Feature 1: (start time: 03:45) Our first guest is Boulder beekeeper Tom Theobald. He talks about the current state of the bee crisis and what, if anything, the EPA is doing to address concerns that systemic pesticides like Clothianidan are properly controlled.
Dr. Claudia Tebaldi
Feature 2: (start time: 12:42) Then National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Dr. Claudia Tebaldi joins us. Tebaldi, a statistician, specializes in long-term modeling of climate change. We talk to her about the relationship between flood and the warming planet. We also talk about the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which she helped lead. She also explains what the ‘fog of prediction is.
Hosts: Jim Pullen, Beth Bartel Producer: Jim Pullen Engineer: Jim Pullen Executive Producer: Beth Bartel
The Tuesday, Sept. 17, show offers two features: Feature #1 (start time TK): Once hadrazine, now green. Ball Aerospace’s Chris McLean, the Program Manager for the Green Propellent Fusion Mission, talks with co-host Jim Pullen about testing a much safer spacecraft fuel.
Mississippi River Basin Courtesy U.S. EPA
Feature #2 (start time TK): The 100-year flood ravaging Colorado has shown us painfully clearly the power of water. We’re seeing how surging rainfall and overflowing streams can destroy homes, roads, indeed whole communities in their path. But what’s less visible is how extreme weather events like this one in the nation’s interior affect oceans in powerful ways. Our watersheds east of the Continental Divide carry water, and tons of nutrients, into the Mississippi River Basin. Rainfall, storm water, and fertilizer runoff from croplands and backyard lawns contribute to the humongous Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. To discuss our inland connection to oceans Dr. David Guggenheim, a marine scientist and founder of the nonprofit Ocean Doctor, talks with co-host Susan Moran. Vicki Goldstein, founder of Colorado Ocean Coalition, also discusses the inland ocean movement, including the second annual Making Waves event this coming weekend.
Hosts: Susan Moran, Jim Pullen Producers: Jim Pullen Engineer: Jim Pullen Executive Producer: Susan Moran
(Proposed design of Yucca Mountain (Los Alamos National Lab)
On Tuesday, August 13th, the US Court of Appeals-DC Circuit ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to evaluate the application for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. Dr. Bill Alley and Rosemarie Alley talk with us about the significance of the decision. The Alley’s just published Too Hot To Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste with Cambridge University Press. They were also our guests on August 13th’s How On Earth!
Today we’re joined by Dr. William Alley and Rosemarie Alley to learn about the nuclear waste crisis in the United States. Bill Alley, a distinguished hydrologist, was in charge of the USGS’s water studies at Yucca Mountain from 2002 until 2010, when the Obama administration ended the project. Rosemarie Alley is a writer and educator and is passionate about the nuclear waste issue. Together, they’ve written a highly readable and informative book published by Cambridge University Press in 2013: Too Hot To Touch: the Problem of High Level Nuclear Waste. The Alley’s also discuss the Ft. St. Vrain Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation near Platteville, where 15 MTHM (metric tons of heavy metal) are housed until a more permanent home can be found. We’ll be bringing you more on the Ft. St. Vrain facility later in the year.
Host: Jim Pullen Producer: Jim Pullen Executive Producer: Susan Moran
Buzz Aldrin’s Vision for Space Exploration (starts at 6:14) Dr. Buzz Aldrin advocates that the United States should not enter a space-race to the moon against the Chinese, or a race to Mars against the Russians, but rather show leadership by cooperating with the major space-faring nations to systematically step across the great void to the Red Planet. This is his personal Unified Space Vision. He is also working toward an independent council, a United Strategic Space Enterprise, that would advise American citizens about the nation’s space policy. USSE experts would draw on a deep knowledge of America’s previous successes and failures to present a unified plan of exploration, science, development, commerce, and security within a national foreign policy context. Buzz shared these visions with How On Earth’s Jim Pullen. Here’s an excerpt from his hour-long discussion with Jim. Stay tuned for the rest of his discussion, in which he shares little-known insights into why Apollo 11, not Apollo 12, was first to land humans on the moon, and never-before-shared honors for Neil Armstrong and Pete Conrad.
