One librarian told us she has to bring a hat and gloves to work in the summer. The Possibly team breaks down the science behind freezing cold libraries.

This episode is a rerun. It originally aired on October 8th, 2024.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

Today we have a question from my friend Jen Kennedy. She’s a librarian at one of Brown University’s libraries, known casually as “The Rock.” And Jen has been struggling with a confusing problem ever since she started working there-

Jen Kennedy: It’s freezing in the Rock. All the time, but especially in the summer when it’s hot outside. I have extra socks, I have gloves to wear in July and August, and sometimes I even wear a hat. We all want to know, why is it so cold?

Megan Hall: So we turned to Nat Hardy and Will Malloy from our Possibly Team to look into this.

Nat Hardy: Hi, Megan!

Will Malloy: Hello!

Megan Hall: Okay so what’s going on here? Why would a library be colder in the summer when it’s hot outside? That seems like a waste of energy right?

Nat Hardy: It’s a great question, and Jen is not alone on this! The internet is filled with people complaining that their local library is too cold in the summer.

Will Malloy: And the answer is a little counterintuitive. It all has to do with humidity and energy efficiency!

Megan Hall: Are you about to tell me that blasting the AC is actually an energy efficient solution?

Nat Hardy: Believe it or not… yes! Heating and cooling libraries is tricky because the humidity inside really matters.

Will Malloy: Books need to be kept in pretty dry conditions, or else water in the air can damage them.

Nat Hardy: The same thing is true for anywhere that holds sensitive objects, like art museums, or science laboratories.

Will Malloy: To understand how these buildings manage that humidity, we talked to someone who thinks about heating and cooling buildings efficiently, every single day.

Dave Larson: Hi, I’m Dave Larson. I’m the energy engineer in the Office of Sustainability and Resiliency at Brown University.

Nat Hardy: To understand this problem, let’s go back to some of the stuff you probably learned in high school about how humidity works.

Will Malloy: You may remember that the hotter air is, the more water it can hold.

Dave Larson: So if it’s 100 degrees out, you can put quite a bit of moisture in that air, and it’ll be fine. Problem is, if you cool that air down, as the temperature drops, its ability to hold that water goes down.

Megan Hall: So the space to hold water is shrinking, but the water isn’t going away?

Will Malloy: Yeah exactly.

Megan Hall: And what happens if the air can’t hold any more of that water?

Will Malloy: It has to go somewhere! So you get precipitation!

Dave Larson: So it’s going to rain, or you’re going to have fog or snow or something like that.

Nat Hardy: Okay, so now picture this, libraries, like all buildings, have ventilation, which means air from outside gets brought into the building.

Will Malloy: And on a humid summer day, that air from the outside brings a ton of water into the building – way more than is safe for the books.

Nat Hardy: So to deal with this, libraries need to remove that moisture from the air.

Dave Larson: So the best way to do that is really to get the air so cold, that the moisture precipitates out of it.

Will Malloy: To do this they use a big system that’s basically an industrial air conditioner.

Nat Hardy: It takes in the humid air from outside and makes it really cold.

Will Malloy: So cold that the air runs out of room to hold water, and the water condenses into a liquid.

Nat Hardy: Have you ever seen a drip of water coming out of your air conditioner? That’s the condensation coming out of the air!

Megan Hall: Cool! So they’ve pulled that humidity out of the air – and now it’s safe for the books?

Nat Hardy: Yeah! Now they have much drier air, but it’s really cold.

Dave Larson: The temperature might be 52, 54 degrees, because you’re trying to wring out the moisture.

Will Malloy: Which is why Jen has to wear gloves in July. The hotter and more humid the summer air is, the colder they have to make it to dry it out.

Nat Hardy: In theory, you could heat the air back up, now that the moisture is gone. And some buildings that want to be really precise about their temperature might do that.

Will Malloy: But that’s expensive, and not very efficient. Think about how high your utility bill would be if you ran your AC and your heater at the same time!

Nat Hardy: So if you go to a library or an art museum in the summer, especially on a humid day… you might want to bring a sweater.

