Richard Harris archive

One of the great mysteries about North America is what killed off woolly mammoths and other exotic animals that roamed the land after the last ice age. Ideas have ranged from a comet impact and climate change to human hunters. A study published Friday in Science Magazine provides new clues about this — cleverly deduced from samples of a fungus that grew on the animal's dung.

Transcript

On Morning EditionPlaylist

November 18, 2009 Conservationists worried about overfishing on the Pacific island of Kiribati persuaded fishermen to pick coconuts instead. The strategy backfired: Coconut oil production increased, but so did fishing. It turns out, fishermen who earned more money in coconut agriculture had more leisure time — which they spent fishing.

Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

November 16, 2009 The international commission that regulates fishing of tuna and other large migratory fish in the Atlantic voted to sharply reduce the fishing quota for bluefin tuna at their latest meeting. But some scientists say the new quota is too high to sustain the species.

Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

November 9, 2009 The Environmental Protection Agency has outlined a new effort to help protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary. And it targets the root causes of the trouble: runoff.

Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

• Researchers Get Dirty To Clean Up Chesapeake

November 3, 2009 The glaciers atop Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro may be gone entirely in the next few decades. A new study shows that 85 percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, and the ice continues to melt rapidly.

Summary

October 23, 2009 Researchers writing in the current issue of Science believe they have found an error in existing biofuel laws that could actually make climate change worse. They say these rules inadvertently encourage deforestation, which in turn contributes to global warming.

Transcript

On Morning EditionPlaylist

• Ohio Utility Wants Customers To Pay To Conserve
• Questions Linger Over Energy Star Ratings

October 21, 2009 A man from the Plains is on a mission to change the way we farm. For the past 33 years, this farmer has devoted his life to creating new strains of crops that will thrive year-round without depleting the soil.

Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

October 16, 2009 Despite dissent from developing countries, the U.S. and Europe seem to be abandoning the idea of extending or revising the Kyoto climate treaty when it expires in 2012. Instead they will form a new treaty, but some doubt it will be ready in December, when diplomats meet in Copenhagen. The news leaves many countries in the developing world frustrated.

Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

October 13, 2009 Spiders deserve their reputation as bloodthirsty critters. Up until now, all 40,000 species known to science seemed to eat by sucking the juices out of insects and other prey. But researchers have come across a spider that eats mainly leaves.

Summary

October 6, 2009 The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for breakthroughs in fiber optics and digital imaging.

Transcript

On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

• Pioneers Of Fiber Optics, Semiconductors Win Nobel