Science, Spoken

Pleurothallis portillae is one odd-looking orchid. Sporting a small nub of a flower nestled in a long, bulbous leaf that droops like a pair of string beans, it’s considered fashionably drab by collectors. But its true home is in the remote cloud forest of the Ecuadorian Andes---a region where, according to an algorithm, it’s most likely under threat of extinction. Plants have long gotten short shrift in conservation circles. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In Katowice, Poland, delegates from around the world have gathered to discuss how to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. The intent is to meet the goals that emerged from the 2015 Paris United Nations Climate Summit. But this year there’s a new top dog at the table. The United States, led by a president who doesn’t believe in climate change or the scientists who study it, will take a back seat at this month's climate summit, known as COP24. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Fire is chaos. Fire doesn’t care what it destroys or who it kills—it spreads without mercy, leaving total destruction in its wake, as California’s Camp and Woolsey fires proved so dramatically this month. But fire is to a large degree predictable. It follows certain rules and prefers certain fuels and follows certain wind patterns. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

“Gender and climate are inextricably linked,” said environmentalist and author Katharine Wilkinson on stage at TEDWomen last week, a gathering of women thought leaders and activists in Palm Desert, California. Women, she says, are disproportionately affected by climate change. When communities are decimated by floods or droughts, tsunamis or fire, the most vulnerable among them suffer the most. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2015, the 12-person organizing committee of the first International Summit on Human Gene Editing—which included Crispr co-inventors Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier—issued a statement on how the world should responsibly push forward the science of permanently altering the DNA of Homo sapiens. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What people say they know about climate change is a roller coaster of human ignorance—wait, everyone knows that but no one knows that? It’s striking to learn (according to Yale’s climate survey program) that 74 percent of women and 70 percent of men believe climate change will harm future generations of humans, but just 48 and 42 percent, respectively, think it’s harming them personally. It is, of course, in lots of ways. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Elon Musk has long promised a constellation of thousands of satellites, called Starlink, which Musk hopes will one day handle half of all internet traffic—and earn him billions in access fees. It's one of the ways he hopes to fund his future Mars adventures. SpaceX says two demonstration satellites it built and launched earlier this year already show that internet from space can be as fast and lag-free as people expect from cables on Earth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last week, diplomats from over 150 countries flew to Geneva to discuss how to reduce human-made emissions. No, not that kind. These suits want to cut mercury pollution. Mercury, that slippery, silvery stuff in old-timey thermometers, is a “huge public health threat,” says meeting attendee Susan Keane, a public health expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

We said “don’t freak out,” when scientists first used Crispr to edit DNA in non-viable human embryos. When they tried it in embryos that could theoretically produce babies, we said “don’t panic.” Many years and years of boring bench science remain before anyone could even think about putting it near a woman’s uterus. Well, we might have been wrong. Permission to push the panic button granted. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On the second day of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, the last session before lunch was already running long. But the crowd crammed into the Lee Shau Kee Lecture Centre at the University of Hong Kong wasn’t budging. Neither were the 5,500 people around the world glued to their live video feeds. Everyone was waiting to hear from the the final speaker, the man who says he helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices