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New Unscripted: Expedition to Antarctica

The new episode of my interview podcast Unscripted focuses on Patricia Yager, professor of marine sciences, and her recent experience co-leading a research expedition to the Amundsen Sea Polynya in western Antarctica.

While many research projects on the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration were focused on sea level rise and the physical processes related to the melting, Yager served as co-chief scientist and lead P.I. on the project Artemis, designed to better understand the impact of melting glaciers and ice shelves on the coastal ocean’s biological productivity.

“The glaciers are not melting because the air temperature is warm,” Yager said in the interview. “The glaciers are melting because the ocean is warm.”

Listen to the interview on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Unscripted.

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A Dish best served cold

Well, once you take the lead out, I guess you could use it for serving, or at least a kind of revenge, instead of taking it to the landfill:

“Unless you take apart the dish — which no one ever does — you’re throwing away the circuit board, which means you’re throwing away lead, and that is very bad for the environment,” said Brent Bolton, owner of Dish Disposal in Los Angeles, which removes and recycles satellite dishes.

Lead and other toxic heavy metals from electronic waste like computers and cellphones can pollute the environment, which has prompted 17 states to ban the disposal of e-waste in the household trash.

Yet when a reporter asked customer service representatives at the major providers in Massachusetts, Dish TV and Direct TV, how to properly dispose of an unwanted satellite dish, their advice was to throw it in the garbage. When pressed, a representative for Dish TV did come up with a list of service centers that he said would recycle old dishes, however.

Of course no one ever takes apart the dish, much less recycles them, but I see a potential growth industry. This could be tackling the problem of all the garbage on TV head-on. Talk about your double entendres. Go ahead. Talk about them.