In this week's edition of Rare Earth on animal migration, @tomheap.bsky.social and I had a great time finding out about the incredible things we're learning as tech improves and what the future holds. Available now on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

New Science Shambles podcast and video out for your enjoyment. Go on a hunt for Dark Matter with @helenczerski.bsky.social, @jengupta.bsky.social, @particleclara.bsky.social & Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Recorded live at @latitudefestival.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=knQq...

If you're in London today (Sat 20th), don't miss the spectacle that is the Great River Race! This historic race is a fabulous way to see all sorts of traditional (from many traditions) boats - skiffs, coracles, gigs & more - race through central London. You can keep up here: greatriverrace.org.u...

“Hard to abate” is the climate wonk’s term for an industry with no immediate route to zero carbon emissions. But I think there’s “hard to abate” & “expensive to abate” & then there’s “it’s just a bit difficult & we can’t really be bothered to abate”. None of this is impossible. We need to *choose*.

Well, here's some good news to start the weekend. Negotiating a treaty is one thing, but the work only starts once it's ratified and it looks as though the High Seas Treaty (aka BBNJ) will soon be up and running. This provides structure & standards & is a big step in protecting our ocean. 🎉🎉🌊

This might be impressive gene-editing but it’s nonsense as “de-extinction”. They’re not the same and they can’t be. At the end of this piece, the company basically admits that it’s just a flashy claim to drive money into their company. This is not conservation, & it diverts money from work that is.

The Swedish translation of Blue Machine, published this week. It’s a beautiful hardback. Do share the news with any Swedish speaking friends who need the ocean in their life! And thank you to the Voice of the Ocean foundation for hosting me in Stockholm today.

I had a lovely morning (after the lost bag debacle) riding on a battery powered train during trials. The station rapid-charging tech is impressive (it reaches down from the train to a track-level charger). What else might the future of the railways hold? Listen to next week’s Rare Earth to find out.

A HUGE hooray for having actual humans on Elizabeth line platforms, and 👏👏👏 for them being such superstars. I left my laptop bag on a platform, didn’t realise until two stops on, and they were so quick and efficient at communicating between stations to find it. We still need humans!

All avoidable injuries are bad, but context is essential. Alongside this story, it's surely essential to say that there were 133,000 car-related injuries in 2024 in the UK, including 1624 fatalities & 28k "serious" injuries. E-bikes aren't the major problem. Data: www.chas.co.uk/blog/uk-car-...

If its not built of it its probably built by it but can #steel ever be green? Rare Earth @bbcsounds.bsky.social with @helenczerski.bsky.social @edconway.bsky.social @steelwatch.bsky.social @willarnoldengineer.bsky.social Also BBC R4 today midday

The nuts and bolts of our world are literally made from steel: furniture, tools, buildings, containers & more. But making all this steel produces 8% of our carbon emissions, so one of the pillars of a clean future is green steel. Can it be done? We find out, in this week's Rare Earth

Bottom trawling is incredibly and depressingly destructive, and the new footage in the Ocean documentary makes that very clear. It’s not only unnecessary, but counter-productive. And yet the UK government has just decided against a blanket ban. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

We've just recorded a Rare Earth on animal migration & this app is amazing. It's called Animal Tracker (www.icarus.mpg.de/29... ), and it's real time data on 100s of animals - birds, foxes, bison & more. Their tracks are fascinating, taking clear routes with intent. More to come next wk on the air!

Another one of our Latitude panels is out now for Patreon and paid Substack subscribers. Go on a dark matter hunt with @helenczerski.bsky.social, @particleclara.bsky.social, @jengupta.bsky.social & Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Sign up or watch at patreon.com/cosmicshambles

We've just recorded a Rare Earth on animal migration & this app is amazing. It's called Animal Tracker (www.icarus.mpg.de/29... ), and it's real time data on 100s of animals - birds, foxes, bison & more. Their tracks are fascinating, taking clear routes with intent. More to come next wk on the air!

