Science Friday - 2018 Scifri Year In Review. Dec 28, 2018, Part 1

Episode Date: December 28, 2018

In 2018, natural disasters around the world bore the unmistakable fingerprints of human-caused climate change. The federal government’s 1,600-page National Climate Assessment predicted even more extreme events—floods that destroy infrastructure, warming that spreads disease, and deadly record high temperatures. But global carbon emissions set a new record this year, and experts say that humanity is nowhere close to meeting its goal of limiting total temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius.   It was also a red-letter year for space missions. NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe to get a closer look at the sun’s corona. And after nine years of detecting exoplanets, the Kepler Space Telescope finally ran out of fuel. In the world of medicine, scientists grappled with the ethical questions concerning human gene editing, many of which are still unanswered. Sarah Kaplan, science reporter for the Washington Post, and Rachel Feltman, science editor with Popular Science, join Ira to discuss the year in science news. Plus, we check back in with a few of the State of Science stories from this year including conservation projects in Wyoming, lead levels in Chicago drinking water, and the algae blooms that formed off the coast of Florida.      Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I am Ira Flato. You know, it's only a matter of days now until we wave goodbye to 2018. And what a challenging year it's been. 2018 may be best remembered as a year of unprecedented natural disasters, right? We had wildfires in California, hurricanes along the east coast, a volcanic eruption in Hawaii. And there were some thrilling moments to remember, too. Scientists launched the Parker Solar probe to study the temperature of the sun's corona, and don't forget the moment the world waited with bated breath for the Mars Insight lander to touchdown on the red planet. 20 meters, 17 meters, standing by for touchdown.

Touchdown confirmed. Always great to hear that sound, and we covered those stories and some less well-known ones, too. We won't be taking call today, but we already asked you to weigh in on. your favorite science stories of 2018. And here's Perry from Princeton, who chose this one. My favorite science story of 2018 was when you interviewed a researcher who was saying how the nerves and the nose are connected straight to the brain and how people that breathe through their nose have better memory, potentially, than people who breathe through your mouth.

That just really made me think in a different way. Yeah, I remember that one also. Thanks for geeking out with us, Perry. Joining me now to discuss some of the highlights from the worlds of science, technology, medicine in 2018. A couple of our expert news roundup guests. Sarah Kaplan, science reporter with the Washington Post. Welcome back, Sarah. Good to be here.

And Rachel Feldman, science editor at Popular Science. Good to see you again. Thanks for having me, Ira. Okay, let's kick off things with a pick from a listener. My name's Rachel, and I'm from Denver, Colorado. I think the most important scientific story of 2018, is about the massive death of insects that we're seeing across the world. I think the Earth could survive without humans,

but I'm not sure life on Earth can survive without insects. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't. Sarah, climate change, big story this year, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're seeing a lot of examples of the way climate change is impacting ecosystems and impacting people all around the planet. And like the listener just pointed out, there's studies coming out suggesting that we're seeing huge

amounts of insect loss, not necessarily extinctions, but just in sort of in terms of population numbers. A study last year saw 76% decrease in flying insects in German nature preserves. And insects are pollinators, they're food for other animals, so that could have ripple effects throughout whole ecosystems. Yeah, you know, Rachel, this year felt like unprecedented, you know, and when it comes to climate disaster. Yeah, you know, we had, we had a lot of wildfires. we had a hurricane season that in some ways was unremarkable, but still managed to have a couple of record-breaking or, you know, historically unprecedented storms.

And so it was really a reminder that even when we have, on average, a calm hurricane season that the storms we're having are more intense. They're happening in places that didn't used to have to worry about this kind of intensity. We're getting more inland flooding every time we have hurricanes. You know, it's become really clear that because of rising sea levels and, and higher rainfall due to warm waters which fuel hurricanes. That storm surge is really the thing that is going to damage the most property, take the most lives every time we have a hurricane. One really interesting study that came out recently,

I think really is a reminder of something we should all be thinking about. It found that when people have their houses destroyed by hurricanes, they're building them back larger in the same places. And that really gets. to a point that, you know, we at Popside try to make pretty often is that there's really no such thing as a natural disaster. There are storms that happen where humans have put themselves. And we have done a really bad job of avoiding areas that we should avoid. And especially a lot of very marginalized people who have no other option are ending up on coastlines and in places where we're going to have these problems increasingly. And we're going to have the insurance companies stepping in on these things.

