Researcher Emmanuel Oyewole explains to Possibly that offshore wind turbines appear to be providing new ecosystems for Jonah crabs.

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

Here in Rhode Island, we had the first offshore wind farm in the country. And more are going up every day. We know that these turbines give us clean, reliable, renewable energy. But what are they doing to the creatures in the ocean?

We had Nat Hardy from our Possibly team look into it.

Nat Hardy: Hi Megan! Nice to be back!

Megan Hall: Hi! So, when we put these big wind farms in the ocean, how do they affect sea life?

Nat Hardy: So we’re really early in the process of understanding their impact. There have been a number of studies done in Europe so far that show that there are some harms, and also some benefits to wildlife. But we wanted to understand how they’re affecting marine life here in New England.

Emmanuel Oyewole: People really have questions about it. Because they want the yes or no. Like, is it good for us? Is it bad?

Nat Hardy: That’s Emmanuel Oyewole, a PhD student at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. He’s been working with a local research group called the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation. It’s a nonprofit that works with scientists to study the fishing industry.

Megan Hall: What are they trying to find out?

Nat Hardy: Right now they’re looking into how these offshore wind farms impact local fisheries. And Emmanuel is interested in one particular species: Jonah crabs.

Megan Hall: And what are those?

Nat Hardy: Jonah crabs are pretty big crabs, anywhere from 6 to 9 inches across. They’ve got big claws and a brownish-red body.

Megan Hall: And why do we care about them?

Nat Hardy: Here’s Emmanuel’s explanation:

Emmanuel Oyewole: So Jonah crab initially was a bycatch in the lobster fisheries business.

Nat Hardy: That means, people fishing for lobster would find Jonah crabs in their traps by accident, and then toss them back in.

Megan Hall: So, they weren’t very valuable.

Nat Hardy: No, but that’s starting to change. Warming waters caused by climate change are making it harder for lobster populations to survive in New England.

Megan Hall: But Jonah crabs are doing ok?

Nat Hardy: That’s what it seems like! So, people are starting to catch them more on purpose. And lately, they’re being found near the offshore wind turbines.

Megan Hall: Why?

Emmanuel Oyewole: So, the structures of these offshore wind farms on the bottom of the ocean create a sort of ecosystem creating a new habitat for these various ocean creatures.

Nat Hardy: Depending on the design of the wind turbine, their hard surfaces can make great homes for creatures like barnacles that latch onto the turbine. Then you get some crabs hoping to feed off the barnacles, then you get some fish show up trying to feed off the crabs, and so on.

Megan Hall: Cool! So how does Emmanuel study these Jonah crab populations?

Nat Hardy: Well twice a month, he goes out on a fishing boat to the South Fork, and Revolution Wind Farms. He checks on the traps, and takes some crabs back to URI. And when I went to visit him, he led me to a freezer in his lab.

Emmanuel Oyewole: I was gonna show you just a few of my babies. So this is what I’m using for my research. So this is Jonah crab.

Nat Hardy: The freezer is stuffed to the brim with Jonah crabs in ziploc bags. One crab tumbled onto the floor.
Nat Hardy: Did you call these your babies?

Emmanuel Oyewole: Yeah.

Nat Hardy: I love that.

Emmanuel Oyewole: Yeah, because I work with them, so, yeah, my babies. [Laughs]

Megan Hall: What’s he doing with all those crabs in a freezer?

Nat Hardy: So Emmanuel is trying to answer a very specific question about the crabs: are there more Jonah crabs because of these wind turbine ecosystems? Or are there the same number of crabs as before, but they just happen to be clustering around the turbines?

Megan Hall: And crabs in the freezer help answer that?

Nat Hardy: Yes! By taking chemical samples from the crab’s claw and its body, Emmanuel can actually make a good guess about where the crab was at two different points in time. From there, he can figure out if the crabs are just migrating to the turbines to feed, or if these crabs were born and raised on the turbines.

Megan Hall: Woah, that’s pretty cool. What’s he finding?

