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A hidden global water crisis

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A major crisis is unfolding beneath our feet: Earth’s continents are losing freshwater at unprecedented rates.  Recent satellite data has uncovered a hidden global water crisis, suggesting the problem is more urgent than previously thought. 

The study, which was led by researchers from Arizona State University, found that since 2002, climate change, unsustainable groundwater use, and extreme droughts have driven dramatic declines in the planet’s freshwater reserves.

The research team found that drying areas on land are expanding at a rate roughly twice the size of California every year.  Additionally, the rate at which dry areas are getting drier now outpaces the rate at which wet areas are getting wetter, reversing long-standing hydrological patterns.   

Approximately 75% of the world’s population lives in countries that have been losing freshwater for more than two decades.  As the availability of freshwater dramatically shrinks, the global population continues to expand. 

The study, which was recently published in the journal Science Advances, identifies four continental-scale “mega-drying” regions, all located in the northern hemisphere, and warns of severe consequences for water security, agriculture, sea level rise, and global stability. 

The researchers identified the type of water loss on land, and for the first time, found that 68% came from groundwater.  Groundwater loss alone now contributes more to sea level rise than melting ice sheets. 

The findings stress the urgent need for sustainable water management, international cooperation, and global policies to slow groundwater loss.

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Satellites just revealed a hidden global water crisis—and it’s worse than melting ice

Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise

Photo, posted January 16, 2012, courtesy of Kecko via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Disappearing wetlands

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More than 170 countries gathered recently to discuss how to save wetlands, which are critical ecosystems.  However, the U.S. was a no-show for most of the summit and Russia said it will withdraw from the wetlands treaty.

Wetlands are a crucial element of all life on Earth, supplying fresh water, oxygen, habitat, and food.  The Ramsar Convention, an international treaty focused on the conservation and wise use of wetlands, is the oldest modern global environmental agreement, adopted in 1971. 

Despite this agreement, since 1970 more than 35% of wetlands have been lost or degraded.  A recent report compiled by more than 60 experts from around the world issued a dire warning that the decline of wetlands spells trouble for global food security, climate stability, and even the capacity for life on Earth to persist.

Sadly, geopolitics have overtaken even the instinct for survival.  Because of a prior resolution to monitor Ukranian wetlands harmed during Russia’s ongoing war there, Russia now intends to withdraw from the treaty.  Meanwhile, the U.S. delegate to the wetlands summit only showed up near the end of the meeting to demand that conference documents make no mention of climate change, diversity equity and inclusion, gender, UN sustainable development goals, or zero growth.

Disengagement by the United States from the world’s increasing and shared environmental problems is a global crisis that only worsens existing global crises.

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Earth’s Wetlands Are Disappearing and Global Efforts to Save Them Are Unraveling

Photo, posted October 8, 2013, courtesy of Marek Kusmin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Soda can hydrogen

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Hydrogen is an ideal climate-friendly fuel because it doesn’t release carbon dioxide when it is used.  But most hydrogen is produced in ways that result in significant carbon emissions. Thus, the search for green hydrogen goes on. 

Last year, engineers at MIT developed a new process for making hydrogen that significantly reduces the carbon footprint of its production.  The recipe uses seawater and recycled soda cans. 

Pure aluminum reacts with water, breaking up the water molecules to produce aluminum oxide and pure hydrogen.  But when aluminum is exposed to oxygen, it forms a shield-like layer that prevents the reaction.

The MIT researchers found that the shield can be removed by treating aluminum with a small amount of gallium-indium alloy.  Mixing the pure aluminum with seawater not only produces hydrogen, but the salt in the seawater precipitates out the gallium-indium, making it available for reuse.

The research team carried out a “cradle-to-grave” life cycle assessment of the process, taking into account every step in using the hydrogen-production process at an industrial scale.  They found that using recycled aluminum – chopped-up soda cans – is environmentally and economically superior to using “primary” aluminum, mined from the earth. The cans would be shredded into pellet and treated with the gallium-indium alloy.  The pellets would be processed near a source of seawater where they would be combined to generate hydrogen on demand.