Yeah, exactly. and they're going to start preventing people or penalizing, raising rates for rebuilding this. I also think it was a year when the climate, toward the end of this year, finally got some press. You know, the news media finally saw this. Don't you think, Sarah, that the news media finally picked up on this as an important story? Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of big reports and big sort of cohesive analyses that kind of brought everything together, all of these extreme weather events that we're seeing and the sort of creeping average temperature rise, average concentrations in the atmosphere. There was the fourth national climate assessment that came out

on Black Friday, so sort of on a time when, you know, some critics thought that was intentional because people wouldn't be paying attention, but people paid attention because the report was pretty dire. And basically is predicting, you know, all kinds of really expensive and deviant. devastating impacts across the country as a result of climate change, from deadly wildfires to hurricanes that get really bad, really fast, to heat waves, which heat stress is actually expected to be the leading cause of death associated with climate change, people who live in cities where heat just gets absorbed and by all the concrete and pavement and not really released. We could see a lot of vulnerable and elderly and sick people really taking the brunt of that.

You know, that was actually reflected in the comments we got from some of our listeners. Let me play one from Terry from Pasadena, California. The big science story for 2018 is the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is a moment when humanity is in peril. It is the defining story of our generation. Yeah, just exactly what we were saying. Rachel, let's move on to human health, of course, the biggest story. I think that broke late this year involved.

Krisper, remind us about that. Yeah, so a Chinese scientist announced quite unexpectedly that he claims he has produced two genetically engineered children, that these twins were edited while they were embryos and are the first genetically engineered humans to be born. And, you know, according to him, they're healthy. He engineered them to basically have... this one gene mutation that makes you less susceptible to HIV infection. And HIV is a big problem in China. It's also very poorly understood by lay people in China.

There's not a lot of good information to the public. The government has not done the best job of managing HIV AIDS there. So all of that combines to people being very concerned that the parents did not actually give what we call informed consent, meaning they didn't really understand the implications of what was going to be. done to the embryos, what the possible outcome was. And then there's a question of, is it enough if the parents gave informed consent? Because if these children were indeed genetically engineered, we have no idea what's going to happen in them as they grow up. We have no idea what the effect will be on their own children. So it really opened this can of worms that, you know, scientists have

been talking about these ethical questions for a long time and hadn't really come to any solutions. So now they have no more answers, way more questions. Sarah, do you think they're going to sort this out eventually? I mean, I think what happened with the experiment in China sort of suggests that they need to, right? I mean, most international scientists had agreed to this sort of moratorium on editing in embryos while they figured out these ethical questions, but clearly that you know, if the science is just going to keep progressing without that, then the sort of bioethicists are going to have to catch up. And actually, here in the U.S., federal law prevents implanting a gene-edited embryo. But there are experiments going on right now in attempt to develop therapies that might one

day be used to treat illnesses in humans. So it seems like we're sort of racing down that line. You know, this is not unprecedented in the world of biology. There have been times, I'm thinking back, in the 70s, the Silamar conference, where gene editing was invented. And they said, let's stop and think about what we're doing. Right. And so maybe we're at that kind of point again. Yeah. You know, I think what really disturbed a lot of members of the scientific community was just that, like Sarah was saying, they had this moratorium.

There had been conferences on this subject. People had really been gnashing their teeth over what we should do. And there was this consensus in the scientific community that we were not ready for this yet. But clearly individual scientists are going to disagree with that. But even the Chinese themselves said, hey, stop this, right? Yeah, it does. I mean, it's hard to know exactly what happened, but at least what the Chinese government and the researchers' institution are saying is that they had no idea this was happening and that they don't condone it at all. Whether or not that's true, I don't know if we'll ever know.

But certainly people understand that it was a bold and probably bad move. Well, especially if you want to be known as a world-class country of scientific research. Exactly. You don't want to know that there are rogue scientists in your country going on and doing these kinds of experiments. Right. I mean, it was kind of an exciting year for the future of reproduction in general, exciting and, like, existentially terrifying at the same time. One of the stories that I found really interesting that came out in December, doctors announced that they had delivered a healthy baby some months before that had been gestated. in a uterus from a deceased donor. So there have been a few uterine transplants over the last few

years, but previously the surgery worked by a living donor, usually a family member of the person looking to have uterus implanted. It's implanted. The baby's gestated. Then it's removed right away because there's no point in risking rejection by keeping the organ in when the point of it is for you to carry the baby and have the baby. So a lot of risk involved for two people. And a lot of doctors have been hoping they could figure out using deceased donors so that the risk is only to one person. And there was kind of like, I think a lot of scientists worried there was too much of like an ick factor, which is very interesting because we get organs from deceased donors all the time. But I think the idea of a new life gestating in an organ from a deceased donor seemed like somehow a step too far to some people.