Nat Hardy: So he’s seeing an increase in the number of crabs around the wind turbines. That much is clear. But Emmanuel hasn’t started the dissections and analysis in earnest yet, so it’s too early to really answer if the crab populations are growing, or just migrating.

Megan Hall: What comes next?

Nat Hardy: Over the next few months, Emmanuel will open up the freezer of crabs, and try to answer people’s questions about how crab populations are changing.

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks Nat.

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at ask possibly dot 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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Lone star ticks are spreading all over the Northeast. What should you know to stay safe?

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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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The Rhode Island General Assembly considered a law this year to charge fossil fuel emitters for the costs of climate change. Possibly spoke with a co-sponsor of the bill about what comes next.

 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. 

This year, the Rhode Island General Assembly considered a type of bill that’s been popping up across the country: it aims to make fossil fuel emitters pay for the impacts of climate change. 

Rhode Island didn’t end up passing the legislation this year, but Nat Hardy from our Possibly Team spoke with one of the bill’s sponsors about what comes next in Rhode Island.

Nat Hardy: Hi, Megan! Thanks for having me.

Megan Hall: So tell us about this bill. 

Nat Hardy: Yeah, it’s called a climate super fund bill. It’s a pretty new idea to address the impacts of climate change. 

Jennifer Boylan: The concept is to make the polluters pay for the damages that they caused.

Nat Hardy: That’s Representative Jennifer Boylan, the lead sponsor in the House, for the Rhode Island Climate Superfund Act of 2026. She’s introduced this bill two years in a row with her colleague, Senator Linda Ujifusa, 

Megan Hall: So what was in the bill?

Nat Hardy: The bill would have made major fossil fuel emitters pay for the cost of responding to climate change in Rhode Island. It would cover projects at both the state and local level.

Megan Hall: Like what?

 Nat Hardy: All sorts of things: repairs after storms caused by climate change, responses to extreme heat, plans to respond to rising waters…There’s a long list. 

Megan Hall: Who would pay these costs? 

Nat Hardy: The bill specifically targets the biggest polluters: companies responsible for more than one billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. So we’re talking companies like Chevron, Exxon Mobil, B.P., Shell. And the companies would be charged proportionally, based on their emissions over the past few decades.

Megan Hall: Interesting! I didn’t realize states could do something like that.

Nat Hardy: Yeah, so this legislation is a new interpretation of an old concept. It’s based on the 1980 federal “Superfund” law, designed to help the government clean up sites contaminated with hazardous waste. 

Jennifer Boylan: And it also forces the parties responsible for that contamination to either perform the cleanup themselves or reimburse the government for any work done by EPA to clean up the site. 

Nat Hardy: So climate superfund bills are trying to do the same thing. If you caused the damage, you pay to fix it. And the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel companies are causing the more powerful storms, heatwaves, and other impacts we’re seeing from climate change. 

Megan Hall:  Has any state successfully passed one of these bills? 

Nat Hardy: Yeah, Vermont was the first state to pass a law like this in 2024 and New York passed one pretty soon after. There are also 11 other states considering these bills.

Megan Hall: Got it. But the Rhode Island bill didn’t pass this year. What happened?

Nat Hardy: So reaction to the bill was split. We saw testimony from residents and environmental groups in favor of the law. 

But we also saw testimony against the law- both from local groups, and from some national groups who represent the interests of oil and gas companies: the American Petroleum Institute and the confusingly named Consumer Energy Alliance. 

Representative Boylan isn’t surprised. 

Jennifer Boylan: I mean, of course these companies aren’t gonna roll over and say, “Okay, you got me. Sure. Where, where do I write the check?” Right? They’re gonna fight it, and that is to be expected.

Nat Hardy: But there was another concern about the bill– like, will it hold up in court?

The two states that have passed climate superfund laws, New York and Vermont, have already been sued, by the Justice Department, and 22 other states. 

Megan Hall: How did those lawsuits affect the Rhode Island bill? 

Nat Hardy: So because of those challenges, the director of Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management, and others, have asked Rhode Island’s legislators to wait for the legal process to play out before they pass a similar law. 

Megan Hall: So where do things go from here? 

