Science Friday - Clean Energy Transition Progress | Avian Flu In Cattle And Humans Has Scientists Concerned

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Global temperature increases are slowing, electric vehicle sales are growing, and renewable energy is now cheaper than some fossil fuels. Also, in a recent outbreak of avian flu, the virus has jumped from birds to cows, and to one dairy worker. A disease ecologist provides context.Progress Toward A Clean Energy TransitionIn honor of Earth Day, we’re highlighting a few positive trends and some promising solutions to the climate crisis. Globally, a clean energy transition is underway. A recent column in cipher, an online news outlet focused on climate solutions, recapped some encouraging progress, including a rise in electric car sales, a drop in the cost of renewable energy, and a slowing of global temperature increases.SciFri’s John Dankosky is joined by Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, to talk through some climate solutions news and other top science stories of the week, including a record year for wind energy, a proposal to swap out power lines to increase grid capacity, and hibernating bumble bees who can live for a week underwater.Why Avian Flu In Cattle And Humans Has Scientists ConcernedDuring the last few weeks, you may have heard about an ongoing outbreak of avian flu in which the virus has jumped from wild birds and poultry to cattle in eight states, and now to one dairy worker. While transmission to cattle and humans is new, avian flu has been spreading and decimating wild bird populations for years, and has led to many farmers to “depopulate” their poultry stock to contain the spread of the deadly virus, with limited success.Guest host Maggie Koerth is joined by Dr. Nichola Hill, assistant professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, to talk about how devastating this virus has been to birds across the world, why the jump from birds to mammals is making virologists anxious, and how concerned the rest of us should be.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Why are virologists anxious about avian flu jumping from birds to cows? We didn't anticipate this happening. Where H5N1 could possibly jump from wild birds into cows, that's completely original. It's Friday, April 19th, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm Cyfry producer, D. Peter Schmidt. You've probably heard about an alarming case of avian flu that's jumped from wild birds to poultry, to cattle, innate states, and now to one dairy worker. But that same avian flu has been spreading through wild bird flu. populations for years, and it's led many farmers to drastic measures to contain the spread of the

virus. So where are those efforts at, and what does that mean for the rest of us? But first, guest host John Dankowski breaks down the biggest news in science this week. Monday is Earth Day, and we wanted to highlight a few positive trends and some promising solutions to the climate crisis. You know, it's easy to feel pessimistic about the future of our planet, and though there's so much more to do, we have made some key strides. So joining me now to talk about this and some other top science stories of the week is my guest, Casey Crownheart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review. She's based in New York City. Welcome back and happy almost Earth Day, Casey. Happy almost Earth Day, John. Happy to be here. Yeah, I'm glad you're here. So let's start with electric vehicles. Their growth has really exploded,

right, just in the past few years. Absolutely. I think it's just kind of wild to think about, you know, just a few years ago. These were such a niche. thing. And now globally, about one in five new vehicles sold last year were electric, either fully battery or plug-in hybrid. So it's just kind of while to see how quickly this has become such a normal thing on the roads. Yeah, such a normal thing. Of course, you know, EVs have their own problems, but that growth probably is a really good thing for the environment long term. Absolutely. You know, these cut emissions by a lot and transportation is one of the biggest problems we need to clean up. So that's definitely, I count that as positive news. Okay. So,

so maybe this is part of it, but there's some data showing that we're also making progress toward that that 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures per year. This is the threshold we've been trying to get to. How are we doing? Yeah, we're definitely kind of on our way. So like you mentioned, the world set this target of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees C or ideally below 1.5, because we know things get pretty bad after that. And so the Paris Agreement set that target in 2015. At that time, we were on track for anywhere between 3 to 5 degrees C of global warming. Now we're on track for about 2.7. So definitely, like you said, a little bit off that or a lot bit off that 1.5C.

