Panel
This week's guests:
Professor Philip Stott
Helen Scales
Dr Chris Collins
Home Planet recording in Edinburgh
An edition of Home Planet is going to be recorded at 1:00pm on Sunday 2 March at the Dynamic Earth Centre in Edinburgh. Please do come and be part of the studio audience. If you would like to pose a question to the panel in person please send us the question in advance by email, post or via the BBC Audience Line, details below, marking your question EDINBURGH.
Dynamic Earth Centre is next to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, click here for details on how to find it.
We look forward to seeing you on 2 March.
The Home Planet Team.
TOPICS
Do human medicines enter the environment via the sewage system?
Link to Dr Karen Kidd's laboratory that conducted the large scale experiment exploring the effect of oestrogen in a lake in Canada.
A BBC news item on a report on some effects on British fish of the contraceptive pill entering the water.
Detailed information on how sewage treatment and septic tanks work. From the howstuffworks site.
A web page from Defra containing links to a variety of information sources on the quality and measurement of sewage effluent.
UK Governments Northern Ireland Environmental and Heritage Service Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive.
What is the impact on low flying aircraft on walrus?
Information about the walrus including reference to the fact that they are sensitive to disturbance by boat noise or low flying aircraft.
Link to a news story that reports large numbers of young walrus killed in a stampede. Scientists link this to climate change as a lack of sea ice forced the animals to gather together in higher than usual numbers.
Information on the threat to the Pacific walrus from climate change.
Will burning fossil fuels reduce the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere?
A short biography of chemist Antoine Lavoisier who first described the process of burning in oxygen.
An article describing the rise of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere around 2,000 million years ago.
An article from Encarta describing the type and concentration of gasses in the Earth's atmosphere.
Article providing a large amount of data about carbon dioxide.
How much carbon dioxide do the oceans soak up?
Web page from the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration giving a large amount of information about the effects of carbon dioxide on the oceans.
A report from the Royal Society on rising ocean acidity due to the seas absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
An article from New Scientist on the fact that the Southern Ocean is starting to absorb less carbon dioxide.
A brief description of the ocean's role in the carbon cycle from the UK Met Office.
Can the quality of soil be improved by remineralising it with crushed rock?
A research article examining whether soils are becoming depleted in minerals.
Minutes of a meeting of the organic stakeholders (pdf) group of the Scottish Parliament listing a brief discussion of soil remineralisation.
An article advocating remineralisation of the soil from an organic gardening website.
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Home Planet
BBC Radio 4
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30 min
