Talking Climate The Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy

For this episode we talk with Dr. Marie Jackson a Research Professor in the Geology & Geophysics department here at the University of Utah. Dr. Jackson’s work is centered in mineralogy, pyroclastic volcanism, and material science, but she applies her work to the realms of engineering, archeology, and more. She’s done a lot of pioneering work on understanding ancient Roman concrete, their composition, structure and how they age over time. Working to make a modern proxy of the concrete has ...

Zoe Exelbert studies birds at the Great Salt Lake. Specifically, she’s interested in how climate change and shifting weather patterns are affecting bird migrations and in turn, how this is impacting the overall ecosystem of Great Salt Lake. Exelbert is a Data Science and environmental studies undergraduate student here at the U. She says understanding the ways these migratory birds are changing their behaviors could be indicative of how we as human are also changing -- and may continue ...

The new Climate of Hope exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah offers museum visitors a more localized and solutions-oriented framing of climate change than other exhibits have done in past years. In this episode, exhibit developer Lisa Thompson and Lynne Zummo, the curator of Learning Sciences at NHMU, take us through the interactive exhibit where they are gathering important data that may improve communication techniques and strategies in years to come.wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/1...

For this episode we talk with Dr. Alexandra Ponette-Gonzalez, an Associate Professor in the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning and Curator of Urban ecology at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Ponette-Gonzalez’s work focuses primarily on urban ecology. She studies forests and trees and how they interact with the atmosphere and urban environments. She’s done a lot of cutting edge research on things like urban ecology, urban black carbon, and what happens to smoke and du...

The Wilkes Center held its second annual Climate Solutions Hackathon on January 26th. This was not a coding “hackathon” but a competition to find innovative solutions to the daunting challenges of climate change-driven wildfires. U students were asked to form teams, choose one of five themes to focus their solution, and accomplish this in 24 hours. Ultimately, the Wilkes Center received a total of 17 submissions, with 3 teams winning the top prizes. In this episode I share m...

Listeners to the podcast are very likely familiar with the concept of carbon offsetting or carbon credits. This is the idea that a company that pollutes in the course of its business practice can purchase carbon credits, often in the form of supporting tree planting somewhere in the world, with a promise that doing this will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to “offset” or balance-out the company’s carbon pollution. This has become a billion-dollar global market.But in r...