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Richard Harris

Credit Doby Photography / NPR

Award-winning journalist Richard Harris reports on science issues for NPR's newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.

Harris, who joined NPR in 1986, has traveled to the ends of the earth for NPR. His reports have originated from Timbuktu, the South Pole, the Galapagos Islands, Beijing during the SARS epidemic, the center of Greenland, the Amazon rain forest and the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro (for a story about tuberculosis).

In 2010, Harris' reporting uncovered that the blown-out BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was spewing out far more oil than asserted in the official estimates. He covered the United Nations climate negotiations, starting with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, followed by Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009. Harris was a major contributor to NPR's award-winning 2007-2008 "Climate Connections" series.

Over the course of his career, Harris has been the recipient of many of the journalism and science industries' most prestigious awards. The University of California at Santa Cruz awarded Harris the 2010-11 Alumni Achievement Award – the school's highest honor. In 2002, Harris was elected an honorary member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society. Harris shared a 1995 Peabody Award for investigative reporting on NPR about the tobacco industry.

As part of the team that collaborated on NPR's 1989 series "AIDS in Black America," Harris was awarded a Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, a first place award from the National Association of Black Journalists and an Ohio State Award. In 1988, Harris won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award for his report, "Anti-Noise: Can Technology Turn Noise into Quiet?" which explored a revolutionary technology that uses computer-generated noise to cancel out, not just mask, unwanted noise.

Before joining NPR, Harris was a science writer for the San Francisco Examiner. From 1981 to 1983, Harris was a staff writer at The Tri-Valley Herald in Livermore, California, covering science, technology, and health issues. Under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harris spent the summer of 1980 as a Mass Media Science Fellow reporting on science issues for The Washington Star, in Washington, D.C.

Harris is co-founder of the Washington, D.C., Area Science Writers Association, as well as past president of the National Association of Science Writers.

A California native, Harris was valedictorian of his college graduating class at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology, with highest honors.

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Environment
4:48 pm
Thu April 26, 2012

Countries Losing Steam On Climate Change Initiatives

Credit Lars Baron / Getty Images
Germany plans to take all of its nuclear power plants offline by 2022, which means coal-fired power plants like the Kraftwerk Westfalen, in Hamm, Germany, will be a key component of the country's energy infrastructure.
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Originally published on Thu April 26, 2012 6:27 pm

Energy ministers from around the world met in London this week and got a scolding. The International Energy Agency warned the ministers that they are falling way behind in their efforts to wean the world from dirty sources of energy. Nations are nowhere near being on track to avert significant climate change in the coming decades.

It turns out that right now, just about everything is conspiring to make it harder to clean up the world's energy supply.

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Environment
3:31 am
Tue April 24, 2012

Melt Or Grow? Fate Of Himalayan Glaciers Unknown

Credit Subel Bhandari / AFP/Getty Images
In this undated picture, Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain at 29,029 feet, stands behind the Khumbu Glacier, one of the longest glaciers in the world. Nepal has more than 2,300 glacial lakes, and experts say at least 20 are in danger of bursting.
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Originally published on Tue April 24, 2012 10:14 am

The Himalayas are sometimes called the world's "third pole" because they are covered with thousands of glaciers. Water from those glaciers helps feed some of the world's most important rivers, including the Ganges and the Indus. And as those glaciers melt, they will contribute to rising sea levels.

So a lot is at stake in understanding these glaciers and how they will respond in a warming world. Researchers writing in the latest issue of Science magazine make it clear they are still struggling at that task.

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Environment
4:15 pm
Mon April 2, 2012

Gold Miners Dig Deep — To The Ocean Floor

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Credit Nautilus Minerals
A robotic arm breaks off a chunk of mineral-rich rock deep underwater. Nautilus Minerals of Australia hopes to develop and expand undersea mining by extracting copper, gold, silver and zinc from the seafloor.
Credit Nautilus Minerals
Credit Nautilus Minerals
This deep-sea rock is rich in copper. Minerals form in the seafloor because a natural hot spring has been laying them down for thousands of years.
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Filmmaker James Cameron recently reminded us of the wonders of the sea by diving solo in a submarine to the deepest spot in the ocean. Next year, if all goes as planned, a rather different expedition will take place 1,000 miles south of that dive: An Australian company will start mining for copper, gold, silver and zinc on the seafloor off the shore of Papua New Guinea.

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Energy
3:57 am
Tue March 20, 2012

Native Alaskans Divided On State's Oil Drilling Debate

Credit Steve Quinn / AP
A drilling rig sits on Oooguruk Island off the coast of Alaska's North Slope. The 6-acre island was built by Pioneer Natural Resources so it could drill for oil on the Arctic Ocean.
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Originally published on Tue March 20, 2012 9:06 am

Shell Oil plans to explore for petroleum off Alaska's north coast this summer. The native people of Alaska have a big stake in both oil revenue and environmental protection. That conflict has played out in recent trips by Inupiats to Washington, D.C., to argue their case.

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Remembrances
1:11 pm
Tue March 13, 2012

F. Sherwood Rowland, Warned Of Aerosol's Danger

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Credit University of California / AP
F. Sherwood Rowland, pictured here in 1989, was one of three chemists who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for chemistry for work on discovering chemicals that deplete the Earth's ozone layer.
Credit Eric Roxfelt / AP
Rowland receives the Nobel Prize from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf in 1995. He shared the award with Mario Molina and Paul J. Crutzen.
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The man who warned us that aerosol spray-cans could destroy the earth's protective ozone layer has died.