But again, you know, lowering the risk of this surgery, which is kind of controversial because it's like totally elective. You know, there are lots of ways to have children, even your own biological children, without caring them yourself. So a lot of scientists have felt like to make this viable in the long term as an option for people, we really do need to figure out how to take out that living donor necessity. And it seems that now that's possible. So that's very exciting.

And a lot of researchers are hoping that this will, be available to trans patients as well, which will obviously be a huge deal for a lot of people. Well, we're going to take a break, and after the break, we're going to come back and talk lots more. We have more highlights from our 2018 coverage of science, plus some of our favorite Science Friday guests from the year, all of that in just a moment. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We're taking a look back at science in 2018. Of course, it wouldn't be a year in review without our annual nod to the 100. of scientists and other experts who joined us this year and made us more well-informed citizens.

So as a hat tip to all our guests from 2018, here's a short selection of our favorite moments. The very first song that Paul McCartney ever recorded for the Beatles is the song Love Me Do. Learn love me do. You know I love you. Someone to love. someone like you And so that jump from someone to love Some is an octave and a semitone Okay, so the costus hummingbird, the sound you played a bit ago

was made with the tail feathers And it was a One of the really funny things about Costa's hummingbird Is their vocal song sounds very similar to that It's kind of this It all started the January before last When I was on holiday with my family And my younger brother who was 19 at the time

He turned to me and he was like, Danny, do snakes fart. And I'm a zoologist, so I'm kind of expected to know these sorts of things, but I didn't really know the answer. But fortunately, I'm quite active on Twitter, and I knew just the person to ask. And that was how hashtag does it fart was born. So squirm monkeys wake up really early. Grasshoppers are one of their favorite items, so to speak. And the way they handle it once they grab it is they hold it by the bottom with head up.

And then they bite off the head, kind of like an ice cream cone, and then they slurp the insides. And then finally they'll eat the legs and the wings sometimes. And they seem very happy while they're doing it. I marched to John Phillips Susan music, and I juggle. I saw that. I saw the video of you juggle. How long did it take to learn how to do that? Well, I learned when I was a kid.

So I got up to 24 times. but I made a gift so that it looks like I'm juggling forever. I saw that. If you can't do it, make a gift. Well, there were supposedly only two major forms of life, as you were saying. The tree of life had two major limbs at that point, bacteria constituting the one limb and everything else, including animals, plants, people, fungi, constituting the other.

And then Woz and George Fox came along and said, wait a minute, there's this third group. They look like bacteria. But if you look at their DNA and their RNA, they are not bacteria. They are not only very different from bacteria. They're more similar to us. It's not really the universe which is ordered.

It is our way of looking at it. You see, we see the sky rotating around us, right? But it's not the sky that rotate. It's us rotating. Many things about the world we have understood. stood by looking at ourselves and understanding that they're not properties of the world, but they're dependent on our perspective. And perhaps even this, even the difference between past and future, is a perspectival thing.

It's something that depends on the way we look at it. So it's sort of the ultimate catastrophe, the one that really changes the nature of the society that's there, and yet, you know, we forgot. And the interesting thing is when we said, go look, how could you possibly forget these sort of things. There's something called a normalization bias. Because when we were evolving into human beings, if you worried about the 100-year flood, instead of the wolf who was about to eat your children, your DNA didn't get passed down. And we're very hardwired to look at the most recent disasters and forget about the longer-term ones. Robert Oppenheimer was persecuted for speaking out

against, well, about the dangers of nuclear technology. Then he was stripped of his security clearance. And I think that's when scientists sort of said, oh, well, we better shut up and do our work. And unfortunately, that's not the case because science is inherently political. When a government makes its funding decisions, it is telling you what its political priorities are. So we really, really need to have a voice as a scientific community because no one is going to speak up for us. And we have to get better about communicating the value of our research and what we do to the public. I think really the biggest impacts are on the scientists who go into this. the prisons and into the jail who have the opportunity to interact with inmates to hear their

good questions, to recognize that this is a group of people who are as interested in science as you are and who may not have the opportunity to go to a library, go to a museum to learn. But when you present them with science as well as you can, that spark of science, that feeling of curiosity, that desire to penetrate a new frontier is present in those men and women and youth just as it is in people who aren't incarcerated. You know, we are definitely going to find something we didn't expect. And we have these cameras. We may, in fact, see something we didn't expect to see.

