7.10.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader's
Kelly Taylor. I'll have some articles related to science and nature,
but first a reminder. RADIOI as a reading service intended
for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
make it difficult to read printed material. We'll start with
an article from a huff Post. The headline is actual

(00:24):
weather experts explain what weather modification does minus the conspiracy theories.
This is from July eighth. In the wake of the
devastating floods in Texas, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green announced new
legislation aimed at an unusual target, weather modification. Quote. I

(00:48):
am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or
dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the
express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity.
The Georgia Republican posted on x formerly Twitter quote it
will be a felony offense. I have been researching weather

(01:10):
modification and working with the Legislative Council for months writing
this bill. She said that the legislation would be similar
to Florida's Senate Bill fifty six and added quote, we
must end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification
and geoengineering end quote. But what exactly is weather modification?

(01:36):
Is it actually happening and is it deadly? Off Post
asked experts to explain the term, as well as the
most common example, cloud seating, and what you should know
about it. Weather modification simply means trying to change or
influence the weather in some way, says Frank Lombardo, certified

(01:57):
consulting meteorologist and CEO of weather Works. Quote. That could
be trying to increase rain or snow, reduce hail, or
lessen the intensity of a weather event. It's really just
a way to nudge the atmosphere in a certain direction
with varying results. As science advances and climate change leads

(02:19):
to more extreme and unpredictable weather, there's been increasing interest
in weather modification. Weather modification intentionally alters the weather using technology,
said Kaccia Friedrich, Professor and chair of the Department of
Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

(02:40):
This includes cloud seating, hail suppression, hurricane weakening, fog suppression,
the idea of being able to lessen devastating storms, or
put an end to severe droughts is certainly tempting, but
we aren't actually able to carry out these kinds of
weather modifications effectively at a large scale, and even if

(03:01):
that changes, there are concerns about unintended consequences on ecosystems,
international cooperation, ethical distribution of resources, and more. While a
large scale weather modification doesn't yet exist, cloud seating is
the most widely studied and applied method. Quote. Cloud seating

(03:22):
is when we add tiny particles like silver iodide or
dry ice into clouds. Lombardo said, These particles help form
more water droplets, which can lead to more rain or snow.
In quote, you will mostly find this happening regionally in
places like the western US, China, and the United Air

(03:45):
Emirates for the purposes of drought relief and or snow
generation in specific areas. Basically, special planes or generators on
the ground release the seating agents to encourage water drops
uplets to form and fall. Most clouds do not need
to be seated, Friedrich said, as precipitating clouds are generally

(04:08):
good at doing this naturally. Quote. The goal is usually
to increase precipitation, but some people also talk about using
cloud seeding to calm storms or break up heavy rain,
though that's mostly theoretical and not well proven. Lombardo noted,
there are so many misconceptions around cloud seating, and I

(04:28):
am always honored to see how much confidence people have
in science. Friedrich said, Unfortunately, we showed in our studies
on orographic wintertime cloud seating that we can produce snow
through cloud seating, but it is really not that much. Indeed,
cloud seating has only shown modest success in increasing precipitation,

(04:51):
with studies indicating about five to fifteen percent or even
twenty percent jumps under optimal conditions. It's also difficult to
fully gauge effectiveness, as weather is dynamic and many factors
can play into changes in precipitation, its usefulness is extremely limited,
said Clifford Mass, professor of atmospheric and climate sciences at

(05:15):
the University of Washington. Some people are making money doing
cloud seeding, but the benefit is extremely small. Probably the
most valuable use of it is with super cool fog
in Arctic areas. The ability to modify precipitation is marginal
at best. Cloud seating also only works if there are

(05:36):
already existing clouds. You cannot use cloud seating to create
a single cloud out of thin air, and its impact
on precipitation is not enough to form a large storm,
even if there are many existing clouds filled with moisture. Quote,
if we were that good at cloud seating, we would
have solved the water crisis in the western US or

(05:56):
any other arid place in the world, Friedrich said, is
powerful and often very efficient in producing large amounts of precipitation.
She added that other forms of weather modification aren't anywhere
near as common as cloud seeding, if they're even possible.
At this point, the research around hurricane and hail suppression