According to their analysis, the hydrogen produced would be at least competitive economically and environmentally with other potential methods of producing green hydrogen.

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Study shows making hydrogen with soda cans and seawater is scalable and sustainable

Photo, posted July 29, 2020, courtesy of Bruce Dupree via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

How much nanoplastic is in the oceans?

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It is unfortunately well-known that microplastics are pretty much everywhere on Earth.  They are also increasingly found in living things like birds and dolphins as well as in human brains and placentas.  The oceans are polluted with plastic, and for the first time, there is now an estimate for the volume of nanoplastics – which are even smaller than microplastics and invisible to the human eye – found in the North Atlantic.

According to a study published in the journal Nature by the microplastics and nanoplastics research group at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Germany, there are at least 30 million tons of nanoplastics in the North Atlantic, which is more than the weight of all wild land mammals on Earth.

The same researchers have analyzed plastic in lakes, urban air, and even the air in very remote places, but the new study reveals a missing part of the plastics story.

Nanoplastics are microscopic fragments smaller than one micron, about the size of small bacteria.  There has been ongoing concern about nanoplastics in ocean water, but there wasn’t the technology available to really investigate it.  While nanoplastics were expected to be found in the ocean, the sheer amount of it was surprising.

The average concentration of nanoplastics near coastlines is about 25 milligrams per cubic meter of water, about the weight of a single large bird feather.   Nanoplastics are tiny enough that they can easily infiltrate the bodies of living creatures.  For fish and other ocean animals, that means constant exposure that builds up over time.

It is highly unlikely that plastic pollution is going to stop any time soon, but there is a United Nations meeting on the subject in August in Geneva.

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Tons of Invisible Plastic Pieces Lurk in Ocean Water

Photo, posted June 24, 2020, courtesy of G.P. Schmal / NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Planting trees to cool the planet

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Planting lots of trees is one of many strategies being pursued to combat climate change. Forests absorb carbon dioxide, provide shade, and help regulate temperatures. They also support biodiversity and improve air and water quality.

According to a new study by researchers from the University of California – Riverside, restoring forests to their pre-industrial extent could reduce global average temperatures by 0.34 degrees Celsius. That’s equivalent to about 25% of the warming the Earth has already experienced.

The study models restoring 4.6 million square miles of forest.  While previous studies have focused on the role trees play in removing carbon, this research adds that trees also alter atmospheric chemistry in ways that boost their cooling impact.

Trees release natural chemicals called BVOCs – biogenic volatile organic compounds – which interact in the atmosphere to form particles that reflect sunlight and promote cloud formation. These effects enhance the cooling impact of forests, especially in climate models that take these chemical reactions into account.

But not all reforestation is created equal. The benefits of reforestation vary by region, with tropical forests offering stronger cooling and fewer drawbacks.  Importantly, the researchers emphasize that meaningful climate benefits don’t require restoring every lost forest. Small, localized efforts can still shift regional climates.

While forest restoration can meaningfully aid climate efforts, the researchers stress that it must complement – not replace – fossil fuel reductions.

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Does planting trees really help cool the planet?

Photo, posted May 20, 2005, courtesy of Ben Britten via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Hidden hydrogen

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The idea of using hydrogen as a fuel or an energy source has been around for a long time.  Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, but most of it is locked up in various chemical compounds, such as water.  Hydrogen is a clean fuel; burning it or using it to generate electricity in a fuel cell produces no greenhouse gas emissions.  But more than 99% of the hydrogen that people current produce is obtained by methods that result in greenhouse gas emissions.

A new study by scientists at the University of Oxford, the University of Durham in the UK, and the University of Toronto looks at geological environments in which naturally occurring hydrogen could be hiding.  According to the study, over the last billion years, the Earth’s continental crust is likely to have produced enough hydrogen to satisfy the energy needs of modern society for 170,000 years.

Much of that hydrogen is likely to have been lost or is inaccessible; most of it is not economically feasible to extract.  But even the relatively small amount of hydrogen left could provide thousands of years of energy for us.  We just have to be able to find it.

