Helen Czerski

Rare Earth logo: a yellow sun on a green background with butterflies.

In today's recording of Rare Earth I learned 2 new words: "confusticated" (confused) & "hibernaculum" (shelter where animals bunk down for the winter). If you're confusticated about how to arrange your own hibernaculum for our changing seasons, do listen in on Dec 19th as we delve deep into winter.

Hard science on exactly how the mechanism works is news. There is very little in the published literature about details: pressures, structures, sensing mechanisms, seasonal cycles etc.

Bronze plaque saying "A Letter to the Future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. August 2019. 415ppm CO2"

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque:
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

So glad to see some recent research on this! I've started trying to write columns on the physics behind this several times over the years and always had to change topic because of the lack of published science. Maybe next time...

Two books: Storm in a Teacup and Blue Machine

*cough* If you're gift shopping for anyone interested in how the world works, do consider these. Storm in a Teacup is all about the physics of everyday life and Blue Machine is all about how the ocean works - the water itself, which is the biggest story on Earth. Share the joy of nature & science!

Now THAT is going down in a blaze of glory... just watch the last few minutes/seconds of this stream as the eruption gets closer and closer until eventually it kills the camera.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqmp...

YouTube video by USGS [V1cam] Kīlauea volcano, Hawaii (west Halemaʻumaʻu crater)

There are others, like this one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk0t...

YouTube video by USGS [V3cam] Kīlauea volcano, Hawaii (south Halemaʻumaʻu crater)

Oh wow... Kilauea volcano in Hawaii is erupting with enthusiasm RIGHT NOW, and you can watch it on the USGS livestream here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqmp...
(HT to @davidho.bsky.social for the link)

Well, it is based around a very long walk…

Final (plentiful) caveats: I just took the suggestions as offered, and I"m assuming they were all reasonable contenders. Obviously this list reflects who finds and replies to my posts. And of course people could see previous suggestions when they made their answers.

My (highly unscientific) conclusion: unless they’re into classic films, films aren’t presenting a cleaner greener future as a potential reality. Younger people aren't old enough to remember the world where bike/bus/trams were normal, and the film world is not helping their imagination along. [5/5]

The word cloud in the first post of this thread shows a representation of the films mentioned, but here is the top of the list with numbers. Only one in the top 15 was made in the last ten years, and that was a remake of a 1974 film. [4/n]

But you can also weight this by the number of mentions [massive caveat here because people might not suggest something that someone else has suggested]. And it looks like this. The 1980s were the boom years for impactful films featuring public transport. [3/n]

I stuck to films, and there were 89 suggestions. Here’s the distribution of the years they were made… they go back a LONG way. That’s interesting, because you would think that more recent films would be easier to remember. So the films that really stuck with people are mostly decades old. [2/n]

A week ago, I made the point that films/tv etc focus on cars, normalising car-filled city streets. I asked for examples highlighting bikes/trams/buses/walking, and got 1.1k replies. Data!
Here is my unscientific analysis of those suggestions (and no, I can’t believe I did this either). [1/n] 🧵

Wow, so many replies to this! Your film/tv knowledge is impressive. My favourites are E.T., Lord of the Rings(!), Paddington, and Run, Lola, Run. And @davidho.bsky.social showed me a great Jackie Chan bike chase scene. But so many are pretty old films… we need to get today’s filmmakers on the case!

Wow. That sounds amazing.

That was the only other one that occurred to me. I do love that film.

Hivemind, I have a challenge. Popular culture is dominated by the car (car chases, cop dramas etc), helping us accept a car-dominated urban environment as normal. Can you think of any examples of popular culture highlighting bikes, trams, walking etc? I can only think of A Streetcar Named Desire.

BBC Radio 4 - I've Never Seen Star Wars Marcus Brigstocke invites guests to try new experiences

I think @marcusbrig.bsky.social would like a word: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

They’re all on BBC Sounds (website or app) as soon as they’re broadcast. IPlayer is for TV only.

Look at ZapMap in London and other cities. I think you'd be surprised at how many charging spots there are.

BBC Radio 4 - Rare Earth, Fashioning the Future Can we rethink how we dress to be less impactful on the planet?

Something that really stuck with me from the fast fashion episode of Rare Earth, and is still cheering me up: sites like Vinted and Ebay are making a significant dint in fast fashion sales, and people are choosing to buy better quality clothes so they can sell them on. Less waste, wins all round 🎉🎉🎉

What a treat to see the Tudor warship the Mary Rose today. It sank in 1545, lay hidden under sediment for centuries, and was raised in 1982. It’s astonishingly intact, with thousands of artefacts telling the stories of everyday life (including SO MANY nit combs). If you’re near Portsmouth, do go!

H2 really isn’t the answer. Partly because physics makes it hard to move & store, partly because thermodynamics makes it really inefficient (round trip efficiency from electricity to hydrogen & back to useful heat or electricity is well below 50%) & partly because there are better cheaper options.

Black Friday is a horrible event for our planet, and I hate these e-mails. If you needed something anyway and there's a discount today, it's a win for you. But everything you buy has an impact on the planet. Don't be sucked into getting more stuff just because you can. Aim for better, not more!

Imagine showing a petrol engine to someone who had only known electric vehicles, and trying to convince them to switch to petrol. No-one would choose the dirty, noisy, less efficient, more expensive vehicle. This isn't 1910, hostage to gender insecurity. We can just choose the better tech.

Great, thank you :)

mini-meadows, bat boxes, rooftop refuges... What are your favourite or most creative examples of people making space for wildlife in towns/cities? We’re covering urban wildlife on next week’s programme & we’d love to hear about what is already out there!

On BBC Radio 4's Rare Earth next week we'll be covering urban wildlife, and we'd love to hear about the fun/creative/unusual things happening near you to make space for wildlife in towns/cities. Do reply to this and let us know!
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

The Shoe Event Horizon is an economic theory that draws a correlation between the level of economic (and emotional) depression of a society and the number of shoe shops the society has. The theory is summarized as such: as a society sinks into depression, the people of the society need to cheer themselves up by buying themselves gifts, often shoes. It is also linked to the fact that when you are depressed you look down at your shoes and decide they aren't good enough quality so buy more expensive replacements. As more money is spent on shoes, more shoe shops are built, and the quality of the shoes begins to diminish as the demand for different types of shoes increases. This makes people buy more shoes. The above turns into a vicious cycle, causing other industries to decline. Eventually the titular Shoe Event Horizon is reached, where the only type of store economically viable to build is a shoe shop. At this point, society ceases to function, and the economy collapses, sending a world spiralling into ruin. In the case of Brontitall and Frogstar World B, the population forsook shoes and evolved into birds.

Remember the Shoe Event Horizon from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? (explained in pic)
Is that where we are today with online clothes shopping?
Listen now to this week's Rare Earth, on fast fashion, its effect on the environment, and options for what happens next: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...