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fact, a crocodile can't stick out its

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tongue. Also, you can get health insurance

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more at uh1.com. Welcome

1:19

to The Climate Question from the BBC

1:21

World Service. This week,

1:23

listeners like me are taking over the show

1:26

with our questions. I'm your

1:28

host, Graeme Jackson, and these are the

1:30

stars of today's show. Hello,

1:33

my name is Anouk, and I'm from London.

1:36

Hi, my name's Noel, and I live in Tokyo.

1:39

Hello, my name is Kimberly, and I'm

1:41

from Maryland in the United States. We're

1:44

answering your questions from where are

1:46

we with nuclear fusion, to are

1:48

electric cars bad for the environment,

1:50

as well as when should we

1:53

talk to our children about climate

1:55

change? We.

2:01

Have our usual panel of experts just

2:03

and may not be disease climb ss.

2:05

Tires could be here thank. You

2:07

and you tonight have you

2:09

accent? Ruthie Bloomberg senior Climate

2:12

Reporter and author of Climate

2:14

Capitalism. Hello be here near

2:16

physicists and Tons and Edwards

2:18

Professor as Climate Change at.

2:20

King's College London. High that

2:22

hello hello how we were. Very

2:25

well. As for Luis up in Yorkshire looking

2:27

at Puffins then you are dominating story about

2:29

how Puffins were caught up in this dispute

2:31

between the Uk and the Who are so

2:33

when enough use or any puzzling things that

2:35

aren't too many cause you to Puffins because

2:37

I live in the you know that live

2:39

within the bar is my rights But we

2:42

did say copper Puffins they arm very keepers.

2:44

Was even abstract sense that seamlessly I've.

2:46

Been looking at a I and Ads

2:48

impact on energy use in the missions,

2:50

and all the tech companies are essentially

2:52

so off track from all the climate

2:54

goals they had set a few years

2:56

ago, instead of their missions declining by

2:59

thirty percent. In the case of Microsoft,

3:01

they've gone up thirty percent in the

3:03

last three years since it said it's

3:05

called to be carbon negative. By doing

3:07

deep for these tech companies, you know

3:09

they all claim the one hundred percent

3:11

renewable power so the emissions that are

3:13

increasing up to the construction of the

3:15

data centers as the. Steel, cement and

3:17

the microchips that needed to parallel computing

3:19

and nice to be done for the

3:21

A I. Could they use the ai

3:24

to find out how they could become more

3:26

sense? Because I seen some really designed on

3:28

Mondays like cement factories and things like that.

3:30

On it to mine too. Buddy Boy Relay

3:32

a Yeah has a lot of it's. first

3:34

project was to look at ways of making

3:37

the data centers more efficient. I claim to

3:39

have improved efficiency bomb at twenty percent. That

3:41

is absolutely something they have to do because

3:43

that's the one place where they can save

3:46

money in the process everything else on time

3:48

ago. they have to spend money so they

3:50

are massing out on the efficiency and yet

3:52

the emissions are going up since. And

3:54

will instantly I was also.

3:56

Thinking about a i recently as a conference

3:58

cause climate in some. which was about

4:01

data and thinking about machine learning, which

4:03

is a kind of AI that I

4:05

use in my research. And they had

4:07

a speaker from Google DeepMind there because

4:09

they're predicting the weather very,

4:12

very well and very, very quickly from this

4:14

kind of AI method instead of using these

4:16

big computer models that have all the physics

4:18

in that people like the Met Office in the UK

4:20

have used for years. Well, I

4:22

wish my story was a bit more highbrow,

4:24

but I was on the BBC Five Live,

4:27

which was like the UK's national radio station

4:29

answering listeners' climate questions or phoning in with

4:31

all sorts. And suddenly my

4:33

toddler ran screaming into the

4:35

room. Yeah, where global temperatures

4:38

decrease. Oh, I'm sorry, I

4:40

have a toddler in the room with me. That's

4:42

all right. What's the toddler's name? His

4:45

name is Oren, he's just back from nursery. Oh,

4:47

he's happy to see you. I'm

4:50

so sorry. He's happy to see me. I'm just on the

4:52

radio. Oh, great. I'll

4:54

tell you what, Grae. Look, we've only got a

4:56

minute left. Why don't you go and see Oren? Let's

4:59

end on a happy note. Oh, great. Oren.

