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Unexpected Elements

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

The news you know, the science you don’t.

The news you know, the science you don’t. Unexpected Elements looks beyond everyday narratives to discover a goldmine of scientific stories and connections from around the globe. From Afronauts, to why we argue, to a deep dive on animal lifespans: see the world in a new way.

The Science Hour

Unexpected Elements: Global Warming Pause -  Is It Valid?

Global Warming Pause

06/06/2015

Global Warming Pause -  Is It Valid?

BBC World Service - Unexpected Elements, Global Warming Pause -  Is It Valid?

Global surface temperature data disputes the reported global warming slowdown or pause.

Analysis using updated global surface temperature data disputes the existence of a previously reported 21st century global warming slowdown or pause.

Professor Tom Karl, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centres for Environmental Information (NCEI) explains to Roland Pease about how his analysis using updated global surface temperature data disputes the existence of a previously reported 21st century global warming slowdown or pause. The new analysis suggests that there has been no discernible decrease in the rate of warming between the second half of the 20th century up to the present day. 

Apollo clean energy
A group of scientists and economists is calling for the equivalent of the Apollo space programme to produce cheap, clean energy.
Apollo engaged America’s best minds to put a man on the Moon in the Cold War. The academics say a similar effort is needed to make renewables cheaper than coal within a decade in what they call the biggest scientific challenge of the century.

Saiga antelopes
Around half of the world's critically endangered Saiga antelope have died suddenly in Kazakhstan since 10 May. An unknown environmental trigger is thought to have caused two types of normally benign bacteria found in the antelopes' gut to turn deadly. The animals die within hours of showing symptoms, which include depression, diarrhoea and frothing at the mouth.

The truth about AIDS
Clinical psychologist Margarita Holmes travelled to the Research Institute of Tropical  near Manila, where she met patients being supported by The Red Ribbon Foundation, TRR, a Filipino charity combating HIV.

The origins of war
Is our desire to wage war something uniquely human or can its origins be traced much further back in our evolutionary past?

Dark Matter in the Universe
For years, physicists have run experiments in deep mines looking for Dark Matter in the Universe – related to the science that’s just started again at the underground laboratories of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The logic is that the layers of rock overhead screen out confusing cosmic rays that would otherwise swamp their data sets. But as Tom Fielden found at the Boulby Mine lab in northern England – the solitude of the dark-matter physicist is being broken by the arrival of other researchers going underground.


Science Hour was presented by Roland Pease with comments from BBC Science reporter Helen Briggs.
Producer: Rami Tzabar


(Photo: A polar bear in Greenland drifting on unconsolidated ice. Credit: Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace)

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