BBC Inside Science Folgen

On Tuesday, the United Nations reported that the breach of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River in Ukraine will impact heavily on global food security, causing a rise in food prices and leaving many without access to clean drinking water. Nine days after the disaster Gaia looks to the future alongside Kira Rudyk, Ukrainian MP who is also leader of the opposition party Golos and Laura Wellesley, senior research fellow in the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House.Earlier this week the three-year inquiry into COVID began, seeking ‘to examine the UK’s response to and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and learn lessons for the future.’ Eyes are on the inquiry from many angles. Inside Science looks at what scientists hope to contribute and learn from it, with author and broadcaster Philip Ball.Also, a spike in North Atlantic sea temperatures has sparked concern among scientists. Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office, talks through the factors that have coincided to form the anomaly. Presenter: Gaia Vince Producer: Harrison Lewis Assistant producer: Robbie Wojciechowski Editor: Richard Collings

For World Ocean Day, Gaia Vince finds out how the planet’s seas could help us to generate clean power, capture CO2 and feed the world. Gaia is joined in the studio by science journalist and marine biologist Olive Heffernan. She dives into the controversy regarding the potential of mining in deep oceans and discusses whether the seas could become the location for Industrial Revolution 2.0.We’re used to seeing seaweed wrapped around our sushi rolls but it’s so much more than that. As well as being a tasty addition to what we eat, seaweed plays a vital role in absorbing CO2. Gaia speaks to Vincent Doumeizel, a senior adviser on oceans to the UN Global Compact; he’s also the food programme director at the UK-based charity Lloyd’s Register Foundation. He’s confident that seaweed could enable us to sustainably feed a growing global population in the coming decades.Phytoplankton – microscopic species of algae that exist on the surface of the sea – also absorb huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Sir David King, founder and chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and former chief scientific adviser to the UK Government has the radical idea that artificial whale poo could boost phytoplankton growth, leading to an increase in fish stocks and, consequently, improved biodiversity in the oceans. He tells Gaia about his project and the potential it has for carbon capture.When we think of energy generation from the oceans, we tend to think of offshore technology such as wind turbines. But what about generating electricity using the water itself? Gaia speaks to Eco Wave Power’s Inna Braverman who reveals how her project harnesses the power of the waves by attaching to existing coastal structures such as piers and jetties, to provide a source of clean, renewable energy. Presenter: Gaia Vince Producer: Hannah Fisher Content Producer: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell Editor: Richard Collings

In the headlines this week eminent tech experts and public figures signed an open letter that read “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”One of the signatories was Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called ‘godfather of AI’. He’s become so concerned about the risks associated with artificial intelligence that he recently decided to quit his job at Google, where he had worked for more than a decade. But are these concerns justified, or is it overblown scaremongering? And should we start prepping for a Terminator-style takeover? To get the answers, presenter Gareth Mitchell is joined by computational linguist Prof Emily M. Bender from the University of Washington along with Dr Stephen Cave, Director at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI). Next up, we hear from Prof Carl Sayer at UCL, along with Dr Cicely Marshall and Dr Matthew Wilkinson from the University of Cambridge, to dig into the science behind wildflower meadows and whether they can boost biodiversity and even help ease climate change. Finally, have you heard about Balto the sled dog? He was part of a life-saving mission in the 1920s and now he has the chance to be a hero once more. His DNA has been studied by the Zoonomia project, which is using databases of genomes from hundreds of mammals to build a better picture of evolution. This data could then be used help identify those animals that are at the greatest risk of extinction. Presenter: Gareth Mitchell Producer: Harrison Lewis Content Producers: Ella Hubber and Alice Lipscombe-Southwell Editor: Richard Collings