Science Friday - NASA Administrator, California Wildfires, Lichens. March 8, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: March 8, 2019

On December 14, 1972, as Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan prepared to board the lunar module, he gave one last dispatch from the lunar surface. And yet, 47 years later, humankind has not set another foot on the lunar surface. But now, NASA’s ready to return, with the Moon to Mars program. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine joins Ira in this segment to talk about the agency's ambitions beyond Earth, the role of commercial space companies in getting us there, and why he thinks plant science is "critical" to NASA. Plus: There aren’t very many old-growth forest left in North America. And while it would be wonderful to be able to preserve all of them, resources to protect those forest patches are also in limited supply. So if you’re forced to choose between two areas of old-growth forest, how do you prioritize which of these islands of biodiversity to focus on? A new study suggests to look at the lichens. Troy McMullin, a research scientist in lichenology at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, joins Ira to talk about the stories lichens can tell about the forest ecosystem. California has been experiencing its wettest winter in decades. That’s good news in a state that has chronic water management issues and what feels like only recently recovered from a devastating multi year drought. The bad news? Researchers say that thanks to climate change and forest management practices, a wet winter like this one will no longer make a difference come next year’s wildfire season.Valerie Trouet, Associate Professor of Dendrochronology at the University of Arizona, tells us more. And Amy Nordrum of IEEE Spectrum tells Ira about a SpaceX "crew" visiting the International Space Station and other top science headlines in this week's News Roundup. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, NASA Chief Jim Brightonstein is here to answer your questions about NASA and the future of American spaceflight. Do you have a topic? You have something you want to talk about. You make the call. But only if you make the call, our number 844-724-8-255-84-Sight-4-Sai Talk, or you can tweet us at SciFRI. But first, in other space news, commercial spaceflight is having a good week this week after private company's SpaceX automatically docked its crew dragon capsule with the International Space Station. And this morning, it splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. Here you'll tell us more about the story plus other short subjects in science.

Amy Nordrum, news editor for the IEE Spectrum. Always good to see Amy. Thanks, Ira. So let's talk about this. Sounds like an exciting week for SpaceX. It was. This was actually a very fun story to follow. You know, NASA is eager to come up with a new U.S. made vessel to transport

astronauts and even potentially space tourists to and from the space station. The space shuttle program ended in 2011, since then we've been relying on Russian-built capsules and rockets to transport people to and from. So NASA has awarded almost $7 billion to both SpaceX and Boeing to develop their own rockets and crew capsules to transport to and from. And this was one of the first tests of the system that went all the way to the space station, successfully docked and then returned. This is just the first step.

Boeing will be testing its own capsule, which it calls Starliner. No later than April, NASA says. And then they'll continue on with actual crude tests where they will have astronauts in these vessels and these capsules rocketing up to the space station and then returning home. And those are also expected to take place for both companies this year. How did they know that this capsule was safe for human beings? Well, that's what they're testing in this particular demonstration. So they had an astronaut dummy named Ripley strapped in to the seat that one astronaut.

or space tourists could soon occupy. There are four seats in the SpaceX capsule, and Ripley was in one of them. This dummy is equipped with all kinds of different sensors. They didn't get specific on what the sensors are, but you'd imagine they'd be wanting to measure things like a force in acceleration as the dummy goes up and returns back home. And, you know, we'll hear what they conclude from that, but that was their way of kind of seeing what an astronaut themselves or a space tourist themselves will experience in this capsule if it actually does make it into commercial use.

Interesting. The capsule docked automatically. Maybe it's a preview of the Tesla full self-driving mode in the capsule. Yeah, in a different format for a different vehicle. Yeah, it had another fun passenger. It actually had a plush Earth toy that SpaceX staff put into the capsule before it went. It's been floating around, bopping around the space station. The astronauts have been taking photos with this toy called Earth. So it had a couple of few fun passengers on board. That's great. Let's move on to another story. It sounds like we don't have to worry. about being hacked in quite the same way that we used to. Yes, I think this might be good news. I'm not sure. But IBM has put out a new report talking about security trends and basically what kinds of hacks they're seeing more and less of. This is looking at trends from 2008. And you may have heard of this type of hack called ransomware where a hacker takes over a system, shuts it down,

you know, prohibits access to the files and then charges a ransom to the user to return it and restore the system. This has been used as a technique in the past. But IBM's report says that is kind of going by the wayside. Hackers are finding it's really not worth the trouble. It's not that great of an attack, perhaps. And they're moving on to something called cryptojacking. So this is actually when a hacker surreptitiously starts using your computing power on your machines or your company's machines to mine cryptocurrencies in the background. So they're not stealing anything.