(06:17):
has shown that we are not able to modify anything significantly,
Friedrich said, I don't know of any hurricane seating activities.
Hail suppression is still being done, but there is very
little scientific evidence that we can alter hailstone sizes in thunderstorms.
I also haven't seen much around fog suppression. Lombarda wanted

(06:38):
to clear up another misconception around cloud seating. Quote. Some
folks think if you see clouds in one area, you
steal the rain from nearby areas, he said, but there's
no real evidence to support that. Cloud seeding might help
in one region, but it doesn't cancel out rain somewhere else.
The many misconceptions in general lack of public understanding around

(07:01):
weather modification have given rise to many conspiracy theories around
weather modification. In the aftermath of devastating events like the
floods in Texas, these theories tend to get a bigger
spotlight when a disaster hits, like a big flood or hurricane,
people naturally look for someone or something to blame. Lombardo said,

(07:22):
is it cloud seating, climate change, bad planning politics? He
noted that Texas has a long history with cloud seating,
particularly in old, drier parts of the state, so it
could feel like a convenient answer to the flooding. Social
media posts about the government or private entities engineering disasters
offer an easy scapegoat. First off, cloud seating didn't cause

(07:47):
the massive storm they hit Texas on July fourth and fifth.
Lombardo said, events like that are driven by much bigger
weather patterns, and they're tough to forecast and even more
difficult to control. Also, cloud seating can't stop hurricanes or
weaken them. People have tried, but it hasn't worked. Although
Marjorie Taylor Green didn't explicitly link her legislative proposal to

(08:10):
the flooding in Texas. The timing of her announcement and
previous statements following natural disasters certainly fuels the conspiracy theory.
It's just complete nonsense. Mass said of links between weather
modification and the Texas flooding. They think that the US
government has a secret program that are creating the clouds

(08:32):
in the sky. He also compared the frenzy to the
debunked conspiracy theory around kim Trails, which Health and Human
Services Secretary Robert Kennedy has also promoted. As with conspiracy
theories before it, the linking of the Texas flooding to
cloud seating tends to say more about human psychology than

(08:54):
about science. We as human beings, want to find answers
to our why and who questions, Friedrich said, simply accepting
that nature is powerful and hurricanes and flooding can cost lives,
it's harder to believe because we have to accept it
and cannot blame anyone. Now, sticking with the theme of

(09:19):
the floods, we have an article from NPR Floods are
getting more dangerous around the country, not just in Texas.
This is from July to seventh. The catastrophic flash floods
in Texas over the weekend were caused by extremely heavy rain.
Up to twelve inches of rain fell in south central
Texas in the early hours of July fourth, according to

(09:41):
the National Weather Service radar. Climate change is driving more
extreme rainstorms across much of the United States, which drop
more water in shorter periods of time and make dangerous
floods more likely. That's what happened in Texas last week.
When a large amount of rain falls very quickly, the
ground can't soak up the water if the terrain is

(10:04):
even a little bit hilly. All that excess water is
funneled into low areas, picking up speed as it flows downstream.
This can cause dangerous flash floods when water rises quickly
and is moving swiftly. The part of Texas that flooded
last week is known as flash Flood Alley because of
its impermeable limestone hills and frequent downpours. But these floods

(10:28):
are unusually severe for the area, and climate change is
making such floods even worse. That's because a warmer atmosphere
can hold more moisture that extra water vapor means storms
can drop more rain than in the past. Today, the
heaviest rainstorms in Texas drop about twenty percent more water

(10:49):
than they did in the late nineteen fifties, when the
planet was significantly cooler, and extreme rain in Texas is
expected to get much more frequent in the coming decade
as the climate warms even more. According to a twenty
twenty four report by the Texas State Climatologists, it's not
just Texas. Across the United States, the heaviest storms are

(11:12):
projected to drop more rain as the planet continues to warm.
We don't know yet how much climate change contributed to
this particular storm. An initial analysis by a group of
European scientists estimates that climate change may have caused slightly
more rain to fall during the July fourth storm. Scientists