Nat Hardy: The lawsuits are making their way through the courts, so it’ll be a while before they’re resolved. But Representative Boylan says the bill will be back next session:

Jennifer Boylan: I’m not going anywhere with this bill. As long as I’m up at the General Assembly as my district sends me back, I will be filing this bill, as long as I think it has some sort of viable path forward, and I do. 

Nat Hardy: So we’ll have to keep an eye on those lawsuits and Rhode Island’s next legislative session to see how things turn out. 

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Nat. 

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the ways your choices affect our planet, at ask possibly dot 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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Regenerative cattle grazing gained momentum as a way to make beef production more climate-friendly. But on the ground, the actual results get complicated.

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.

On Possibly, we talk a lot about how cutting beef out of your diet is one of the easiest ways to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions.

But, we’ve also heard about this thing called regenerative cattle grazing that claims to make eating beef more sustainable. Is that true?

We’ve got Nat Hardy and Leo Nachamie to walk us through the answer.

Nat Hardy: Hey Megan!

Leo Nachamie: Hi!

Megan Hall: Remind me—why is beef such a big climate problem?

Nat Hardy: For one, cows burp out methane, which is a really powerful greenhouse gas.

Leo Nachamie: And because of how much beef we eat, there are a lot of cows on this planet. Their bodies take up more physical space than any other mammal on earth—including humans.

Megan: That’s… a lot of burps.

Nat Hardy Yeah… And if you add in the land and fossil fuels used to grow their food, you get a massive impact on our climate, just from cows.

Leo: Every pound of beef creates roughly the same amount of CO2 as driving a gas-powered car for about 100 miles.

Megan: Yikes. So is there any way to cut down on those emissions?

Leo Nachamie: That’s what some advocates of regenerative grazing have been hoping.

Megan: Okay, so what exactly is regenerative grazing?

Leo Nachamie: The idea is to raise cattle in a way that has a lower impact on the environment.

Megan: And how do you do that?

Nat: One way is to mimic the way wild animals feed on America’s grasslands. Like Bison.

Dan Kane: Think of a pre-colonial bison herd moving across the landscape, right? Huge numbers, they’ll come through, graze really hard for a short period of time, and then migrate on, and they won’t return for the rest of the year.

Leo Nachamie: That’s Dan Kane. He’s a soil scientist at Mad Agriculture, which is a non-profit that helps farmers and ranchers transition to regenerative practices.

Nat Hardy: He says that most traditional cattle operations will let their herd loose onto a big swath of land, and kind of just let them munch away.

Leo Nachamie: Which means the grasses can’t catch a break—they get eaten and trampled over constantly.

Nat Hardy: It’s the opposite of what bison do: eat a lot, but don’t return for a year.

Leo Nachamie: With regenerative grazing, ranchers try to mimic the bison by dividing their land into smaller segments, and moving their herd every day or so.

Megan Hall: And that gives the grass a chance to fully recover and grow back?

Leo Nachamie: Exactly.

Nat Hardy: And here’s the crux of it: Some farmers claim that this approach can actually put more carbon into the soil than it takes out.

Megan: Woah. How would that work?

Nat Hardy: We needed some help figuring that out. So we talked to our show’s founder, professor Stephen Porder. He says:

Stephen Porder: The idea there is that, if the animals graze in a way that promotes a lot of plant growth and the plant growth is healthy and has a lot of roots and is robust, that that might actually start to pull some carbon out of the air and store it in the soil.

Leo Nachamie: Plants capture carbon dioxide from the air. When those plants die, most of that goes back to the atmosphere. But some carbon dioxide gets stuck in the soil.

Nat Hardy: So if we can figure out how to get more of that carbon into the soil, by letting the grass grow back, we could lower the carbon hoofprint of beef.

Megan Hall: Okay, that makes sense! So… climate problem solved?

Leo Nachamie: Unfortunately, not quite.