And I think that's the coolest thing about science. We always go in with questions, and we always come out with more questions. And that's what keeps us going. The best is yet to come, you mean. Some of our favorite sounds and voices of science from 2018. Could you pick out Mark Glickman? Christopher Clark, Danny Rabiotti. How about Anita Stone, Alan Alda, David Quaman, Carlo Rovelli, Lucy Jones, Jess Phoenix,

Nelini Nekarney, Alex Young, and of course, Eric Candell's laugh. Thanks to them and all the other great guests who've joined us in 2018, and we'll see you in the year ahead. In case you just joined us, we're talking about science with Rachel Feldman and Sarah Kaplan. Let's move on now to talk about space. My name is David Lockett. I am a STEM teacher in Lake Wales, Florida. What do I think the most important science story from this year is? Of course, the NASA Insight Mission.

We all want to know a little bit more about early formation of our rocky planets than our inner solar system. Hi, this is William Carroll from Chicago, Illinois. And one of my favorite science stories of 2018 was Voyager 2 recently entering interstellar space. and after traveling since 1977, still being able to send information back to us on Earth. Yeah, that is an amazing feat to be out there in space. I'm here to talk more about those stories as well as others that stood out to Sarah. Rachel Feldman, Science Editor at Popular Science. Sarah Kaplan, science reporter with The Washington Post.

Sarah, let's move on to space. A bunch of achievements this year. Yeah, yeah, there's been a lot going on out there beyond the stratosphere. So I actually, I really enjoyed the Insight landing. This is NASA's mission to conduct seismology on Mars, which has never been done before. Insight is going to drill deeper into the Martian surface than any spacecraft has ever gone. And it's going to try to figure out, you know, what the planet is made of and how it formed over the course of the past 4.6 billion years. And that's interesting because Mars is kind of like Earth's kind of evil twin or, you know, evidence suggests.

that Mars and Earth actually started out pretty similar back in the early days of the solar system, but Mars is a smaller planet that cooled more quickly. And, you know, it lost some of the tectonic activity and the convection in its interior that helps make Earth so habitable. And so understanding what happened in Mars could tell us a lot about our own origins. And it lost its atmosphere, too, didn't it? Didn't it once have an atmosphere? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, Mars used to have, or the evidence suggests that Mars had this magnetic field and it had volcanoes and it had this, you know, thick atmosphere that enabled it to have liquid water on its surface. It had lakes and oceans. But then something happened about three and a half, three billion years ago and all that stuff is gone now

and it's this like desolate desert place. Yeah, we have to go there. What about the solar probe? I know you went to the facility there where the solar probe has been worked on, right? Parker Solar Probe is also, you know, another achievement. It's getting closer to the sun than any spacecraft has ever been before. It's going to conduct a series of orbits trying to peer into the sun's atmosphere, this thing called the corona, which is full of mysteries. The corona is actually hotter than the surface of the sun, which is really bizarre. It's like a campfire that is hotter the further away you get from it than if you would, like,

stuck your hand in it. And that's important because stuff is happening in the corona that affects Earth. these things called chrono mass ejections, big explosions of energetic particles that can come to Earth, interact with our atmosphere, and cause the auroras, they can interfere with spacecraft, and they can even induce currents in Earth's surface that could interfere with our electric grid. So it's an important thing to study, and we're just getting our first close look at it. That's interesting. It wasn't all positive this year in space, right? We also said goodbye to some spacecraft. Yeah, we did say goodbye to a few spacecraft this year, one of them being Kepler, which had like such an intrepid journey. I loved writing about that spacecraft. So Kepler is a space telescope that was meant to stare out at space and be fixed and looking for stars that might have planets orbiting them and, you know, was looking for these transits. when you see the flicker of a star because of the planet passing in front of it relative to the telescopes position.