5:02

Thank you so much for having me.

5:04

I really appreciate it. And there was

5:06

no way I could answer any of

5:08

these quite technical questions whilst sort of

5:10

fending off a toddler. So

5:12

anyway, not quite as highbrow, but it does

5:14

bring me to my first question from Chennai

5:16

in the UK. I

5:18

wanted to know when is too young to

5:21

talk to children about climate change? Justin,

5:23

you have two kids, is that right? Four kids. Yeah,

5:25

not very environmentally friendly. I've got four

5:27

kids, yeah, I've got, they're older now.

5:29

Listen, in my view, right, climate

5:32

change is a bit like sex when it comes to

5:34

talking to children. Uh-huh, okay. That's probably a sentence that's

5:36

never been sent before. No, I was gonna say. You

5:39

know, I think you have to, look, my

5:41

rule as a parent was if they ask

5:43

you a question, you've got to answer it

5:45

as honestly as you can within the kind

5:47

of parameters of their comprehension. And I think

5:49

they can kind of understand the basics of

5:51

climate change and sex. And

5:54

I think you're building up a problem for yourself if

5:56

you don't answer these questions honestly.

5:58

So if you sort of, you know, they say,

6:00

oh I've kids at school to mention something's happening

6:02

in the atmosphere and you don't, you're not honest,

6:04

then they're gonna be more like what else did

6:06

daddy lie about when I asked him coaching? But

6:08

also it's in kids TV programs. I was

6:10

watching Octonauts at 5 a.m. this morning and

6:13

they were talking about climate change and I

6:15

thought, well you know. Yeah exactly and I

6:17

think you do you sort of just be

6:19

honest and communicate with them like the people

6:21

that they are and trust that they can

6:23

process information reasonably. So you don't present it

6:25

as we're all gonna die as

6:28

well as terrifying as perhaps it is. Anyway

6:30

so that's my. Actually do you have kids?

6:32

No kids but I've been talking to lots of

6:35

kids I know and you know even at six

6:37

years old I feel like they know science concepts

6:39

that I don't think I knew till I was

6:41

10 and I just feel

6:43

like they are learning way faster science

6:46

than I did and to me that

6:48

gives me hope that they'll understand climate change. So

6:57

Billie Eilish has been a great champion actually

6:59

of climate causes and also plant-based

7:02

eating and so has her mom as well. They

7:05

had a kind of festival of climate

7:07

change and veganism plant-based

7:09

food and roller skating and

7:12

I went and talked on a panel

7:15

actually so lots of her fans kind of

7:17

in the room teenagers and also online around

7:19

the world about climate change and the

7:21

focus of the panel was on good news. So

7:23

that's the angle I've already been taking anyway

7:26

actually with a lot of young people. I spoke

7:28

at Glastonbury last year as well a couple of

7:30

times and I think people actually

7:32

are not really hearing enough of the good

7:34

news usually and that's why they switch off

7:36

that's why they feel anxious they don't feel

7:38

agency. So just kind of telling people look

7:41

you know we've made this progress we've got

7:43

this plan in place this set of plans

7:45

we think it's gonna avoid this much

7:47

warming we keep striving to make

7:49

those plans better to avoid even

7:51

more future warming. People don't know this

7:53

and you know we only hear the kind of the bad

7:56

stuff in the news don't we and there's

7:58

loads of kind of quiet slow progress.

8:01

We only hear bad stuff in the

8:04

news. I really enjoy telling solution stories

8:06

because often they're really interesting. Solving

8:09

these riddles, which Akshat does loads of

8:11

this, solving these riddles that kind of

8:13

industry and society faces is fascinating and

8:16

of course gives you that sense of progress as well.