Nat Hardy: Both Stephen and Dan, the soil scientist, have spent their careers knee-deep in the latest research around regenerative grazing. And both of them say the data is just not there. At least not yet. Here’s Dan:

Dan Kane: We’ve got like a set of papers that say, okay. Hey, this looks promising. But when we then shift over to the small number of experiments, where people really tried to kind of control for all these things and really try and are a nice experimental setup, the evidence just is kind of weak.

Leo Nachamie: Basically, we’re a long way from knowing that changing grazing practices has any effect on soil carbon.

Megan: So what’s the takeaway here?

Leo Nachamie: Regenerative grazing can have all sorts of benefits – it can help slow soil erosion, and support more biodiverse grasslands.

Nat Hardy: But when it comes to the carbon question, we shouldn’t count on it to really help with climate change.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Nat and Leo!

That’s it for today. Special thanks to Cameron Leo, who did the reporting for this episode.

For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go at ask possibly dot 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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This week on Possibly we weigh the different methods of recycling glass: single-stream, multi-stream and bottle bills. Could switching to a different recycling system make more sense for your community?

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.

A few months ago, we did an episode about how the US only recycles about a third of the glass that we use. But there’s actually a lot more to the story.

We had Leo Nachamie and Nat Hardy from our Possibly Team look into it.

Leo Nachamie: Hey Megan!

Nat Hardy: Hello!

Megan Hall: Okay, so refresh my memory… why isn’t glass getting recycled?

Leo Nachamie: Well, there’s two main things to consider -first…what to do with the glass: where to transport it, and what to turn it into. That’s what we talked about last time….

Nat Hardy: But there’s another factor to consider—the quality of the glass: how uniform it is, the cleanliness, and the color.

Megan Hall: Tell me about that!

Leo Nachamie: Let’s follow a glass bottle in the US. Once it’s made at a glass factory, it’s shipped to a store where someone buys it.

Nat Hardy: Then someone brings it home, uses whatever is inside, and then hopefully recycles it.

Leo Nachamie: But that last step, recycling the glass bottle, looks different depending on where you live. And this can impact its value.

Megan Hall: Don’t we all just put our recycling into one bin?

Nat Hardy: That’s one system…

Collin Wilkinson: In the United States, single stream, curbside pickup is the most common. You put all your recyclables in one bin. Somebody with a big truck comes along, picks it all up, takes care of it, sends it off.

Nat Hardy: That’s Collin Wilkinson, an assistant professor of glass science and engineering at Alfred University.

Leo Nachamie: He says there’s also multi-stream recycling. Instead of everything going into one bin, households sort out their recycling by material, and it’s picked up by different trucks.

Megan Hall: But either way, the glass bottle I recycled goes to the same place, right?

Leo Nachamie: It depends. With multi-stream, sometimes glass is brought right to specific processors. Other times glass is brought to recycling plants, like the single stream stuff.

Nat Hardy: At those plants, everything gets sorted into what can and can’t be recycled.

Leo Nachamie: As you might expect, recycling that’s all mixed together needs a lot more sorting.

Collin Wilkinson: So the sorting technology can range everywhere, from incredibly sophisticated machines that is able to use air streams to actually singularly push off a shred of glass into the right bin. This is incredibly useful innovative technology, but it is not widely accessible due to the cost of it.

Nat Hardy: Recycling plants in wealthy areas might be able to justify these very efficient sorting systems. But for others, especially in rural areas, this type of investment might not make sense.

Leo Nachamie: So a lot of recycling plants use a combination of machinery and workers that sort materials by hand, which can be dangerous for the people handling glass.

Megan Hall: So how does all of this affect how often glass gets recycled?

Leo Nachamie: Glass that’s contaminated is worth less money. That means it’s less likely to be recycled.

Nat Hardy: And, when cities and towns throw all of their recycling in one bin, it’s harder to sort out the glass – so it’s more likely to get contaminated.

Megan Hall: I get it! So, should we start sorting our recycling into separate bins?

Nat Hardy: Well, it’s hard to say… single stream is popular for a reason. It makes recycling easy for households, and it cuts down on transportation costs since all the recycling goes into one truck.

Leo Nachamie: So communities really have to weigh the transportation costs of multi-stream versus the sorting and contamination costs of single stream.

