8.14.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to radiowized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader's
Kelly Taylor. I have articles related to 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.
We'll start today with an article from BBC Wildlife. Taller

(00:25):
than a double decker bus or longer than a lorry
Meet the ten tallest animals on Earth. This from August twelfth.
Defining tallest gets complicated when you leave dry land. While
animals like giraffes and elephants are measured by how high
they stand, marine species such as whales and jellyfish challenge

(00:47):
the scale with extraordinary body length. This list brings together
some of the planet's most impressive giants. Whether they tower
above the tree drops, tree tops, or extend far beneath
the waves, just be worn. Not all height is vertical.
The tallest and longest animals include the blue whale. Blue

(01:11):
whale is the biggest animal ever known to have lived
on Earth, clocking up to thirty three meters in length
and matching its length with a whopping one hundred eighty
thousand kilograms in weight for females and one hundred and
fifty thousand kilograms for males. Blue whales hold another impressive record,
with the biggest penis extending up to three meters in length.

(01:33):
The giraffe standing around four to five meters high. Giraffes
are the tallest mammals in the world. In fact, some
giraffes have been recorded at heights of up to five
point nine meters, taller than a double decker bus. Much
of this height is found in their long necks, which
can help them reach high tree branches to feed. The

(01:56):
saltwater crocodile. The male of this species is around five
meters in length, although females are significantly smaller, making this
deadly predator one of the long longest reptiles. Snakes such
as the reticulated python and green anaconda are longer in length,
but the saltwater crocodile is generally larger. Historically, saltwater crocodiles

(02:20):
of up to seven meters in length were likely to
have existed, but these have been threatened due to hunting practices.
The lyon's main jellyfish small in body but long and tentacle.
The land's main jellyfish, can grow up to thirty meters,
using its long stinging tentacles to capture prey from far

(02:44):
away and pull it in to eat. It's the biggest
jellyfish in the world. The Eurasian brown bear Ursus arctose
arctose is tall when standing on its hind legs. Particularly
polar bears and brown bears are the biggest of the

(03:05):
bear species. Polar bears tend to be larger than brown bears,
but brown bears are more variable in size and can
reach around three meters when standing on their hind legs.
The whale shark is the largest species of shark and
fish on Earth, reaching up to twenty meters in length.
Despite their vast size, they are gentle giants, not generally

(03:27):
aggressive towards humans, and considered harmless. They filter seawater to
feed on plankton. The African element elephant, the heaviest land
animal on Earth, can grow to between three and four
meters tall, with males typically larger than females. Their height
and trunk length allows them to access a wide range

(03:50):
of food sources. Elephants also have the biggest noses in
the animal kingdom, at two point seven meters tall. The
ostrich is the largest flightless bird and the biggest bird
in the world, weighing as much as a piano. They
might be flightless, but our stridges are speedy on the ground,

(04:11):
with running speeds up to forty miles per hour. Is
partially due to their powerful long legs. The largest extant
species in the deer family, the moose, is a tall,
heavy and broad animal with broad antlers. They generally measure
between one and a half and two meters tall. The

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Indian elephant is one of three species of Asian elephant
and tends to be between two and three meters tall
at the shoulder. They're smaller than their African counterparts, but
still taller than many other land mammals. Now we'll turn
to The Guardian, and the headline for this article reads,

(04:55):
Southern Europe swelters under deadly heat wave as temperatures pass
forward degrees celsius August eleventh, Deadly heat of up to
forty four degrees sea is setting southern searing Southern Europe,
as scientists worn of a Molotov cocktail of climate conditions

(05:18):
that is fueling vast wildfires across the Mediterranean. In Italy,
where temperatures of forty degrees celsius are expected. In Florence
later this week, a four year old boy died of
heatstroke and a red alert warning was issued for seven
major cities, including Bologna and Florence. The boy had been
found unconscious in the family's car in Sardinia, was airlifted

(05:41):
to a Rome hospital several days ago, but died on
Monday of irreversible brain damage. France's weather placed more than
half the country under heat wave warnings on Monday morning,
with twelve out of ninety six administrative units on the
mainland under the highest red alert, while Spain's Spain has