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks Nat and Will.

For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to askpossibly.org You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on social media at “ask possibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Ocean State Media, and WBRU.

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More than 9 million students had school disrupted by climate change last year. Researchers at Brown University have launched the SustainableED initiative to study what rising temperatures will mean for our education system.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

Last year, the Annenberg Institute at Brown University launched a research initiative looking at how the US’s education system is intertwined with climate change. The initiative is called SustainableED

Nat Hardy and Will Malloy from our Possibly Team are here to tell us more.

Nat Hardy: Hi, Megan!

Will Malloy: Hello!

Megan Hall: So you spoke with the director of this new initiative?

Nat Hardy: Yeah, that’s right, Matt Kraft – he’s an education policy researcher. But he told me that a few years ago he changed his focus completely.

Matt Kraft: I can tell you the exact moment. I was putting my then-second-grade son to bed one night. And that night, as he was falling asleep in the kind of twilight moment, he turned and said, “Dad. Global warming is bad. Well, what are we gonna do?” And it rocked me.

Nat Hardy: After that question, Matt felt a real sense of responsibility to do something. So he looked for the intersection between the work he was already doing, and climate change.

Will Malloy: After a couple years, his quest led to the launch of SustainableED, a research initiative at Brown looking at how climate change and education are linked.

Megan Hall: What are they doing?

Nat Hardy: Basically, they’re looking into two main topics–how climate change is affecting our schools, and the opposite, how our schools might affect climate change.

Will Malloy: Let’s start with the way climate change affects schools.

Matt Kraft: The reality is that schools are a cornerstone social institution in our society,

Nat Hardy: Even if you don’t have kids, schools are an important part of how American communities function!

Will Malloy: Like Megan, where do you go to vote?

Megan Hall: I go to a school.

Nat Hardy: And if there was an emergency and you had to evacuate your home, you might end up at a school gymnasium.

Will Malloy: Schools are a key part of our infrastructure. And so it’s especially important that they are prepared for climate change.

Matt Kraft: So one out of every four US public schools is located in a census tract, a small area, that has been designated at very high risk for at least one environmental hazard.

Will Malloy: Matt and his team recently published a tool that lets people look up their local school, and see the risk levels for different environmental hazards.

Nat Hardy: Schools are already being affected by these risks. Insurance on school buildings is getting more expensive. School districts that didn’t used to need air conditioning, are starting to need it. And during heatwaves some playgrounds are too hot for students to play on.

Will Malloy: And climate risks are keeping kids out of school too.

Matt Kraft:In the most recent academic year, over 9 million students had school disrupted or closed due to climate pressures.

Nat Hardy: So Matt and his team say that education policy needs to respond. Education doesn’t work if the schools aren’t open.

Will Malloy: Then there’s the other side of this equation – the fact that the education system could be a key way to respond to climate change.

Megan Hall: Like schools cutting down on their carbon pollution?

Nat Hardy: Yeah, reducing the greenhouse gases from schools is definitely part of it. But it also means thinking about how schools teach students about climate change.

Matt Kraft: How do we help them have a core foundation in climate science to understand the experiences that they’re having in their lives?

Will Malloy: The kind of education students get will shape how they respond to climate change as an adult– maybe they won’t fall for climate misinformation, or they’ll find a job addressing the climate crisis.

Nat Hardy: They’re also hoping to research how extreme weather affects students’ success at school. There’s a lot of things to look into.

Megan Hall: What do they hope to accomplish?

Will Malloy: Well, SustainableED is just getting off the ground, so it’s too early to know what kind of an impact their work will have. But I think this all comes back to that question Matt’s son asked him about climate change.

Matt Kraft: I think part of my response to him has been not what I say, but what I do. I have a ton more to learn. But I’m still motivated by trying to find the answer to that original question.

Nat Hardy: I think a lot of people feel a responsibility to do something about climate change, but they’re not quite sure what to do.

Will Malloy: This project is a good example of the fact that you probably already have the skills you need to make a difference; you just have to find your way to apply them.

