This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. The climate is changing, and because we need to deal with it now, we open the fourth chapter of our series, Degrees of Change, where we are exploring the challenges of a changing climate and how we as a planet and a people are adapting.

And this week, we're talking about how a changing climate affects what's on your plate and how what you eat affects the climate.

We've been taking your questions and comments all week on Twitter and Facebook

and through our new, very new app called SciFri Voxpop.

You can join in the conversation for a searching for a sci-fry vox pop.

That's V as in Victor OXP-O-P-O-P, wherever you get your

apps. Let's begin with a comment we got from David Church in Jacksonville, Florida,

who was wondering how beef stacks up to plant-based patties. What about plant-based meat

alternatives? They're highly processed. I think

that would take up a lot of resources. Very good question, and we will have an answer for that.

But first up this week, residents all along the southern coast have been keeping their eye on

tropical storm Barry. The storm is predicted to hit Louisiana on Saturday, and the governor

just said today that he expects it to be a hurricane force when it does. New Orleans has

been keeping a close watch. Governor Edwards has declared a state of emergency for the entire state.

How will the levees hold up and how has climate change played a part in this storm?

Scott Waldman is here to fill us in on this story and to check in on the gatekeepers, the decision makers, the controllers of the purse strings.

He's a White House reporter with Energy and Environment News and Climate Wire based in Washington. Welcome back. Thanks for having me, Ira.

So the governor is really getting the state ready. That's right. I think this is going to be

potentially a pretty serious storm, and it's really, you know, they've certainly dealt with worse

storms down there, but this is going to be a hurricane one, so they've been hit by Hurricane

5, of course. But the problem is going to be the flooding. They're already experiencing

pretty high levels of flooding right now in the Mississippi River. And this storm is certainly

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