(06:02):
warned of extreme danger in Zaragoza and the Basque country,
as it issued yellow and orange warnings for almost all
the rest of the country. Both weather agencies forecast temperatures
above forty degrees celsius over the coming days and called
for vigilance amid forecasts of a very intense, even exceptional
heat wave in parts of the continent. Forty degrees celsius,

(06:27):
by the way, is about one hundred and four degrees
in fahrenheit. The high temperatures have alarmed experts, as firefighters
struggled to contain destructive wildfires in France, which brought its
biggest fire since nineteen forty nine under control on Sunday.
Authorities reported that one person had died in the blaze,
while twenty firefighters and five civilians had been injured. In

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the Balkans, Croatian officials praised the superhuman efforts of firefighters
as they put out a large fire near Split on Monday,
while Serbian meteorologists warned of extreme conditions for fires to
develop amid temperatures of up to forty degrees celsius, while
fires in Albania and Montenegro also forced people to flee

(07:13):
their homes. According to local media reports. In Spain, fires
that broke out and Leone and Zamora on Sunday forced
more than a thousand people to flee their homes, while
large fires continued to burn in Galicia. Christina Santine Nunio,
a fire scientist at the Spanish National Research Council, said

(07:33):
the large number of blazes was to be expected after
a wet spring that helped plants grow, was followed by
extreme heat, strong winds in long periods without rain. If
we add to this the relatively easy possibility that a
spark can ignite a fire somewhere. We have all the
ingredients for the Molotov cocktail we're seeing right now, she said.

(07:55):
French forecasters said heat records were likely to be broken
on Monday and Tuesday, as temperatures passed forty two degrees sea.
In the southwest, temperatures hit a record high of forty
one and a half degrees in the village of Torbes
near Beziers at the weekend. In Spain, temperatures on Monday
were expected to rise further and the southern and eastern

(08:17):
thirds of the Iberian Peninsula and eastern Cantabrian Sea. They
were forecast to fall In the northwest, the Weather Agency
said had expected heat of thirty seven to thirty nine
degrees celsius across the interior of the peninsula on Monday,
with maximum temperatures above forty and high as it could
reach above forty four degrees in the lower Guadalaguavie. Haesius

(08:43):
Santiago Notario, a soil scientist at the University of La Laguna,
said conditions of extreme and prolonged heat had primed the
large number of fires across the country by drying out fuel.
He added, areas in the center northwest to theoretically less
prone dous of air fires compared with the Mediterranean coast,
for example, are burning. This is striking to me. The

(09:07):
world has warmed by about one point four degrees celsius
because of fossil fuel pollution, which forms a heat trapping
blanket around the Earth, and the destruction of nature, which
sucks carbon dioxide from the air. In Europe, which has
warmed nearly twice as fast as a global average, a
warm and dry air mass hanging over much of the
Iberian Peninsula and France is coincided with high levels of

(09:31):
summer sunshine that have pushed temperatures even higher now. An
article from USA Today in this one's dated August six,
smoke from Canada wildfires prompt air quality alerts in the US.
Large wildfires in Canada continue to cause concerning air quality

(09:52):
levels across parts of the United States and triggered multiple
air quality alerts. Over seven hundred and fifty wild burning
throughout Canada, with more than five hundred labeled out of control.
According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center, Over sixteen
million acres of land had been scorched by blazes, making

(10:13):
this year's wildfire season one of Canada's worst on record.
Smoke from the blazes has crossed into the United States,
bringing hazy skies to multiple states and major metropolitan areas,
including New York City. As of August sixth, the Environmental
Protection Agency labeled air quality throughout the Plains, Midwest, and

(10:33):
Northeast regions as quote unhealthy for sensitive groups, including the
city of Chicago. The National Weather Service issued air quality
alerts in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont,
New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. The alerts warned those with asthma

(10:54):
and heart issues to take precautions to avoid fatigue and
strenuous outdoor activity. Now we'll go to Ours Technica and
the headline for this article reads experiment will attempt to
counter climate change by altering ocean. From August the eleventh,

(11:18):
Later this summer, a fluorescent reddish pink spiral will bloom
across the Wilkinson Basin in the Gulf of Maine, about
forty miles northeast of Cape cod Scientists from the Woodshole
Oceanographic Institution will release the non toxic water tracer dye
behind their research vessel, where it will unfurl into a

(11:40):
half mile wide temporary plume bright enough to catch the
attention of passing boats and even satellites. As it spreads,
the researchers will track its movement to monitor a tightly controlled,
federally approved experiment testing whether the ocean can be engineered
to absorb more carbon and in turn help combat climate crisis.

