Switzerland has submitted a proposal to create a United Nations expert group on solar geoengineering to inform governments and stakeholders. The idea was discussed at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, this week. Professor Aarti Gupta shares how, after tense negotiations, the different member states could not agree, and the proposal was withdrawn. Why is solar geoengineering a controversial issue? How would dimming the sun even work? And should we consider it a genuine option in our fight against climate change? Dr Pete Irvine and Professor Joanna Haigh join presenter Marnie Chesterton in the studio to discuss.
Animal welfare charities have been celebrating a ban on donkey skin trade, agreed to this month by 55 African countries. This will make it illegal to slaughter donkeys for their skin across the continent, where around two thirds of the world’s 53 million donkeys live. Victoria Gill tells Marnie that the demand for the animals' skins is fuelled by the popularity of an ancient Chinese medicine called Ejiao, believed to have health-enhancing and youth-preserving properties and traditionally made from donkey hides.
Lastly, Dr Jess Wade, physicist and science communicator at Imperial College London, discusses Breaking Through: My Life in Science. It’s the memoir of Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Dr Katalin Karikó, whose passion and dedication to mRNA research led to the development of the life-changing COVID mRNA vaccines.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producers: Florian Bohr, Louise Orchard Assistant Producer: Imaan Moin Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
BBC Inside Science is produced in collaboration with the Open University.
The Big Compost Experiment; Using AI to screen for new antibiotics; Science of slapstick
Coronavirus questions; HMS Challenger and ocean acidification; Sean Carroll's quantum world
Ordnance Survey - Britain's 220-year-old tech company; Launching synthetic voices and personality test
Solar Orbiter launch; Mutational signatures in cancer; paleo-oncology
Coronavirus update, Typhoid Mary and 200th anniversary of the first sighting of Antarctica
Coronavirus outbreak in China; Genetic diseases in Amish communities and getting an Egyptian mummy to speak
Reproducibility crisis in science; Aeolus wind-measuring satellite; electric cars
Australian bush fires; Veganuary and LIGO
The hidden history in our DNA - Part 2 - Travel and Culture
The hidden history in our DNA - Part 1 - Sex and Disease
Ten years of Zooniverse; what happened to volcano Anak Krakatau and visualising maths
Earliest hunting scene cave painting; animal domestication syndrome
Global Carbon Emissions; Parker Solar Probe and simulating swaying buildings
What's the problem with palm oil and should we be supporting sustainably grown oil? Virtual reality skin
Noise pollution and wildlife; No till farming; Cornwall's geothermal heat
Soils and floods, Air pollution and ultra-low emission zones, detecting the drug Spice
Fracking moratorium; Bloodhound; Big Compost Experiment; transit of Mercury
African genomes sequenced; Space weather; sports head injuries
Organic farming emissions; Staring at seagulls; Salt and dementia
Ebola model, Partula snails, Malaria origin
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Science Weekly
Post Reports
Science Vs
Global News Podcast
The News Agents