The researchers have developed what they call an “exploration recipe” which identifies where natural hydrogen might be located as well as where it could be commercially feasible to extract.  These places with hydrogen have so-called reservoir rocks and geologic formations that prevent the gas from leaking into the atmosphere.

A few such places have already been identified such as one in Albania.  There are various candidates to explore, even including an area in Kansas.  The study’s authors have founded a company whose mission is to find these natural sources of hydrogen.

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Scientists Say Hidden Hydrogen Could Power the World for 170,000 Years

Photo, posted October 4, 2019, courtesy of Tony Sprezzatura via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Our cities are sinking

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A new study by the Columbia University Climate School has found that all of the 28 most populous cities in the United States are sinking to some extent.  This phenomenon of subsidence is not just taking place in cities on the coast, where relative sea level is an issue, but also in cities in the interior.

The primary cause of subsidence is large-scale groundwater extraction for human use.  When water is withdrawn from aquifers made up of fine-grained sediments, the pore spaces formerly occupied by water can eventually collapse, leading to compaction below and sinkage at the surface.

The fastest sinking city in the US is Houston, with more than 40% of its area subsiding more than 5 millimeters a year and 12% sinking at twice that rate.  Some local spots are going down as much as 5 centimeters a year.   These seem like very small numbers but the fact that the subsidence is often not uniform across an urban area means that there are stresses to building foundations and other infrastructure.  Parts of Las Vegas, Washington D.C., and San Francisco have particularly fast sinking zones.

There are other causes of subsidence.  In Texas, pumping of oil and gas adds to the phenomenon.  A 2023 study found that New York City’s more than one million buildings are pressing down on the Earth so hard that they may be contributing to the city’s ongoing subsidence.  About 1% of the total area of the country’s 28 largest cities faces some danger from uneven subsidence.

Overall, some 34 million Americans live in cities affected by subsidence.  Global cities facing especially rapid subsidence include Jakarta, Venice, and here in the U.S., New Orleans.

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All of the Biggest U.S. Cities Are Sinking

Photo, posted December 27, 2012, courtesy of Katie Haugland Bowen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The oceans are warming faster

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A new study has shown that the rate of ocean warming has more than quadrupled over the past 40 years.  The study, by researchers at the University of Reading in the UK, helps to explain why there have been unprecedented ocean temperatures in 2023 and 2024.

Global ocean temperatures hit record highs for 450 days straight in 2023 and early 2024.  Some of this unusual warmth came from the El Niño that was taking place at the time, but the rest of the increased temperature came from the sea surface warming up more quickly over the past 10 years than in previous decades.  In the late 1980s, ocean temperatures were rising at a rate of 0.06 degrees Celsius per decade.  According to the recent research, they are now increasing at 0.27 degrees per decade.

The acceleration of ocean warming is driven by growth in the Earth’s energy imbalance, meaning that more energy from the sun is being absorbed by the Earth than is escaping back into space.  This energy imbalance has roughly doubled since 2010 as a result of two factors:  increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and reductions in the Earth’s albedo.

Earth’s albedo, the measure of how much sunlight is reflected back into space, has been declining since the 1970s, primarily due to the decrease in snow and ice cover, especially in the Arctic. 

The overall rate of ocean warming observed over recent decade is likely to only increase.  This underscores the urgency of reducing fossil fuel burning to avoid even more rapid temperature increases in the future.

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Ocean-surface warming four times faster now than late-1980s

Photo, posted January 18, 2007, courtesy of Alexey Krasavin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Vegetation and climate change

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Temperatures have been steadily rising around the world as a result of the increased greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.  This warming trend has led to more frequent and intense heat waves, droughts, and other extreme weather events.  Rising temperatures are also impacting human health, leading to increased risks of heat-related illnesses and a higher number of fatalities during extreme heat events.

One simple but effective way to reduce the health risks from extreme heat is to increase urban vegetation.  According to new research led by scientists from Monash University in Australia, increasing urban vegetation by 30% could save more than one-third of all heat-related deaths.  The study, which was recently published in The Lancet Planetary Health, examined more than 11,000 urban areas and found that increasing greenery could have saved up to 1.16 million lives worldwide between 2000 and 2019.

The impact of increasing urban vegetation on heat-related deaths varies by climate, greenness, socioeconomic, and demographic factors, with the greatest benefits seen in Southern Asia, Eastern Europe, and Eastern Asia. 

Vegetation has a cooling effect on temperature.  Vegetation helps regulate the Earth’s climate by absorbing carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, which helps to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Vegetation also cools the environment through shading, moisture release, and evapotranspiration, which reduces temperatures and mitigates heat-related health risks.

Incorporating more vegetation into urban areas is a powerful solution to mitigate the impacts of climate change and protect human health.

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Increasing urban vegetation could have saved over 1.1m lives in two decades

Photo, posted July 1, 2023, courtesy of Lauri via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The American butterfly census

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There has been a great deal of interest in the plight of monarch butterflies in this country.  Monarchs’ population and migratory habits are closely watched, and many people have been planting milkweed in their gardens to help their caterpillars.  But other butterfly species have received much less attention despite the fact that many butterfly populations are in decline.

A groundbreaking new study has provided comprehensive answers about the status of butterflies in America.  Over the past 20 years, the contiguous US has lost 22 percent of its butterflies.

The study is based on over 12 million individual butteries counted in 77,000 surveys across 35 monitoring programs from 2000 to 2020.  Three hundred forty-two butterfly species in total were analyzed.  Thirty three percent showed statistically significant declines while less than 3% displayed statistically significant increases.  Overall, 13 times as many species decreased as increased.

Why are butterfly populations crashing?  Experts point to a combination of factors:  habitat loss as land in converted for agriculture or development, climate change, and pesticide use.  It is not clear which factor is most important and may well vary by location.  Pesticide use – especially neonicotinoids – has been shown to play a particularly lethal role in studies. 

Insects including butterflies play a huge role in supporting life on earth.  They pollinate plants, feed birds and many other creatures in the food web.  Nature collapses without them.  And butterflies are clearly in trouble.

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See How Butterflies Are Surviving, or Not, Near You

Photo, posted August 9, 2016, courtesy of Rachel Larue/Arlington National Cemetery via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Are today’s refrigerants safe?

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Refrigeration is based on heat transfer mediums that absorb heat from the area being cooled and transfer it to the outside environment.

The earliest refrigerants were dangerous substances like ammonia.  In the 1930s, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) like Freon became the standard refrigerant for use in refrigeration systems and even in aerosol cans.  When these substances were found to be depleting the earth’s ozone layer, the Montreal Protocol dictated their phaseout and by the mid-1990s, CFCs were largely replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

HFCs don’t deplete the ozone layer, but they were eventually determined to be potent greenhouse gases, thousands of times more planet-warming than carbon dioxide.   As a result, the global phaseout of HFCs began in 2016, and have been increasingly replaced by hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs), which are considered a more environmentally-friendly alternative to all their predecessors.

Trying to not be surprised by additional unpleasant discoveries about refrigerants, researchers are studying the potential environmental impacts of HFOs.  Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia have found that HFOs can break down in the atmosphere and that some small amounts of the resultant products are in fact fluoroforms, which are the HFC with the greatest global warming potential and can stay in the atmosphere for up to 200 years.

That only a small amount of HFC gets into the atmosphere is good, but nevertheless it reveals that the consequences of replacing widely-used chemicals are not a simple matter to determine.

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Are our refrigerants safe? The lingering questions about the chemicals keeping us cool

Photo, posted July 19, 2021, courtesy of Vernon Air Conditioning via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Tigers in India

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The Anthropocene is the term that describes the current era in Earth’s history when human activities are having a significant impact on the planet.  It is an epoch filled with species extinction and species attrition in both numbers and range.  The population of large carnivores are among the most affected species and recovering these animals that play important roles in ecosystems is a formidable challenge.

