0:00

Hello and welcome to this podcast

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from the BBC World Service. Please

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let us know what you think and tell

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other people of Isis on social media. Podcasts

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from the BBC World Service. are

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supported by advertising. Welcome

0:14

to Science in Action from the

0:16

BBC World Service with me, Roland

0:18

Pease, and with the COP28 climate

0:20

negotiations underway in Dubai, we've lots

0:23

on climate science, including the threat

0:25

of climate tipping points, the costs

0:27

of carbon capture as a countermeasure,

0:30

and the role of global warming

0:32

in the devastating rains afflicting the

0:34

Horn of Africa right now. They

0:36

were flooding in charges in people's

0:38

homes, there were deaths

0:40

reported, some of them up in early

0:43

morning when people were still sleeping, they

0:45

find their houses just water gushing into

0:47

their houses and it was quite devastating.

0:49

But we do have time also for

0:51

the oldest fossil mosquito by far, and

0:54

it's a beauty. And here I have in front

0:56

of me a male, and this male

0:59

is having in fact all necessary

1:01

equipment to be a blood feeder.

1:03

Stay tuned. It

1:05

was agreed in 2015 that the

1:08

world should aim to limit warming to no more

1:10

than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial

1:13

temperatures, and that doing

1:15

that would require reducing

1:17

carbon emissions to net

1:19

zero. But bit by

1:21

bit more and more emphasis has

1:23

been put on the net part

1:26

of net zero. Keep burning fossil

1:28

fuels, but offset them

1:30

somehow afterwards. Another

1:33

word saying the same thing is

1:35

also creeping now into the jargon.

1:38

We must phase out unabated

1:40

fossil fuel. Unabated means

1:42

you're not capturing

1:45

the emissions. We have to do that,

1:47

yes, because otherwise you cannot get to

1:49

net zero 2050. US

1:51

climate envoy John Kerry slipping

1:54

in the idea of abatement.

1:56

Abated fossil fuel use being

1:58

sort of okay. But

2:00

is it, and more to the point, is

2:02

it a cheaper way to a clean future?

