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Playlist: Consider for Climate Specials

Compiled By: Michael Marsolek

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Killer Heat in the United States

From This Is Science With Jess Phoenix | Part of the Got Science? series | 28:29

Climate scientist Dr. Kristy Dahl explains off-the-charts deadly heat, just how bad it could get, and what we can do to avert the worst-case scenario.

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In this episode Kristy talks about:

  • UCS' recently released report on extreme heat
  • How disruptive extreme heat will be
  • What we can do to have a fighting chance against the warming planet

Related content:

The Science of Forest Fires: Culture, Climate, and Combustion

From This Is Science With Jess Phoenix | Part of the Got Science? series | 30:00

Professor John Bailey, an expert on all things fire, tells us about controlled burning, silviculture and why Smokey the Bear had it all wrong.

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In this episode John Bailey talks about:

  • Topography and wildfires
  • What silviculture means, and why it's important
  • Why he sees an entire forest as fuel
  • What the four housemen of the apocalypse and Smokey the Bear got wrong about fire

Related content

Climate and Behavior: Warmer Means Worse

From Raw Data | Part of the Raw Data: Season 4 series | 27:25

Climate change is already reshaping the natural world, but how does it affect human behavior?

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Climate change is already reshaping the natural world, but how does it affect human behavior? Economist Marshall Burke is part of a growing field of scientists uncovering interactions between global warming and humanity. The connections are vast: wars, violent crime, suicide rates, and income inequality. The emerging research may have the power to help us adapt...if we choose to pay attention to it.

This Week in Water for October 6, 2019

From H2O Radio | Part of the This Week in Water series | 06:34

Toilets Could Be Impacted by Climate Change. That story and more on H2O Radio’s weekly news report about water.

H2o_logo_240_small Three environmental groups are asking a federal court to order the government to consider tearing down Glen Canyon Dam.

One in five households relies on septic systems and many of them could be impacted by climate change.

new gel-like fluid has been developed that might help prevent wildfires.

Scientists have developed a non-toxic water repellent for textiles.

If it's blue, it’s safe to swim. If it’s pink, think.

Whitebark Pine, Grizzlies, and an Ecosystem on the Brink

From Kristin Espeland Gourlay | 05:56

Whitebark pine trees, once a feature of the mountainous west, are under attack. Nearly two-thirds have died from beetle attacks and other causes, hastened by climate by change. Just recently considered candidates for endangered species protection, the pines' disappearance is affecting a chain of interdependent species, including Yellowstone's grizzly bears.

Cimg1143_small Just a few years ago, I accompanied a group of some of the finest entomologists and foresters into the heart of grizzly country for a first-hand look at the beetle damange to Yellowstone's whitebark pine trees. Trudging up the sides of mountains and, later, flying over ridge after ridge in a small plane, the extent of that damage became clear. More than two-thirds of the species, which ranges throughout the Rockies, has been destroyed. Mountainsides once evergreen have turned a rusty brown.

Now, whitebark pine trees are being considered for endangered species protection, primarly because of the continued threat of global warming to their survival. But without any intervention, their demise could tip the scales for an entire community of species that rely on the trees for surviving the winter.

More:

Yellowstone's grizzly bears rely on a single food more than any other to pack on the pounds before winter: whitebark pine tree nuts. They find them stockpiled in squirrel middens - storehouses for another species dependent on the nut in winter. The tree survives by being indispensible to one more species - a bird called the Clark's nutcracker, which survives the winter on buried nuts. Unlike other pines, whose seeds spread by fire, the whitebark pine needs a forgetful nutcracker.

But this tightly woven community of animals and trees faces a serious threat, made worse by global warming. Pine beetles that once focused on other species of trees have taken advantage of warmer temperatures and shorter winters to continue their attack at the higher altitudes where whitebark pine trees grow. The trouble is that whitebark pines haven't evolved the right defenses against this particular bug. So it's killing trees faster than they can bounce back--leaving few, if any, options for foresters.

Fewer whitebark pines means fewer whitebark pine nuts. And fewer nuts means bears, squirrels, and the nutcracker must scramble to find another source of calories - or starve.

It's the kind of story unfolding in ecosystems across the globe: warmer temperatures set off or speed up a chain of events with consequences nearly impossible to reverse.