And it was held in place by these gyroscopes, these thrusters. And one of them failed. I think eventually another one failed too. So things were not looking good for Kepler, but engineers were able to figure out how to use the sun as a virtual thruster. So the actual physical power of particles from the sun, you know, forcing pressure onto Kepler to hold it into position. And so it had this new life in the mission called K2 continuing to look for planet transits. And that was just thrilling. You know, it did collect most of its data during its first mission.

But K2 found a lot of planet candidates as well. But Kepler did eventually have to run out of fuel, which was a big bummer. Nothing can last forever in space. People will still be looking at the data for years from there. I mean, there are people who are going to spend their entire careers analyzing Kepler data. So its work is not over. And Sarah, speaking of space, there was another big achievement in astronomy this year, and I'm talking about scientists finally able to capture exactly one neutrino.

Why was that such a big deal? So neutrinos are they, we call them ghost particles because they're really, really tiny. If you held out your hand for a minute, thousands of them would pass through totally unnoticed because they kind of slip through the empty spaces in atoms. And that makes them really hard to capture, but it also means if you could catch them, they would be really powerful tools for understanding the universe because they're not getting disrupted the way light does. Like when light travels across space, it can get warped, it can get stretched out.

Whereas neutrinos, they're what's called good messengers. They basically don't get distracted. So in order to detect one of these galactic neutrinos that was formed outside our galaxy in the cosmic explosion very far away, scientists had to install this array of detectors in the ice of Antarctica. There's thousands of them buried beneath the surface. And basically the idea is neutrinos are streaming in, they're streaming in, And hopefully, if we're lucky, one of them bumps into a detector. And that finally happened.

Scientists announced the result this year. One thing to look forward to as the New Year approach is that New Year's Eve is going to be a really special event when New Horizons, which went past Pluto, is going to get to an asteroid. Right, right, right? And they're going to have a big party. Yeah. Watching and take it. Yeah. A lot of people are very excited for the best New Year's party in the solar system.

So New Horizons, you know, most people are familiar. It had its Pluto flyby to much excitement and acclaim, very successful flyby. But the New Horizons team said we can do more. We're not done yet. And so as the spacecraft was, you know, shooting out into the Kuiper Belt, you know, the outer regions of our solar system, they decided they were going to find some other candidate targets that perhaps New Horizons. could be adjusted toward. And they found one. I believe it's MU69.

I know they've named it since then. Ultima Tuli. Right, Ultima Tuli. So it's going to do a little flyby of this thing that's so far away that we really have barely seen it before. It is a blurry little rock out in space. Either one of you going to the party, Sarah?

You're going to the party? They're throwing. Yeah, I'll be there. You will. I think that the moment of the flyby is supposed to happen at 1233 a.m. on January 1st. So there's going to be like a countdown till then. But Ultimatouli is actually so far away from Earth that it takes light about nine hours to travel that distance. So we won't actually get the first data. The signal saying that like New Horizons

succeeded. It saw the Kuiper Belt object until 10 a.m. that warning. So there's sort of like two countdowns. You'll have to hang around a long time. Yeah, yeah. And then it's another. day before we get the first images. It's just when you're communicating with spacecraft that far out, it takes a long time. I'm I reflato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Do you have a suggestion for a story that did not get enough attention that you perhaps followed and maybe deserves more attention? Or maybe counter-wise, I'll throw it out to you this way, maybe a story that got too much attention that didn't deserve it. I don't know if there are any science stories that don't deserve attention as a science writer. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that.

But one story that I loved that I just could talk about all the time is the vote to redefine the kilogram that happened this year. I am a sucker for metrology news. I just find it fascinating. So basically, prior to, well, actually still, until World Metrology Day next year, the definition of a kilogram has been the mass of this metal cylinder that's kept in this locked vault in Paris. And that's been the definition since the 19th century when the sort of metric system was first developed. But scientists for decades have said that's not good enough because this cylinder, which is called the IPK or the international prototype of the kilogram, has been losing mass. It's actually getting ever so slightly less weighty than it used to be. And, you know, when you're doing really, really sophisticated science or even really sophisticated commerce, I mean, we use standards and metrics for all of our communication across international borders, all of our commerce, all of our trade.

