Australia’s fires - fuelled by climate change
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2020
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Attributing Australia's bush fires, a major study says man-made climate change was a big driver – making the fires at least 30% worse than they would have been if natural processes were the only factors.
We look at preparations for coronavirus in Africa. Although cases there are currently lower than in much of the rest of the world a major training initiative is taking place to spread awareness amongst medics across the continent.
We ask why Horseshoe bats in particular carry coronaviruses, and find a novel idea for distributing vaccines in places without refrigeration.
And why are we obsessed with crime? Kay from Hamburg, Germany asks as every Sunday evening Germans pile into their local pubs to watch Tatort, a hugely successful crime drama which has been running for 50 years.
Presenter Marnie Chesterton starts with the science and speaks with psychologists to get to the bottom of where this obsession might come from. Have we evolved to have an innate obsession with danger or are we addicted to feeling fear?
Or perhaps the dramatisation of crime fuels our obsession. Producer Caroline Steel visits the film set of BBC crime drama, Line of Duty. Producer Jed Mercurio explains what draws us to crime narratives and the techniques he uses to keep his audience captivated.
But does the way we chose to represent crime in media match up with reality? And what is the impact of this on society and policy?
(Image: Australian bushfires. Credit: Getty images/AFP)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is The Science Hour from the BBC World Service, and I'm Roland Pease. |
| 0:05.0 | And in half an hour, Inspector Chesterton will be doing a bit of sleuthing on crowd science. |
| 0:10.4 | Why she wonders, are we so obsessed with crime stories? |
| 0:13.9 | I think the true crime genre, more delving into the mind of, say, a psychopath or a serial killer, |
| 0:19.5 | I think that often fascinates us because perhaps |
| 0:22.8 | we have a little bit of insight that we all have a little bit of darkness inside us. |
| 0:26.7 | Who done it and murder mysteries on crowd science later in this science hour? Before that on science |
| 0:32.6 | and action, the mystery has been the case of the massive wildfires in Australia these past few months. |
| 0:38.4 | I'll be hearing the evidence in a moment from the scientist who is sure that global warming truly was to blame. |
| 0:43.8 | Also, we've the diseased detectives on the lookout for the spread of coronavirus in Africa. |
| 0:49.0 | They still have weaker healthcare systems, so they're less prepared. |
| 0:53.1 | We trained people from, I think, 35 countries, |
| 0:57.5 | and we're going next week to train another 23 countries. A lot of countries are still young |
| 1:04.1 | in the area of preparedness. Also, we're looking at a sweet new recipe for vaccines. |
| 1:09.6 | I love there's sugar, a little bit of salt, nothing harmful, things that we use every day, |
| 1:14.7 | cinnamon and mint and things like that, to see how that impacts the way certain vaccines work. |
| 1:19.8 | Let's first return, though, to the extensive bushfires of Australia. |
| 1:24.0 | This week, for the first time in 240 days, New South Wales was free of any wildfires. |
| 1:31.1 | We talked last week about the extent of the fires and previously we've talked about the climate models |
| 1:36.3 | showing they were in line with trends in global warming. But proving the connection always takes |
| 1:42.2 | deeper analysis and this week the numbers are in, |
| 1:45.6 | showing rising global temperatures had made the fire season at least 30% more likely. |
... |
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