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CrowdScience

How Bad is Flying for the Planet?

CrowdScience

BBC

Science

4.81K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What effect does air travel have on the climate? That is the question listener Neil sent CrowdScience from New Zealand. If you have ever looked up at the sky and seen the wispy white streaks that airplanes leave behind, then you are looking at one of the major environmental impacts of air transport – contrails.

To find out more, Anand Jagatia goes on a journey through the rugged, lava-ridden Icelandic landscape with earth scientist Thor and discovers how both natural events like volcanic eruptions as well as man-made acts of terror can shed light on the environmental impact of aircraft. Plus, we meet a man who tailgates 737 airliners to measure their emissions.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, hello this is the podcast edition of Crowd Science from the BBC World Service.

0:05.0

I'm Anand Jagatier.

0:07.0

And this is producer Louisa.

0:09.0

Hello.

0:10.0

How are you Louisa?

0:11.0

I'm good.

0:12.0

So in this week's episode we've been on a bit of an expedition haven't we and I'm not going to reveal exactly where we went

0:17.6

But you've brought back a bit of a local delicacy

0:21.4

Yes, and I've got it here with me and I've wrapped it up firmly in various bags. It is

0:28.8

fermented shark and it's a national dish but it's a bit of an acquired taste. So some of the people that I

0:38.6

asked about it, they just absolutely love it and other people really hate it.

0:43.2

So I'm just going to open here.

0:45.8

All right.

0:48.3

Okay, I'm just going to let you smell this.

0:52.8

So what I've heard about this is this.

0:54.8

Oh wow, oh wow.

0:57.2

Oh my God.

0:58.2

Oh my God.

0:59.2

It's quite pungent, shall we say that?

1:03.0

So what we thought we'd do before we get into the show is we'd both try a piece.

1:06.8

So do you want to grab, I'm going to have a very small piece.

1:10.1

You can't back out of this now, Louisa.

...

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