Climate Cast

Minnesota Public Radio

4.7 (83)
EARTH SCIENCES
UPDATED BIWEEKLY

MPR News meteorologist Paul Huttner with the latest research on our changing climate.

APR 17

Writer turned citizen scientist offers tips on living lightly to reduce your carbon footprint

Writer Tamara Dean knew she wanted to live lightly on the planet. Her search to live a productive life while lowering her carbon footprint led her to the Driftless Area of Wisconsin — also known as Bluff Country and the Paleozoic Plateau — with dreams of become a homesteader. Dean shares her experience in her new memoir “Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless.” She spoke to MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner for Climate Cast. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and length. What prompted you to write this book? I had been spending most of my days in an office, like a lot of people in front of computers, and my partner, David, and I decided we wanted to live healthier lifestyles. We also wanted to live out our environmental principles. We didn't know where exactly we wanted to start over, but when we drove around the Driftless Area, which is mostly in the southwestern corner of Wisconsin, we recognized that this was a place where we wanted to live. You talk about being a citizen scientist in your book. What does that mean to you? A citizen scientist is someone who volunteers to study nature. In places like Wisconsin, where the Department of Natural Resources really doesn't have the funding and staffing to cover every species in the state, a citizen scientists can fill that gap and provide information to help professional scientists do their work. It’s not only a rewarding opportunity for people, but it’s also helpful for the state. We were citizen water monitors for the little river behind our house, and I became interested in surveys for fresh water mussels. They are some of the most endangered creatures in North America, but citizen scientists are studying where they’re still thriving and that helps the people at the DNR know where to focus their efforts in helping their habitat. What do you think about the progress we’ve made on climate solutions so far? I think we have an over-estimation of our potential for solving the climate crisis with technology. It’s definitely a necessary component of addressing the climate situation, but we also need to look at reducing our own footprints. There are ways we can do that pretty simply, whether it be reducing our travel, reducing our birth rate, or examining our diets. It doesn’t have to be a hardship. It can be something easy and satisfying. You don’t have to take it all on either. I think it can be a joy as well. What message do you have for anyone who wants to bring their life more in tune with our planet and our climate? I would recommend indulging your curiosity. Find what has energy for you — whether it’s a particular type of landscape or a particular species — and immerse yourself in learning about that. I often think it’s a shame that we think we have to go to Mars to learn something new, because all around us there are mysteries to pursue. I hope that’s what my book leaves readers with. The idea that you can walk out your door and be curious and open-minded. And find a mystery that will ignite your own curiosity and passion, and pursue that to create your own story out of it. To hear the conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

4 min
APR 7

It’s not your imagination, Minnesota is experiencing a longer allergy season

There’s a warming trend in cities across American, and that’s extending allergy season for millions of Americans. A new study by Climate Central found five cities in Minnesota have increased their pollen season — in some cases by nearly a month. The Twin Cities allergy season has expanded by 27 days, Duluth is seeing an average of 24 extra days of allergy season, while Mankato is experiencing 11 and Rochester is averaging 10 extra days, said Kristoffer Tigue, a reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune. “It’s not just the extended pollen season that the studies have have shown are are making allergies worse for people,” said Tigue. “The plants themselves are growing larger, and that’s because there’s more carbon dioxide in the air. There’s even research that suggests that the pollen itself is becoming more allergenic.” To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast

4 min
APR 2

Minnesota's volatile winter could be the new normal

Minnesota experienced a seasonably cold but relatively snowless winter. Now, the spring months are making up for lost time by dumping sloppy snowstorms. State climatologist Pete Boulay said what Minnesota is seeing is over time is a different start and end times for the seasons. “Winter is shifting around a bit,” said Boulay. “We’re not seeing as big of snow storms in November like we used to, but April is becoming a shining moment of winter.” Boulay said winters have also lost their cold edge. Minnesota isn’t dipping into subzero temperatures like it used to, and each season is getting hard to predict. “I couldn’t even tell you what next winter is going to be like right now, because anything could happen.” To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