Tigers in Asia are a prime example of extirpation – removal of a species from a specific area.  They have been eliminated in more than 90% of their historic Asian range over the past century.  A new study, published in Science has found that tigers in India are making a comeback.

India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority estimates that between 2010 and 2022, India’s tiger population grew from 1,706 to 3,682.  Tigers are thriving not only on protected lands but also near some human communities.

Tigers are gone from poorer areas where poaching was prevalent and from areas affected by the violent conflict associated with India’s Maoist rebellion.  On the other hand, the big cats can be found near some prosperous communities where poaching is rare.  Farmers keep cattle in enclosures to protect them from tigers.  

The success in protecting tigers in India could provide some insights for Europe where wolves are making a comeback, and perhaps even in the American West where the resurgence of wolf populations is triggering a violent backlash.

Large predators can survive in the modern world with creative thinking and willingness to find a balance between protection and coexistence.

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India Doubled its Tiger Population in a Little More Than a Decade

Photo, posted January 8, 2014, courtesy of Roderick Eime via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Microplastics in Antarctica

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Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long and typically far smaller than that.  They come from a variety of sources, often from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces.  There are also microbeads, which are tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added to various health and beauty products.  Tiny bits of plastic easily pass through filtration systems and end up in the ocean and other bodies of water.

Microplastics are a pervasive problem for which nowhere on Earth is truly untouched.  Despite stringent regulations on materials entering Antarctica, scientists have discovered microplastics in the snow near some of the deep field camps there.

A study by the British Antarctic Survey made use of a new and advanced technique that can detect microplastics as small as 11 microns – about the size of a red blood cell.

The research team found microplastics at concentrations ranging from 73 to 3,099 particles per liter of snow. 

Snow samples from three different sites identified polyamide (used in textiles), polyethylene terephthalate (found in bottles and packaging), polyethylene, and synthetic rubber.  The results suggest that at least the polyamide, which accounted for half the microplastics found, came from local sources.

Additional research is needed to fully understand the sources of microplastic pollution in Antarctica and to understand the broader implications of microplastics in that frozen wilderness. Microplastics have already been detected in several penguin, seal, and fish species.

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Microplastics discovered in Antarctica

Photo, posted February 3, 2015, courtesy of Christian Stangl via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The human footprint on Earth

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The Earth is a pretty big place, and it is easy to think that humans and their activities occupy very little of it.  But the impact of human activities on our planet continues to grow.  Recent satellite images from NASA’s Earth Observatory show the staggering extent of the human footprint on Earth.

Agriculture is a major part of it.  Farms and pastures take up almost half of the world’s habitable land – land not covered by ice or desert.  Greenhouses have recently proliferated tremendously and now cover 3.2 million acres, an area the size of Connecticut, and they even have effects on local climates.

More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, which are expanding rapidly.  Enormous cities in Asia are changing the landscape in places like Thailand and Indonesia.  Apart from taking up lots of land, many of the world’s cities are immersed in clouds of air pollution that they generate.

Greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, and temperatures continue to rise.  The effects of this on the planet are increasingly evident.  Seas are rising, ice is melting, glaciers shrink away, and wildfires continue to burn.  The massive wildfires in and around Los Angeles have made major changes in the local landscape.  Rising seas have flooded coastal wetlands and elsewhere, rivers and lakes have shrunk.

There are also human impacts visible from space that represent positive signs.  Large solar arrays supply the cheapest form of energy in most parts of the world and the number and size of solar installations are at a record high.   These solar installations provide some hope that global warming can be slowed.

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The Growing Human Footprint on Earth, as Seen from Space

Photo, posted July 28, 2012, courtesy of Beth Scupham via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Engineering plants to consume more carbon dioxide

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The most abundant protein on the planet is an enzyme called ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, better known as RuBisCO.  Its critical role in photosynthesis makes life as we know it on earth possible.  What it does is convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the organic matter contained in plants.

Getting plants to take up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a key strategy for mitigating climate change.  Planting lots of trees is one way to do it.  Another is to get individual plants to capture more carbon dioxide.