They're not limiting access to your files. They're just kind of using your computing power without your consent. to create a cryptocurrency winfall. Maybe if the fan on your laptop starts going a little fast. Yeah, that's about the only way you'd know if it starts to slow down. But it's funny because ransomware was very obvious in your face. Your whole system turns black and you get a message that you need to wire this ransom. But this is the exact opposite.

It's very, I don't want to say innocuous, but it's very subtle. And I guess if you had to choose between the two, cryptojacking. I would choose cryptojacking. If I had to choose one or the other, I mean, ideally neither, but it is less disruptive. You know, and for the hackers, it's harder to trace back. But we don't get any of the cryptocurrency that they're mining. Unfortunately, no. No, let's work on that.

Let's look at some bad news, maybe, for endangered gray wolves. Tell us about that. Yes. Well, the Secretary of the Interior this week on Wednesday said that the Interior Department would be proposing to delist gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act. would remove protections for these wolves that it has had because it's on this list protected by the act. And the story is a little bit more complicated. So this delisting effort would apply to one population of Great Wolves, known as the Great Lakes population.

So those are the wolves in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Wolves and part of the country known as the Northern Rockies have already been delisted. And states there have their own different kinds of protections and ways of. of allowing hunting and trapping of wolves. But this, you know, this de-listing would actually apply to all wolves, you know, and make it so that they're all due-listed across the United States. Environmentalists are, you know, not saying it's not quite time yet. Wolves have, wolf populations have recovered from their historic low of about a thousand wolves

in the lower United States. But they're not fully yet restored to their historic range, which covered large swaths of the U.S. And so they're, some are saying that, you know, we need more time. and these wolves should still have the protections under the Endangered Species Act. Finally, some drama in the world of research publishing, something we don't really talk much about, a company called Elsevier, most of people know that, and the University of California. Some drama going on there.

That's right, just about a week ago, the University of California said that it would no longer be paying Elsevere, the fees it has traditionally paid them to access a large number of academic journals. Elsevere is a very large publisher. It has about 2,500 titles. And University of California said that this was because Elsevere could not agree, could not provide open access by a default setting to all of the research published by University of California scientists, which is obviously a publicly funded institution

that's using a lot of taxpayer money for research and through grants. And so, you know, the University of California will no longer be paying Elsevere for access to its journals. Why do they need, you know, journals now, you have public, you know, POS and all those is public publishers. Why do you need to pay Elsevier, you know, for your Lancet or something like that? Yeah, I think that was their argument, and they, you know, we'll see they, they said they're still open for negotiation with Elsevier. But at this moment, you know, they're not going to be paying them. I think it was $11 million per year for access to Lsevere journals.

It's a big statement in terms of open-saccess access. Others could follow. Thank you, Amy. Thank you. Amy Nordrim, News Editor for the I-Triple-E Spectrum. Now it's time to play. Good thing, bad thing. Because every story has a flip side. California has been experiencing its wettest winter in decades, and that's all thanks to that jet stream that has dumped more than 15 inches of rain on cities like L.A. since October.

That's a good thing in a state that has chronic water management issues. The bad news? Researchers say that thanks to climate change, a wet winter like this one will no longer make a difference come next year's wildfire season. Here to tell us more is my guest Valerie Truay, Associate Professor of Dendro Chronology at the University of Arizona. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So let's talk about this. There must be an upside to California getting all that rain, right? Most definitely. So California has been in a drought, a five-year drought over the past years from 2012 to 2016, and so it's high time that some of its water reservoirs are refilled, which is happening now,

especially in a state like California, like you said, that needs water for its agriculture, for its ecosystems, for its people, and especially because California has a Mediterranean climate, so it really only receives water in winter. And so all the water it's going to get this year is what is falling now. That's interesting. I didn't look at it that way. So why is it then, why is it this and especially rainy winter this year? So part of an important reason why it's a rainy winter is the position of the jet stream. So the jet stream where the winds high up in the atmosphere about the elevation where airplanes fly. and these winds blow in an eastward direction across the entire northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. And so they bring moisture from the Pacific Ocean towards the American West Coast.