5 min
MAR 27

New book traces 75-year history of U.S. military climate research

By creating the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE) in 1949, the U.S. military became one of the earliest climate research groups on the planet. The group’s mission was to study the science and engineering of the warming Arctic and the national security implications that could follow. University of Vermont professor and geoscientist Paul Bierman wrote about this in his book, “When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future.”He spoke to MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner for Climate Cast. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and length. How and when did the U.S. military become interested with climate changes in the Arctic? They actually got interested during World War II, when they occupied parts of Greenland in part to rescue bomber and fighter pilots who'd landed on the ice and realized how ill-equipped they were to operate in frozen environments. They really stepped it up, though, in the early to mid-50s, fighting the Cold War in the Arctic. From the military’s point of view, climate change is important in variety of ways. It’s certainly important in the Arctic, where the very stability of the ground they’re working on is questionable, but it’s also very important in the sense that when you melt ice sheets, you raise sea level. That has huge implications for human migration around the world, and for things as simple as five of the U.S. aircraft carriers that are berthed in Virginia — which is a sea-level-rise hot spot and will find their docking facilities under water in the next couple decades. What does the military mean by the phrase ‘climate resilience is force resilience’? They mean that in the sense of trying to reduce the risks to active military, reduce the number of global conflicts that will come from climate change, and be prepared for the eventualities of bigger storms, higher temperatures — all those sorts of things that affect maneuverability on the ground to the safety of soldiers. So in one way, moving toward renewable energy takes them away from dependence on fossil fuels and the need to transport those fossil fuels. Another idea that jumped out at me in your book is that for the military, climate change is ‘too costly to ignore.’ There are estimates that suggest if we let sea level rise uncontrollably, which would be from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, it could cost the global economy trillions of dollars in losses because of the flooding that’s going to occur around every coastline. So the military is also looking, of course, at the prices of fossil fuels. We're at a point now where solar and wind are competitive, if not cheaper, than typical fossil fuel energy sources. The U.S. Army drilled the first deep ice core in Greenland. How old was it, and what did they find? The military drilled the ice core through almost a mile of ice, and then they drilled through about 12 feet of frozen soil. The ice itself goes back about 100,000 years, but the frozen soil takes us back millions. What’s most important about what they found in that frozen soil is that the upper portion of it — dated to about 400,000 years ago — is full of plant fossils and fossils of insects. Those are important because they are very strong evidence that the ice sheet there had to vanish, and when it vanished, a mile of ice disappeared. If we don’t control climate change and global warming, at this point, we’re going to repeat the past, and a mile of ice is going to melt again. To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

5 min
MAR 14

Minnesota ‘red-tape experiment’ streamlines permitting process to achieve carbon-free grid

Wind and solar are among the cheapest energy sources available today, but even when clean-energy projects are ready to go, a cumbersome permit process is slowing down their implementation. Allison Prang wrote a New York Times article about a Minnesota experiment to cut the red tape that is impeding the state’s ability to achieve its clean-energy goals. She spoke to MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner about her reporting. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Minnesota has a goal of carbon-free on the electric grid by 2040. How does this new law help speed up that process? When I talked to Governor Walz, he said it was fair to say that without doing some reform for the state’s permitting process, it would be tough for Minnesota to hit that goal. I talked to one lawyer who works with companies that are working on projects, getting them approved in the state. He said it’s taken some as long as 13 months, and people are hoping that the permanent reform law could shave off the typical timeline by several months. If it does what they want, it could make it much quicker for projects to come online. Is this just in Minnesota, or is this a national problem, too? Permitting reform is a very unsexy and yet super crucial topic that the whole country is grappling with. In Washington, members of Congress have tried to tackle the issue, because it does have bipartisan support. But it’s not just a national issue; there are things states can do to tackle the problem. Like Minnesota, other states have also passed laws trying to make the process easier at home, and sometimes localities are involved. It really depends on where an energy developer is working — what state, what area in the state? That's why it's so complicated. It really, really is situational. What should we be watching for with getting these projects to the grid going forward? The really big thing that’s happening in the backdrop of all of this is that not only are we seeing the country electrify more broadly — and states and localities have these climate goals — but we’re also going to see an increase in power demand like we haven’t seen in decades. So that’s happening at the same time, and part of that is because we’re seeing more data centers come online. We just need more power as a country. A lot of people are watching if the new Congress will be able to get a permitting reform bill over the finish line, what that would look like, and asking would that make permanent renewables easier? It’s going to be really interesting to see if the country can tackle this problem and make it easier, so that we can kind of meet this really crazy moment of this expected increase in demand. To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