Megan Hall: Got it. Thanks, Nat and Will!

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If you have an electric car, and you want to try to reduce the greenhouse gases that are created in order to power that car, when should you charge it?

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

Today we’ve got a question from our show’s founder Stephen Porder. Stephen and his family have an electric car, and he wants to try to reduce the greenhouse gases that come from charging that car.  So he wants to know, when should he charge it?

We had Nat Hardy and Will Malloy from our Possibly Team look into this.

Nat Hardy: Hi, Megan!

Will Malloy: Hey!

Megan Hall: So actually I’ve got an electric car too, and I’ve been wondering the same thing!

Nat Hardy: Yeah it’s a good question! But first, it’s important to say that driving a fully electric car will always cut down on emissions compared with a gas car.

Will Malloy: But how much your emissions are reduced comes down to where you live, and the time of day you’re charging your car.

Megan Hall: Why does the time of day affect emissions of the electricity we use?

Nat Hardy: Right. So, it’s easy to think of electricity as a consistent source of power. You plug in your car, or run your clothes dryer, and it just works.

Will Malloy:  But the truth is, the electric grid is a mix of lots of different energy sources, and the amount of electricity from these sources is constantly changing – throughout the seasons, and by the second!

Nat Hardy: And where your electricity comes from makes a big difference on your emissions! If your car gets charged with electricity entirely from renewable sources like wind and solar power, there are no greenhouse emissions from powering your car!

Megan Hall: But if that electricity came from a fossil fuel source?

Will Malloy: Then there are emissions from creating that electricity – even though the total emissions will still be lower than if you drove a gas car!

Megan Hall: Okay got it. But how can I figure out where my electricity comes from?

Will Malloy: Well lucky for us, there’s someone you can ask!

Nat Hardy: Different parts of the country have their own electric grids, and each grid is managed by an organization called an Independent System Operator, or ISO for short.

Will Malloy: So to figure out where our electricity is coming from here in Rhode Island, we called up ISO New England. Here’s Matt Kakley, a spokesperson for the ISO.

Matt Kakley: Right now, we’re seeing it as about half natural gas, about a third or so nuclear, and then, you know, renewables and imported electricity from neighboring regions. You know, in large part Canadian hydro power.

Nat Hardy: Most of the energy sources Matt mentioned, generate electricity consistently throughout the day. But the exception is New England’s solar panels, which generate power during the middle of the day. So midday is a great time to charge your car in New England.

Megan Hall: But what if you live somewhere else?

Will Malloy: Well luckily you don’t need to call up your local ISO to ask, most ISOs have websites that show you a live feed of where your electricity comes from.

Nat Hardy: And in some parts of the country, things will look different. If you live somewhere that has more wind turbines, like the midwest, they tend to make more energy at night.

Megan Hall: So, charge in the day if your region uses more solar, charge at night, if there’s more wind power?

Nat Hardy: Yeah!  But there’s one more thing to consider, and it’s probably the most important thing – the demand for electricity.

Will Malloy: When people use more electricity than normal, our electric grid has to turn to extra sources of energy that can quickly be turned on or off. And those sources are usually fossil fuel plants.

Megan Hall: Which means they’re creating extra greenhouse gas emissions?

Will Malloy: Exactly.

Megan Hall: So, when are these spikes in demand?

Nat Hardy: Matt says-

Matt Kakley: Those fossil fuel units that don’t operate very often are operating on the hottest and coldest days of the year, and they’re doing so during the peak hours of those days.

Megan Hall: When do these peak hours usually happen?

Nat Hardy: It depends on the season. In the winter, electricity demand peaks in the morning before work, and in the evening after work.

Will Malloy: But in the summer electricity use peaks when everyone’s using their ACs, around 5 to 6 pm.

Megan Hall: Okay. That’s a lot of information to juggle. Can you just make it a little easier for me?

Nat Hardy: Sure. No matter where you are in the country, the best thing you can do is to charge your car when people are less likely to be using electricity. During the middle of the day, or at night.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Nat and Will!