A standard that loses weight is like not ideal. So scientists have been working on developing a new definition of the kilogram that is dependent on a universal constant, something that doesn't change no matter where you are or what period in history you're in. if aliens came to Earth and looked at our definition of a kilogram, they would understand it. And finally, they measured with precision this very strange figure from physics called Planck's constant, which describes how energy gets emitted, sort of these packets of energy. And because of that, they were finally able to redefine the kilogram, according to Planck's constant. And in this era, when it feels like we're arguing with each other, and there's just a lot of disagreement and debate about truth and reality. The idea of scientists, not even scientists,

but international officials from all over the world coming together and sort of recognizing something universal to me is like really beautiful and powerful. And I just think like we should celebrate it a little bit. How do I top that one? It's a great, it's a beautiful way to end the year and to start the beginning. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us. Sarah Kaplan, science reporter with the Washington Post, Rachel Feldman, Science Editor at Popular Science. Wish it in both of you, a happy new year. You too, Ira.

You too. And if you're looking for more great science stories from this year, our staff has picked out the Best of Science Friday 2018. You can check out the whole list at ScienceFrily.com slash best of 2018. After the break, we'll check in on some of the big local science stories this year, We'll get updates from our state of science reporters who covered conservation efforts in Wyoming, drinking water in Chicago, and algal blooms in Florida. All that right after this.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. As the year winds down, we're looking at the big stories of 2018, and many of them happening locally. For our state of science series, we've talked to local reporters for stories of national significance, and we want to check back in on some of them. Let's head to Wyoming first. Maggie Mullen joins us this summer to talk how scientists are trying to prevent deer from wandering into the road by using canvas bags. She's here to talk about that and other conservation projects happening in the state. She's a reporter for Wyoming Public Radio.

Welcome. Thanks for having me, Ira. You're welcome. So this summer you told us about an interesting conservation technique. Researchers are trying. They were using canvas bags to try to prevent animals from getting it by conservation. cards, any update there? Yeah, so they haven't, the last time I spoke with them, they were really hoping to find

some partners to develop a technology that does what the canvas bags do only better. So they're not planning on going out anytime soon and putting up the white canvas bags, but they're hoping to develop something that is a little bit more permanent and a little bit more practical, but uses the same idea that they sort of discovered on accident. Yeah, yeah, I can understand that. You also reported on water conservation efforts that look to the beaver. That's right. I spent a couple of days with a group of researchers while they taught local conservationists and biologists how to build these beaver-like dams in order to think about drought differently.

They call it a sticks and stones approach. And the idea being that, you know, most precipitation across the mountain west, it comes in the wintertime. But when that snow melts, it's often in a hurry. It turns into runoff. It rushes down a stream to a bigger river and far away from where it's needed or, you know, at least from where ranchers and landowners need it. But if it encounters a beaver dam or something like a peaver dam, that water gets delayed and the longer it sits there, the more of it gets absorbed into the ground. So basically by building these dams out of mud, sticks, twigs, you know, just like a beaver wood, they're trying to create these sponges in the ground that can soak up water and save up for those lean times,

like when maybe you don't get a lot of precipitation. And eventually where these dams are built, they'd like to reintroduce beavers and sort of let them do their thing when it comes to storing up water. Leave it to the beaver. Exactly. We talked about drought and wildfires in California. but there's also a big issue in Wyoming too, right? Wyoming had a wildfire this year, the Roosevelt fire, right? It did, yes, the Roosevelt fire.

It was about 30 miles south of Jackson. It burned over 61,000 acres. And I do think there is something sort of unique and sort of telling about the Roosevelt fire about what we might start to see with wildfire season because it burned late in the season. It started late September, and it burned into early October. And with a fire that late in the year, it's not easy to contain because a lot of the resources are starting to time out at that point in the year. Like a lot of people are hired as temporary seasonals and they have these six-month contracts. And usually their terms expire on September 30th.

And like I said, this fire burned into early October. And I think as we start to see more of these wildfires start outside that window and burn year round. this will probably become a pressing issue in how we fight wildfires, but also how we pay for how we fight wildfires. You think this is going to be the new normal about fire? It's sure looking that way. Yeah. What are you keeping your looking out for? What are you looking out for in 2019 in terms of conservation policy in Wyoming?

Yeah. You know, another recent study just came out about what's called landlock acres. And, you know, Wyoming, and really a lot of them out in West, it's a place that's known for its abundant public land. And, you know, people live here. People move here for it. But a lot of that land is out of reach to the public because it's often surrounded by private land. And like I said, the study that just came out found that Wyoming alone has over 3 million landlock acres. So I'll be keeping an eye on that because, you know, public lands were such a big issue in the election. and a lot of the candidates that ran in the Mountain West ran on a public lands platform, and they won.

