Center Pierre-Louis: For scientific American‘S science quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis on behalf of Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup.
First, the Trump administration announced last week that it would rescind the scientific finding that has served as the foundation of US federal climate policy since 2009.
(CLIP: President Donald Trump speaking at a White House press briefing: “We are officially ending so-called endangerment searches, a disastrous Obama-era policy that seriously harmed the U.S. auto industry and drastically increased prices for American consumers.”)
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To give us a sense of what this could mean for US climate action, we spoke to Andrea Thompson, senior desk editor for Life Sciences. scientific American.
Hello, Andrea, thanks for joining us today.
Andrea Thompson: thanks for having me
Pierre-Louis: So the basis of federal climate policy in this country has been something called “threat detection.” Can you tell us what it is?
Thompson: Yeah, so basically you start with the Clean Air Act, so that’s a law passed in the 70s that gives the EPA the authority to regulate air pollutants that affect human health. And so finding a threat is like a legal and scientific argument that, yes, greenhouse gases affect human health.
So there are greenhouse gases – the main one being carbon dioxide. Another really important one is methane. These gases are released by combustion engines and cars and trucks, industrial uses. So as they’re burned, they get into the atmosphere and, effectively, those gases preferentially trap infrared radiation, or heat, coming away from the Earth, so the temperature of the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface is getting warmer and warmer every year.
And so the discovery of the threat, it led to a lawsuit from environmental groups and states and a case that went to the Supreme Court in 2007. Massachusetts v. EPA. And the Supreme Court ruled that, yes, it counts as an “air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act. And so then the EPA had to address this threat, which is then the basis for them to issue regulations on greenhouse gases, specifically for cars and trucks.
Pierre-Louis: And so last week the Trump administration said they were rescinding, or withdrawing, this threat finding. What does it mean?
Thompson: So this basically means that the EPA is not required to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Its limited scope is on cars and trucks. But regulations on greenhouse gases from other sectors, including industry, are reminiscent of this decision, so it could also have an impact. And that means that, effectively, the US is going to emit even more greenhouse gases than it would have if this finding had not been repealed.
Now, of course, the US is not the only emitter. Emissions are a global thing, so we’re all affected by them.
Pierre-Louis: But we are one of the biggest…
Thompson: Yes.
Pierre-Louis: Historical emitters.
Thompson: Yes, we are the largest historical emitter, so from a fairness perspective, this would mean that we need to contribute to reducing these. And what that means: The more greenhouse gases you release into the atmosphere every year, the faster the temperature rises and the more quickly you start to see these impacts – wildfires, floods, heat waves are huge – and, you know, kids today will see much bigger impacts than you or I or our parents or grandparents saw from them.
Pierre-Louis: I mean, this is a bit serious. In some ways, this is relevant to the kind of weather much of the country is experiencing. You and I both live in New York City…
Thompson: Yes.
Pierre-Louis: And it is bitterly cold. But it’s much warmer in the West, with parts of Florida cooler than Anchorage and Juneau, Alaska.
Thompson: Mm-hmm.
Pierre-Louis: And you wrote about it in an article ScienceSo I’m going to ask you: What’s going on with the weather?
Thompson: (Laughs.) Yeah, so it involves everyone’s favorite winter weather bugaboo, the polar vortex – basically this fast-moving stream of air that circles the Arctic – it traps all that cold Arctic air inside. But sometimes it becomes weak. And just as slow-flowing rivers have these, you know, these very curved bends compared to fast-flowing rivers, these kinds of curves and loops develop when the polar vortex is weak.
And some of those loops go south, and when they do, the cold air of the Arctic comes out of the freezer, as they say – comes down. (Laughs.) That’s what you, I, and a lot of people on the East Coast have been experiencing these past few weeks. But where you have a circulation going south, next to it you have one going north, so warm air comes with it. And the West Coast has been in the same situation.
And these types of patterns can also stick, and they do so depending on background conditions related to Earth’s geography. So the location of the Rockies and where the Pacific meets the West Coast, you get what they call a ridge, an area of high pressure, or that type of northward loop. And then to the east you get a trough, an area of low pressure, or that kind of southward loop.