8:18

And people just don't know the progress that

8:20

we've made and the plans that are in

8:22

place. They just assume that nobody cares, that

8:24

no one's doing anything, that nothing's happening. And actually,

8:26

it's not fast enough, but lots of things are

8:28

happening and they are speeding up, I think as

8:31

well. Yeah, I quite often zoom out a bit and

8:33

say, look what we've done in 10 years. But

8:36

circling back to Chanae's question, how young is

8:38

too young? I would say it's

8:40

a very personal question, right? I personally won't be talking

8:42

about it for a little while, but I will be

8:44

talking about it perhaps as and when he asked if

8:46

not before, maybe it's something that we talk about around

8:49

the dinner table, Chanae. Anyway,

8:51

our next question is from Noel in

8:53

Tokyo. I

8:57

recently saw an article claiming that the world's fossil

8:59

fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the

9:01

amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved

9:03

projects by the end of this decade. Could

9:06

you help us understand how this is possible, given

9:08

the agreement at COP28, to transition

9:11

away from fossil fuels and also what we can

9:13

do about it? Thank you. Justin,

9:16

your thoughts? Well, I mean, it's interesting. I

9:18

sort of obviously went back and looked at

9:20

the article. It's the source of the data.

9:23

It's from something called the Global Energy Monitor,

9:25

which is a US NGO. And it claims

9:27

that since 2021, when the International Energy Agency,

9:30

which is kind of global watchdog on energy,

9:32

said we should have no new oil and

9:34

gas if we're going to stay at

9:37

or below 1.5 of warming since

9:39

the Industrial Revolution, there have been

9:41

20 billion barrels of

9:43

additional oil and gas equivalent found.

9:46

So a huge amount of

9:48

additional oil and gas. Now, I can't

9:50

vouchsafe those stats. I haven't dug

9:52

into them. But it's certainly true that countries

9:54

like, for example, America has massively increased

9:56

its output over the last couple of decades. I

9:58

think in the last... six years, it's produced

10:01

more oil each year than any country

10:03

in history has ever done before. So

10:05

even the peak of Saudi production, America's out

10:08

producing it. And then you look at other

10:10

places, Guyana's found huge oil reserves, billions of

10:12

barrels of oil, I think 11 billion barrels

10:14

of oil is now producing 750,000 barrels of

10:17

oil a day. And

10:20

if you subscribe to the IAA statistics you see, I

10:22

get every month how much everything's increased

10:24

and it's very rarely, it's always going to

10:26

be on the map. It's always on the

10:28

up. So why on earth do these international

10:31

agreements that we've got not hold them in

10:33

check? Well, the problem with the COP process,

10:35

the Conference of the Parties, the big climate

10:37

discussions the UN organises is they are voluntary.

10:40

So when I was at Dubai for that

10:42

big climate conference, it was quite interesting because

10:44

the final agreement which everybody was like, yay,

10:46

great deal, we're going to transition away from

10:48

fossil fuels. And you look at it and

10:51

it's going to, it asks countries to contribute

10:53

towards that goal. And I remember a joke I

10:55

made at the time when I was reporting on

10:57

this from, I said, look, if I did a

10:59

couple of plates and we had a dinner party

11:01

in the clothes of washing up and I did

11:03

a couple of plates, I've contributed to the washing

11:05

up, but I don't think my wife would feel

11:07

that I really kind of equal to the real

11:09

task. So the language is very weak. It doesn't

11:11

include plastic or transportation in the total. And

11:14

there was an opt-out clause for gas. So

11:16

world agrees to transition away from fossil fuels.

11:18

When you look beneath them, look beneath the

11:20

bonnet and have a look, you find that

11:22

actually it's not such a tough agreement after

11:24

all. Tamsin,

11:31

this next question is for you.

11:33

Nigel in South Africa writes that

11:35

he lives in a tin roofed

11:37

bungalow. He added solar panels

11:40

to the roof, which are black and absorb

11:42

the sun's heat. He wonders if the whole

11:44

world is doing what he's doing. Are all

11:46

these black solar panels causing the planet to

11:48

warm? It's an interesting question, isn't it? It's

11:50

a great question. I love this kind of

11:52

thing of like, you know, what are these

11:54

kind of trade offs, I guess. And there

11:57

are people who are obviously thinking about this.

11:59

For example, people I think if we

12:01

put a lot of solar panels across the

12:03

deserts, which are also quite kind of light,

12:05

that extra darker surface, what does that do

12:07

in terms of absorbing more

12:09

of the sun's heat and warming things up, maybe

12:11

even changing the local climate, changing the winds and

12:14

things? Interestingly, they're also thinking

12:16

about it for forests. If you think

12:18

about it, if you plant forests in

12:20

the sort of, say, the high northern

12:22

regions that used to be grass that

12:24

gets covered in snow, snow is nice

12:26

and bright. It's really, really bright and

12:29

a nice flat ground will reflect a lot

12:31

of the sun and cool the planet down.

12:33

Now, if you replace that with big dark

12:35

pine and these kind of huge trees, dark

12:37

trees, they don't hold that snow and it's a

12:40

lot darker. So actually, that kind

12:42

of warming effect of the surface does

12:44

matter and it's a bigger impact if

12:46

you're replacing a really bright surface, of

12:48

course. But the

12:50

basic answer is it's still worth it.

12:52

It still wears planting cheese. It's still worth

12:54

having the solar panels because they do pay

12:56

off. Solar panels, it's been estimated in a

12:59

study I saw today, pay

13:01

off in sort of two, three years. The

13:03

carbon cost? Yeah. So

13:05

the kind of compensation of the warming

13:07

of the dark surface compared with the

13:09

carbon, it becomes worth it very quickly.

13:12

With forests, perhaps a bit longer, perhaps more

13:14

years or even decades as the tree grows because

13:17

it takes time to take up that carbon,

13:19

it's not instant. But basically, the

13:21

short answer is it's still worth it. I

13:24

want to know, do white solar

13:26

panels exist? Actually, you're smiling. Well,

13:28

the whole point of a solar panel

13:30

is to try and absorb as much of

13:32

the light that falls on it. And so

13:34

one of the advances why solar panels have

13:36

become so effective, if they started to absorb

13:39

more and more of the range of lights

13:41

that fall, everything from the blue to the

13:43

red, most of it is now being

13:45

captured. And yet the efficiency is only about 25%. So

13:48

yes, 75% of the light

13:50

and energy is reflected. So

13:53

you want a dark solar panel. That

13:55

is not to say people aren't thinking

13:57

about adding transparency in solar panels. because

14:00

if they're so cheap, you don't just want

14:02

them on your roof, you want them on

14:04

your windows where light still comes in, but

14:06

the kind of light you don't want is

14:08

absorbed and that's converted into electricity. They're

14:11

so cheap, people are using solar panels to

14:13

make fences because they're one of the cheapest

14:15

building materials. Really? Yeah.

14:18

Wow, I did not know that. I mean, I

14:20

was really excited. I'm going camping next weekend and

14:22

I managed to buy a solar power pack. It's

14:25

tiny. I mean, probably about five to two hands

14:27

and that will charge my lights and on my

14:29

phone for two nights and I was just

14:32

remarkable. Yeah, they've come on so quickly

14:34

in their capacity, I mean, much faster

14:36

than anyone predicted, I think. So,

14:44

Akshat, you helped develop an idea for

14:47

us about booming electric two and three

14:49

wheelers in Asia, e-rickshaws, electric mopeds, that

14:51

sort of thing. We made a whole

14:53

show about it a few weeks ago

14:56

and we got loads of questions and

14:58

comments. Thank you for those.

15:00

I'm just going to read some of

15:02

those out. Dennis from Malawi was very

15:04

enthusiastic. He said, this is what we

15:07

call innovation, adapting to the environment and

15:09

making the best of our situation. Sundeep

15:12

wrote that he loves his electric bike.