And when those, when a jet stream is positioned straight over California, as is the case this winter, then it brings a lot of moisture over California. What happened, for instance, during the 2012-2016 drought, is that there was a, high pressure system sitting over the eastern Pacific, which diverted the jet stream and diverted the storms that come with the jet stream, and so the jet stream was positioned further north. So what is the bad news here about the winter-summer relationship? Yeah, so we use tree rings. I'm a dendrochronologist. I study the rings and trees, and in this study we used them for two purposes, one, to look at jat stream dynamics back to

1600 and on the other hand to look at wildfire in California over the same period of time and what we found is that prior to the 20th century years like this one where the jet stream was positioned straight over California you would almost be guaranteed a mild fire season the following summer because you get wet winter so wet or moist forests that didn't burn easily What we find is after the 20th century, starting at the start of the 20th century, that connection between the position of the jet stream and wildfires in California has weakened. To the extent that in most recent decades there's no connection between them anymore at all. So you can't depend on having a wet winter, then having a moderate fire season? Exactly, yeah. That's no longer a guarantee.

It's possible that you'll have a mild fire season. but it's no longer a guarantee. Any link to climate change here? Right, exactly. So the reasons why does the case is that with globally rising temperatures, also in California, the temperatures are rising. And so you get summer droughts. Even after winter, you can get summer droughts because it's hotter.

So the drought is not just a function of how much moisture there is, but also of the temperature. So with warmer temperatures, you get drier conditions. And then in addition to that, I'm sorry, go ahead. In addition to that, there's a century of fire suppression that happened in California. So we've started putting out fires around the start of the 20th century. All right.

We're going to have to leave it there, Dr. Trouye. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Fellow Chouye, Associate Professor of Dendrochronology at the University of Arizona. We're going to take a break and have Jim Bridenstein, NASA chief, my guest, your questions. Stay with us. We'll be right back. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

On December 14, 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Sernan stood on the surface of the moon, about to take his last steps back into the lunar module. I like to just let what I believe history will record that I'm not. American challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. The moon and tours literal. We leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return. Jane Cernan, Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission to the moon. He says we believe not too long in the future we will return.

Well, it's been 47 years. 47 years later, a human has yet to set another foot on the lunar surface. But now NASA is ready to return with the Moon for Mars program, just one of the many projects on NASA's drawing boards. Jim Bridenstein is the head of NASA. He joins us from NASA headquarters in Washington. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. It's great to be here.

Wasn't that a great feeling to hear Gene Cernan again? Absolutely. Absolutely. What a wonderful man. I got to know him personally when I was a member of the House of Representatives. And I can tell you his vision up until the day of, of his death was just as adamant that we go back to the moon and we go to stay. And that's what the president has us doing now. Let's talk about your own career.

You mentioned that you were a member of the House. You spent a career in politics and military. You're not a space scientist or an astronaut. So what led you to interest in space? So I'm a Navy pilot by trade and had the opportunity to fly E2 Hawkeyes off of aircraft carriers and then transition to the F-18 Hornet. I've always had an aviation kind of desire. From my earliest age when I was five years old,

they asked us to draw a picture of what we wanted to do when we grew up. I drew a picture of an airplane and said I wanted to be a pilot. So it's always kind of been who I am as a person. I've always loved aviation. And the first A in NASA is aeronautics. A lot of people forget about that. But we're also the space agency. And so I've had a great opportunity.

I ran for Congress, had the opportunity to win. And when I was in Congress, I was on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, which oversees the National Security Space-based capabilities of our country. And then I was on the Science Committee, which on that committee, I was on the Subcommittee on Space, which oversees NASA. And I was on the Environment Subcommittee, which oversees NOAA. and about half of Noah's budget, or 40% of Noah's budget, is space-related activities. So I have a, I've spent five and a half years in the House of Representatives working on space issues, and I got to the point where I drafted a very comprehensive space reform bill. We called it the American Space Renaissance Act,

and that kind of started me on this path, and eventually I ended up being nominated by the president to serve as his administrator, and it's been an amazing, amazing opportunity, and I will tell you the folks here at NASA are phenomenal. And this agency is so bipartisan. And members of the House, members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle, support what we do. And we've had very good success in a bipartisan way, achieving budgets that are going to put us on a path to go back to the moon. And this time we're going to stay.

Let me quote from your American Space for Renaissance Act. I'm quoting, you want the United States just, to be among those who first arrive at a destination in space and open it for subsequent use and development by others. So as China and others prepare to send humans to the moon, is it imperative to you that Americans be the first to return there? Well, I think it's important. There's a difference between what I think China is doing and what we are doing. China, of course, is interested in going to the surface of the moon, and so are we. Our interest is going to the moon to stay.

