Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup.
We spotted lots of important climate-related stories last week, so we’re going to hunker down and focus on the environment today—with the exception of a couple of very fun stories we’ll save for the end of the show, as a treat.
First up, we’ve got some troubling news about forests. Last Tuesday the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed a plan to kill something called the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This Clinton-era rule pretty much does what it says on the tin: it took tens of millions of acres of national forests and grasslands that did not yet have roads on them and deemed that they would remain roadless. In the decades leading up to the Roadless Rule’s introduction, the logging industry had been encroaching on these wooded areas with access roads. Roadless areas ensure that swaths of these national forests are preserved, protecting animal habitats and allowing for recreational activities like hiking.
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The USDA described the policy in last week’s press release as a “one-size-fits-all restriction” that has “frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to wildfire risk reduction work.” It’s worth noting, however, that the Roadless Rule has always allowed roadbuilding and tree cutting when needed to reduce wildfire risk or otherwise support human health and safety. And experts have pointed out that, with most wildfires stemming from human activity, road construction and industrial incursions will likely make wildfires worse, not better.
The proposed rule will go through a 30-day public comment period before it can be finalized. You can submit a comment by going to Regulations.gov.
Speaking of humans traveling through places that used to be none of our business, last week China launched a summer cargo shipping route that will skirt the northern coast of Russia—a route that would be impossible without climate change. Here to tell us more is Scientific American’s chief newsletter editor Andrea Gawrylewski.
Thanks so much for coming on to talk to us about this.
Andrea Gawrylewski: Thank you so much for having me
Feltman: So this shipping route couldn’t exist, now it does. Let’s start with who’s actually doing the shipping?
Gawrylewski: Yeah. Earlier this month, a Chinese shipping company launched a new shipping route over the Arctic Ocean as kind of an expressway to get to Europe. This route will run along the northern coast of Russia to Europe, so through the North Sea. And experts expect that this shipping route will become a lot more traveled in the summer months because of the lack of ice at the Arctic.
Feltman: Yeah, so this was like actually not a passable route. How much melt had to happen to make this possible?
Gawrylewski: A tremendous amount of melt, and I will just back up with a fun historical fact since I just read a great book about this. But Captain James Cook was one of the explorers from Britain 250 years ago who was trying to find the Northwest Passage. This was a real desired route by the Admiralty of Britain and other European superpowers who wanted to find a faster way to get goods from the Pacific to Europe. And at the time of Cook’s final voyage, he was met with a wall of ice when he tried to find the Northwest Passage.
So much ice has melted, in fact, that NASA data is showing that the Arctic sea-ice extent is shrinking by 12% at least every decade. So it’s a tremendous amount of Arctic ice melt.
Feltman: And can you quantify a little bit, sort of, how valuable this is to shipping companies? You know, how much time is this gonna save?
Gawrylewski: So this subpolar route is way shorter than the standard one. So this trip that this Chinese cargo vessel will go on should take about 20 days compared to 40. So you’re looking at 50% faster movement of these goods around the Earth, which is pretty incredible.
Another major advantage of taking this route is that it stays entirely out of the way of some more heavily trafficked shipping routes like the Strait of Hormuz. Some experts are starting to refer to this new route as a new Silk Road, the “Ice Silk Road,” right? That would avoid a lot of these traditional routes and become a major artery in getting goods around the globe.
Feltman: Well, obviously this is, kind of, inherently a little disturbing because it couldn’t exist without climate change. Are there any other reasons to be concerned about this?
Gawrylewski: Yeah, for sure. I mean, just the fact that you will have tankers and cargo ships up in the Arctic Ocean, you might at the very least have more black carbon emissions from the shipping fuel, which would contribute to this positive feedback loop and cause the sea ice to melt even more quickly. Heavy fuel oil, which is like this cheap, high-energy and, and very tar-like material, which is left over from refining crude oil, has been banned in the Arctic since 2024, but people still get around it all the time.
These cargo ships that travel around the world have not been built to travel in the Arctic Ocean, right, where you have giant ice on the water. So you’re potentially, by exposing these cargo ships to these polar conditions, increasing the risk of oil spills and accidents, which as you know, is very damaging to local ecosystems.
Feltman: Well, thank you so much as always for, uh, coming on to share this with us.
Gawrylewski: Thrilled to be here.
Feltman: Listeners don’t forget to subscribe to Today in Science to get stories like this one in your inbox everyday.
Now for our last climate story of the day. A new poll conducted by the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup found that 38 percent of Americans lived through an extreme weather event in the past year. People within that group were more likely to say they feel pushed by circumstances beyond their control, and less likely to say that they “mostly feel able to shape [their own] path[s], even when things are difficult.” In other words, the report, which surveyed almost 7,000 adults from across the U.S., suggests that enduring an extreme weather event such as a flood, hurricane, tornado or hailstorm can make you more anxious and pessimistic about the future.
But it isn’t all gloom and doom. The report authors conclude that nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults “believe their community is worth investing in, even when they acknowledge it has room for improvement”—and this outlook doesn’t seem to disappear in the wake of extreme weather. But as the report points out, caring about your community can only do so much if you’re not given the tools to actually protect and improve it.
Now that we’ve swallowed our medicine for the week, here are those treats I promised. You know that feeling you get during cold and flu season, when it seems like your head is so full of snot that it’s hard to picture any room for your poor brain? Is that just me? I don’t think it’s just me. Anyway, that’s basically what every winter is like for the long-clawed shrew. They’re not full of snot, per se—at least as far as I’m aware—but they are quite literally all nose. In a study published last Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists report that Sorex unguiculatus, aka the long-clawed shrew, has a wider snout in the winter than it does the rest of the year.
Having a seasonal schnoz surplus would be weird enough, but this story gets even weirder. See, scientists already knew that many shrews—along with some weasels, voles and moles—experienced changes in their skulls during the winter. But this seasonal flux, known as Dehnel’s phenomenon, involves winter shrinkage, not growth. Many animals reduce the overall mass of their bodies and internal organs to conserve energy in cold months. In shrews and those other scurrying mammals I referenced earlier, that includes a marked reduction in skull size and even brain mass. In the case of the long-clawed shrews featured in this new study, the average height of the braincase in specimens collected during winter was 12 percent smaller than those seen in young shrews collected in August and September. Meanwhile, the average snout was 6 percent wider in the winter shrews. As is the case with the skull and brain, this change seems to reverse when it gets warm again. One possible evolutionary benefit for a seasonal nose shift could be to warm up chilly winter air, or perhaps to better sniff out scant sources of food.
While we’re on the topic of wild noses, let’s talk about narwhals. So, not actually their nose but their unicornesque tusks are the only ones in the animal kingdom known to grow in a straight line. While the overall structure struts out straight from their faces, the tusk itself is actually a tight spiral—and those spirals always seem to go counterclockwise. Such uniformity is rare, which of course made scientists very curious. A study published last week in Nature Communications aims to explain the origin of this leftward spiral. Using advanced x-ray scanners, the researchers took a closer look at the microscopic threads of collagen that come together to form narwhal tusks. It turns out that they grow in a sort of double helix, with the internal collagen structures spinning right while the external structure spins left. These two opposing layers balance each other out and help the tusk grow in a straight line.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk about how damaged sperm could contribute to the risk of recurring miscarriages—and what would-be dads can do about it.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Marielle Issa and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!