(11:32):
will be able to do more accurate analyses as more
detailed data from Texas become available in the coming days
and weeks. Friday's rain was particularly intense because the remnants
of tropical Storm Vary were moving over Texas after the
storm made landfall last week in Mexico. As the earth worms,

(11:53):
tropical storms and hurricanes are dumping more rain than they
used to. Most of the excess heat that humans have
trapped on Earth has been soaked up by the oceans.
In warmer ocean water combined with warmer air in the atmosphere,
makes large wet storms more likely. Such storms can cause
deadly flooding very far inland, a phenomenon that was on

(12:16):
full display last year when Hurricane Helene caused devastating flooding
and Appalachia. In twenty twenty one, flash floods from the
remnuts of Hurricane Ida killed dozens of people in the
northeastern United States after making landfall in Louisiana. More than
one third of the estimated two hundred thirty billion dollars

(12:38):
of damage caused by inland flooding in the US between
nineteen eighty eight and twenty twenty one would not have
happened without human caused climate change, according to the National
Climate Assessment. The flash floods in south central Texas washed
out roads and bridges and swept away buildings in rds
along the Guadalupe River. Despite the growing risks, many communities

(13:03):
around the country are still not planning for more intense
rain storms as they build roads, floodways, and storm infrastructure.
That's in part because local governments around the country relye
on historical rainfall records from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration NOAH INAA to plan flood control systems, but in

(13:29):
some places the records are decades old, meaning they don't
reflect how rain storms have already gotten more intense in
most of the country. In Texas's Harris County, which includes Houston,
NOAH updated the rainfall records in twenty eighteen and found
that extreme storms, those that have a one percent chance
of occurring in any given year, now drop almost eighteen

(13:52):
inches of rain, compared to thirteen inches prior to the
nineteen sixties and seventies. That increase meant that one third
of the major roads and highways in Harris County are
vulnerable to flooding. To respond to the growing risk, the
county's flood infrastructure plan became one hundred and fifty to
two hundred million dollars more expensive, largely due to the

(14:15):
flood's safety needs. NOAH is currently updating outdated rainfall records nationwide,
taking into account how climate change could continue to make
storms worse. Those updates are expected to be released starting
next year. Noah did not respond to questions about whether
that timeline is changing under the Trump administration, which has

(14:38):
proposed significantly shrinking the agency, including programs that work on
climate change research. Now we'll turn to The Guardian for
an article about bees honeybees. The headline is could become
a debt's spiral. Scientists discover what's driving record die offs

(15:01):
of US honeybees From July eighth. Brett A. D. That's
ade is one of the largest bee keepers in the US,
with two billion bees across fifty five thousand hives. The
business has been in his family since the nineteen thirties
and since truckloads of bees across the country from South Dakota,

(15:25):
pollinating crops such as almonds, onions, watermelons, and cucumbers. Last December,
his bees were wintering in California. When the weather turned cold,
bees grouped on top of hives trying to keep warm. Quote.
Every time I went out to the beehive, there were
less and less, says D. Then a week later there'd

(15:47):
be more dead ones to pick up. Every week. There
is attrition just continually going down in quote. A D
went on to lose seventy five percent of his bees.
It's almost depressingly, he says. If we have a similar
situation this year, I sure hope we don't, then we're
in a death spiral. It developed into the largest US

(16:10):
honeybee die off on record, with beekeepers losing on average
sixty percent of their colonies at a cost of six
hundred million dollars. Scientists have been scrambling to discover what happened.
Now the culprits are emerging. A research paper published by
the US Department of Agriculture, though not yet peer reviewed,

(16:33):
has found nearly all colonies had contracted a bee virus
spread by parasitic mites that appear to have developed resistance
to the main chemicals used to control them. Varroa mites,
equivalent in size to a dinner plate on a human body,
crawl and jump between worker bees. If there are no

(16:56):
infections present, they do not typically damage the bee, but
if diseases are present, they quickly spread them. While varoa
typically infects honeybees not wild bees, the diseases that they
spread can kill other pollinators. Research has shown that the
viral outbreaks among honeybees often spill over to wild colonies,

(17:17):
with potential knock on effects. On biodiversity. All beekeepers in
the USDA screening used amatraz, a pesticide widely used in
the sector to get rid of mites, but the research
showed all mites tested were resistant to it. After years
of heavy use, amatraz no longer appears to be effected.

