. However,
not all rifts turn into oceans, so we won't know
for sure until geologic history takes its course. And now
we have an article from Yale Environment three sixty and

(24:04):
the headline reads out of the wild. How AI is
transforming conservation science. This is dated May nineteenth and written
by Jim Robbins. It has always been challenging to study
nocturnal birds, especially if they use camouflage to blend into
their surroundings. Quote. They are highly mobile, so they are

(24:27):
really really hard to study, said Ellie Knight, University of
Alberta researcher who studies common night hawks, a medium sized
bird in the night jar family. Quote. Outside of traditional
ecological knowledge, we don't know much about them in the
boreal forest in quote. To surmount those challenges, night you

(24:48):
turned to a huge set of recorded wildlife sounds. It's
common these days to study animals with autonomous recording units,
which federal and provincial wildlife agencies have placed throughout the
Southern Royal Forest in northeastern Alberta where Night Works night
had access to that audio trove, But there was a catch.

(25:09):
The amount of stored data is vast and mixed in
with other sounds, so there's no practical way an expert
could parse and analyze only the calls of the night hawks. Quote. Realistically,
we're only able to do that expert analysis for one
percent of recordings. So there's this other ninety nine percent
that's sitting there, she said. To address this gap, Night

(25:33):
began using artificial intelligence on the giant pile of acoustic data,
casting a good deal of light on the world of
the night hawks. The analysis showed where the birds lived,
when they were there, and how they're foraging and nesting habits.
Different quote. It really opens what we can study, which

(25:54):
can provide a wealth of ecological insights, Knight said, But
further refinement will expand the applications and efficacy, including identifying
individual birds to provide a far more detailed ecological portrait.
Knight is now working on applying the same approach to
a broad range of boreal bird species. The use of

(26:17):
artificial intelligences spreading rapidly through the field of conservation these days,
bringing rapid and dramatic changes and the promise of more
to come. A recent paper, for example, bore the title
the Potential for AI to revolutionize conservation. Ellie Knight agrees
it's a paradigm shift, she said. Still, some scientists say

(26:40):
that AI's burgeoning use in this field comes with the
raft of drawbacks that go beyond the technology's widely discussed
enormous consumption of water and energy. There is also concern
that AI that synthesizes the vast constellation of existing information
available on the web will perpetual errors and biases I

(27:02):
relying primarily on Western academic expertise and excluding traditional or
indigenous knowledge. AI has also been criticized as a technological
barrier to people's direct engagement with organisms in their natural environments. Quote.
If I could waive a wand and uninvent AI, I would,

(27:26):
said Hamish Van Dervin, Professor of Sustainable Business Management of
Natural Resources at the University of British Columbia and a
leading critic of the spread of AI in conservation and elsewhere.
For now, though it's full steam ahead around the world.
Thousands of researchers are using AI to further biological research

(27:49):
and conservation projects. Well that's all for today's Diary of
Science and Nature. Your reader was Kelly Taylor. Thanks for listening.
Now let's stay tuned for the Health Corner on RADIOI