2:05

A report from the Oxford Smith School

2:07

of Enterprise and the Environment this week

2:10

tackles that question, the economics

2:12

of abatement and cleaning up

2:14

the carbon mess that we're

2:16

making. Richard Black of the

2:18

Grantham Institute is one of the authors,

2:21

and he's at the COP explaining the

2:23

problem. If you're

2:25

talking about unabated fossil fuel burning, you're

2:27

just letting the carbon dioxide go straight

2:29

into the atmosphere. If you're

2:32

abating it, then in this

2:34

context what it means is that you

2:36

are somehow trapping the carbon dioxide before it

2:38

gets into the atmosphere. So you can still

2:41

burn the fossil fuels, this is the idea,

2:44

but the CO2 doesn't go into the atmosphere

2:46

and therefore doesn't contribute to climate change. So

2:48

basically I clearly get the mess after you've

2:50

made it, you know, a bit like throwing

2:53

rubbish into a rubbish bin rather than

2:55

coughing out on the roadside. Yes,

2:58

to a certain extent, although in

3:00

principle if you were to have

3:02

a power station that was

3:04

fully abated, the

3:06

CO2 would never get into the atmosphere, it

3:08

would just be taken somewhere else, and you're

3:10

absolutely right, it has to be disposed of

3:12

somewhere, and that would be underground

3:15

in some cavern, some formation,

3:17

some rock formation, where it

3:20

would essentially stay forever. So

3:22

this is really the big political

3:24

discussion that's been going on at

3:27

COP, this is the CRUX

3:29

argument, because essentially you have a group of

3:31

countries that don't really want to reduce fossil

3:33

fuel use, at least not kind of right

3:35

now, because they're making a lot of money from it. And

3:38

then you've got another group of countries that

3:40

sort of doesn't trust the

3:42

carbon dioxide capture and storage,

3:44

the abatement route, and

3:46

thinks they'd be much better off if everyone

3:49

did things with renewable energy and energy efficiency,

3:52

and switching to electric vehicles and things like this

3:54

as a much safer and more reliable way to

3:56

do it. I mean, your

3:58

report sort of addressing how it works, expensive

4:00

having enough rubbish bins to deal

4:02

with all the carbon rubbish we're

4:04

putting out would be. You're

4:06

right Roland the question is basically is

4:09

it cheaper or more expensive to

4:11

get to global net zero around about 2050 which

4:13

is the kind of trajectory

4:15

we should be on using lots

4:17

of CCS or using a little bit

4:20

of CCS and by

4:23

lots in our study we meant on

4:25

average doing about half of

4:27

the emission reduction using

4:29

carbon capture and storage and by a

4:31

little bit we meant about doing one

4:33

tenth so the other 90% would

4:36

then be done through other things like

4:38

renewable energy. Using current technology

4:40

costs and projections of how those

4:42

technology costs will change and we

4:45

found out that the low CCS

4:47

route will be cheaper by about

4:49

a trillion dollars per year. A

4:51

trillion per year? A trillion per

4:53

year between now and 2050 than

4:56

a high CCS route. How

4:58

is this going down at the

5:00

corporate? It's really hard

5:03

to tell you know there's an

5:06

almost fantasy like world around

5:08

carbon capture and storage so

5:11

a couple of days ago there was supposed to be or what

5:14

we thought was going to be a big sort of

5:16

pledge moment where it looked like

5:18

a number of countries were going to

5:20

put forward pledges on scaling

5:23

up carbon capture and storage

5:25

so basically we have about

5:27

50 million tons of carbon

5:30

dioxide being captured every

5:32

year right now around the world. International

5:35

Energy Agency says that you know in

5:37

their scenario for getting to

5:39

net zero by 2050 we should

5:41

be capturing about 1.2 billion

5:44

tons so that's a

5:46

25-fold scale-up but

5:49

in the end nothing new was put

5:51

forward at all as far as we

5:53

can see. You know proponents of carbon

5:55

capture and storage they use this as

5:57

a kind of a fig leaf. do

6:00

this. We can do it all with carbon capture stories, don't

6:02

worry about it, it'll be fine. But

6:04

of course that's not what's actually

6:06

happening in the real world. If

6:08

the countries that were backing it

6:10

were actually building facilities that the

6:12

scale needed to meet these 1.5

6:15

Celsius scenarios, then one might have some

6:17

sympathy for their arguments. It's not legal

6:19

saying that there's no place for carbon

6:22

capture stories though. So

6:25

with some industries, cement

6:27

and some chemical processes, this might be the

6:30

best option, there might actually be no other

6:32

option or this might turn out cheaper than

6:35

alternatives. Governments they

6:37

need to get serious about this. If they

6:39

really want this as part of the solution,

6:41

then they have to start building really quickly

6:43

because they're not building at the scale that

6:45

scenario say is necessary. And

6:48

what they should be doing is targeting it to

6:50

those uses where basically it looks like

6:52

being a really good option and

6:55

absolutely not pretending that it

6:58

is a sensible alternative to

7:00

replacing fossil fuels with

7:02

renewable energy, energy efficiency,

7:04

electric cars, heat pumps,

7:07

because doing those is going

7:09

to be a much much cheaper

7:11

way to get us to net

7:13

zero in 2050. And I

7:16

find it quite extraordinary frankly that in a

7:18

world now where so many people are struggling

7:20

with the cost of living and

7:22

the high cost of energy being a

7:25

factor in so many parts of

7:27

the world, that anyone would be

7:29

advocating a far more expensive pathway

7:31

to net zero. Because that trillion

7:33

dollars per year when you work

7:35

it out for every man, woman,

7:37

child on the planet equals it

7:40

works out to about 120, 120 dollars that each of

7:42

us would be spending unnecessary on energy every

7:47

year until 2050. Climate

7:49

policy analyst Richard Black on the hidden

7:51

costs of carbon abatement. And if you

7:54

are a long time listener to Science

7:56

in Action, yes he did used

7:58

to sit in this vid. and

10:01

because they have the potential to

10:03

cascade. So triggering one of

10:05

these tipping points makes it

10:08

more likely that other tipping points follow.