Scientists at the University of Illinois have focused on getting plants to produce more RuBisCO which allows them to grow faster, consuming more carbon dioxide in the process.

Some plants are better than others at taking advantage of the earth’s rising carbon dioxide levels.  Among these are food crops like corn, sugarcane, and sorghum.  Such plants’ growth is not primarily limited by how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere but rather by how much RuBisCO is in their leaves.  The Illinois scientists tweaked genes in corn and sorghum to produce plants containing more RuBisCO.  Laboratory experiments on corn demonstrated faster corn growth.  Recent outdoor field experiments on sorghum demonstrated a 16% boost in its growth rate. 

Improving photosynthesis in this way is not only a potential strategy for increasing plants’ ability to combat climate change.  It is also a way to cope with the world’s increasing demand for food by producing crops that can grow larger and more quickly.

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Scientists Engineer Crops to Consume More Carbon Dioxide

Photo, posted April 12, 2016, courtesy of K-State Research and Extension via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Wrong trees in the wrong places

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Temperatures in cities are rising around the world and urban heat stress is already a major problem.  Extensive surfaces of man-made materials absorb the sun’s energy, and lead to temperatures well above those in the surrounding countryside.  This is known as the urban heat island effect, and it can lead to greater energy use, higher air pollution levels, and a greater risk of heat-related illnesses, as well as death. 

Some cities have already started implementing mitigation strategies, with tree planting prominent among them.  Planting trees can cool the climate by absorbing carbon dioxide, providing shade, and releasing water vapor, which lowers air and surface temperatures. 

However, while trees can cool cities significantly during the day, new research from the University of Cambridge in the U.K. shows that tree canopies can also trap heat and raise temperatures at night. 

According to the study, which was recently published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, planting the wrong species or the wrong combination of trees in suboptimal locations or arrangements can limit their benefits.

The researchers found that in temperate climates, trees can cool cities by up to 6°C during the day but can increase nighttime temperatures by 1.5°C.  Cities with open layouts in temperate and tropical climates benefit from a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees, enhancing cooling by 0.5°C more than in cities with only deciduous or evergreen trees. 

The researchers hope their findings will help urban planners choose the best combinations of trees and planting locations to combat urban heat stress.

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Wrong trees in the wrong place can make cities hotter at night, study reveals

Photo, posted October 29, 2017, courtesy of Lars Plougmann via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Neighborhood geothermal energy

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Residential geothermal energy makes use of the constant, year-round temperature of the earth below the surface to efficiently provide both heating and cooling for a home.  In the summer, the cool earth beneath a house sits at about 55 degrees and can be tapped into with a heat pump to provide cooling.  In the winter, that 55-degree underground expanse provides a much warmer source of air to heat instead of the often freezing-cold air outside.  Geothermal systems are appealing because they use far less energy than other sources of heating and cooling.

Using geothermal energy to heat and cool buildings is nothing new.  But after years of planning and months of drilling into the ground, the first neighborhood-scale geothermal heating and cooling project has come online in Framingham, Massachusetts.

The project ties together 31 residential and five commercial buildings that share the underground infrastructure needed to heat and cool them.  This sort of shared geothermal system has previously been used on college campuses and similar places, but never before across a neighborhood in the United States.

The $14 million project, built by Eversource, broke ground in June 2023, and comprises 90 boreholes or wells drilled 600-700 feet underground. Approximately 135 customers are connected to the system, including low- and moderate-income customers, apartment buildings, a gas station, and a kitchen cabinet showroom.

A total of 13 states, including Massachusetts and New York, are considering pilot projects or advancing legislation that would allow gas utilities to develop networked geothermal heating and cooling.

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First-in-the-Nation Geothermal Heating and Cooling System Comes to Massachusetts

Photo, posted September 30, 2019, courtesy of Stephen D. Strowes via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Giant batteries in the Earth

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The wind and the sun are inexhaustible sources of energy, and we are tapping into them to produce electricity at a growing rate around the world.  But neither of them is always available when we need them.  When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, they don’t work.