We've already been to the moon. We landed on the moon in 1969. We had six missions, 12 people that walked on its surface. And so this is not a race. And, you know, if people want to claim that it's a race, which I hear quite frequently, I'm okay with that. But the reality is when they were landing on the far side of the moon, we were landing on the far side of Mars.

And by the way, we were doing it for the eighth time in human history and we're the only country that has ever done it. And weeks later, we were flying by Ultimatouli in the Kipper Belt, which is past Pluto. We're talking about 4 billion miles from Earth and taking beautiful images of Ultimutuli. And then, of course, we entered orbit around an asteroid in deep space called Benu. And as everybody saw just a few days ago, we launched SpaceX, a Falcon 9 rocket with a crude dragon to the International Space Station, where we have had people living and working for now 18 years in a row in space. So I would say we are in really good shape as a country.

This president has put us in an even better position with his budget requests and bipartisan support in the Congress. We're making great progress. When we go to the moon, though, the difference is the president has said we're going to be sustainable. In other words, we're not going to leave flags and footprints and then not go back for another 50 years. this time when we go, we're actually going to stay, which means we need commercial partners, we need international partners, and we're getting great support from our international partners right now, and we also need reusability. We need rockets to be reusable, and of course every piece of the architecture between here and the moon to be reusable.

Let's talk about the president's support for this space efforts. The 2019 NASA budget gave NASA. It was very generous. It gave NASA more than an ask for. But President Trump wanted to cut the W-First telescope, the Europa lander, five missions that study the Earth, and NASA's education programs. Congress gave you the money instead and more, basically saying to the president, no, we disagree with your policy. So we can take each one of those. So here's the thing.

Congress was very generous to us. They have given us a budget that funds, I think, pretty much everything that you have suggested. their budget was actually the president here's the thing i come in as the nass administrator and um and the president's budget request takes nassah up a billion dollars billion and a half well no his his budget request was actually about a billion oh they gave you more yeah it was big it was bigger than it was bigger than any budget in in my adult lifetime and everybody was like wow he's serious he wants to go back to the moon and by the time and i was like thrilled i'm like okay i'm going to go to the i'm going to go to nassan i'm going to advocate for a

a much bigger budget. By the time I got here, Congress had already passed in a bipartisan way a $1.7 billion increase. So it's interesting that I, you know, I thought I was coming here to increase the budget. In fact, the administration and Congress are stepping over with each other trying to increase our budget. So this is, we have not had this kind of support really since the Apollo era, but it's good. In each one of those cases, those programs that you mentioned, and I have to go back and listen to all of them that you mentioned. But they are currently, I believe, all fully funded. Yes, they are.

And so we're in good shape. We are moving out on each one of those projects. We are following the law. But it is also true that we can't do everything that we'd love to do, and sometimes we have to make tough decisions. But as you're aware, those projects are all fully funded. Let's go to the phones. 844-724-8-255.

Let's go to Derek in Tulsa. Oklahoma. Imagine that. A former constituent here, a long-time listener, thanks. Whenever you were, Mr. Bridingstine, when you were running for Congress here in Tulsa,

you were pretty adamant against man-made climate change, and you've recently changed your mind on that. I was wondering what you came across, what you read, who you talked to, to change your mind. And if you return to Oklahoma politics,

later in life. If you're going to hold that view, do you think that Republicans in Tulsa, for instance, can hold a view on man-made climate change like you do now and still run for Congress in Oklahoma? Thanks, Michael. Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it's important to note that there's a lot that goes into that question. And to unpack it, I'll just say this. I believe 100 percent carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. humans have put more of it into the atmosphere than ever before, which means we have absolutely contributed to the climate change that we are currently experiencing. That is absolutely true, and I don't know anybody who argues that that is not the case. What NASA does and what NASA will

continue to do is study the Earth in every part of the electromagnetic spectrum in order to provide data and information so that policymakers can make good decisions. As a member of Congress. There were certain things happening that in my estimation, we're not in the best interest of our country, but I don't remember ever saying that climate change is not happening. I don't remember ever saying that. Some people attribute that to me based on certain positions that I took on certain issues. But the reality is climate change is happening. It has been always happening. We are contributing to it. And the question is, what is NASA going to do? about it. What NASA does is we study the earth, and we make all that data and all that information available to the public so that other people can make their determinations and assessments on what the policies ought to be in order to make sure that our Earth is healthy. You said in front of a group of farmers in California last month that, quote, plant science is critical for NASA. What did you mean by that? No, this is an area, again, going back to the