10:10

They're connected in the Earth system, and

10:13

there's also the potential that if a number

10:15

of these get triggered or transgressed, and these

10:17

tipping processes unfold, the climate

10:20

of the entire Earth could shift towards

10:22

something very different. Your

10:24

chapter in particular is on governance,

10:26

and I guess that's why you

10:28

are at the COP meeting. How

10:31

does consideration of these tipping

10:33

points have a

10:35

role within the climate negotiations? We

10:38

think that prevention should be at the

10:40

core of the governance framework for Earth-centric

10:43

points, so we should do everything we

10:45

can to prevent these change processes from

10:47

happening. We know

10:49

that the risks to pass some of

10:51

these tipping points exist

10:54

already today, and we

10:56

know that for five tipping systems,

10:58

this risk increases significantly once we

11:00

surpass 1.5 degrees of global warming

11:03

above pre-industrial levels. So

11:05

what we really have to do is to revisit,

11:07

first of all, this conversation about the temperature goal.

11:10

Tipping points give us another very strong argument

11:12

of why we should be focusing very hard

11:14

on keeping 1.5 alive, maybe

11:17

even considering that we might want to be

11:19

lower than that ultimately. And

11:22

given that we now know we're going to

11:24

surpass 1.5, we have to work really hard

11:26

to bring temperatures back down as soon as

11:28

possible. Now, two things. We have to make

11:30

sure our peak temperature in the world is

11:32

as low as possible, and

11:34

that the time period during which we

11:37

overshoot 1.5 degrees is as

11:39

short as possible, because the

11:41

longer that overshoot period is,

11:43

the higher the risk that we're going to pass

11:45

some of these tipping points, once

11:47

they're triggered, we cannot stop them. So

11:50

are you there to make the message

11:52

that 1.5 degrees

11:54

is a really important target not

11:57

to exceed, and to bring down

11:59

seasons? CO2 emissions as fast as

12:01

possible is really important

12:04

or are there other policy levers that

12:06

you want people to understand? The

12:08

message that we need much more

12:11

rapid mitigation efforts within the

12:13

Paris Agreement Framework is one of our key messages but

12:15

there's a lot more to be talked about. Let me

12:17

just maybe quickly go

12:19

back to the challenge of mitigation

12:22

and rapidly increasing

12:24

our mitigation efforts. This

12:26

has to now include really

12:28

fossil fuel phase out, proactive

12:30

deliberate plant equitable fossil fuel

12:33

phase out, a step

12:35

change in our mitigation efforts and we have to start

12:37

thinking really hard and practically

12:39

about sustainable carbon dioxide removal.

12:42

That component of the policy debate has been

12:45

growing but I don't think we've seen enough

12:47

dedicated attention to the fact that we really

12:49

have to invest in these

12:51

CDR technologies because without them we cannot

12:53

pull temperatures back down. To address overshoot

12:55

and to come back to 1.5 or

12:57

even lower we need CDR. We're

13:01

also talking about the fact that we

13:03

already see these tipping point risks today and

13:05

we don't know if we're going to be

13:07

able to prevent all of these tipping processes.

13:10

We think it's really, really important to

13:12

also start considering impact governance which is

13:15

one of the chapters we have in

13:17

our report. That

13:19

would concern everything from adaptation,

13:21

loss and damage to migration

13:24

and maybe even security

13:26

and conflict issues. We

13:28

have to reassess whether adaptation is

13:30

fit for purpose once we consider

13:32

tipping point risks. There will

13:34

be a lot more loss and damage and

13:36

loss and damage governance will become much

13:39

more important. It's been very contested. We've

13:42

seen some good progress on loss and

13:44

damage including here at COP. We've seen

13:47

the loss and damage fund established and

13:49

seeing its first financial contributions. It's

13:52

great but a lot more needs to happen to

13:54

build our governance infrastructure for loss

13:56

and damage and the importance of that will

13:58

grow with tipping points as well. And

14:01

the third important point for impact governance is

14:03

migration. These processes will

14:05

increase migration pressures in the world.