Megan Hall: Are there any other options?

Nat Hardy: States can pass bottle bills, which put a small deposit on glass bottles. When consumers return their bottles, they get their money back.

Leo Nachamie: This incentivizes people to sort the glass themselves, and those who don’t want to can still participate in regular systems like single-stream.

Megan Hall: Okay, so there are a few different ways we can tackle glass recycling. What’s the big picture?

Nat Hardy: The solution goes back to those two factors we talked about at the beginning. We have to preserve the quality of glass in a cheap way while making it easier for the glass to get recycled.

Leo Nachamie: That might mean introducing bottle bills or switching to multi-stream. But there’s no one size fits all solution.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Leo and Nat!

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the ways your choices affect our planet, at ask possibly dot 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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In part two of Possibly’s series on the dairy industry, we’re turning our attention to an age-old method used to efficiently store cheese.

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.

This episode, we’re taking a closer look at how we store dairy, from modern refrigeration to cheese caves.

We had Samantha Zhang and Nat Hardy from our Possibly Team look into this.

Samantha Zhang: Hi, Megan!

Nat Hardy: Hello!

Megan Hall: In our last episode, we talked about the environmental impacts of dairy production, but how about storing all that dairy?

Samantha Zhang: Yeah, It doesn’t matter if it’s cheese, butter, or even dry milk, when we have extra dairy we need more cold storage.

Megan Hall: I’m assuming that uses a lot of energy, right?

Nat Hardy: It can, but there’s actually a way to store dairy efficiently— using the earth! At one point in time, there were government-sanctioned cheese caves!

Samantha Zhang: To explain, we’re going to have to start with a little history lesson. It all goes back to a 1949 program when the government decided to buy lots and lots of storable dairy products.

Megan Hall: Why would they do that?

Nat Hardy: At the time, they wanted to protect dairy farmers and keep milk prices stable. So, the government became a very predictable customer.

Samantha Zhang: In the 70s, the program expanded, and the government was buying large quantities of cheese— so much cheese that they had to store it in caves!

Megan Hall: So there are caves somewhere in the United States that are just full of government cheese?

Nat Hardy: Well, the US government doesn’t really do that anymore.

Samantha Zhang: But there are still plenty of private groups that store their cheese in caves….

Nat Hardy: To figure out why, we talked to Doug Hales, a Professor of Operations & Supply Chain Management at the University of Rhode Island.

Samantha Zhang: He says, once you cool down a storage location, you want to minimize the energy you need to keep it cold.…

Dr. Hales: The key to efficient refrigeration, is the insulation of the facilities that are being cooled.

Samantha Zhang: Guess what’s great at maintaining cold temperatures?

Dr. Hales: The earth soil is one of the best insulators out there.

Nat Hardy: Companies like Kraft use spaces like Springfield Underground, an old limestone quarry and cave complex in Missouri, for cheese storage.

Samantha Zhang: And that’s not the only one.

Dr. Hales: Clemson University, they actually had an ice cream and cheese and mushroom growing facility inside caves in the area, for that very reason.

Megan Hall: So storing stuff in caves is a climate-friendly solution! Why don’t we do this with everything that needs to stay cold?

Nat Hardy: Well,

Dr. Hales: Earthen areas are difficult to be found close enough to the large cities.

Samantha Zhang: And this lack of natural spaces means we tend to turn toward modern refrigerated facilities.

Nat Hardy: But, some people have figured out a way to use the cooling power of the earth in places without natural caves.

Samantha Zhang: To find out more, we talked to Laura Haverland, the owner behind Sweet and Salty Farms right here, in Little Compton, Rhode Island.

Laura Haverland: Our cheese cave is an above ground space, because if you dig down in Little Compton, you very quickly hit the water table.

Nat Hardy: So instead of digging an entirely underground space—

Laura Haverland: We worked with our builder, and they thought they were going to have a lot of fill anyway, from creating the building space.

Samantha Zhang: They took that fill, the excavated dirt from digging the foundation, and piled it up on the sides of the building.