Useless private medical tests=bad. But I heard recently (as an eg) abt work on a clock accurate to 1 second in the lifetime of the universe, while (peri)menopause is still poorly researched. Data *would* help, if collected & analysed properly, directly benefitting 1/2 of us. Why aren't we doing it?

No idea what’s going on, but isn’t the Mall in London amazing as a pedestrian street? A place for people, not metal boxes. More of this!

tl:dr - NONE of the options for either pulling carbon out of the atmosphere or shading Earth from the Sun will make any difference if we don't drastically decrease our carbon emissions. This is absolutely *not* a trade-off, where we can "pay" for continued emissions with carbon removal.

In the 1950s, this (a scientist in a tie(!) pulling levers to influence the weather) was the image of geoengineering. But as the climate crisis advances, is it back on the table? In this week's Rare Earth, @tomheap.bsky.social & I take a look at the ideas around today www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

My feed is full of depressing and serious things, but there IS still beauty and fun in the world, so here’s a pelican in St James’s Park gently trying to filch @davidho.bsky.social ‘s shoe. It decided it wasn’t worth it and solemnly set about collecting leaves in its beak to make a nest on a bench.

Mirrors in space, blanket forestry, capturing gigatonnes of carbon. Can #geoengineering save us? on @bbcsounds.bsky.social with @helenczerski.bsky.social Shaun Fitzgerald from @climaterepair.bsky.social @peterbrannen.bsky.social @alexdavey.bsky.social

Still gutted about the news on a lack of specialist physics teachers. Storm in a Teacup has been translated into 21 languages, & is still in print 7 years after I wrote it. Clearly people ARE interested in the physics of the world around them and how it works. This should be for everyone.

And far too often we still think physics is just quantum mechanics and cosmology - far away mysterious things that don't relate to our everyday life. That's nonsense. Why it is tiring to walk slowly, what limits the height of a tree, why do baby ducks swim in a tight line? Physics will tell you!

And far too often we still think physics is just quantum mechanics and cosmology - far away mysterious things that don't relate to our everyday life. That's nonsense. Why it is tiring to walk slowly, what limits the height of a tree, why do baby ducks swim in a tight line? Physics will tell you!

It's incredibly disappointing to hear that a quarter of UK schools don't have a specialist physics teacher. It's essential that we can all see the basics of how the world works & it's fun to satisfy that very basic curiosity. Physics gives us all agency in a complex world.

For this Friday's Rare Earth I visited a VERY cold room in Cambridge where they're doing experiments to see whether they can help Arctic sea ice last longer. But should we even be thinking about this, who would pay for it, and what are the wider implications? Do listen in this Friday to find out.

These are very cute but they are not raindrop-shaped. No, not even at the moment they pinch off (see bottom right for reality). As they fall through the air, raindrops wobble into all kinds of interesting shapes, but none of them have points. Maybe it's time for a Campaign for Real Raindrops.

If you're into gravel bike riding and you're near London or Oxford, this new Cycling UK route is worth a try. We just did a chunk of the northernmost bit (& some bits are definitely the mountain bike end of the gravel world) but I'm looking forward to the rest :) www.cyclinguk.org/routes/long-...

Did you know that we only have tequila because bats pollinate agave plants *at night*? While we're asleep, the ecological action carries on. So what are we missing out on and how important is it? Join us for this week's BBC R4 Rare Earth (on air & online now) to find out. www.bbc.co.uk/progra...

Great work here from @carbonbrief.org , debunking common myths about solar power. The reason that solar power makes so much sense is fundamental physics - it takes energy in its most useful form, as soon as it arrives on Earth, before it's "taxed" in entropy. Making use of it is a slam-dunk win.

It's 20 yrs since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans & flooding is becoming a fixture in their lives. In Front Yard Floods, out on the BBC World Service today, we met the local communities who taking flood protection into their own hands, to give their city a future.