That’s it for today.

You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.

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If you’ve ever spent time in a library or art museum on a hot summer day, you might have felt way colder than you expected. On this episode of Possibly we break down the science of why libraries get so cold in the summer.

Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.

Today we have a question from my friend Jen Kennedy. She’s a librarian at one of Brown University’s libraries, known casually as “The Rock.” And Jen has been struggling with a confusing problem ever since she started working there-

Jen Kennedy: It’s freezing in the Rock, especially in the summer when it’s hot outside. I have extra socks, I have gloves, sometimes I even wear a hat. We all want to know, why is it so cold?

So we turned to Nat Hardy and Will Malloy from our Possibly Team to look into this.

Nat Hardy: Hi, Megan!

Will Malloy: Hello!

Megan Hall: Okay so what’s going on here? Why would a library be colder in the summer when it’s hot outside? That seems like a waste of energy, right?

Nat Hardy: It’s a great question, and Jen is not alone on this! The internet is filled with people complaining that their local library is too cold in the summer.

Will Malloy: And the answer is a little counterintuitive! It all has to do with humidity and energy efficiency!

Megan Hall: Are you about to tell me that blasting the AC is actually an energy-efficient solution?

Nat Hardy: Believe it or not, yes! One thing that makes heating and cooling libraries tricky is that the humidity of these spaces really matter.

Will Malloy: Books need to be kept in pretty dry conditions, or else water in the air can damage them.

Nat Hardy: The same thing is true for anywhere that holds sensitive objects, like art museums, or science laboratories.

Will Malloy: To understand how these buildings manage that humidity, we talked to someone who thinks about heating and cooling buildings efficiently, every single day.

Dave Larson: Hi, I’m Dave Larson. I’m the energy engineer in the Office of Sustainability and Resiliency at Brown University.

Nat Hardy: To understand this problem, let’s go back to some of the stuff you probably learned in high school about how humidity works.

Will Malloy: You may remember that the hotter air is, the more water it can hold.

Dave Larson: If it’s 100 degrees out, you can put quite a bit of moisture in that air, and it’ll be fine. Problem is, if you cool that air down,  as the temperature drops, its ability to hold that water goes down.

Megan Hall: So the space to hold water is shrinking, but the water isn’t going away?

Will Malloy: Exactly.

Megan Hall: And what happens if the air can’t hold any more of that water?

Will Malloy: It has to go somewhere! So that’s when you get precipitation!

Dave Larson: So it’s going to rain, or you’re going to have fog or snow or something like that.

Nat Hardy: Okay, so now picture this, libraries, like all buildings, have ventilation, which means air from outside gets brought into the building.

Will Malloy: And on a humid summer day, that air from the outside brings a ton of water into the building – way more than is safe for the books.

Nat Hardy: So to deal with this, libraries need to remove that moisture from the air.

Dave Larson: The best way to do that is really to get the air so cold, that the moisture precipitates out of it.

Will Malloy: To do this they use a big system that’s basically an industrial air conditioner.

Nat Hardy: It takes in the humid air from outside and makes it really cold.

Will Malloy: So cold that the air runs out of room to hold water, and the water condenses into a liquid.

Nat Hardy: Have you ever seen a drip of water coming out of your air conditioner? That’s the condensation coming out of the air!

Megan Hall: Cool! So they’ve pulled that humidity out of the air, and now it’s safe for the books?

Nat Hardy: Yeah! Now they have much drier air, but it’s really cold.

Dave Larson: The temperature might be 52, 54 degrees, because you’re trying to wring out the moisture.

Will Malloy: Which is why Jen has to wear gloves in July. The hotter and more humid the summer air is, the colder they have to make it to dry it out.

Nat Hardy: In theory, you could heat the air back up, now that the moisture is gone. And some buildings that want to be really precise about their temperature might do that.

Will Malloy: But that’s expensive, and not very efficient. Think about how high your utility bill would be if you ran your AC and your heater at the same time!

Nat Hardy: So if you go to a library or an art museum in the summer, especially on a humid day, you might want to bring a sweater.