Nat Hardy: This eco-friendly building saves energy with its very own earthen insulation. And… there is another upside to this design.

[Cows grazing/mooing]

Samantha Zhang: For the cows!

Laura Haverland: The cows come and graze on top of the cheese cave. Because it’s grass, and that’s easier for us than cutting it or weed whacking it. And so the surrounding dirt is actually creating food for our animals as well.

Nat Hardy: So perhaps we can consider more green refrigeration solutions like the one from Sweet and Salty Farms.

Samantha Zhang: Who knew storing government cheese in caves wasn’t so absurd afterall…

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Samantha and Nat!

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at ask possibly dot 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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We talk a lot about the carbon pollution that comes along with eating beef, but this week on Possibly we’re asking: what about eating dairy? How do they compare?

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.

We’ve talked a lot about the carbon pollution that comes along with eating beef, but what about eating dairy? And how do they compare?

We had Samantha Zhang and Nat Hardy from our Possibly Team look into this.

Samantha Zhang: Hi, Megan!

Nat Hardy: Hello!

Megan Hall: So, what creates more carbon emissions? Beef or dairy?

Nat Hardy: Let’s start with the obvious overlap between the two… cows. We know that cows use a lot of resources.

Samantha Zhang: They need land to graze, and lots of feed.

Megan Hall: But what does feed have to do with carbon pollution?

Nat Hardy: Well, it takes a lot of energy to make feed– from fertilizers to grow it, tractors to plant and harvest it, and trucks to deliver it.

Samantha Zhang: Not only that, because of the way cows’ stomachs process food, they belch out methane —a greenhouse gas that’s much more potent at warming the planet than carbon dioxide.

Nat Hardy: And of course, we can’t forget that their manure also creates methane.

Samantha Zhang: But one major difference between beef cows and dairy cows is how long they live. Dairy cows stay on the farm for about 5 years, while beef cows get slaughtered after about a year and a half.

Megan Hall: What kind of difference does that make when it comes to pollution?

Nat Hardy: For starters, cows that live longer have more to offer. It takes about two years for a cow to start making milk.

Samantha Zhang: So really, during those early years you have to feed them, they burp out methane, but they aren’t making anything.

Nat Hardy: When a dairy cow sticks around for five years or more, you’re getting at least three years of milk in exchange for all of the things they do that create carbon pollution.

Megan Hall: So, letting dairy cows get a bit older is more efficient?

Samantha Zhang: Exactly. But there’s more. With dairy cows, you’re kind of getting a 2 for 1.

Nat Hardy: To find out more, we talked to Dr. Matthew Hayek, an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at NYU.

Matthew Hayek: The dairy cow is producing multiple products for human consumption. First of all, a lot of milk. And second, she is probably going to be slaughtered and rendered into beef that is used in hamburger meat. Then also, she will have offspring.

Nat Hardy: Compare that to a beef cow that is used for only one thing— beef— and suddenly dairy cows are looking way more efficient.

Megan Hall: So dairy cows create less emissions overall, because those emissions are being divided up in between amounts of milk and cheese and beef.

Samantha Zhang: Exactly! So if we take a look at the numbers, the emissions for around two pounds of beef from a cow that’s JUST used for beef is about 60 kilograms of CO2.

Nat Hardy: But, beef from a dairy cow comes in at about 20 kilograms of CO2. So only a third as much.

Megan Hall: So, less emissions, for the same thing! What about milk?

Samantha Zhang: Well, 2 pounds of milk produces way less emissions—about 20 times less than beef from a dairy cow.

Megan Hall: Where does cheese rank in terms of greenhouse gases?

Nat Hardy: Well the surprising thing is, cheese creates a ton of emissions per pound. It’s up there, with the emissions from beef that came from a dairy cow, though it depends on the type of cheese.

Megan Hall: Why is cheese so similar to beef?

Nat Hardy: Well, consider how much milk goes into a kilogram of cheese.

Samantha Zhang: That’s the thing to keep in mind about these metrics: they can really change depending on the measurement. Since…

Matthew Hayek: Different types of food have different quantities of water, protein, fat, calories in them, depending on which you choose to report by, you’re going to have very different answers in that comparison.

