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Home Planet: Clouds, Boats and Pond Life

26/07/2011

Clouds, Boats and Pond Life

BBC Radio 4 - Home Planet, Clouds, Boats and Pond Life

With Richard Daniel. Is pollution from leisure craft damaging the environment?

We love messing about in boats. But to keep our leisure craft working, we have to keep their hulls free of barnacles and weed. Are we polluting our lakes and seas as a result?

It's a rather watery programme this week. First up is a question about the measurement of water in the atmosphere and the impact this has on climate change. 

Then we descend to the seas, lakes and rivers where those who can spend time relaxing on the water. But are the anti-fouling paints, engine exhausts and various other boating paraphernalia polluting the waters in which we play? One listener wants to know what's eating what in a garden pond. We move onto land to find out whether roadside pollution makes picking blackberries from the verge a hazard? And what links swarms of jellyfish, Himalayan glaciers and a recent poll of the British public? 

We have a trio of professors lined up to do the answering this week, they are Sue Buckingham - Professor of Social Work at Brunel University; Mike Hulme - Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia and Graham Underwood - Professor of Marine and Freshwater Biology at Essex University.

The programme is presented by Richard Daniel


Producer: Toby Murcott 
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

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