Making Contact (Series)

Produced by Making Contact

Most recent piece in this series:

No, COVID Isn’t “Over,” and the Need for Continued Community

From Making Contact | Part of the Making Contact series | 29:00

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March marks four years since the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health failures and government inaction have forced communities to take matters into their own hands. On today's show, we look at two groups steeped in the values of community care.

First, we'll hear about the Auntie Sewing Squad, which distributed over 350,000 hand-sewn masks to communities in 2020-2021. Then, we'll speak with organizers from Pandemic Solidarity for the Long Future, which is working today towards a safer future for everyone.


Learn more about the story and find the transcript on radioproject.org. [https://www.radioproject.org/2024/03/no-covid-isnt-over-and-the-need-for-continued-community]


Making Contact [https://radioproject.org/] is an award-winning, nationally syndicated radio show and podcast featuring narrative storytelling and thought-provoking interviews. We cover the most urgent issues of our time and the people on the ground building a more just world.

Episode 91: Meeting A King

From Wyoming Public Radio | Part of the HumaNature series | 18:52

Shermin de Silva was an elephant researcher looking for a sign. Then she met a king.

Humanature_logo_wpm_small Shermin de Silva was an elephant researcher looking for a sign. Then she met a king.

Hot Farm - Standard Clock

From Food & Environment Reporting Network | 51:59

Climate change is coming for your food. In the American Heartland, farmers are battling increasingly severe weather, with epic floods and heat. Nearly half the land in the United States is used to grow crops and food animals, and agriculture accounts for an impossible to ignore 10 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions. If we’re serious about fighting climate change, we need farmers to be part of the solution. Hot Farm, a new hour-long documentary based on the four-part podcast of the same name from the Food & Environment Reporting Network and hosted by Eve Abrams, is about what the people who grow our food are doing, or could be doing, to combat climate change.

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Climate change is coming for your food. In the American Heartland, farmers are battling increasingly severe weather, with epic floods and heat. Nearly half the land in the United States is used to grow crops and food animals, and agriculture accounts for an impossible to ignore 10 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions. If we’re serious about fighting climate change, we need farmers to be part of the solution. In this documentary, based on Hot Farm, a new podcast from the Food & Environment Reporting Network and hosted by Eve Abrams, we travel across the Midwest, talking to farmers about what they are doing, or could be doing, to combat climate change. 

 

Among the people we meet is David Bishop, an Illinois farmer who became an unlikely Pied Piper in the sustainable agriculture movement. More than 30 years ago, after a drought wiped out his corn and soybean crops, Bishop changed the way he farmed. It was 1988, the same summer that a scientist named James Hansen told Congress that human activity was causing “global warming,” unofficially launching the climate-change era. While Bishop’s neighbors vowed that next year would be better, Bishop decided that he couldn’t go on doing the same thing. He started diversifying the crops he grew and replacing chemical fertilizer with manure. Over the next decade he kept asking himself, “What else can I do?” He began selling what he grew directly to consumers—something virtually unheard of in farm country back then. He didn’t consider what he was doing a crusade against climate change, but rather a way to break free of a system that was squeezing farmers from both ends—forcing them to grow only a handful of commodity crops and sell those crops to a handful of big buyers who set the prices. Along the way, Bishop has inspired—and helped guide—many younger farmers. Which is crucial, because as Abrams explains, we need more Dave Bishops if we are going to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions coming from U.S. agriculture.

 

In the second half of the documentary, we meet some farmers who, unlike Bishop, are still raising commodity crops and remain unconvinced that how they farm is contributing to climate change. This is true of most American farmers. But as producer Dana Cronin explains, farmers are practical above all else. If doing something differently makes farming and financial sense, they’re likely to embrace it. This is how Lin Warfel, who is skeptical of man-made climate change, came to be involved in a farmer-led initiative called Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources, STAR for short. The idea is to change farming practices in ways that safeguard the soil—the foundation of a farmer’s livelihood—for the next generation to farm. But many of the practices endorsed by STAR also help reduce carbon emissions, even if that isn’t the reason the farmers adopt them. It’s the kind of voluntary, meet-them-where-they-are strategy that the USDA and others hoping to convince farmers to join the climate.