15:14

It goes for 120 kilometres for less than 20 cents. That

15:18

does sound like good value, doesn't it? One

15:20

Kenyan asks, do they work in hilly

15:23

terrains? Are they strong enough to carry

15:25

heavy loads like petrol ones do? I

15:28

have to admit, I don't know the answer to that question,

15:30

Akshat. Oh, very much so. I mean,

15:32

the goal of an electric bike is basically you

15:34

put a motor on, you power it with a

15:36

battery, and of course you have some mechanical movement

15:38

if you would like so. You

15:41

can put a big motor and you can

15:43

carry a lot of people. So, when I

15:45

looked at the numbers, a cargo e-bike, sort

15:47

of a bigger bike with a space to

15:49

put people on. Like a bike on the

15:51

front. Yeah. Could take as

15:53

much as 240 kilograms of weight, which is

15:55

like three proper adults. But

15:57

Gino in the US and Malumbo in

16:00

the US. in Malawi had concerns about

16:02

the environmental cost of producing

16:04

batteries and questioned whether we should

16:06

have featured that in the show. I'm

16:08

just gonna respond to those comments now. We

16:11

did very briefly talk about what's

16:14

called a life cycle assessment of

16:16

batteries, which includes impact for mining

16:18

these metals. But truth be told,

16:20

it wasn't really the focus of

16:22

this program. Sadly, we just

16:24

can't talk about everything every time as much as

16:26

I'd like to. But Gino and

16:28

Malambo, we have just published a show all

16:30

about this. Check out the Climate Question podcast

16:33

if you want to hear that. And

16:35

we're also gonna talk about it now because

16:37

Kimberly from the US separately asked

16:39

us this. I've heard

16:41

that electric cars are just as bad

16:43

for the environment as regular cars because

16:46

of the batteries and shorter life spans. Is

16:49

this true or just an anti-global warming

16:51

rhetoric? Let's put this

16:53

to bed and say, no, we have the

16:55

numbers. We've done these numbers again and again

16:57

and again. And now I have them in

17:00

front of me. Any country in

17:02

the world, even if it's 100% coal

17:04

powered grid, it is still cleaner to

17:06

have an electric car than a fossil fuel car. The

17:09

saving is smaller if it's an electric

17:11

car on a 100% powered coal grid.

17:14

But if you look at the UK, for example,

17:16

or the US or Germany, an

17:18

electric car produces one third the emissions in

17:20

its lifetime, which is to take into consideration

17:22

all the battery and the metal that's got

17:25

to make it, plus

17:27

all the electricity that will be consumed, which might come

17:29

from gas in some cases, versus

17:31

a fossil fuel car, which is okay,

17:34

lower carbon when it's created, but

17:36

consumes so much fossil fuels in

17:38

its lifetime. And so one third,

17:41

US, UK, Germany, half if

17:43

it's China, which is a very coal heavy grid.

17:46

Well, I mean, that is, the numbers speak

17:48

for themselves, but that's not to say, Justin,

17:50

that there are other issues. I mean, last

17:52

week on the programme, we heard about allegations

17:54

of river pollution next to a coal bolt

17:56

mine in DRC. Coal obviously also

17:59

has the human rights. concerns kids

18:01

work in mines. Exactly, we had about

18:03

property damage from where they'd exploded the

18:05

rock faces and rocks were flying over

18:08

into people's homes but also like a

18:10

reported death of a teenage girl. So

18:12

there are many issues with mines like

18:15

these, right? And with coal mines and with

18:17

oil rigs and with, you know, I mean, getting

18:19

materials out of the ground is a brutal

18:21

physical process and, you know, there will

18:23

be... I mean, it's an issue across

18:26

the mining industry actually, isn't it? So

18:28

you should look at this again from

18:30

a very big picture perspective. If by

18:32

2050, say we need net zero, the

18:34

amount of mining of stuff that we'd

18:36

be doing will fall by 99%

18:40

because today most of the mining that

18:42

we do is fossil fuels. These fossil

18:44

fuels, once burned, go up into

18:46

the atmosphere, cannot be reused. Whereas

18:49

metals, we will have to mine a lot

18:51

more metals, but the amount of metals today

18:53

and in the future that will be mined

18:55

will be much smaller than the amount of

18:57

fossil fuels we mine. And that's something we

18:59

don't often talk about, which is that we're

19:01

trying to build up a stock of metals

19:03

of lithium and cobalt and all the other

19:05

metals. And the dream is, the hope is,

19:07

we'll be able to recycle that. So there

19:09

comes a point, and we're quite close to

19:11

it actually with things like aluminium, steel, we're

19:13

getting there, you know, we'll have a stock

19:15

where we actually don't need to go and dig into the

19:17

ground to get more out because we've got as much

19:19

as we need and we just recycle it and reuse it.

19:22

This is why recycling electronics is really important. Oh,

19:24

good point, Tamsin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so

19:26

don't throw away those disposable electronics, make

19:28

sure you take them to the proper waste place. It's

19:36

that time in the programme where I have to remind

19:38

you that you're listening to The Climate Question

19:41

from the BBC World Service. I'm

19:43

Graeme Jackson. And

19:47

this week, action at Tamsin, Justin

19:49

and I are answering your questions.