And that’s what has happened over the past few weeks. And so we’ve seen teeth-gnashing cold (laughs) but when you actually look at the record – and this is where climate change comes in – no one has seen the coldest cold, you know, December on record, much less January. A large portion of the West experienced the warmest winter ever recorded.
Those of us living in the East may feel so cold because this type of cold used to be more common and is no longer so.
Pierre-Louis: It’s interesting you say that because I used to have snow boots; I won’t do it anymore because we don’t have the kind of snow that I saw in my childhood. But from your point of view I think another element of it is that we are losing the memory of what weather should be like because of climate change.
Thompson: Yes, no, absolutely.
Pierre-Louis: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
Thompson: Thanks for having me.
Pierre-Louis: Speaking of cold temperatures, I was scrolling through social media recently and saw photos of wild horses in the Outer Banks of North Carolina that were wrapped in fiberglass insulation to keep warm. As someone who sometimes has difficulty detecting AI images, I could also tell that these images were fake. After all, fiberglass insulation is irritating enough, wild horses are often mean, and why don’t people wrap them in blankets?
Still, Andrew D. Thaler, a deep-sea ecologist, felt compelled to note that the photos were fake on the social media platform Bluesky, and I understand that. In a world where search engines produce AI summaries, ChatGPT produces essays, and Sora produces videos, it can be hard to know what’s real.
To help combat this problem, governments are increasingly implementing policies like the EU’s AI Act, which mandates labeling of AI-generated content, among other requirements. But a study published on Tuesday magazine PNAS bond Suggests that this approach may not be a panacea.
To assess this, researchers at Stanford University surveyed about 1,600 people and showed them political content. The message was presented in one of three ways: with a label indicating it came from a human policy expert, a marker saying it was the creation of an expert AI model, or without any label. The goal was to determine whether to know There was something AI-generated that would impact whether or not people trust the content – but it didn’t.
The researchers found that labeling made no significant difference in how people felt about the policies, whether they felt the message was accurate or whether they intended to share it. The scientists concluded that while adding AI labels improves transparency, policymakers may need to consider other strategies to help people be more critical and less trusting of AI.
And in Olympic News we bring you the science behind the bizarre scandal known as “Penisgate.”
If you’re unfamiliar, Penisgate involves Olympic ski jumpers allegedly injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid to gain a competitive edge. You may have heard of hyaluronic acid in the context of skin care. It is often used in dermal fillers with the goal of eliminating wrinkles and restoring facial density. Hyaluronic acid may also help reduce knee pain related to osteoarthritis.
So what does injecting filler into your penis have to do with potentially winning an Olympic medal? The answer is physics.
Before the start of each ski jumping season, athletes undergo 3D scans to obtain accurate measurements of their extremely tight-fitting suits. This is because even small amounts of extra fabric can enhance a ski jumper’s performance. Take the 2025 study into the journal Leader in sports and active life It looked at how the suit’s air permeability and shape affect ski jumping. It found that increasing suit size by about three-quarters of an inch increased lift by 5 percent and drag by 4 percent. Simply put, a larger suit allowed an athlete to jump further. In fact, researchers found in simulations that increasing a suit’s size by just this small amount allowed athletes to jump an additional 19 feet.
This is where hyaluronic acid comes in. Injecting filler into the penis will enlarge the organ. If an athlete does this before taking measurements for their suit, it will be made slightly larger. The trick is that the hyaluronic acid can later be dissolved with an enzyme, which in theory would allow racers to cheat their way into larger suits — though it wouldn’t be risk-free. One Ars Technica The article states that in rare cases individuals have experienced serious side effects after receiving penile filler injections. In one case, a 31-year-old man’s infection became so severe that he developed sepsis and multiple organ failure, forcing doctors to perform surgery to remove the filler. It’s a reminder that short-term gains can have long-term consequences.
that’s all for today. Tune in Wednesday, when we’ll look at how researchers are turning to AI to make homes safer for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
science quickly It is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak, and Jeff DelVisio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Scheana Poses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. agree scientific American For more latest and in-depth science news.
For scientific American, This is Center Pierre-Louis. have a great week!