(12:01):
As the world struggles to stay below the one and
a half degree celsius global warming threshold, a goal set
out in the Paris Agreement to avoid the most severe
impacts of climate change, experts agree that reducing greenhouse gas
emissions won't be enough to avoid overshooting this target. The
latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, published in twenty

(12:24):
twenty three, emphasizes the urgent need to actively remove carbon
from the atmosphere. Quote. If we really want to have
a shot at mitigating the worst effects of climate change,
carbon removal needs to start scaling to the point where
it can supplement large scale emissions reductions, said Adam Subhaus. Subhas,

(12:47):
an associate scientist in marine chemistry and geochemistry at the
Woods Whole Institution. The test is part of the Lockness
Project short for locking away ocean carbon in the Northeast
Shelf and Slope, which subhas has been leading since twenty

(13:08):
twenty three. The ongoing research initiative is evaluating the effectiveness
and environmental impact of a marine carbon dioxide removal approach
called ocean alkalinity enhancement. This method of marine carbon dioxide
removal involves adding alkaline substances to the ocean to boost

(13:30):
its natural ability to neutralize acids produced by greenhouse gases.
It's promising, Subhast said because it has the potential to
lock away carbon permanently. Quote. Ocean alkalinity enhancement does have
the potential to reach sort of gigatons per year of

(13:50):
carbon removal, which is the scale at which you would
need to supplement emissions reductions. Subhas said. Once the alkalinity
is dissolved in seawater, it reacts with carbon dioxide in
forms by carbonate, essentially dissolved baking soda. That by carbonate
is one of the most stable forms of carbon in

(14:11):
the ocean, and it can stay locked away for tens
of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years quote, but
it will be a long time before this could happen.
At the magnitude needed to mitigate climate change. According to
Will Burns, co director of the Institute for Responsible Carbon
Removal at American University, between six and ten gigatons of

(14:34):
carbon need to be removed from the atmosphere annually by
twenty fifty in order to meet the Paris Agreement climate target.
It's a titanic task, he said. Most marine carbon dioxide
removal initiatives, include including those involvingae, are still in a

(14:56):
nascent stage. Quote. We're really far from ha having any
of these technologies be mature, said Lisa Eleven, oceanographer and
professor at scripts Institution of Ocean Oceanography at the University
of California, San Diego. She was speaking at a panel
at the United Nations Ocean Conference in June about potential

(15:20):
environmental risks of mining and carbon diox are removal on
deep sea ecosystems. We're looking at a decade until any
serious large scale marine carbon removal is going to be
able to happen, or more. In the meantime, everybody acknowledges
that what we have to do is to reduce emissions

(15:41):
and not rely on taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
She said, So far, most carbon removal efforts have centered
on land based strategies, such as planting trees, restoring soils,
and building machines that capture carbon dioxide directly from the air. Increasingly,
research are exploring whether the oceans might help. Quote looking

(16:04):
at the oceans makes a lot of sense when it
comes to carbon removal because the oceans sequester seventy times
more CO two than terrestrial sources. Burns said, what if
it can hold more? That question is drawing growing attention,
not only from scientists. In recent years, a wave of
private companies have started pivoting and piloting various methods of

(16:28):
removing carbon from the oceans. Quote, it's really the private
sector that's pushing the scaling of this very quickly, Subhas said.
In the US and Canada, he said, there are at
least four companies piloting varied ocean alkalinity enhancement techniques. Last year,
EBB Carbon, a California based startup focused on marine carbon