4 min
MAR 6

Forget migration. Ducks are choosing to chill in Minnesota all winter long

Nick Halter, a Twin Cities reporter at Axios, noticed a peculiar pattern on his morning walks — hundreds of ducks braving subzero temperatures. Many ducks still fly south for the winter months. But climate data shows Minnesota winters have warmed more than five degrees on average since 1970, creating a more tolerable environment for ducks and other birds. These ducks are deciding there’s no reason to make the potentially dangerous journey south when Minnesota’s warming climate provides a habitable environment, he said. “You don’t get as cold, you don’t have as deep of freezes and you have more open water,” said Halter said. Ducks that do stick around have no problem staying warm, Halter said. Insulation from their feathers combined with the counter-current heat exchange manages the temperature of the blood destined for their feet. And the open water provides an ecosystem that makes the decision to stay easier. “They kind of change their diet in the winter time,” said Halter. “When it’s warm, they’ll eat insects and fish. Then become more vegetarian in the winter time — they’re going to eat roots and seeds — and so the open water does present opportunities for more food, too.” Climate isn’t the only factor that’s making more ducks want to stay put in Minnesota, Halter said. Evolution and natural selection also play a role. ”Birds that stick around here, and then procreate — their offspring are then sort of naturally selected to not also migrate,” Halter said. To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

5 min
FEB 27

Increasing greenhouse gas emissions may put Minnesota climate goals out of reach

It’s a post-pandemic world, and Minnesota’s greenhouse emissions are following the nationwide trend of going up. Based on recent state data from 2020 to 2022, emissions rose 6.4 percent with transportation and agriculture being the biggest contributors. Now, the state is off-track to meet its climate goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. “I think it will be difficult to meet,” said Walker Orenstein, a reporter with The Minnesota Star Tribune. “As the state has pointed out, if we don’t start seeing big drops in sectors that aren’t the electric sector, then it will be troublesome.” MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner talked to Orenstein about his reporting on the biennial greenhouse gas emissions report. To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

5 min
FEB 20

Slowing climate change by ‘putting carbon back where it came from’

A technology that can slow or stop climate change already exists — and has a history of bipartisan support in Washington. But it has a few hoops to jump through before it can make a bigger impact. The method is called carbon capture, which removes carbon from the atmosphere and stores it deep underground. “You can think of this whole process as essentially putting carbon back where it came from,” said Ben Grove, senior manager for carbon storage with the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force. “Geologic storage has been occurring since the 1970s, mostly in the oil and gas industry, but to date, we’ve stored over a billion tons of Co2 in deep geologic formations.” There’s significant storage potential in the U.S. — but challenges in infrastructure and storage permits may stand in the way of progress. “We’re thinking [carbon capture] needs to be scaled up to the gigaton scales,” Grove said. “But this could grow up to a very large industry — like billions of tons [of carbon capture].” To hear the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast.

5 min

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4.7

out of 5

83 Ratings

Climate matters

12/13/2023

Musing by Me

Plus: your broadcast, points to the effects of CC locally with great effect. Negative: your broadcast, fails miserably at pointing fingers at the causes of CC. My quote: “fossil fuels are our destruction”! Neutral: people want/need hope. I grew up knowing our world would end in nuclear winter. Now I “believe” our end is a CO2 summer. I was wrong the first time; let’s keep our fingers crossed! I recommend a podcast called “Drilled”. Because!
Great podcast

07/07/2023

cjtannu

Thanks for the variety of content
My Favorite Climate Podcast

08/06/2022

Caran Quinn

Excellent topics. Impactful, but brief. Always interesting guests who leave an imprint and reinforce what I’m doing to reduce CO2. Thanks for all that you do!
Needs Native voices!

02/13/2017

egdod17

I hope you begin to Center the voices and stories of Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and environmental justice activists more! Very few of these stories are about Native sovereignty; would be great to see more!! NoDAPL, NoKXL, IdleNoMore, 350 Pacific, and so many more... These folks are the rock stars of the movement against climate change; they have been doing the work for centuries that settlers are just coming around to, and they are the communities most impacted by climate change and pollution.