(17:41):
This discovery underscores the urgent need for new control strategies
for this parasite. Mite numbers have increased to high levels
in recent surveys, according to the researchers, who collected hundreds
of samples from dead and living hives from one hundred
thirteen colonies. When mites become uncontrolled, virulent viruses are more

(18:05):
likely to take over. Researchers say since the nineteen eighties,
veroamites globally have developed resistance to at least four leading miticides,
pesticides specifically formulated to control mites that are challenging to develop,
causing significant problems for beekeepers. Norman Carrick, a senior technician

(18:28):
the University of Sussex who was not involved in the research, says,
quote sadly, it was inevitable that major honeybee colony losses
would again occur in the US at some point it
was only a matter of time before widespread resistance to amatraz,
the only remaining effective synthetic chemical, would develop, he says,

(18:50):
but the discovery of amatraz resistant mites in hives does
not mean that they alone were responsible for all of
last year's record die offs. A combination of factors is
likely to be causing successive colony deaths among usbes, including
the changing climate, exposure to pesticides, and less food in
the form of pollen and nectar. As monocrop farming proliferates,

(19:15):
many US beekeepers now expect to lose thirty percent of
their colony or more every year. These wider combined factors
are also devastating for wild pollinators and native bee species,
and honeybees, which are closely monitored by their beekeepers, may
be acting as a canary in the coal mine for
pressures affecting insects more generally. Paul Heatherington of the charity

(19:41):
Bug Life says honeybees are in effect quote a farmed
animal as opposed to wild bees, but they will be
suffering from the same stresses as their wild cousins, in
particular loss of good habitat, climate stress, chemical stress, light
adi says he had mites for twenty years and we

(20:01):
never had over three percent losses. He believes there is
a combination of things that makes the bees more stressed
and the mites more deadly. He cites the use of
neo nikotenoid neo nicotinoid, that's it, neonicotinoid insecticides in the

(20:21):
US which harmbee's nervous system, paralyzing and ultimately killing them.
Some researchers have warned of neonicotinoids causing another silent spring,
referring to Rachel Carson's nineteen sixty two book on the
effects of the insecticide DDT on bird populations. Dave Gulson,

(20:46):
professor of biology at the University of Sussex, says the
study provided no evidence that the viral load was higher
in weaker colonies. Quote, almost all be e colonies have
these viruses, but they only do significant harm when the
colony is stressed. He says high levels of viral infection
may be a symptom of ill health, not the cause.

(21:09):
Due to government staffing cuts, the USDA team were unable
to analyze pesticides in the hives and asked be experts
at Cornell University to carry out the results, or carry
out the research with the results still to be published.
Experts are concerned that successive loss of honeybee colonies could
affect food security, as the insects pollinate more than one

(21:32):
hundred commercial crops across North America. Reports of new losses
this year came through before the California almond blossom season,
which is the largest pollination event in the world, requiring
the services of seventy percent of US honeybees. Daniel Downey,
director of nonprofit beekeeping research organization Project APIs, which conducted

(21:58):
the die off survey, says, if you like to eat,
you need healthy bees to pollinate crops. Beekeepers try to
rebuild each year, but they are pushed to the brink
as losses and input costs keep increasing. If beekeepers fail,
there is no backup plan for the pollination services they
provide in US food production, she says. Meanwhile, beekeepers are

(22:21):
being pushed close to ruin. When d was growing up,
he would get upset about losses of more than five percent. Now,
a loss of thirty percent each year's standard. It's absolutely
insane that that's an acceptable loss in any livestock industry,
He says, like many beekeepers. Ade was unable to restock
this year because the losses were so high. Quote I'm

(22:44):
just watching every nickel and dime right now because I
don't want to get rid of men that have helped
me manage these bees for years in quote. Now we'll
go to Smithsonian and the article headline reads the largest
Martian meteorite in the world is heading to auction and
could sell for four million dollars. This is from July eighth.