But, you know, we're on track for kind of a better future than we were almost a decade ago. So that's, I also count that as good news. Yeah, it seems like things are trending in the right direction. I guess another trend that's happening is that the costs of renewable energy really have been dropping. and they're dropping pretty substantially, and that might account for some of this progress we're making. Absolutely. I think especially when you look at solar and wind, batteries also fall into this bucket. Solar and wind today can be one of the cheapest ways of producing electricity. And that was, you know, a decade or a little bit more ago, they were among the most expensive. So that's just another kind of push that we've seen towards making progress on climate.

Yeah. And I guess amongst all of the renewable energy sources that we have, oh, wind, projects have really been picking up steam, I suppose. What have you found on wind energy and how much it's been growing? Yeah. So there was a big report that came out tallying up what wind installations looked like from last year. And globally, there was about 117 gigawatts of new wind power capacity added in 2023. That sounds like a lot and it is, but what I think is even more important is that that's 50% more than what was added the year before in 2022. So we're seeing this growth and we're seeing accelerated growth, which is, again, this is kind of one of the staples of getting our electricity supply cleaned up. Sure, but I guess when we see that global growth, there's more growth in some

places than others. The U.S. has fallen behind some other countries, of course. Yeah, we're seeing definitely this is kind of localized in some places. So China is absolutely leading everybody else on both onshore and offshore wind power installations. I mean, that's the case for a lot of other climate technologies as well. But, you know, the U.S. and Germany are kind of catching up a little bit, installing a lot. Wind is getting installed everywhere. But yeah, like you said, definitely faster in some places than others. You know, one of the things I know that you've heard, I've certainly heard for years of covering renewable energy sources, is that we can't put enough online in the U.S. because our power grids just aren't ready to accept it. Now, I guess there's a new report,

Casey, from UC Berkeley, that suggests a potential solution to this problem, because, you know, be something called advanced reconductoring. Can you explain what exactly advanced reconductoring is? I know. This is a term that sounds so kind of hard to parse, but it's really interesting. So like you said, we have a lot of projects just waiting to get onto the grid because the grid needs upgrades and it takes a while to get all the permits and everything. One potential solution to our aging grid is advanced reconductoring. And basically what this is is kind of like a renovation for power lines. So today, most power lines have steel cores and then they're surrounded by aluminum. Advanced cables can be made with different materials.

So you can take out that steel and you can put in lighter materials like carbon fiber. And so then a power line can do a lot more. It can carry as much as, you know, twice the current as older power lines could. So by swapping out these power lines, it seems though more clean energy could actually be generated in the U.S. because the grid would be able to accept it. How much more do you think? Yeah, I mean, as far as transmission capacity, we could add as much as four times more transmission capacity by 2035 as what we're on track to do, which would be, like you said, absolutely huge for getting more projects on the grid. The one kind of caveat is that if we are building projects

in new places, so say there's some sunny remote area where there wasn't a lot of power lines before, you'll probably still need to build new lines to get to those places. But this could be really big for getting more projects on the grid. There are, of course, a lot of wide open spaces in the U.S. Is this a scalable sort of thing in the U.S.? I mean, I know other countries are doing it, but sometimes those are places that are more densely populated. Yeah, that's a great point. There are countries that have kind of made progress on this. The problem in the U.S. is actually kind of that our electricity system is very fragmented. There are, you know, thousands of utilities that are in charge. of electricity. There's this crazy patchwork of regional planners and regulators. So there's just kind of a lot

of cooks in the kitchen here. So that's kind of one of the major barriers to making big progress with transmission and the grid in general. So just this week, you wrote about a fascinating bit of clean energy technology. Thermal batteries. Tell me more. This is something I've been absolutely fascinated by recently. Listeners might have heard of, you know, regular batteries that use chemistry to store energy. Thermal batteries basically do the same thing but with heat. And this is really, could be crucial in cleaning up heavy industry because heat in industry makes up about 20% of all energy demand. Global energy demand is used in heat in like factories and industrial centers. And so we're seeing these companies come up with these really funky solutions to store heat in things like bricks and blocks to use in their