Ooh, look. When we covered the climate impacts of machine learning (“AI”) on Rare Earth in June we found it really frustrating that none of the tech companies would tell anyone the water and energy costs. Now Google has made at least some of it public. More of this! (and preferably raw data too).

Is the insurance industry climate friend or climate foe? They’re the hidden hand behind so much - they don’t just pay out, they decide what can be insured & they’re massive investors. Rare Earth is back on air for another series & in the 1st ep (out now) we find out. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Wow. I just learned that there's such a thing as a lockout: "The difference is that, in a strike, the union withdraws their labour, whereas in a lockout it’s the employer who takes the action to stop work." This appears to be happening right now at Dalhousie University: www.dal.ca/dept/hr/labo...

It doesn't look that dramatic but this was me this morning with a big insulated jacket on, in a -10C cold lab, looking at experiments to investigate potential sea ice enhancement. We're covering geoengineering on Rare Earth soon... a HUGE topic. Could/should/will it ever escape from the lab?

I feel that "damaged/knocked down by a truck" is... underplaying this. A truck that was large enough, heavy enough and/or moving fast enough to smash a very solid stone gateway did exactly that. We should be grateful that apparently there weren't any people in the way. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

TIL that we wouldn't have tequila if it wasn't for bats pollinating the agave flowers, at night. It turns out that ecosystems are very busy in the dark, up to all sorts of things. Next week's Rare Earth is all about noctural ecology - what is it, why does it matter & how is it affected by us?

The bloke a few rows back on the train has just proclaimed "of course, this is all in confidence", while having a phone conversation that the whole carriage can hear. Top tip: it really isn't but it would be nice for the rest of us if it was!

It’s pretty cool that swimming penguins have more than a hint of dolphin. Convergent evolution between mammals & birds! But the penguins got there first. The tallest known penguin (-2m tall) lived ~55 million yrs ago, approx when the land mammal ancestors of whales/dolphins started to become aquatic

~5% of fossil gas & 15% of oil go into “non-energy producing purposes”: raw material for plastics, fertilizers, industrial chemicals etc. A global plastics treaty has just been nixed. These are not unrelated. The petrochemicals industry is fighting for their backup plan in a clean energy world.

A bike dual carriageway in Dublin! More of this! 👏👏🎉🎉

How does the (huge) hidden hand of the insurance industry influence climate issues? Rare Earth is back next wk to find out. It made me think about the uninsurable things: biodiversity, landscapes etc. Maybe flood insurance makes ppl care less about a flood-filled future, but some losses are final.

Doing the basics well (not just shiny tech/gadgets) is a huge part of reducing emissions & we need to recognise + embrace that. We have just tested a simple change to the hot water system in a big university building & it reduces energy use by ~20%. Users won't notice. Yay for the simple stuff!

If your London home was "burnt down, demolished or damnified by means of fire" in the 1680s, you might have had one of the first modern insurance policies (pictured). But is the insurance of today friend or foe when it comes to climate change? BBC R4's Rare Earth is back on air next wk to find out.

I'm looking forward to giving my first Gresham Lecture a month from today. Anyone can register for free to listen online or to watch in person if you're in London.

Loads of wet wipes contain plastic & if they get flushed out with sewage and into rivers, they accumulate in horrible muddy mounds. I've been out on this "island" with Thames21 cleaning volunteers and it's great to hear that it's being removed. Don't flush wet wipes! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I'll be interviewing these two ace writers in a couple of weeks for @intelligence2.bsky.social‬ . The video podcasts (both video and audio formats will be available, I think) will be out shortly after that. Lots of food for thought!

The legendary astronaut Jim Lovell (of Apollo 8 & 13) has just died, aged 97. There are only 5 Apollo astronauts still living, only five who have been far enough from home to really see the precious jewel of Earth hanging in space. I wonder whether human eyes will see it again in a their lifetimes.

Thank you Ireland for a lovely five days of cycling through beautiful countryside (and barely any rain at all). Those hills are definitely a lot harder with panniers... but the views were worth it! @davidho.bsky.social