19:51

If you've got one yourself, you

19:53

can send it to theclimatequestionatbbc.com. Next

19:58

question is from a listener in China. The

20:00

arena food porn. They asked about nuclear

20:02

fusion and whether scientists have been able

20:04

to create power from this reaction times

20:06

and just explain the difference between neatly

20:08

season which is what we see in

20:11

nuclear power plants today and nuclear fusion.

20:13

Oh this is taking me back to

20:15

my undergraduate physics day as high as

20:17

many alexa on this and the other

20:19

cities are inside the middle of an

20:21

awesome and the nucleus as a huge

20:23

amount of energy and you can access

20:26

it is t different ways of vision

20:28

is the one way he. Sees

20:30

throw neutrons a uranium basically

20:32

another type of particle. Exactly

20:34

exactly these very tiny particles. but basically

20:36

at the goal is to split up

20:39

this uranium into kind of smaller particles

20:41

but then in doing that you release

20:43

some of that locked up entity that

20:45

kind of bonding everything together fuse and

20:47

again you're accessing that same sort of

20:49

energy. but instead of a splitting your

20:51

your feelings of the same as in

20:54

in the sun where we've got hydrogen

20:56

seizing to make helium spot he can

20:58

imagine these are like particles, the have

21:00

the same cause as positively cause. they

21:02

don't like the in a they repel.

21:04

Each other. They don't want to become close together

21:06

to. Fuse he worried he got a full

21:08

of them. with a lot of

21:10

high temperature high pressure can find month

21:13

with is actually. Pretty difficult, which is

21:15

why we've been struggling to do it for seventy years

21:17

or so. Bright. Side

21:19

Season is where he split the atom,

21:21

the parts and that creates energy. and

21:23

fusion is where he bring the atoms

21:25

together and also creates those events. it.

21:27

But the benefit a fusion of course

21:29

is that there's no toxic waste and

21:31

was an infinite amount of energy just

21:33

like the sun. And there was a

21:35

big breakthrough late last year wasn't that?

21:37

I'm then. That's. Right say that

21:40

the difficulty is of course creating

21:42

these conditions. The breakthrough back in

21:44

December was at the National Ignition

21:46

Facility in California s and will

21:48

and of about this is they

21:50

fired a hundred ninety to be

21:52

laser. Line slurring his things into

21:54

a tiny gold cylinder. just a centimeter

21:56

loan i'm a city that is the key

21:58

to defeating up so much inside this tiny

22:00

gold cylinder. It basically made a fuel

22:02

pellet inside, sort of, implode

22:05

and fused together, and it

22:07

released 50% more energy than

22:09

they put in. So it's like magic, right?

22:11

It feels like energy for free, but

22:14

it's taken 70 years to get to this point. 192

22:16

big lasers take a lot of energy. It's

22:20

very difficult. I mean, it was like the whole US grid

22:22

or something. I mean, it was a thing in Spain. Yeah,

22:24

I haven't seen comparisons exactly, but it was, I think, 3

22:26

million degrees Celsius, like hotter than the surface of

22:28

the sun. Many times, like eight times hotter

22:30

than the Earth. Right, yes, exactly. Really, really,

22:32

very hotter. Yeah, a lot hotter. So it

22:34

is amazing that it's really at that kind

22:36

of proof of concept level. Like we always

22:38

knew, it's always knew that this was possible,

22:40

but how you actually do that in

22:42

practical terms, how you get the energy

22:44

out into heat to sort of use

22:46

energy, how you scale that up. I

22:48

mean, this is still kind of probably

22:50

decades away, really. Accent? As

22:52

a business journalist, this story fascinates me because for

22:54

the first 50 years of doing

22:57

this work on nuclear fusion, it was mostly

22:59

in government labs because it was just so

23:01

hard and you couldn't spend money as a

23:03

commercial entity. You had to spend government money,

23:05

research money. But in the last 20 years,

23:08

there's been billions and billions of dollars going

23:11

into private companies and to startups that want

23:13

to do fusion. And that tells you something,

23:15

which is that these people are not going

23:17

to waste money. There's billions of dollars nobody's

23:19

going to waste. Well,

23:23

let's move on. Otherwise, we might be here for a

23:25

while, mightn't we? Our next listener

23:27

is Anouk in the UK and

23:29

she wrote in after the last Q&A we

23:32

did. I think Dr.