(23:09):
Humans are still dreaming about landing on Mars, but periodically
chunks of the red planet come crashing down on Earth.
Now one of those rare Mars rocks is heading to auction,
the largest Martian meteorite ever found on Earth, called NWA
one six seven eighty eight, that sell for as much
as four million dollars at Sotheby's Natural History Sale in

(23:32):
New York on July sixteenth. Meteorites are pieces of space
debris that survived the journey through Earth's atmosphere to reach
the surface. When these objects are still hurtling through space,
they're known as meteoroids, and as they're traveling through the
Earth's atmosphere, they're called meteors, or colloquially shooting stars. An

(23:53):
anonymous meteorite hunter discovered NWA one six seven eight eight
in theF Calfe region of Nizer on July sixteenth, twenty
twenty three. According to the Lunar and Planetary Institute, A
fragment of the grayish brown rock was later sent to
the Shanghai Astronomy Museum for analysis. The chunk weighs more

(24:16):
than fifty four pounds, which makes it about seventy percent
bigger than the next largest known Mars metiawrite. According to Sotheby's,
NWA sixteen seven eight eight is so large that it
represents more than six percent of all Martian material ever
found on Earth. NWA sixteen seven eight eight is also rare.

(24:38):
It's one of roughly four hundred known meteorites from Mars,
which together make up a small fraction of the more
than seventy seven thousand officially recognized meteorites from all extraterrestrial
sources quote that chunk had to be loose enough to
break off, and then it had to get on the
right trajectory to travel on ndred and forty million miles

(25:01):
to Earth, and then it had to land in a
spot where someone could find it. Says Cassandra Hattan, vice
chairman of Science and Natural History for Sotheby's. And then
we were lucky enough that someone came by who knew
enough about meteorites to recognize that it wasn't just a
big rock. The object is what's known as a sergotite meteorite,

(25:23):
which is the most common type of meteorite from Mars.
Scientists believe these fragments, named after the Shergati meteorite that
fell in India in eighteen sixty five, come from the
red planet's volcanic regions. Based on its internal composition, scientists
think in Wa sixteen seven eight eight was torpedoed from

(25:44):
the Martian Service surfaced by an asteroid impact. The collision
was so powerful that it transformed about twenty percent of
the meteorite's minerals into a type of glass known as masculinite.
Parts of this surface are also covered in a glassy
fusion crust, which likely formed as a careem through the atmosphere,

(26:07):
generating high temperatures. It's not clear exactly when in Wa
sixteen seven eight eight landed on Earth, However, based on
the lack of visible weathering, it probably fell somewhat recently.
According to Sotheby's. In a statement, Hatton describes a meteorite
as once in a generation find that provides a link
to our celestial neighbor that has long captured the human imagination.

(26:31):
Some onlookers are disappointed that in Wa sixteen seven eight
eight is being sold to the highest bidder rather than
being donated to a scientific institution or museum. It would
be a shame if it disappeared into the vault of
an oligarch, says Steve Brusati, palaeontologists at the University of
Edinburgh in Scotland. However, other experts are less concerned about

(26:55):
the sale. A fragment of the rock has already been
analyzed and a reference samples being kept at the Purple
Mountain Observatory in China. In addition, the new owner may
ultimately choose to donate the specimen or support future research
on it. Meteorites are unique specimens that carry information about
the history of the Solar system that cannot be learned

(27:15):
any other way, says Paul Asimov, geologist at the California
Institute of Technology. He goes on to say this is
mitigated by the scale at which we can study meteorites.
And a subsample is likely to contain all the information
that the whole stone contains. In addition to the meteorites,

(27:35):
Sotheby's is also auctioning off other rare items. The authoring
offerings include a late Neolithic stone axe, the skeleton of
a one hundred fifty million year old juvenile sarah Thossaurus dinosaur,
and articulated Tyrannosaurus rex foot and other fossils. Well, that's

(28:00):
all for today's Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader
was Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for the Health Corner
on Radio I