Rachel Feltman<\/b>: Happy Monday, listeners! And happy August. For Scientific American\u2019s Science Quickly, I\u2019m Rachel Feltman. Let\u2019s kick off the month with a quick roundup of some of the latest news in science.<\/p>\n
First, we have Andrea Thompson, senior news editor for sustainability at Scientific American, to tell us about last week\u2019s earthquake and the resulting tsunami waves.<\/p>\n
Andrea Thompson: <\/b>Last Tuesday a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia\u2019s Kamchatka Peninsula in a subduction zone, where the Pacific plate is plunging below part of the North American plate. And subduction zones are typically where you\u2019d see tsunamis be generated because you have a big shift in the earth that sort of provides a big push to the water. And this area, actually, did produce a really big tsunami back in 1952, when there was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.<\/p>\n
On supporting science journalism<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n So sort of tsunami alerts, warnings, advisories were released kind of all around the Pacific\u2014so there were some in Japan; some in Russia; Hawaii; all along sort of the North American coastline, you know, from the Aleutians down to Southern California; also in South America.<\/p>\n And some of this is because we generate warnings if there is the likelihood of tsunami waves arriving and there is the possibility of them causing damage, because you wanna give people as much time as possible to move away from the coast or reach higher ground. And then in the hours after an earthquake we sort of get more information that helps refine, \u201cOkay, how much energy was released? How is that likely to track sort of around the basin?\u201d And, and that\u2019s why you\u2019ll see changes, going from maybe a warning to an advisory or something different.<\/p>\n Luckily, the waves were not catastrophic, but there were eight-foot waves in parts of California. There were definitely waves in Japan and in Hawaii. Luckily, in a lot of these places they didn\u2019t cause considerable damage, but, you know, there was structural damage, and these kind of waves, they\u2019re not on the scale of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake or the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but they\u2019re still strong enough to sweep a person off their feet or to wipe away a structure.<\/p>\n So, you know, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake is a really big earthquake [laughs]. That is up there among the strongest ever on record. In 1952, when there was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, that caused damage as far away as Hawaii. This one, it turns out, did not produce as big a tsunami as that, although 8.8 sounds really close to 9.0, but the scale of measuring earthquakes is not linear, so there\u2019s a big jump in the amount of energy released when you go from 8.8 to 9.0, which is probably part of the reason this earthquake didn\u2019t produce as big of a tsunami.<\/p>\n So I think one of the things that [we should] take away from this is that our warning systems work really well. You know, in 1952 a lot of people were killed and there was damage because no one knew what was happening. And we\u2019ve built up these really robust tsunami warning arrays and sensors, and through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration we have monitoring for tsunamis and issuing warnings, and it\u2019s clear that it works: people were alerted, they were able to stay away from coasts, and we didn\u2019t see, you know, the casualties that we could have if there wasn\u2019t a warning. And that is also because we\u2019ve put a lot of public funding into the science behind this and to keeping this running.<\/p>\n Feltman:<\/b> Thanks for that update, Andrea.<\/p>\n Next, some troubling news from the Environmental Protection Agency. Last Tuesday<\/a> the EPA began making moves to repeal the so-called endangerment finding. This 2009 declaration concluded that several greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and welfare, which meant they could be regulated as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The endangerment finding followed the analysis<\/a> of decades of research and the review of more than 380,000 public comments<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last week the Department of Energy put out a report<\/a> rebutting the endangerment finding. The agency said the report offers a \u201ccritical assessment of the conventional narrative on climate change.\u201d Indeed, the report appears to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change across the board. The report argues that CO2-induced warming \u201cappears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed\u201d and that U.S. policy actions to curb global climate change will have \u201cundetectably small\u201d impacts while potentially causing economic harm.<\/p>\n EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who announced the agency\u2019s proposal to rescind the endangerment finding at an auto dealership in Indiana, claimed the move could save an estimated $54 billion annually, but experts are pushing back.<\/p>\n Rachel Cleetus, a policy analyst and economist at the advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists, told the Washington Post<\/a> that the EPA\u2019s proposal contained \u201cfringe arguments\u201d that \u201cgo against the established science.\u201d Scott Saleska, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, told the Associated Press<\/a> that \u201cto repeal the endangerment finding now would be like a driver who is speeding towards a cliff taking his foot off the brake and instead pressing the accelerator.\u201d<\/p>\n The proposal won\u2019t be finalized immediately. There will first be a public comment period, so we\u2019ll keep you posted on the details of that.<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s move on to some news you can use: a study published last Tuesday in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine suggests that picking up your walking pace for just 15 minutes a day could help you live longer.<\/p>\n