EarthBeat Radio

This week, Earthbeat puts global warming under the microscope. We're taking a look at bugs, bacteria and fungi. Scientists say that insects may be the perfect canary in the coal mine when it comes to global warming. Bacteria are now being touted as the solution to all of our oil-based problems, and fungi may have a much larger role in our climate than anyone ever imagined. Bugs - bacteria - and fungi - oh MY.

Joining Earthbeat host Mike Tidwell for the first two segments of our program is Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Climate Change.

Glen Juday at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, is studying the devestating onslaught being seen in the Alaskan forest by the spruce bark beetle.
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In our second segment, bacteriologist Derek Lovley joins the conversation. At the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Lovley works with a bacteria that actually produces electricity along its cell wall. In addition, we also hear from C. Scott Miller, the author of The Bioconversion Blog, talking about one of the few working industrial site that uses ethanol-producing bacteria to break down garbage.
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Finally, fungi. Briefly on the telephone from the Royal Society of Edinburgh is Roy Watkins, a fungus expert, as well as Steve Schmidt a mycologist with the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Image of a G. metallireducens, copyright 2005 eye of science