Earth Science Budget of NASA. We have, again, we're sensing the Earth in every part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and we're doing it in both active, with active sensors and passive sensors. In some cases, we're shooting beams, whether it's radio or, you know, infrared or even laser at the Earth, and we're getting that reflected energy back, and we're making determinations. Here's what we're learning. We put those satellites into space to study the Earth, to study. the atmosphere, to study the ionosphere, to study the upper atmosphere. We didn't put them in

the earth to help agriculture. But what we're finding is that in this process, we're able to take this data and provide it. Right now, we have a cooperative agreement with the cooperative extension of the University of California, and we're sharing our data with the University of California in a way where they can apply it to farmers' land in California. This is a good story about about California. So what we're doing is we're reducing water usage for a lot of these farmers by 25% while they're increasing their crop yields and saving the nitrates in the soil. So nitrates, of course, they erode away when you overwater. Well, if we can prevent farmers from overwatering, we save the water, we save it for the ecosystems and for the people to drink

and for hydropower and all the other things we need water for. But at the same time, we're also preserving the nitrates so we get better plant growth and those nitrates don't end up in the drinking water. And here's the thing. We launched these satellites for a purpose that was not this. And here we are able to increase crop yields, reduce water use, preserve nitrates in 2017. Just a couple years ago, we applied some of this capability to a situation that we saw as NASA developing in Uganda. And when we applied NASA data to a drought that was about to occur in Uganda, we can see plant stress from space weeks ahead of when we can see it from Earth with the human eye.

And so we applied this technology. We saw a disaster waiting to happen, and we actually mitigated the disaster ahead of time, saving the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars by actually investing $2.7 million in front of the crisis instead of doing disaster relief after the crisis. So here's an applied capability that has benefited the American taxpayer. It has saved lives in Uganda, and it's a win-win for all of the above. And so we need to expand these kind of capabilities, not because NASA, this is not in our mission set, but what we can do is we can prove the technology, we can prove the capability,

and then we can use it for others or, you know, commercial industry could take it over and sell the data for farmers that are looking to improve their crop yields. There's a lot of different ways we can benefit from this. Amara Flato, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with Jim Bridenstein, who's the head of NASA, talking about unintended consequences, and when you know they turn out to be good things, then we call it serendipity.

Let's go to the phones. Let's go to Orlando. David and Orlando. Hi, welcome to Science Friday, right there in the Space Coast. Yes, hi, thank you for taking my call. First off, I want to congratulate NASA SpaceX on such a successful historic program this past week. I was able to see a launch from right here in downtown Orlando, and it was awesome. And it's such a historic moment for the residents here.

I'm a younger gentleman by the age of 33 years old. And so I wasn't around in the Apollo missions, but it gets me so excited, as I sure does for the youth in this country. My question is... Well, thank you for all that. Go ahead. Oh, 100%. My question is, Administrator of Bridenstein. With the success that SpaceX and NASA have done through a partnership, NASA has provided such critical resources through their expertise and just being a great partner to SpaceX.

And like Elon said, SpaceX wouldn't be around and be at the success level without NASA. So with that, as we move towards our focus to the moon and from the moon to Mars, why is NASA still focusing on the SLS program for that launch capability when clearly we have companies like Boeing coming online, companies like Space? SpaceX are going to be able to provide these resources to get out of low Earth orbit and into the moon. We're coming up on a break. Let me get an answer before we go. Yeah, I'll be really quick. Great question, by the way. SLS has a bigger payload capacity than any rocket that's ever been built in history.

Of course, it's taller than the Statue of Liberty with a bigger faring size for more volume. Here's the thing. We need a permanent presence at and on the moon. We need reusability. The Gateway, which is a space station in orbit around the moon. and think of a very small space station, is in essence a reusable command and service module. We need a very heavy lift rocket,

a super heavy lift rocket to put that in place for reusability to drive down the cost and increase the access to the surface of the moon. It is true that there could come a day when other companies can have that super heavy lift capability. It's not there right now. We're getting really close with SLS. And of course, Orion is very close as well.

We need to keep developing these capabilities. But here's the thing. If there are opportunities to partner with private industry, just like we did with SpaceX and Boeing for commercial crew, in the future, you're likely to see that happen. Right now, those opportunities aren't presented to us in a way that we're ready to move out on it, but certainly that is on the horizon if and when that day comes. All right.

We're going to take a break and take lots more calls. 8447248255. A lot of people calling. We have a lot of people tweeting, and here's a tweet from Shannon who says, since International Women's Day, please ask your guest if returning to the moon will include a woman on the moon, something that's never happened.

30 seconds for an answer for everybody. The answer is absolutely, in fact, it's likely to be a woman, the first next person on the moon. It's also true that the first person on Mars is likely to be a woman. So these are great days. We have the first all-female spacewalk

happening this month at the end of March, which is, of course, National Women's Month. So NASA is committed to making sure that we have a broad and diverse set of talent, and we're looking forward to the first woman on the moon. There you have. News from Jim Bridenstein.

He'll be with us. Going to stay after the break. We'll be back. 844-724-8255. You can also tweet us at SciFri. Stay with us. We'll be right back on the other side of the break. This is Science Friday.

I'm Ira Flato. We're talking this hour with the NASA administrator Jim Bridenstein. Our number, you can call in. Lines are pretty busy. 8447248255. And administrator, we were talking earlier about climate change and Florida, where all that infrastructure is from NASA, the launch facilities in Florida. If you've been there, I'm sure you have. I know you have. Many of us have. Just about all at sea level. Yeah.

With the rising ocean levels predicted for this century, what long-term plans does NASA have to make sure that the launch facilities and everything else? stays dry. No, that's a critical, important question. A couple of things to note here. So the answer is, yes, the sea level is rising. And I heard somebody earlier suggest that as a member of Congress, I might not have been, I don't know, that I didn't believe in climate change or something. To be clear, I was on the Armed Services Committee as a member of Congress. And at one point, this was long before I was either nominated to be the NASA administrator or even being thought of as being the NASA administrator. There was an amendment to have the Department of Defense study how climate change is affecting national security. And what's interesting is, of course, all the Democrats were

for the amendment having the Department of Defense do this study. And all of the Republicans were against the Department of Defense doing this study. And I made a determination as a Republican that this was a critically important study that the Department of Defense ought to do. Why? Because I'm a Navy pilot. I used to be stationed on the coasts of the United States, including Point Magoo, California and Norfolk, Virginia, among other places. And yes, it is true that a rising sea level, which is happening, does affect the military bases at sea level,

just as it affects our launch complex. So right now, out at Kennedy, we are, in fact, building berms. We're building dams, if you will, out of sand and other materials that are necessary to prevent when there is a storm surge from a hurricane or something else, so that our facilities will be 100% protected. So that has become necessary. We've had problems in the past. We're trying to make sure we don't have those problems in the future.

This is true, though, and I hope the gentleman from Tulsa who called is listening. When I was on the Armed Services Committee, the argument I made is that as a Navy pilot, here's what we know. we know that the Arctic ice is not where it used to be. It has receded significantly. In fact, even in the wintertime, it doesn't completely cover the Arctic at this point. What does that mean? That means we have to defend territory. We didn't used to have to defend, and our competitors in the world are able to operate in territory.

They never used to be able to operate. So the Arctic ice is melting. The sea level is rising. That is happening. And everybody can argue about what's causing it. But the reality is nobody can argue that it's not happening because it is very apparent. I think the argument is whether how much you believe that humans are involved in causing the rise of CO2 levels? Absolutely.

And the answer is we are very involved. In fact, I mean, I don't know what the right number is, but certainly carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It's now at about 420 parts per billion, which puts us in a position where the sea level, we have warmed the earth. and the sea level is rising. It is also true that there are feedbacks in the climate of the Earth. Feedback, some of them make it even get warmer. Some of them actually have a cooling effect. Carbon dioxide, of course, results in a greening of the Earth.

That has a cooling effect. Carbon dioxide results in the melting of the Arctic ice. That has a warming effect because the blue ocean absorbs more energy. So there are all these feedbacks that really, quite frankly, nobody knows how they're all going to play out as time goes on. but NASA is critical to studying and understanding the climate. And it is true that the president's budget request for climate science has been strong. And it is also true that right now we have the highest budget in the history of our agency for climate science.

Bill Nye, head of the Planetary Society, has tweeted that he fares NASA's next budget. Your 2020 budget will be slashed compared to years past. What's your feeling? Has the White House told you anything about that? Well, I've been working on the 2020 budget. I'm not allowed to talk about it right now, but here's what I'll tell you. On Monday, I'm announcing at Kennedy Space Center what our budget is. We're going to have as much media attention as we can possibly get,

and I'm very proud of the budget that you're going to see on Monday. You're not, they haven't gotten any word possibly that the president may take money out of your budget to pay for the wall at all. No, not at all. Here's the thing. The president, I don't know if you've noticed, he talks about space a lot. and he recreated the National Space Council to focus on space, and he put at the helm of that Space Council the Vice President of the United States. The Vice President has been over here at the NASA headquarters three times in the last three months.

