01/04/15

SciDev.Net Podcast: Super beans, climate models and more

Beans at CIAT
Copyright: Neil Palmer/CIAT

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In this month’s programme, we imagine a hotter world through the eyes of scientists and policymakers.
 
We kick off our podcast with ‘super beans’: 30 new varieties that can thrive in weather extremes. The beans were developed by scientists at CGIAR, a global research partnership for food security, to protect the ‘meat of the poor’ from being wiped out in a warmed world.

We then visit Oxford University in the United Kingdom where we hear from climate scientists running a global climate model on tens of thousands of volunteers’ home computers. With this experiment, they are investigating how global warming is increasing the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events.
 
Amid uncertainties about what tomorrow’s hotter world will look like, one thing scientists are sure of is that sea levels will rise, threatening the world’s coastal populations. We learn how researchers are now including coastal managers in the picture and how they try to provide them with new tools to prepare for the “most unlikely but potentially catastrophic events.”
 
Finally, we talk with Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, about the challenges ahead for international climate finance and who will pay the bill for the climate impacts affecting the developing world.