14:08

We need to think ahead and

14:10

strengthen our international and national migration

14:12

governance, including

14:14

increasingly important planned relocation. Mannyana

14:17

Milkorait of Oslo University, who featured

14:19

in a whole edition we devoted

14:22

to Tipping Points just before the

14:24

pandemic. We've put a link to

14:26

that on the Science in Action

14:28

webpage at bbcworldservice.com. It's

14:32

been a recurring theme for us that

14:34

it's the weather extremes which are the

14:36

big danger in global warming, not the

14:38

small changes. We might not notice this

14:40

from day to day. So

14:42

there should be a lesson

14:44

for the COP negotiators in

14:46

the extreme flooding that's afflicting

14:48

parts of Kenya, Somalia and

14:50

Ethiopia over the past few

14:52

weeks. A humanitarian crisis,

14:54

according to the International Red Cross.

14:58

Only last March we'd been talking here about

15:00

the three or so year drought in

15:02

the area that had been equally calamitous.

15:05

That had been made worse by

15:08

climate change experts had established. And

15:11

so have the current floods we learned

15:13

today. The Grantham Institute's Joyce

15:15

Kimutai, born in Kenya and assisting

15:18

their COP delegation, is

15:20

the lead scientist on the analysis. East

15:22

Africa for the last two and a half years experienced

15:25

drought that caused devastating

15:27

impacts in the region,

15:29

including harvest losses, death

15:31

of livestock, hunger, malnutrition,

15:34

displacement of people. It

15:36

fuelled conflict in the region as well.

15:39

And just immediately after that, as

15:41

if that was not enough, we

15:43

have this extreme rainfall happening in

15:45

the region. So there's been episodes

15:47

of rainfall. So there's been short, intense

15:50

rainfall that lasts for a few hours or

15:52

so. But there's also

15:54

been multi-day accumulation of rainfall. So you find

15:57

that there could be a few hours,

15:59

a few minutes. minutes of rain in a

16:01

day, but if that extends for like a few

16:03

weeks or three weeks or a month, then

16:05

you find that the river starts to

16:08

swell and eventually they

16:10

start bursting their banks. And especially if

16:12

the soil is extremely dry, in a

16:14

way that they can absorb the water.

16:17

And I've seen some of the pictures

16:19

from the region with the streets in

16:21

town turned into rivers as well and

16:23

things being washed away. In your report,

16:25

you're talking about millions of people have

16:27

been displaced because of

16:29

the flooding. Yes, we've really seen a

16:31

lot of displacement of people. And

16:33

one sad one really is the refugees in

16:36

a camp in the border of Kenya and

16:38

Somalia. That camp was

16:40

completely washed away. Those refugees

16:42

had to find a new home. So

16:44

it's really that kind of a devastation

16:47

that we're seeing. And parts of coastal

16:49

Kenya as well, there was really, really

16:51

a lot of rainfall falling in very

16:53

short time. They were flooding

16:55

in charges in people's homes. They

16:58

were death supported. Some of them up

17:00

in early morning when people are still

17:02

sleeping, they find the houses just water

17:04

gushing into the houses. And it was

17:06

quite devastating. Now the

17:08

last time we talked about the climate

17:11

conditions in East Africa on the program

17:13

was at the end of the drought

17:15

when the circulation patterns

17:17

over the Pacific, where you

17:20

had a La Nina at the time

17:22

and the Indian Ocean, which is also

17:24

this kind of seesaw of

17:26

circulation. They were all favoring the

17:28

drought, but I was told that

17:30

they were going to flip and

17:33

they were going to bring the rain back to the

17:35

Horn of Africa. But it

17:37

sounds like this is much worse

17:39

than you'd expect. Yeah. So

17:42

there is these sort of natural

17:44

occurrence of changes in the ocean, which

17:47

sometimes is due to reversal of winds.