So I'll be interested to see, you know, with them now being in office and with enough pressure from citizens, we could see more of these public easements. We could see more cooperative agreements with private landowners when it comes to this public land that is right now inaccessible to citizens. All right, Maggie, we'll follow this along with you. Stay in touch. Hey, thanks so much, Ira. Happy New Year. Maggie Mullen is a reporter for Wyoming Public Radio.

based out of Laramie, Wyoming. Another story we talked about this year was about the drinking water in Chicago. There are 1,200 outdoor public drinking fountains in the city, and over half had detectable levels of lead in the water. Monica Eng is here to give us an update. He's a reporter with WB.EZ. Welcome, Monica. Thanks, Sarah.

Nice to have you back. The public drinking fountains are off of the season, right? So what has the city done to fix the problem since we last chat at old back in June? Well, last year they said, they'd be working throughout the summer to find the ones that were really needed, where a lot of people really needed a drink of water and needed to be remediated and prioritized fixing those, meaning getting some of those lead service lines that bring the water up out of there. They said they had done about 20, but I asked, you know, by the end of the year,

where were you? How many had you fixed and how many are going to go back online next year for, you know, anybody who's outdoors in the parks jogging on running paths to use? And, Sadly, the Department of Parks was not able to get me that number by today. They say that they're working on it and they really hope to have more fixed by next year, but they weren't able to give me exact figures. So how many homes do we think still have this problem? Well, when we're talking about homes, we're talking about 80% of Chicago homes have lead service lines.

That's because Chicago was the last big city to stop installing them. We installed these lead water service lines until the day, the federal government said, hey, everybody has to stop it because of health reasons. Is this elevated lead in the public system having any effect on health that we might know about? Well, Chicago consistently comes in with some of the highest blood lead levels in children that we check. We're always in the top 10 of this. While other cities have dropped, we've maintained those levels. And so it appears that, you know, lead coming from somewhere, whether it's lead paint or water is contributing to these levels.

And, you know, as you know, the health authorities, the World Health Organization says no level of lead is safe, both for kids in their development, their brain development, and for adults in the risk of cardiovascular disease. I know there's a mayoral election coming up in February in Chicago. This has got to be a campaign issue, right? Absolutely. And, you know, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has consistently had a department that says there's no problem here. we're taking care of it by putting a chemical in the water called orthophosphate that when running through constantly can coat the insides of the pipe and prevent lead from leaching into the water. But we're still finding high levels. A study that the Chicago Tribune did found that one third of all homes had these levels that would not have been tolerated in bottled water.

So it's still an issue, but guess what Rahm Emanuel did? He said he was not going to run again. He shocked everyone. So now it seems like everybody and their brother is running for mayor now. And some of the front runners are making this a huge issue. How much would it cost then to, I know that, you know, it's a big project. Are there any estimates on the cost? How much this would, what kind of tab you'd run up on doing this?

There are definitely costs. And they look like about $7,000 to $10,000 per household to take out those old lead service lines and replace them with a safer metal like copper. And we have about 360,000 homes with these lead service lines. So depending on the length of a line and the kind of digging up work that needs to be done, we're looking at definitely more than a billion dollars. Wow. You know, a billion here, billionaire, it gets to be real money.

But other cities are doing it. Milwaukee, Boston, Denver, Philadelphia, Madison, they are all saying let's start the hard work of getting these toxic lines out of our system. Yeah, they're ancient pipes. You've got to get them out sometime, right? Yeah. Thank you, Monica. Thank you.

Monica Eng, we'll be checking back with you next year to see how stuff is going. She is a reporter with WBEZ. Finally, Florida is another place where water has been a big issue this year, but we're not talking about the drinking water in this case. There was a big algal bloom that hit the state's waterways. Reporter Amy Green has been covering this issue throughout the year for WMFE in Orlando. Welcome to Science Friday. It's nice talking with you.

This has really been, we were just talking about politics in Chicago. This has been a political year for this issue also, hasn't it? This has been just such a huge issue in Florida, which is just so dependent on our natural resources for our economy and attracting tourists to the state. And as you said, these toxic algae blooms, we actually experienced two different species of toxic algae blooms this year, red tide and blue-green algae. And it was a big issue in our very, very. close, bitterly close Senate race and also in our gubernatorial race. And what was the extent of the damage caused by these blooms? These blooms were just widespread. We experienced a bloom of blue green algae, kind of in the

center of the state that began in Lake Okeechobee, which is that big lake in the center of the state and spread to the east coast and west coast. And then red tide, a bloom of red tide began in southwest Florida. And by the end of the summer, going into the fall, that had spread really across the peninsula. So you really had all of Florida surrounding the waterways is affecting the whole state? That's right. That's exactly right. Now, I know algal blooms do happen in Florida, but this year was particularly bad. Did scientists or policymakers learn something about how to address this in the future? Well, there are two causes that are kind of especially behind these toxic algae blooms. One of them is warmer temperatures. And so a lot of people think

that these blooms will just continue as we experience the warming world. Also, a lot of people are pointing at nutrients and nutrient pollution. The state experienced a lot of rain with Hurricane Irma and also with this spring. And as that water washes away from urban areas, it takes with it, all those nutrients and all of that pollution goes into the waterways and it can fuel a lot of these toxic algae blooms. Because I know for years, I've been covering water issues in Florida for years, and we've been talking about runoff, you know, the fertilizers coming in and fueling the algae blooms, and we're talking about this again here. That's right, yeah. And is it the sugar farmers involved again like they have been in years past? Right. So sugar farmers have been

kind of one of the things that's at the center of this of this debate because of the nutrients that are used in the fertilizers on on cane fields. And you know, another reason these toxic algae blooms spread from Lake Okeechobee to the East Coast and the West Coast is because of water flows that today flow east and west, historically those flows would have would have gone south. but we have this very large sugar farming community south of Lake Okachovia that prevents that. Farmers say that they are good stewards of the land and that the water coming from their farmlands today is relatively clean. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios talking now with Amy Green about what's going on with the water situation in Florida.

and Florida is all about water. Everything that goes on in Florida certainly goes back to the water because you're surrounded by, and it's coming up from, you know, from on the ground also. Is there more money, do you think, that's going to be allocated for prevention? Because when you talk politics, you're talking money, right? That's right.

So, you know, just two years ago, the state experienced, again, very, very problematic toxic algae blooms. And one of the things that we saw come out of that was a legislative overhaul of our water standard. A lot of the environmental groups think these standards did not go far enough, so it'll be interesting to see what comes out of the legislature this year in response to these new toxic agiblooms. Also, we have new leadership coming in. We have a new governor coming in, Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has taken a very strong stance on the issue of water quality and farming and sugar farming. And so it's possible we could see changes coming to our water management districts, which oversee these water resources. Now, I know the Trump administration has approved oil and gas exploration off the coast of Florida using seismic testing, which is basically blowing stuff up underwater, I think.

What's been the response of the state? So the Trump administration has issued authorizations or permits allowing the kind of incidental harm to wildlife that comes with seismic testing. This is a step in that direction. The next step is the permits themselves, and those permits are expected any day. Already environmental groups have filed a lawsuit trying to stop the seismic testing. In Florida, Floridians are very opposed to oil exploration and oil drilling off the Florida coasts. Our clean beaches, of course, are an extremely important economic draw. Florida Governor Rick Scott says that he has been reassured by the interior of the secretary that drilling

will not occur in Florida waters. Seismic testing is kind of a separate issue. It's an exploration technique, and this plan does include Florida. The plan that we have in place now for oil drilling also includes Florida, but a new updated plan is expected any time, and we'll see if Florida has been removed from that. Yeah, because, you know, the tourist industry, Florida, Florida is so key to, you know, the presidential elections, you don't want to get Floridians upset, do you? Right, yeah. I mean, and as you say, Rick Scott has said this is not going to happen in Florida. That's right. That's right. And as I said, the current Trump plan for oil drilling includes Florida, but we should be receiving an updated plan very soon. And we'll see if Florida has been removed from that. We will see. And we'll check back with you, Amy. Okay. Let us know what happens there. Very interesting story.

Thank you. Have a happy new year. You too. Thanks. Amy Green is a reporter for WMFE in Orlando. We're out of time, but I want to thank all of my guests for helping us look back on the big science stories of the past year. Looking forward to 2019, we want to wish everybody, all of our guests, all of our listeners, everybody out there, a happy new year. BJ Leiderman and composed our theme music, and if you missed any part of our program, we'd like to hear it again. Subscribe to our podcast. And if you have a smart speaker, ask it to play Science Friday or whenever you want to. So like every day of the week is now Science Friday.

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