🔝PodSnacks' Climate Picks

Welcome to this week’s free edition of PodSnacks. Discover selected quotes from the 10 most recently covered climate episodes. If you aren’t on the paid plan yet, upgrade to read the full summaries and receive the PodSnacks newsletter daily.

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💧 Water

Podcast: The Stream
Episode: Introducing the Water Action Platform (Original: “A Walk in the Park”)
Hosts: Will Sarni & Tom Freyberg
Guest: Dr. Piers Clark | Founder & Chairman | Isle Utilities
Category: 🚰 Utilities
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 36 min | 🗓️ 10/06/2021

[13:34] “When we set the Water Action Platform up, it really wasn't intended to become anything like what it's become now. It was March 23, 2020 and […] I simply thought the pandemic is coming at that stage. […] And I thought […] utilities probably need to share what they're doing. […] Within three days, we've got 72 utilities, and today [we’re at] over 800 organizations, and we've now hit 94 countries who are involved in the Water Action Platform.”

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Podcast: Water Voice
Episode: Stormwater Management: Information, Innovation & Education (Original Title: “The Random Conversation)
Hosts: Greg Johnson & Kevin Kunz
Category: 🗣️ Opinion
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 1 hr 1 min | 🗓️ 10/18/2021

[13:34] KK: “Our utility patent wants to connect all forms of freshwater as one asset. And really where the focus is, is Integrated Water Management. Why do we collect raindrops at the gutter at the end of the street, to send it miles away for it to be treated and then pushed out of our communities into waterways? It's simply not a solid practice for something that is so precious as a freshwater asset. We compost and recycle. Why don't we recycle stormwater? And so this new engineer design approach moves to capture stormwater by modernizing the sidewalk, utilizing it as a freshwater asset, which can mean reconnecting it back into the aquifer, and reconnecting the natural water cycle.”

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[13:24] “We split the [Colorado] basin in two […] and the upper basin is entitled to 7.5 million acre feet. And the lower basin is entitled to use 7.5 million acre feet […] . And then later Mexico negotiated for 1.5 million acre feet. If you add all that up […] you get 16.5 million acre feet. So if you have that amount to play with in a year, everyone's happy. And back when they negotiated the compact, there was about 18 million acre feet showing up on average. So the apportionment numbers were reasonable. Flash forward to today, and we're closer to 10 to 12 million acre feet in an average year and the math just doesn't work. So demand management is our response to that dynamic, where we're using more out of the system than is coming in on a reliable basis. And we have to do something in order to to change that supply and demand imbalance.”

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[23:55] “If you look at the big companies, […] the market of water bottles is dominated by Nestle, Coca Cola, Pepsi and Danone. So if you look at these four companies, they are all in to a bigger or smaller extent, trying to find solutions to look into different ways of providing hydration to people. These are often resulting in out of home dispensing solutions, […] like water kiosks, water stations, water ATMs, dispensing water machines, you can call them in different ways. But essentially what they are is a next generation of vending machines, where instead of selling you the bottle with the liquid, they would just sell you the liquid. And that liquid needs a bottle of course in order to capture it. And so that's really the kind of transition in which we want to play.”

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Podcast: Water Nerds
Episode: Water Discoloration & Residue (Original Title: The Science Behind Pink Bathroom Slime, White Chalky Residue, and More)
Host: Analies Ross-Dyjak
Guest: Christina Liu | Science Team Head | Hydroviv
Category: 🔬 Research
Apple | 🕰️ 23 min | 🗓️ 09/29/2021

[7:42] “[Pink slimy residue] is actually caused by a bacteria and that bacteria is called serratia marcescens. And when it grows, it stains pink. […] It shows up in […] the showers, […] toilets, […] sinks. It is airborne and so you can't filter the water and have it not show up. […] Serratia marcescens in general is not harmful to most people.”

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⚡ Carbon & Energy

Podcast: Carbon Removal Newsroom
Episode: “New Research Checks the Math of Large-Scale Tree Planting”
Host: Radhika Moolgavkar
Guest: Dr. Jane Zelikova | Executive Director | Soil Carbon Solutions Center
Category: 🌳 Carbon Capture
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 31 min | 🗓️ 10/08/2021

[15:57] “One of the things I think we all need in this space is a common definition of what it means to have a quality carbon offset. I think Oxford's carbon offsetting principles is a really great guide, because it does kind of spell out what it means to remove a ton of carbon and what it means to avoid the emissions of a tonne of carbon. And I think those kinds of guidelines are not being followed by many companies and governments that are currently making claims and setting net zero goals.”

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[10:27] “If you just think about CO2 emissions by country, China […] emit[s] 11 million kilo tons of CO2 per year. […] The US about 5 million kilotons, India about 2.5. But interestingly, if you look at it per capita, the US is about 16 metric tons per person and China is only about 7. […] Also, if you look at megawatts on the ground installed per 1,000 people, that's the generation available, US about 3 megawatts per 1000, China 1. So you have this […] push for decarbonization on one hand, but […] in these emerging markets like China, they need the electricity. […] They're still building coal units […] . So you have this […] natural flashpoint […] between decarbonization globally and the demand and need for electricity.”

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[2:37] JL: “Hydrogen is a very mature, globally traded industrial feedstock. And sadly, of the 100 million metric tons that's produced every year around the world, most of it is gray and brown, meaning it's produced from fossil fuels, either oil or natural gas. And it produces a lot of emissions. If you treat global hydrogen production as a country, it would emit more carbon than Germany. So that gives you an idea of the scale and scope and what's at stake.”

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Podcast: My Climate Journey
Episode: Energy & Renewables at Microsoft (Original Title: “Brian Janous, General Manager of Energy and Renewables at Microsoft”)
Host: Jason Jacobs
Guest: Brian Janous | General Manager of Energy and Renewables | Microsoft
Category: ⚡ Renewable Energy
Apple | Spotify | 🕰️ 1 hr 1 min | 🗓️ 10/18/2021

[9:27] “As we've transitioned to being a company where […] cloud […] is approaching 50% of the company's revenue, it's become a lot more clear that […] energy is critically important to us. Both for growing our business, because we are a very large energy consumer. Data Centers represent about 1 to 2% of the world's electricity consumption […]. And as we look to this next decade, I think the cloud companies will be the single largest commercial consumers of electricity in the world.”

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[5:35] “An electric car, of course […] won't use oil any longer, but it will use six times the amount of minerals than a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle. An offshore wind plant requires nine times more minerals than a gas fired power plant. So we're moving from the fossil dependency to a new intensity of minerals.”

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🏆 Top 10 Climate Bites to Read this Week

💧 Water

⚡ Carbon & Energy

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