17:49

And so it's actually really due to

17:51

changes in sea surface temperatures in different parts

17:53

of the ocean. And

17:55

when we have a La Nina, we have

17:57

dry conditions over East Africa. and

18:00

when you have a linoid, it's always wet conditions

18:02

over East Africa. But as much

18:04

as these are natural variability of the

18:06

system, and that has been happening

18:08

for millions of years and it will continue to

18:10

happen even in the future, but one

18:12

thing that we're really curious as a

18:15

scientist to understand is if climate change

18:17

is actually also starting to affect these

18:19

natural vulnerabilities of the system, and one

18:21

way in which climate change could be

18:23

influencing that is the changes in the

18:25

sea surface temperatures. So for

18:27

example, from this study that we did, we looked

18:30

at the Indian Ocean Dipole, which is the

18:32

relative warming of the western and eastern

18:34

side of that ocean, and

18:36

the positive phase is when there's

18:38

warming on the western side, so

18:40

on the coast of Africa, and

18:43

we find that it's really responsible in a

18:45

big way to the rainfall that has been

18:47

experienced. So as much as

18:49

we are seeing the role of

18:51

climate change in warming the atmosphere itself,

18:55

making, because when the atmosphere is warm,

18:57

it tends to hold more water, but

19:00

we also want to understand if also if

19:02

that warming of the planet or the atmosphere

19:04

is also affecting surface temperatures.

19:07

You've run a lot of fancy statistics in

19:09

this study, but these things

19:11

can make a quantifiable difference. Yeah,

19:13

we looked at these Indian Ocean Dipole and

19:16

also analyzed the influence of the

19:18

warming of the system, so climate

19:20

change, and we saw that

19:23

IOD, which is the Indian Ocean Dipole, doubled

19:25

the intensity of rainfall that I was experiencing.

19:28

I mean, that is in comparison with

19:30

IOD neutral air, so when the ocean

19:32

is in neutral phase. And

19:34

at the same time, we saw that climate

19:36

change actually also doubled the intensity of

19:38

the rainfall. So that's a substantial change,

19:41

because as I understand it, once you

19:43

go beyond the kind of threshold when

19:45

rain is falling, that's when you see

19:47

the flooding conditions. Yes, I mean, what's

19:49

good to understand is what

19:51

causes disasters usually really depends

19:53

on what situation of things on the ground. So

19:57

if your systems are adaptive and... And

20:00

they can absorb the rainfall, the better. Of

20:03

course, some flooding could result, as we see

20:05

in other parts of the planet. But

20:07

when the system is vulnerable

20:10

and cannot absorb the shock

20:13

of the rainfall, so it definitely

20:15

means it's going to result in

20:18

a disaster. And that's why we

20:20

see this kind of flooding happening

20:22

in the region. Joyce Kimitai of

20:24

the Grantham Institute of Imperial College

20:26

London and of the World Weather

20:28

Attribution Collaboration, which rushed out that

20:30

analysis. So let's

20:32

hit pause on the climate button for now and

20:35

let's wind ourselves back 130 million years

20:38

to the beginning of the Cretaceous

20:40

period when Lebanon was in the

20:42

tropics, he was deeply forested and

20:45

a little mosquito got trapped in

20:47

sap to be perfectly preserved

20:50

for the moment fossil hunter Danny

20:52

Azar came across it. When

20:57

I first saw it, I said, gosh,

20:59

but what is happening? I can see

21:01

details of the most part, in fact.

21:04

So it was something so

21:06

bizarre for me because I know that

21:08

only the female can feed on blood.

21:11

And here I have in front of me a male

21:14

and this male is having, in

21:16

fact, all necessary equipment to be

21:18

a blood feeder. How big from

21:21

end to end is this mosquito? How

21:24

old is it? Then

21:27

you're actually seeing details within it. Yes.

21:30

In fact, this material is 130 million

21:33

years old and it is

21:35

big like a recent mosquito. So it's not

21:37

very different, in fact, as a size. These

21:40

most parts, in fact, I was able to see them

21:42

first in Lebanon. And then I went

21:44

to Paris right after the crisis

21:46

of COVID where I

21:49

was working at the National History Museum

21:51

of Paris. And there I had better

21:53

equipment to see this. But

21:55

the best equipment that we got was ennanging.

21:57

So we were able to make all these...

