The Life Scientific: Mercedes Maroto-Valer

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do you solve a problem like CO2?

As the curtain closes on the world’s most important climate summit, we talk to a scientist who was at COP 28 and is working to solve our carbon dioxide problem.

Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer thinks saving the planet is still Mission Possible - but key to success is turning excess of the climate-busting gas, carbon dioxide, into something useful. And as Director of the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions at Heriot-Watt University and the UK’s Decarbonisation Champion, she has lots of innovative ideas on how to do this.

She also has a great climate-themed suggestion for what you should say when someone asks your age…

Presenter: Jim Al-Khalili Producer: Gerry Holt Audio editor: Sophie Ormiston Production Co-ordinator: Jonathan Harris

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm John Ronson and I'm an invisible enemy.
0:05.0	That changed people psychologically.
0:08.0	Words can be dangerous if you don't know the context.
0:12.0	We were told to stay at home.
0:15.0	We lived with an invisible enemy,
0:17.0	with only the internet for company.
0:19.0	That changed people psychologically.
0:21.0	I'm John Ronson, and I'll be unerthing the roots of the
0:24.4	culture wars that engulfed us then and still do now.
0:29.2	The award-winning podcast, Things Fell Apart Returns.
0:33.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:35.0	In 1969, a plan to show support for an anti-racism protest turned the lives of 14 promising black student athletes upside down.
0:45.0	Amazing Sport Stories from the BBC World Service tells their story.
0:49.4	Search for Amazing Sport Stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:53.2	Hello, what comes to your mind when you hear the word carbon?
0:57.8	You may picture the beauty and richness of life on earth.
1:00.9	We are, after all, carbon-based life forms. Without carbon-based life forms,
1:03.6	without carbon chemistry there would be no life on this planet.
1:06.9	But your thoughts might also turn to smoking factory towers,
1:10.5	traffic pollution, decimated rainforests and raging seas brought by the latest climate-related
1:15.8	disaster. When a carbon atom bonds to two oxygen atoms, it becomes carbon dioxide, a greenhouse
1:22.4	gas. The rapidly rising concentrations of which
	...

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