(16:51):
dioxide removal, signed a deal with Microsoft to remove up
to three hundred and fifty thousand metric tons of CO
two over the next decade using an ocean alkalinity enhancement
process that splits seawater into acidic and alkaline streams. The
alkaline stream is then returned to the sea, where it

(17:11):
reacts with CO two and stores it as bicarbonate, enabling
the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
In return, Microsoft will purchase carbon removal credits from the startup.
Another company called Vesta, which has headquarters in San Francisco,
is using an approach called coastal carbon capture. This involves

(17:33):
adding finely ground olivine, a naturally occurring olive green colored mineral,
to sandy beaches. From there, ocean tides and waves carry
it into the sea. Olivine reacts quickly with seawater in
a process known as enhanced weathering, increasing the ocean's alkalinity.
The company piloted one of their projects in Duck, North Carolina,

(17:57):
last year, where it estimated approximately five thousand metric tons
of carbon dioxide would be removed through coastal carbon capture
after accounting for project emissions, according to its website. But
these efforts are not without risk. We have to proceed
in an extremely precautionary manner, says Burns. Some scientists are

(18:20):
concerned that ocean alkalinity experiment. Initiatives that involve olivine, which
contains heavy metals like nickel and chromium, may harm marine life.
Another concern is that the olivine could cloud certain ocean
areas and block light from penetrating to deeper depths. If
too much alkalinity is introduced too fast, some animals might

(18:41):
not be able to adjust. Other marine carbon dioxide removal
projects are using other methods besides OAE. Some involve adding
iron to the ocean to stimulate growth in microscopic plants
called phytoplankton, which absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Others include
the cultivation of large scale farms of kelp and seaweed,

(19:05):
which also absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. The marine plants
can then be sunk in the deep ocean to store
the carbon they absorbed. One technique that has not yet
been tried but may be piloted in the future, according
to a conservation nonprofit Ocean Visions, would employ new technology

(19:27):
to accelerate the ocean's natural process of transferring surface water
and carbon to the deep ocean. That's called artificial down
welling in reverse process, artificial upwelling cooler nutrient rich waters
from the deep ocean would be pumped to the surface
to spur phytoplankton growth. So far you see San Diego's

(19:52):
Levin said she is not concerned or convinced that these
trials will lead to impactful carbon removal. Quote. I do
not think the ocean is ever going to be really
a large part of that solution, she said. However, she
had it it might be part of the storage solution.
Right now, people are looking at injecting carbon dioxide as

(20:13):
removed from industry activities on land and transporting it to
the ocean and injecting it into basalt. Levin said she's
also worried that we don't know enough yet about the
consequences of altering that natural ocean processes. Quote, I'm concerned
about how many field trials would be required to actually
understand what would happen, and whether we could truly understand

(20:36):
the environmental risk of a fully scaled up operation. Most
marine carbon dioxide removal projects that have kicked off already
are significantly larger in scale than the Lotness experiment, which
subhas estimates will remove around fifty tons of CO two.
But he emphasized the goal of The project is not

(20:57):
to compete in size or scale, he said. The aim
is to provide independent academic research that can help guide
and inform the future of this industry and ensure it
does not have negative repercussions on the marine environment. And
now we've got an article from Popular Mechanics in an
energy breakthrough, scientists just pulled electricity out of thin air.

(21:22):
This is from August the thirteenth. Inspired after taking a
hot shower and entering an air conditioned room, engineer Ady
Suwardi wondered how much energy might exist in the temperature
difference between his skin and the cool, dry air around him.
After doing some preliminary research, he was shocked not so

(21:45):
much that evaporation could be a potential source of energy,
but that few people had investigated capturing it. As the
world pushes to electrify, both to stave off the worst
outcomes of climate change and to feed the increasing electricity
tons of future technologies, scientists keep looking for new forms
of renewable energy. Solar and wind are the obvious examples,

(22:07):
and they remain our best near term bet for kicking
fossil fuel addiction. Researchers have also tapped into the power
of the world's oceans, unlocking Earth's geothermal potential, and develop
nuclear batteries capable of lasting for thousands of years. But
an unlikely new source of energy might surpass all of these.