An opposite problem also exists.  When our energy needs are low, but it is sunny or windy, solar and wind power are all dressed up with nowhere to go.  Energy storage is the answer to both of these problems.   When there is excess generation, store the energy for later use.  When there is need for energy and not enough is being generated, tap into the energy that is stored.

Giant banks of lithium-ion batteries are the rapidly growing form of energy storage, and they are increasingly providing resilience in the electric grid.  But battery storage is short-term energy storage.  Even the largest battery banks can only provide a few hours of electricity. 

So, there is a real need for “long-duration energy storage” – systems that provide at least 10 hours of backup power and sometimes much more – for the grid to be fully reliable.

Pumped hydro storage, which uses water from elevated reservoirs to drive turbines, has been around for a long time.  Historically, this is the largest form of energy storage in the world.  Other methods include pumping compressed air into underground caverns or lifting massive blocks into elevated positions.  All of these techniques use excess electricity to place things like water, air, or cement into a position where they can be used to drive electrical generators.

The grid of tomorrow will store energy in giant battery banks, but also in the ground, in reservoirs, and in large structures.

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How giant ‘batteries’ in the Earth could slash your electricity bills

Photo, posted March 21, 2024, courtesy of Sandra Uecker/USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The race for fusion power

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The sun is powered by fusion energy.  Hydrogen atoms fuse together into helium atoms, liberating vast amounts of energy in the process.  Our understanding of this process emerged early in the 20th century and by the 1950s, research efforts were underway trying to replicate the process on Earth.  If it could be done, fusion would be a source of almost unlimited clean energy.  But there has been a cynical saying going around for half a century:  fusion power is the energy source of the future, and it always will be.

However, in recent years, there has been progress in developing fusion power.  Extraordinarily expensive and colossal machines have produced fusion energy albeit consuming more energy than they make.  However, for a brief moment in 2022, a fusion reactor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory did produce more energy than it took to run the machine.

Despite the less than encouraging history, there are now multiple start-up companies dedicated to developing fusion energy and they are optimistic that there will be significant progress over the next few years.

One such company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, located 40 miles northwest of Boston, is building a fusion reactor called SPARC, that they claim will be producing net energy in 2027.  They say that their next machine, called ARC, will generate electricity for paying customers in the early 2030s.

A handful of other companies, including Type One Energy, Thea Energy, Realta Fusion, Zap Energy, General Fusion, and Helion Energy are also pursuing fusion reactor designs and also expect to have machines running over the next 5 to 10 years.

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The Quest to Build a Star on Earth

Photo, posted April 21, 2015, courtesy of John Spiri via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Generations Z and Alpha and climate change

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People’s views and level of concern about climate change tend to vary according to age, political affiliation, and other demographic categories.  But one clear trend is that young people are overwhelmingly concerned about climate change.  Given that they will ultimately suffer from its effects far more than older generations, this is not really surprising.

A new study investigated the views about climate change of 16,000 young Americans aged 16 to 25.  The study found that about 60% of respondents said they were either very or extremely worried when asked “How worried, if at all, are you about climate change and its impact on people and the planet?”  More than 85% said they experienced at least some level of climate anxiety.

There was similarity in responses across dramatically different geopolitical regions of the country.  Responses never differed by more than 25% across all surveyed populations.  Concern about climate change transcended political identification.  While the Republican group did have a lower level of concern, endorsement of climate issues was still above 50% no matter what group people identified with.

People from Generations Z and Alpha, those with fewer economic resources, people of color, and other vulnerable communities are experiencing the highest levels of climate distress. Research finds that 3% of Americans are experiencing clinically significant climate anxiety. 

The true number of people experiencing climate-triggered anxiety may be much higher as some people are hesitant or reluctant to even acknowledge that climate change is happening.  Some level of climate anxiety is undoubtedly beneficial for climate action.  People who are experiencing distress are the ones most likely to take action. 

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The Depths of Their Discontent: Young Americans Are Distraught Over Climate Change

Photo, posted April 23, 2022, courtesy of Mark Dixon via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)