So I will tell you this administration is, and just look at their budget request compared to history, we're in good shape. Well, the President, just to push back from what I said at the beginning, and I want to go on with this because I want to move. But the President tried to cut five programs out of NASA's 2019 budget, and Congress put it back. as you say, they're fully funded. Let's move on to a caller. Let's go to, let's see, Peter and Berkeley. Hi, Peter. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. And thank you for this opportunity.

Really appreciate it. It got me thinking about the use of weapons in space, and I looked up the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, ratified by 108 countries by now. And I just want to invite the reflections and comments, because it seems like a ban, it does ban weapons of mass destruction and specifically anything on the moon or other. Peter, we're running enough time. Do you have a question? Yeah, I would like to comment of how NASA is going to interface, and shouldn't we have an international police force instead of any one country?

Because what goes around and comes around, and it'll come back at us. Okay. Internationally administered. All right. What about the space force? Yeah, a great question. So a couple of things. Number one, NASA does not do national security or defense.

We never have. We never will. That's not in our agenda. We partner with Russia. We partner with other countries. Maybe some countries that are not always friendly with the United States. We have at this point partners with over 120 countries on the globe and over 800 different cooperative agreements.

So what we don't want to do is we don't want to delve into national security. When NASA was created by Eisenhower, it was intentionally kept separate from the Department of Defense. That being said, and I'm committed to that, just so everybody knows. That being said, when I was in the House of Representatives, we voted on the Space Force numerous times. I voted on it on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee. I voted on it on the Full Armed Services Committee, and I voted on it on the floor of the House of Representatives. It got strong bipartisan support in all of those. And in fact, it got 344 votes in the House of Representatives, which doesn't happen these days,

but it happened when we voted on the Space Force as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. I'll tell you why this happens. And this is so important for all of the world to understand, especially the United States of America. Our very way of life has been elevated by space capabilities to the point now where we are dependent on space in a way that most Americans don't understand. The way we communicate, we talk about DISH network, direct TV, X, radio. Internet broadband from space. Think about my home state of Oklahoma. A lot of rural folks there. If there's no internet broadband from space, there is no internet for them. When you think about not just how we communicate, how we navigate with GPS, how we produce food. I talked about

how we're increasing crop yields right now for certain parts of the United States, eventually all over the world. How we do, how we get energy. I mean, the way we produce energy is, is transformed in, by the way, in a way that is good for the environment. We are detecting leaks of methane and other things during the production of energy that we can then very quickly work to mitigate. The way we do disaster relief, and of course, national security, the way we predict weather. When I was in Oklahoma, every year I had constituents dying in tornadoes.

We're moving to a day where we can have zero deaths from tornadoes. That is on the agenda. But the way we do weather prediction, the way we do client. science, the way we understand the changing climate, all of these things are dependent on space. Now, here's what's important to note. Every banking transaction in this country is dependent on a timing signal from GPS. Every banking transaction in this country is dependent on a timing signal from GPS. So if there is, if there's no timing signal from GPS, guess what? There's no banking. In other words, there's no milk in your grocery store. That is an existential threat to the United

States of America, to the point where China has declared space, the American Achilles, heal, and they're moving out to deny us the use of space if and when they want to. They've also recognized that that timing signal is necessary for the regulation of flows of electricity on the power grid and the regulation of flows of data on the terrestrial wireless networks. We are absolutely dependent on space for our very way of life, and it absolutely must be protected. So I'm a big advocate for it, but I will also tell you that's not what NASA does, and I'm

committed to making sure NASA stays separate. from the Department of Defense. Jim Bridenstein is the NASA administrator, and I want to thank you very much for taking time to be with us today. I know you're pretty busy, and good luck next week on your press conference. Absolutely. Thank you so much. For the rest of the hour, let's head out to the woods. There aren't that many stands of old growth forests left in North America,

and unfortunately, the resources to protect and preserve those forests are limited. So how do you prioritize which of those islands of biodiversity to preserve? Well, until now, a standard way to identify the best patches of forest was to look at the size of the trees, right? Certainly makes sense. But new work published this week in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment proposes a new way. Tilt your head down and look at the lichens. Troy McMullen is a research scientist in lichenology at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Ira. Thanks for having me on. Just tell us quickly what a lichen is. A lichen is actually a fungus that has learned a farm. It's a standard fungus that's transformed somewhat to form a greenhouse where it's growing algae, and the algae is photosynthesizing and producing carbohydrates and sugars to feed the fungus. And what can the lichen tell us when you look at it about the health or diversity of the forest? Well, lichens have a large gradient of sensitivities to disturbance. So there's ones that will actually prefer to live in a city,

and there's a whole gradient to those that will only really live in old growth forests that have been undisturbed for a long period of time. So the ones that we're proposing to use here are the ones that grow in these really old forests. And so you look down at the lichen, and what do you actually look for? What do you see that tells you? Well, you're looking for the species that would be indicators of these old stands. Or do you mean what do you see when you see a lichen? Yeah, when you see a little, yeah.