Nat Hardy: So, say we weren’t looking at the emissions by weight, but instead we were looking at it based on the amount of protein.

Samantha Zhang: Then you’d get more emissions for milk, once you took out all the water weight. Going back to cheese, it…

Matthew Hayek: Might look like very high emissions by comparison, because you’ve removed most of the water in order to perform that fermentation.

Nat Hardy: The numbers might change based on how you measure it, and beef is definitely worse than dairy, but in the end food that comes from a cow is always going to make a lot of emissions.

Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks, Samantha and Nat!

That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the ways your choices affect our planet, at ask possibly dot 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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A research team at Brown called Breathe Providence is asking people to track what they smell, in an effort to better understand air pollution in Rhode Island.

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.

Take a deep breath…. In through your nose. What do you smell? A group of local researchers think, it’s a question worth asking. And the answer might tell us a lot about the quality of our air.

Isha Thakkar and Leo Nachamie from our Possibly Team have more on this project.

Isha Thakkar: Hi, Megan!

Leo Nachamie: Hello!

Megan Hall: So can smelling our air help us improve our air quality?

Isha Thakkar: Great question! To answer this, we talked to Emma Blankstein.

Emma Blankstein: I am a student researcher with the Breathe Providence project.

Megan Hall: What is Breathe Providence?

Leo Nachamie: Breathe Providence is a research team at Brown University that tracks air quality in Providence neighborhoods.

Megan Hall: Why do they need to track this information?

Isha Thakkar: Rhode Island has one of the highest asthma rates in the country, so understanding where, and when people are exposed to polluted air, could play a role in improving their health.

Leo Nachamie: Breathe Providence uses a lot of tools to track air quality. They have a network of powerful sensors all over the city.

Isha Thakkar: But they’re also encouraging everyone to use the sensors we carry around already – our noses.

Leo Nachamie: Anyone can participate when they download the “Smell my City” app.

Isha Thakkar:  The app, which was originally created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, is part of a national project to crowdsource pollution odors across the country.

Leo Nachamie: It’s an easy way for community members to report and describe different smells.

Megan Hall: How does it work?

Isha Thakkar: When people report a smell, they rank the intensity of the odor from 1 to 5. They can also list any health symptoms they are experiencing that may be a result of the smell, from trouble breathing to headaches or stomachaches. Then, the app records the location of the smell.

Leo Nachamie: As more and more people started using the smell my city app in Providence, researchers started noticing some common patterns. 

Megan Hall: Like what?

Isha Thakkar: Well,  people living near the port of Providence, often report smells of sulfur, asphalt, or tar.

Leo Nachamie: That makes sense because the neighborhood around the port has some of the worst air quality in the state.

Megan Hall: Where is this air pollution coming from?

Isha Thakkar: Well, there’s a lot of smelly industries near the port, including an asphalt plant, oil and gas companies, and a scrap metal distributor.

Megan Hall: Oh yeah– I always notice that giant pile of metal every time I drive near the water!

But, it seems pretty obvious that people would notice these smells if they live near these companies. What’s the point of collecting their experiences?

Isha Thakkar: Well, certain toxins have very distinct smells, and our noses are powerful tools.

Leo Nachamie: The smells we notice can give us clues about where those toxins come from, in a way a traditional air monitor couldn’t. 

Isha Thakkar: It’s a part of Breathe Providence’s efforts to paint a fuller picture of what’s happening to Providence’s air. And validate what neighborhood members already know.

Emma Blankstein: There are so many remarkable people who know what to do about these things, and they know what they’re smelling, they know what they’re experiencing and they know what the problem is and how to fix it. It is a matter of building the power and the scientific evidence in order to actually make sure that that knowledge can translate to change, whether it’s changes that the community are making for themselves, or whether it’s changes that are made in collaboration with city and state government.

Isha Thakkar: So next time you’re outside, notice what you’re smelling, it could tell you more about what’s in the air than you might think.

Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Isha and Leo!

And if you’d like to report the things you’re smelling, you can find Smell My City on your phone’s app store.