The Bees Needs (starts at 16:04) Colorado is home to over nine-hundred species of wild bees. Most of these solitary creatures nest in the ground, but others nest in the hollow stalks of plants, and about one hundred and fifty species nest in holes in wood. How are these bees doing? Are pesticides striking them down, like their honeybee cousins? How will they respond to changes in climate? CU scientists Dr. Alex Rose and Dr. Virginia Scott have embarked on a journey of discovery, and they’ve invited ordinary people to help. It’s the Bees Needs, a citizen-science project. How On Earther Jim Pullen is a part of that citizen-science team, and he invited Virgina and Alex to see what’s happening at the bustling bee block nest outside our studio.
Hosts: Jim Pullen and Susan Moran Producer: Jim Pullen Additional Contributions: Joel Parker and Shelley Schlender Engineer: Jim Pullen Executive Producer: Susan Moran
The World Listening Project celebrated its 40 anniversary on Thursday, July 18th. On Thursday, How On Earth’s Jim Pullen was in Ft. Collins recording audio for an upcoming story on the National Institute of Standards and Technology radio station WWVB. To celebrate the World Listening Project, World Listening Day, and the field of acoustic ecology, he took a few minutes to record a thunderstorm that was causing some havoc at the station. Take some time to listen quietly to the sounds in your life!
(Recorded using linear pulse-code modulation at a sample rate of 96 kHz and resolution of 24 bits per sample with a Marantz PMD 661 recorder specially fitted with low-noise preamplifiers by Oade Brothers and an Audio-Technica BP4025 x/y stereo field recording microphone. The audio file posted here is a 192 kbps mp3.)
High importance (yellow) and critical importance (red) risk areas to birds and wind tower proposals (2003-2011) (dark crosses). Source: American Bird Conservancy.
One to two million additional bird deaths per year. Wind is the most rapidly growing energy source in the US, but are environmental protections keeping pace? Tuesday on How On Earth, Kelly Fuller, the American Bird Conservancy’s Wind Campaign Coordinator, talks with Jim Pullen about the impact of big wind on birds.
Host: Jim Pullen Producer: Jim Pullen Executive Producer: Joel Parker
Canadian hemp being cut by combine-harvesters. (Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance)
(starts at 08:19) At (high? no, not this plant) noon on Tuesday, Governor John Hickenlooper will sign a bill that will legalize growing industrial hemp in Colorado. But it’s been 70 years since hemp was legally grown in the US… Fortunately, because Canada lifted its ban in the 1990s, we can seek the experience of our northern neighbors. Join the How On Earth team and guest Dr. Jan Slaski, a Canadian plant science expert, to learn about the modern practice of growing industrial hemp.
Hosts: Jim Pullen and Joel Parker Producer: Jim Pullen Engineer: Joel Parker Executive Producer: Joel Parker
NASA satellite image of slash and burn being used to clear rainforest in Sumatra.
(start time: 07:23) We talk with Lindsey Allen, the Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network, about the destruction of rainforest from the proliferation of palm oil plantations.
Hosts: Jim Pullen, Joel Parker Producer: Jim Pullen Engineer: Joel Parker Executive Producer: Joel Parker
Today on How On Earth, KGNU’s award-winning science show, we continue our discussion with Boulder’s Dr. David Wineland about the human side of winning the Nobel Prize. The National Institute of Standards and Technology scientist shared the 2012 physics award with France’s Serge Haroche. They’ve developed experimental methods for trapping and holding particles so that weird quantum behaviors can be studied. The research is critical to developing extreme quantum computers that may someday break today’s best encryption algorithms…and make truly unbreakable ones.
Host: Jim Pullen Producer: Jim Pullen Executive Producer: Joel Parker