Yeah, so lichens come in all shapes and sizes. They are a lot like a coral reef in that there are many different colors. There are a lot of really spectacular shapes and sizes. And once you get an eye for them, you know, they tend to get overlooked because a lot of them are smaller. Not always, but like old man's beer, the big stringy, bright green stuff you see in the West Coast. and the reindeer lichens are growing on the ground, the big spiky things that those are the ones that grow in high abundance that people do notice.

I'm Ira Flater. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you just joined us, talking with Troy McMullen. So if you see lichens, does that tell you that the place is then healthy, if you see the lichens growing there? Well, healthy is a subjective term. A forest when it's young, just has the species that live in, young forests. But what we can use Lykins for us to tell us that some stands have not been disturbed

for a long period of time, and that's not reflected in the age of the trees. It's reflected in how long that site has been forested. So the trees might only be a few hundred years old. And by every definition that we have for old growth forest, that would fit them. But the diversity that's in those stands, that might have accumulated over hundreds or thousands of years. And that wouldn't be, you know, looking at the trees only as only a proxy for the species that would be there. Some stands have considerably more of this unique biodiversity than other states. This sounds harder than just looking at a patch of forest and saying, hey, the trees here look pretty big, pretty healthy.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, a good analogy is looking at a car. You can have two Ford AF-150s sitting beside each other that look the exact same. But until you open the hood and climb inside, you don't really know which one would have the better features. So we're proposing you get in there and have a look at what species are in there that are really important to, if you need to, this is to give them a conservation value. And so we can identify the forests that we should be targeting more for preservation. If I want to go out lichen hunting or, you know, just do lichen touring, if I'm going to put up that, how do I tell a lichen

from a moss, from a fungus, what do I look for? Oh, that's a good question. So lichens are generally brighter in color, but if you really want to get into the fine details, you add water. When lichens are dry, they're hard, and when you add water, they become soft. But if you add water to a moss or even a fungus, there are fungi that are wet, there's fungi that are dry, but when you add water, they stay the same. So lichens really have an extreme change, and that's one easy way of knowing you've got a lichen. You're lichen, you're lichen. Sorry, bad jokes all the time. I always appreciate them, though. Good. I found it sold me.

So you see a lichen on a big slab of rock. Is it an old? I mean, what do you think is the oldest lichen in the world? Oh, they've been aged at thousands of years. Really? Likens are really slow growing. So there are some that will grow right into the substrate. They'll almost become part of the tree or the rock. And those ones grow extremely slowly, like on average, less than a millimeter a year.

So you're looking at some patches that are sometimes a foot in diameter. You know, that's been there a really long time. Wow. Are city slickers, we New Yorkers, we out of look and looking for lichen? Well, there's a few species that actually will like that kind of condition in New York City. So there are species in New York City, but not many of them, and they're generally very small. And that's one of the reasons that lichens are an overlooked and understudied group, because you tend to have to get out of the city and into more undisturbed areas to really see. the spectacular ones.

I guess, and you can go online and find pictures and help in studying the Lichens, finding them. Oh, yeah, yeah, more and more, there's field guides to the Likens. Okay. You can answer the focus. We're just about done. Thank you very much for taking time to be with us. You're welcome. Tremnickmullen Research Scientist in Lichenology, where Lichenol, yeah, do it yourself,

at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario. direction. In last week's program, I mistakenly referred to Republican Oklahoma House Representative Frank Lucas as Frank Lewis. It's Frank Lucas. I regret the error, Mr. Lucas, and I publicly invite you to come on the show and talk about science. Charles Breckwith is our director, our senior producer, Christopher Taliatta. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, Katie Feather. We had technical and engineering help today from Sarah Fishman, Kevin Wolfe, and Rich Kim. We're active all week on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all the social social media. I have a smart speaker you can catch up and follow Science Friday. So like every

day now is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato in New York.