23:34

Akshat Rasi mentioned that music is played

23:36

to plants to increase growth in certain

23:38

plantations. Could you perhaps

23:41

look at this and how the

23:43

association between music, sound waves, and

23:45

plants is being used to tackle

23:47

climate change, food security, and human

23:50

wellbeing? So I too

23:52

found this whole thing fascinating and went

23:54

and did some research after this conversation.

23:57

And I like seeing claims that roses are part of

23:59

it. a bit of classical music. And

24:05

positive effects can be seen in chrysanthemums

24:07

after just 30 minutes of tunes. But

24:13

not rock music. Plants absolutely

24:15

hate rocks. There

24:19

are loads of videos on YouTube, I don't

24:21

know if you've had a look at this,

24:24

but they're titled things like plants, growth from

24:26

music, maximise your plants potential, and some even

24:28

boast like special frequencies for powerful growing. And

24:30

they have millions of views. So my question

24:32

is, do they not play

24:34

music to their houseplants? No

24:37

I don't. But I will say as a

24:39

science journalist, which is where I started as

24:41

a journalist, it is amazing

24:43

to me that there are questions we don't have

24:45

answers for. That there are some studies that show

24:47

this work, some studies that show they don't work,

24:50

and that it is something we should study more.

24:52

Because I would like to see what happens when

24:54

you try and play all sorts of music to

24:56

all sorts of plants. Well because we

24:59

do, I mean it's not that far fetched,

25:01

right? Because all music is, is a set

25:03

of vibrations, right? And some plants do rely

25:05

on vibrations. So bees wings to release pollen

25:07

or caterpillars chewing to release unappealing oil to

25:09

sort of fend them off. So there is

25:11

some basis there. But I mean the studies

25:13

I looked at were a bit dubious. You

25:15

know they're not done in the same way.

25:18

And it kind of makes it very difficult

25:20

to say yes or no. I find it

25:22

kind of interesting though, because some of the

25:24

studies that said yes, I read one from

25:26

1962 from a Dr Singh in

25:28

India, and he found that balsam plants

25:30

grew 20% taller when

25:34

he played them both Western music, classical

25:36

music that is, and Indian classical music called

25:38

raga, which is kind of wild. Yeah,

25:46

for me as a music lover, I think you know you play the

25:48

music to the plants, but you also make the humans happy, so

25:50

you've got to choose the music that you like. I mean it's

25:52

not going to harm your plants, but that way. So if

25:54

you play music to your plants, keep on doing that. Even

25:56

rock music. Well, apparently not, according

25:58

to these claims I've read. Anyway,

26:01

plants can also make music. Have

26:03

you heard this? I was

26:05

really intrigued by this. So I found

26:07

an app called PlantWave and

26:09

they say their device can monitor

26:11

small biological changes in the plants

26:13

and it then converts that into

26:15

music. Would you like to hear?

26:17

Yes please. Please. This

26:29

is quite nice. Yeah, it's very sort of

26:31

spa music, isn't it? It's very spa, yes.

26:34

I like it. It's relaxing. Yeah, well that's

26:36

what I mean. I like the thought that

26:38

a plant is communicating this to me, some

26:40

gentle... I feel that they may

26:42

be transposing the data to make it sound

26:44

musical. I always suspect there's a little bit

26:46

of translation going on. Would you listen to

26:48

this, Exa? I think so. I do. But my

26:51

phone. Why not? Are you offering?

26:55

Thank you so much for joining me today.

26:58

I've had so much fun and I hope

27:00

you have too and I'm sure our listeners

27:02

are really grateful for helping answer their questions.

27:07

Now, listeners, don't forget you can

27:10

send us your climate questions and

27:12

we'll answer them in the next

27:14

Q&A with Exa, Justin and Tamsin

27:16

in a few weeks' time. So

27:18

email theclimatequestion at bbc.com, ideally with

27:20

an audio recording of Your Question.

27:23

The producer this week was Osman Iqbal

27:26

and the editor was Simon Watts. Mixing

27:28

was done by both Tom Brignell and

27:30

Neil Churchill. I'm Gray Jackson and I'll

27:32

see you next week. Thanks

27:51

for watching. lives

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