22:00

beautiful illustrations with

22:02

the minute details on the mouth parts of

22:04

that insect. And the mouth parts are

22:06

the important bits, so there's something different is there about

22:08

the mouth that means that they can pierce the skin

22:10

to get to the blood. Yes,

22:12

the mouth parts of this male are

22:15

comparable to what we can see in

22:17

some blood feeding females and we have

22:19

a male. And there's no

22:21

mistake that this is a male. Yeah, we

22:23

can say it's a male because we can

22:25

see very clearly the genitalia and moreover normally

22:28

for most of the flies with

22:31

long antennae, males always they have

22:33

primose antennae, so they look like

22:35

a feather. The female don't have

22:37

this character. So there are

22:40

two really important things about this fossil that

22:42

you have. One is this

22:44

is way older than any other fossil mosquito,

22:46

isn't it? Well, the oldest one till now

22:48

it was from the Burmese Amber and it

22:50

is estimated the age of that one, 100

22:53

million years. So

22:55

this one is 30 million years older

22:57

than the one which was considered to

22:59

be the oldest. And then the second

23:02

is this fact that the

23:04

male has this blood

23:06

sucking ability which no

23:08

modern mosquito male has, is that right?

23:11

Yes, this is the only specimen in

23:13

the world in fact of mosquitoes

23:16

where we have the male with

23:18

these type of mouth parts.

23:21

I mean fossils are one way of looking back

23:23

at the prehistory of modern organisms.

23:27

The other one is using genetics.

23:29

You can compare the genes of

23:31

different species of mosquitoes and work

23:33

backwards. Is there anything

23:35

in the genetic record that implies the

23:37

kind of discovery you've made? What

23:40

we were thinking in fact that originally the

23:43

mosquito group were most

23:45

of them hematophages and

23:48

there have been a shift from

23:50

hematophagy to non-hematophagy

23:53

at least for males with

23:55

the advent of the flowering plants. So

23:58

we have here another source. for

24:00

energy and for food for these

24:02

males and which is more safe,

24:04

let's say, than being blood

24:08

feeding. So that's what we think. We

24:10

have here a male which

24:13

was hematophages. Eating

24:15

blood? Yes, eating blood. At

24:17

the same time, we have at least

24:19

the radiation of the flowering plants. I

24:21

love the idea that they turn from

24:24

blood sucking to harvesting

24:26

nectar. During the evolution,

24:28

always in fact, nature will seek

24:31

to have the most parsimonious pathway

24:33

to be realized. Imagine,

24:35

for example, a mosquito coming to your

24:37

face. What's the first thing you will

24:39

do? You will try to kill it. Absolutely.

24:42

I think that it was the same

24:45

reaction that an invertebrate that is living

24:47

on the continent, attacked by a mosquito,

24:49

it will try to get it off

24:51

from its body.

24:54

It is more safe to go and eat

24:56

nectar from flowers. But for

24:58

females, they need certain type of protein

25:01

which can be found

25:03

in fact in the blood. So that's why they will

25:06

eat this blood and

25:08

this blood, in fact, with its

25:10

protein will enable the development of

25:13

the embryos and the eggs inside

25:15

the females. One other

25:17

thing, Danny, I hope everyone knows

25:19

the story of Jurassic Park. It

25:21

starts with a mosquito and some

25:23

dinosaur blood inside it. Is

25:26

there any way of knowing what this may have fed

25:28

on before it got trapped in amber? Could

25:30

there be some dinosaur blood inside

25:33

it? Well, we have

25:35

other types of insects like biting

25:37

midges and here we have some

25:39

blood which is preserved inside

25:41

the gut and outside the legs.

25:43

And now we know that it

25:45

is impossible to get BNA. We

25:47

all tried out our chance with

25:49

this, but we failed. But there

25:52

is something wrong in this story.

25:54

It must not be named Jurassic

25:56

Park simply because the oldest amber

25:58

with fossils is side. The Lebanese

26:00

Amber which is a little bit older

26:03

than the Isle of Wight Amber. I

26:05

worked on the Isle of Wight Amber.

26:07

So both of these

26:09

Ambers are from the lower

26:11

Cretaceous. So the correct name

26:13

must be Cretaceous Arc not

26:15

Jurassic Park. Danny Azhar

26:17

of the Nanjing Institute of

26:19

Geology and Paleontology doubling our

26:22

knowledge of Mosquito prehistory as

26:24

he reported in Current Biology.

26:26

I'll be tweeting some of

26:28

the images they truly are

26:30

stunning. Just look for

26:32

at P. Roland on X. And that's

26:34

it for Science in Action from the

26:37

BBC this week. From me and from

26:39

producer Alice Lipscomb Southwell. Thanks for

26:41

listening.