(22:28):
Sowarde and his fellow researchers have now done what once
seemed impossible, pulling energy literally out of thin air. Scientists
from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the National
University of Singapore have designed a tiny device that converts
the heat from airborne moisture evaporation directly into electricity. They

(22:50):
detail their methods in a paper published in July twenty
twenty five in the journal ACS Nano. This isn't a
wholly new approach. A burgeoning field known as hydro voltaics
similarly aims to transform moisture into energy. The appeal is obvious.
Moisture is omnipresent, wind and solar they come and go. Quote.

(23:15):
Our modern technologies evolved so fast that not every possible
application aspect has been thought of or demonstrated, says Sowardi,
a professor in the Electronic Engineering department at Chinese University,
Hong Kong. Sometimes things are just hidden in plain sight,
and all it takes is creative applications of technologies that
we already have. This has led some scientists to consider

(23:39):
whether large moisture capping capturing machines could help address the
world's energy needs. In twenty fifteen, researchers from Columbia University
developed an evaporation engine using the expansion and contraction of
bacterial spores over a water source, as well as a
moisture mill that's in quotes that extracted power when wet.

(24:03):
These methods are still minute power generators, but the researchers
predicted that perhaps future evaporation engines could yield larger amounts
of electricity from great power generators floating on large bodies
of water or large turbine like structures placed above a
water source. But there's a difference between something being theoretically

(24:27):
possible and being cost effective against well established renewable sources
such as wind and solar. Evaporation systems typically convert moisture
into mechanical energy and then into electricity, but this method
could be more efficient. Sowartas team found. Their paper details
a new approach evapo Evapo electrics that's in quotes. Evapo

(24:53):
electrics cuts out the mechanical middleman instead of transforming moisture
into energy. Instead, it transforms moisture into energy directly. This
method generates at least double the amount of energy compared
to current hydro voltaic systems. According to the authors quote,
most people don't think of evaporation as a possible source

(25:15):
of energy, so what he says, But Earth's water energy
cycle relies on evaporation driven by sunlight, which turns into
clouds and subsequently rains. So there's a tremendous amount of
energy involved throughout these processes of evaporation. In a basic sense,
evaporation takes away an immense amount of heat through vaporization.

(25:39):
Just one gram of water translates into roughly two thousand,
two hundred and fifty jewels of heat absorption, enough to
theoretically power a sixty WHTTE light bulb for thirty eight seconds.
This new evapoelectric device attempts to miniaturize this process in
the hopes of powering future wearables and sensors, and that

(26:00):
future seems possible. As Sowardy and his steam proved they
could supply energy to a simple lced display using only
this moisture based method. Their evap electrics device consists of
a thermo electric generator sandwiched between two heat sinks, components

(26:23):
designed to draw away excess heat. One of those heat
sinks is a porous polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel, which soaks up
water unlets it evaporate naturally. The other heat sink's primary
job is to maintain a temperature that's close to the
ambient air temperature. As water evaporates on the PVA hydrogel side,

(26:46):
it cools the surface, which creates a temperature gradient between
the heat sinks. As heat flows from one heat sink
to another, the generator converts it into electricity directly. Sowartie
says that some applying such a device with continuous water
for evaporation remains a design challenge. However, even sweat could

(27:08):
potentially be used as an extra energy source. He says,
a NonStop, minuscule energy source that can run on sweat
is perfect for wearable technologies such as smart watches or
fitness trackers. But there's still a lot that needs to
happen between now and our possible perspiration powered future. Like photovoltaics,

(27:30):
hydro voltaics, and evapp electrics are far from one hundred
percent efficient at converting energy. However, through improvements to the
PVA hydrogel layer as well as the TEG Swarti believes
evapp electrics could push into the realm of the technologically practical,

(27:50):
and as technology improves, it could one day power bigger
things beyond microsensors. In the near term, Sowardi sees evapp
electrics as an additional resource for wearables, pulling energy from
the air and human sweat. Right now, the only limit
to what's possible is time and attention. Well that's all

(28:12):
for today's Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader is
Kelly Taylor, and I'll stay tuned for more programming on
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