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks Nat and Will

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at askpossibly.org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or X at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and The Public’s Radio.

The post Why is it so cold in libraries? appeared first on TPR: The Public’s Radio.

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Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall. 

Lead paint and leaded gasoline haven’t been used in American homes or cars for nearly 30 years. But researchers say that these sources of lead are still an environmental hazard. But why? 

We had Nat Hardy and Will Malloy from our Possibly Team look into this question. 

Nat Hardy: Hi, Megan! 

Will Malloy: Hello! 

Megan Hall: So, why are we still worried about lead?

Nat Hardy: Well, lead used to be in a lot of products. It was used to make paint more durable, and in gasoline to help engines run smoother.

Will Malloy: But it’s also really dangerous. If it gets into your body, it can harm brain development, especially in young children.

Nat Hardy: Because of the health effects of lead, the federal government started phasing it out in the 70s. 

Megan Hall: Okay, but that was decades ago. Problem solved, right?

Will Malloy: Not quite! It’s still a problem, We talked to Gabe Filippelli, a professor of earth sciences at Indiana University, to figure out why.  

Gabe Filippelli: Lead is one of these elements– it is an element, meaning, unless alchemy works at some point, we’re stuck with it.”

Nat Hardy: Once it’s been introduced into the environment, lead doesn’t break down or wash away. So even though we’re not adding any new lead into our environments today, it’s not going away either. 

Will Malloy: These leftover sources of lead in the environment are called “legacy sources,” and they’re still a risk for people’s health today. 

Megan Hall: Well that doesn’t sound good! Do we know where to find these legacy sources?

Nat Hardy: We do! The major legacy sources of lead are in soil and dust near where the lead was originally used.

Will Malloy: For example, when the paint on old houses peels or cracks, the soil around the house can be contaminated. Then that soil can get blown into the air as dust. 

Nat Hardy: The exhaust from cars with leaded gas also contaminated the soil. Gabe still sees this when he tests for lead.

Gabe Filippelli: You will see a very definitive peak in soil lead near the roadway and a decline away from the roadway.”

Megan Hall: I didn’t realize lead could be in the soil. When I’ve heard people talking about lead these days, they’re mostly just talking about lead water pipes. 

Nat Hardy: And they’re right about that too!  Almost 10 million water pipes in the U.S. are made of lead. 

Will Malloy: And when water quality is mismanaged, these pipes can corrode, allowing lead to enter drinking water. 

Nat Hardy: But recently, the  EPA announced a plan to replace every lead service line in the country over the next ten years.  

Will Malloy: So we’re making great progress getting lead out of drinking water. But, research has shown that contaminated soil and dust can cause lead exposure just as much as pipes can

Nat Hardy: Especially for toddlers who spend a lot of time playing on the ground, and putting things in their mouths…

Megan Hall: So what can we do about this lead in the soil?

Will Malloy: Nationally, The EPA plans to update the country’s regulations around lead in soil. A change like this could encourage soil cleanup projects. 

Nat Hardy: And at home, there are affordable options to keep your kids safe. 

Megan Hall: Like what? 

Will Malloy: You can get your home or yard tested for lead…

Nat Hardy: And If you find elevated levels, you can put down a thick layer of mulch to cover up contaminated dirt. 

Megan Hall: I’m starting to feel overwhelmed…

Will Malloy: No, it’s okay! It’s not that bad. There’s a ton of reasons to be optimistic about cleaning up lead. 

Nat Hardy: Children born in the last decade already have way lower lead levels than people born in the 70s. 

Will Malloy: And Gabe says that cleaning up lead is something everyone can get behind.

Gabe Filippelli: It’s a little bit different than climate change, where we have so many embedded processes that use fossil fuels to emit carbon dioxide. Lead no longer has any embedded interest. Now we just need to clean it up.”

Megan Hall: Got it. Thanks, Nat and Will!

That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to thepublicsradio.org/possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. 

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook or X at  “askpossibly”

Possibly is a co-production of The Public’s Radio, Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, and Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative.

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