industrial processes. Oh, this is interesting, right? So the manufacturing process throws off heat, it gets stored in these thermal bricks and then it's able to be reutilized somehow? Yes. So that's part of it is there's this ability to kind of soak up waste heat. But some people are also building these solutions that can take in electricity. You know, we talked about solar and wind power, which, as we all know, those are only available sometimes. You know, when the sun is shining, the wind is blowing. And so if you take that electricity and you turn it into heat, then that heat can be more cheaply stored and then used later in an endowment. process. So it's really interesting. Okay. I've got one downer story here, Casey. We've been talking

about a lot of really positive things for the Earth. Scientists announced this week that there's another global coral bleaching event. What's happening here? Yeah. I think it's important to kind of remember that there are still a lot of these challenges and these effects on the planet that we're already seeing because of climate change. And so scientists announced this week that coral reefs around the world are experiencing global bleaching. This will be the fourth time that this is happening. So basically reef bleaching is when in warmer waters, stressed coral can expel the algae that live inside them that are their food source. That's what gives them their color. And so if this happens and if it's severe and long lasting enough, then coral can die. So it's a really, really kind

of awful thing that's happening around the world. The last time this happened was in 2017. It lasted three years. And so this is the second worldwide bleaching event that we've seen just in the last decade. Since we're talking about rising ocean temperatures, I guess we should mention a weird type of organism that might actually be able to survive some of these higher temperatures. They're mixotrophs, part plant, part animal. What exactly are they, Casey? And what did this new study find? Yeah, this is a really funky story. We tend to think of, you know, autotrophes, which make their own food and heterotrophes like animals, which, you know, eat other organisms to get their energy. But there are these funky little creatures in the ocean called mixotrophs that are kind of somewhere

in between. So maybe they do some photosynthesis, but also eat, you know, kind of tiny plankton, something like that. And so scientists found that during heat waves in the Gulf of Alaska, mixotrophs tended to make up a larger portion of the plankton during these heat events. And so it kind of suggests that these creatures, because they have kind of multiple ways, to survive, are able to kind of adapt to these changing conditions. It sounds pretty smart. Maybe we should all be more mix at trophy so that we can adapt better to what's happening. Absolutely. Okay, let's step into the animal kingdom entirely here. Scientists have successfully cloned two more black-footed ferrets. Why exactly is this a big deal

other than the fact that now the world has two more really cute ferrets? Oh my gosh, they're so cute. So black-footed ferrets, once scientists thought they were entirely extinct, these have been threatened for a long time. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on Wednesday that they had cloned two black-footed ferrets. Their names, importantly, are Antonia and Noreen. And this is important because at one point, there were only a few of these little creatures running around. And so all black-footed ferrets in the wild today descend from just seven individuals. And so adding in two more ferrets could potentially really help with genetic diversity and, you know, help increase the chances that these little creatures can recover. Okay, so this last story is a really cool animal story. It's one of those times a lab accident can lead to a scientific breakthrough.

It turns out that hibernating bumblebees can survive being submerged into water for up to a week. What? I know. This is absolutely wild. Makes me feel better about all the lab accidents. I may have caused when I was in college. So yes, this Canadian university, they were studying bumblebees and they had a few hibernating queens basically stored in the fridge. They had them in these like little soil filled tubes. And one of the researchers realized that one of these tubes had gotten moisture inside. And so a few of the bees had been submerged in water. But they took them out and the queens woke up and they were okay. And so they looked into this a little bit more and found that, you know, when they would submerge hibernating queen bumblebees in water,

about 80% of them could survive for up to a week. It's really interesting. It's likely because, you know, when they're dormant and they're hibernating, they drop their metabolism rate a lot, and so they don't need very much air at all. I think that's a great place to end this Earth Day edition. Nature's just amazing, Casey, isn't it? Absolutely. Casey Crownheart is climate reporter at MIT Technology Review.