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, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

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

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It seems like microplastics are everywhere these days — but their impacts on human health remain unclear. Today we take a closer look at why that is and how scientists are trying to get a clearer picture.

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.

It feels like there’s a new story every day about microplastics — in our blood, in our organs, even in our brains. But what does this all mean? Are microplastics bad for us? How bad? And how do we know?

Here to tell us more are reporters Will Malloy and Nat Hardy from our Possibly team

Will Malloy: Hey Megan!

Nat Hardy: Hello!

Megan Hall: To start, can you remind me what microplastics are?

Will Malloy: There are a couple of different definitions. Here’s a simple one: any plastic particles smaller than five millimeters. 

Megan Hall: And how big is that?

Nat Hardy: Yeah. 5 millimeters is pretty big, about the size of a grain of rice. But these microplastics can also be tiny. So small that you can’t see them.

Megan Hall: Where do they come from?

Will Malloy:  All sorts of places —  a lot of cosmetic products contain microplastics, synthetic fabrics like fleece shed microplastics when you wash and wear them, car tires shed microplastics on the road. The list goes on.

Nat Hardy: And as you said, Megan, they’re everywhere.

Susanne Brander: Over the past about five to eight years or so, there have been a lot of studies in humans and we found them wherever we’ve looked.

Will Malloy: That’s Dr. Susanne Brander — she’s a professor at Oregon State University who studies how microplastics affect aquatic ecosystems.

Nat Hardy: Susanne says, even though we know microplastics are in us, we don’t necessarily know what that means for our health… yet.

Susanne Brander: A lot of what we know about humans is that they exist in our bodies. We just don’t have a full picture of what they might be doing.

Megan Hall: Why not?

Will Malloy: At the end of the day, scientists haven’t been looking at what microplastics do inside the body for very long at all.

Nat Hardy: Research on small plastics started in the 70s and 80s, but at first, scientists were just focused on studying them in the ocean and in marine animals, like fish. 

Will Malloy: Scientists didn’t start looking for evidence that microplastics are in people’s bodies until about a decade ago.

Nat Hardy: In these early stages, research has been really focused on establishing that microplastics are there at all — we are only starting to study what they do to us.

Megan Hall: So does that mean we have no idea what they’re doing to us?

Nat Hardy: Not necessarily —

Susanne Brander: We have a lot of data from other animals, rodents, fish, other vertebrates, invertebrates.

Will Malloy: We call these “model species” — if we can understand how microplastics affect them, we might get some insight into how they affect us. 

Nat Hardy: Scientists use model species all the time.

Susanne Brander: To understand the impacts of any kind of chemical on the human system, we often use model species to sort of mimic or better understand how that chemical is going to behave if we’re exposed to it.

Megan Hall: So, what are these studies in model species telling us?

Will Malloy: A review of studies done in rodents found a lot of health impacts associated with microplastics.

Nat Hardy: Things, like changes to their reproductive, digestive, and neurological systems.

Will Malloy: So those could be important things to pay attention to in humans.

Megan Hall: I get that we don’t know a lot yet, but when are we going to know if this is something to worry about?

Nat Hardy: That’s a really great question because it has a lot to do with how science works fundamentally.

Susanne Brander: It’s not as if one paper right is going to change the field, it’s that different scientists who are doing similar work, that that work begins to produce similar results, and that those results are in agreement with one another.

Will Malloy: As more and more people look into this, we will hopefully start to see patterns and consensus will arise as many scientists work really hard to find answers.

Nat Hardy: There’s still so much we don’t know, but Susanne says…

Susanne Brander: I do think, and others have said similarly, that we know enough to act.

Will Malloy: Reducing our exposure to microplastics probably won’t hurt us in any way, even though we don’t yet know if or how much it will help.

Megan Hall: So, how do I reduce my exposure to microplastics??

Nat Hardy: That’s a bigger topic for another episode, but the short answer is: cutting back on plastics in any way you can will help.

Will Malloy: Things that come in contact with your food are a good place to start.

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

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, or Bluesky at  “askpossibly”

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

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