Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
The notion that human activities might be warming the planet started coming into focus in the 1960s and ’70s, before a scientific consensus emerged in the 1980s and ’90s. But the rough outlines of the science surrounding humanity’s greatest contemporary threat has a surprising, little-known history that dates back roughly two centuries. This brief animation from BBC Ideas traces our modern understanding of the greenhouse effect through the work of three pioneering scientists, beginning with the US scientist and women’s rights activist Eunice Foote, whose 1856 work on the heat-trapping effects of CO2 was buried for decades before being rediscovered in 2010.
Video by BBC Ideas
Animator: Peter Caires
video
Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
video
Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
video
Biology
‘Save the parasites’ may not be a popular rallying cry – but it could be a vital one
11 minutes
video
Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Why large language models are mysterious – even to their creators
8 minutes
video
Evolution
The many ways a lizard tongue sticks, grasps, pinches and plops – in slo-mo
6 minutes
video
Biology
Starlings swoosh like brushstrokes across the sky in this dazzling short
3 minutes
video
Engineering
From simple motors to levitating trains – how design shapes innovation
24 minutes