Casey, always good to have you. Thanks so much. Great to be here. This is Science Friday. I'm Maggie Kerth. During the last few weeks, you may have heard about an alarming case of avian flu that's jumped from wild birds to poultry to cattle in eight states. And now to one dairy worker. Here to talk about this devastating bird virus, why the jump from birds to mammals is making virologists anxious, and how worried the rest of us should be, is Dr. Nicola Hill, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of, of Massachusetts in Boston.

Thanks, Maggie. It's wonderful to be here. So this particular virus has been circulating for a little while now, correct? And I want to know a little bit about how it has changed in the last few weeks. Right. So agreed that this virus has actually been circulating for the last two decades. And in slow motion, it's been evolving between poultry and wild birds, but usually contained to certain parts of Eurasia. and in the last handful of years, we've seen this virus expand into new geographic locations, including the US, where it's also shifted further south, into South America,

and finally into Antarctica. So this virus now has a global distribution in wild birds, and during the last two weeks, what we saw was a consequence of this virus being really widespread in wild birds, where it managed to jump from wild birds in a farm setting to dairy cows and finally into humans. So this is a great demonstration of how well this virus is able to jump between hosts that are completely unrelated, very efficiently. So when I went to a Halloween party in 2006 and a virologist friend was dressed as H5N1, that's the same virus.

It's not a different version of that. That is the same one. Yes, that is absolutely the same one. It's been what I would call simmering away for a good couple of decades now in certain parts of the globe. But it's just expanded and it's increased its host range at the same time. And the consequence has been these really unpredictable host jump events that are now happening with a frequency and that have many of us in the flu community just didn't see coming. So there are these big biological differences between wild bird shows up done to a farm and a cow, and then now you've got one person who worked on the cow farm contracting it.

Tell me a little bit about, you know, some of the risks there when you have a virus jumping between these very different organisms. Right. So this is a unique combination of hosts and the virus. We didn't anticipate this happening where H5N1 could possibly jump. from wild birds into cows, that's completely original. It does speak to how well this virus is able to jump into hosts that are completely unrelated. And I think that is something that has caused alarm. So I should clarify that we didn't actually see any of these mutations that would signal

adaptation to mammals in the cattle. But what we saw was adaptations in the human. There was one very clear a marker of mammalian adaptation. And that is usually the entry level for the virus to start fine-tuning its genome and become better equipped to replicate inside a mammalian cell. But the fact that it's gained that single mutation is again making us pretty uncomfortable about the possibility of this happening again. And so the chances of this happening again in another host are actually pretty high. Well, so what's happening? happening to this one person? What kind of symptoms did they end up developing? Very mild. So there was reports of red eye or conjunctivitis. So they were able to recover with only showing mild symptoms.

And that's good news for human health. But it's also a bit of a mixed blessing because we know when the virus tends to show or present as a mild respiratory infection, it can also spread more easily, and that makes it more difficult to detect with surveillance. So this is sort of a mixed blessing, and one where we'll have to step up monitoring of a lot of our agricultural workers to make sure that these host jumps aren't happening unseen or undetected. Okay, so this is obviously not the first time. We've seen this kind of situation where a flu virus that's common in animals makes a jump to a handful of people. It's not even the first time with this particular virus, but it feels a little bit different now.

I mean, to me anyway, because of the experiences we've all had over the last few years. So help us understand a little bit about this, you know, what usually happens in a situation where you get to spill over to one person and it's a mild case. And also help us understand how worried you are now personally about the possibility of new pandemics. Right. it's always on the mind of every scientist everywhere, I think, to monitor and be really aware of the evolution of influenza viruses. They're amazing at adapting to new host types that are completely unrelated. We have seen this before, as you were saying, there have been over 800

cases of H5 spilling over from an animal into humans over the last handful of decades. And typically, it dead ends in that human host. And that's the moment that we all breathe a sigh of relief and it doesn't seem to be capable of efficient human to human transmission. And that's the part where we're a little bit upstream of that event by, I would say, a good handful of mutations and we're tracking that evolution of the virus to see how close it gets. And at the moment, it's shown a single mutation in humans of mammalian adaptation, but it does need a handful of others across multiple different genes to finally unlock efficient human-to-human transmission so that the possibility of the virus transmitting, say, virus sneeze or a cough.