F. Sherwood Rowland, better known as Sherry Rowland, was a Nobel-prize winning chemist at the University of California, Irvine. And he didn't just keep to the laboratory: He successfully advocated for a ban on ozone-destroying chemicals called CFCs.

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Rebuilding Japan
4:32 pm
Fri March 9, 2012

Crippled Japanese Reactors Face Decades Of Work

Credit Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP/Getty Images
Last year's earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station. Foreign journalists saw cleanup and recovery work in process on Feb. 28.
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Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 10:58 am

The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, lasted for many terrifying minutes. But the multiple nuclear meltdowns that followed created an emergency that lasted for weeks and a legacy that will last for decades.

Here's how the event unfolded. The tsunami knocked out power to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. As a result, the cooling systems failed and three reactors melted down. Steam laced with radioactive material poured into the air. Water contaminated with radiation also flowed into the sea.

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Rebuilding Japan
12:01 am
Fri March 9, 2012

Trauma, Not Radiation, Is Key Concern In Japan

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Credit AFP/Getty Images
A worker is given a radiation screening as he enters the emergency operation center at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on Feb. 20.
Credit David Guttenfelder / AFP/Getty Images
A deserted street inside the contaminated exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station, on Nov. 12, 2011. Experts say health effects of radiation exposure likely won't be detectable and a bigger problem is the mental health issues resulting from the trauma of the tsunami.
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One year ago this Sunday, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off Japan triggered a tsunami that killed 20,000 people. It also triggered multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station, one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.

But health effects from radiation turn out to be minor compared with the other issues the people of Fukushima prefecture now face.

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Energy
4:17 pm
Wed February 15, 2012

Many Jobs May Be Gone With The Wind Energy Credit

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Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
From left, enginers Eric Nicosia, Amin Ahmadi and Gavin Boogs work to solve an issue with part of a wind turbine at the Gamesa Corp. factory in Langhorne, Pa., on Feb. 10.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Angel Gonzales operates a crane to assemble a gear box for a wind turbine. The heavy-lift cranes hoist pieces weighing up to 70 tons.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Joseph Wright tightens bolts on the hub of a wind turbine. Sixty percent of the components used in wind turbines are manufactured in the U.S., according to the American Wind Energy Association.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Angel Gonzales assembles a main shaft of a wind turbine. Tens of thousands of jobs depend on a federal tax credit meant to help keep wind power competitive with other forms of electricity.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
At the Gamesa plant, workers can check wrenches and other tools from these vending machines.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
About 175 people work at Gamesa's factory, including Jerry "Jazz" Holt, who is assembling an oil cooler unit.
Credit Maggie Starbard / NPR
Gamesa's factory is a cavernous building that once housed a U.S. Steel foundry. It's about the length of two football fields and produces one nacelle per day.
Credit Photos by Maggie Starbard / NPR/NPR
The Gamesa factory in Fairless Hills, Pa., produces nacelles for wind turbines. Nacelles house the gear box, generator, electrical transformers and wiring. From left, engineers Eric Nicosia, Amin Ahmadi and Gavin Boogs work to solve an issue with a nacelle at the factory on Feb. 10.
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Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 11:01 am

The wind power industry in this country has grown fast in recent years, but that could come to a screeching halt.

The industry depends on a federal subsidy to keep it competitive with other forms of electricity. It's a tax credit wind farms get for the power they produce. That credit expires at the end of the year, and it's not clear whether Congress will renew it.

The tax credit was initially created to encourage wind energy, since it is a clean and secure source of electricity. But these days the argument is all about jobs.

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Shots - Health Blog
10:06 am
Fri February 10, 2012

How My Voice Went Silent

Credit Courtesy of Richard Harris / NPR
Everything looked fine on my CT scan, but I didn't sound even close to right.
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Originally published on Fri February 10, 2012 3:10 pm

There's an old joke around newsrooms: News is something that happens to your editor.

If you'll pardon the self-indulgence, I'm going to take this truism one step further: News is what happened to me.

I was laid low the week before New Year's Day by a mysterious headache and a blazing sore throat. A few days later I lost my voice.

My doctors eventually pinpointed the cause by snaking a small camera down my nose. My left vocal fold (or vocal cord if you prefer) had stopped working. It was essentially paralyzed, other than the occasional twitch.

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Science
5:02 pm
Wed February 8, 2012

'Amasia': The Next Supercontinent?

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Credit Chris Scotese / University of Texas at Arlington
This map shows what the Earth's landmass looked like in the Precambrian era, about 738 million years ago.
Credit Mitchell, et. al. / Nature
The Americas and Asia may fuse together to form a new supercontinent, "Amasia."
Credit Mitchell, et. al. / Nature
Two of the previous supercontinents, which formed 200 million years ago (Pangaea) and 800 million years ago (Rodinia).
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The Earth's continents are in constant motion. On at least three occasions, they have all collided to form one giant continent. If history is a guide, the current continents will coalesce once again to form another supercontinent. And a study in Nature now shows how that could come about.

You can think of continents as giant puzzle pieces shuffling around the Earth. When they drift apart, mighty oceans form. When they come together, oceans disappear. And it's all because continents sit on moving plates of the Earth's crust.

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