And that is the sweet spot for the virus to start to become efficiently spread from human-to-humans. So right now it's kind of a carefully watching this. keeping an eye on what's going on. And I want to kind of also talk a little bit about what the farmers have been doing because this has been spreading in poultry in the U.S. for a couple of years now. And farms have been trying to limit the spread by what's called depopulation. Can you explain what that process entails and why with this jump to cows you don't think it's the best course of action to take?

Yeah. So the current guidance on how to respond to an outbreak in poultry is culling or depopulation. And so flocks that are infected need to be destroyed immediately. And that limits the possibility of transmission between barns or between poultry. And that has been really common as a policy that's been applied for the last two decades, I would say. But I think we're experiencing that this might be unsustainable as a practice because it brings into question ethics around animal welfare as well as the consequences for the cost of agriculture. These are, this is agriculture that we rely on in terms of chickens and dairy cows that are consumed daily. And so these have huge economic consequences as well as consequences for our own.

animal welfare. And I think this transmission into cattle brings into focus that depopulation isn't always the solution. And the current advice is actually just quarantine and supportive care and making sure that we're just doing intensive monitoring of our cattle and poultry and other livestock populations to make sure that we're aware of the virus early enough so we can actually act without actually needing to depopulate these stocks. I'm curious also a little bit about the broader implications for agriculture here, because you sort of talked about things that need to change around the way that we handle avian flu once it's there. But there's also, you know, the spread of flu, the spread of viruses, from animals to people. There's a lot of connections between that and these problematic

agricultural practices in general. So what needs to be changed there in that bigger picture to really help prevent the spread of viruses between animals and particularly poultry and the people who are taking care of them. Yeah, this is a great question. So industrialization of agriculture has been born out of necessity for food security. We need to feed a growing population. But I think we're discovering the flip side of that now, where there's no putting this virus back in the box H5N1 is now globally distributed and we have to think about ways beyond depopulation to rain in and control this virus and it's going to take some creative thinking and there's been discussions in other parts of the globe about scaling back agriculture to medium or small

scale farming as well as vaccination and even considering more indigenous breeds of animals that might actually be naturally resistant to disease, rather than the current stocks, which tend to be quite genetically identical, and therefore don't have a lot of resistance to a novel pathogen like this when it enters into a barn, say. And so I think there's a lot of big thinking

about how we need to approach this question because it's now this combination of factors that's at play now. We have animals that are dying in the millions, both wild and domestic animals. We have the possibility of a large pandemic potential as a consequence of this virus moving around the landscape. These practices are largely inhumane

for how to depopulate these flocks in response to bird flu. And so I think there's many reasons to motivate us to really think creatively about how to stop this virus from spreading. And it probably isn't going to be one solution alone, but a combination that gets us there to a place, happy medium between having enough food for a growing population and making sure that we are prioritizing animal health and welfare as well as stopping the next possible pandemic.

So what do you expect to happen in the next month or so? That's a bit of a tricky one for me to address directly. So I think what is probably going to happen is we'll probably see ramped up surveillance on dairy farms and we need to do surveillance that looks at both animals and humans together at this point. And I think there'll be all eyes on the dairy industry as well as the poultry industry to make sure that we're doing that effectively. And that is no small task. That is absolutely huge when you consider all of the resources that it takes to do that.

But I think we're at a stage where it's become challenging because of how widespread this virus is in wild birds and the potential for it to keep jumping into new hosts, we have to start thinking about where those interfaces are and directing resources there to make sure that we're staying one step ahead of the virus. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us about this. Absolutely. My pleasure. Dr. Nicola Hill is an assistant professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. And that's it for today. Lots of folks help make the show happen, including Kathleen Davis. Diana Plasker. with Rami.

Danielle Johnson. Next time, we'll take a look at the psychological effects of what scientists are calling eco-anxiety. I'm SciFar producer Dee Petersmith. See you then.