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Blues for a Red Planet

   1980    Science
The episode, devoted to the planet Mars, begins with scientific and fictional speculation about the Red Planet during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction books, and Percival Lowell's false vision of canals on Mars). It then moves to Robert Goddard's early experiments in rocket-building, inspired by reading science fiction, and the work by Mars probes, including the Viking, searching for life on Mars. The episode ends with the possibility of the terraforming and colonization of Mars and a Cosmos Update on the relevance of Mars' environment to Earth's and the possibility of a manned mission to Mars.
Series: Cosmos

Wild Ocean

       Nature
Each year an unbelievable feeding frenzy takes place in the oceans of South Africa as billions of sardines migrate up the KwaZulu-Natal Coast. Wild Ocean captures spectacular breaching whales, feeding sharks, diving gannets, and massive bait balls inside and up close on the screen. The migration has provided an annual food source for both life in the sea and the people living along the African shores for countless generations. The film demonstrates how business, government, and the local people have joined forces to protect this invaluable ecological resource.
The film will delve audiences into an epic underwater struggle for survival and reveal the economic and cultural impact the migration has on the coastal communities. Wild Ocean is an explosive, symphonic documentary film about man and nature which captures one of natures greatest migration spectacles through the magic of IMAX.

Battle Begins

       Nature
Global warming, and how to combat it, has provoked intense debate, changed the way we see the planet and created headlines around the world. But when and how did scientists first discover global warming, why has it led to such furious debate? In this three-part series geologist Dr Iain Stewart presents a definitive guide to the history of climate change.
Battle Begins uncovers some of the great unsung heroes of climate change science, and introduces us to a secret organisation of American government scientists, known as Jason, who wrote the first official report on global warming as far back as 1979. By the late 1980s global warming had already become a serious political issue. It looked as if the world was uniting to take action. But it turned out to be a false dawn.
Series: The Climate Wars

Fightback

       Nature
Dr Iain Stewart investigates the counter-attack that was launched by the global warming sceptics in the 1990s. At the start of the 1990s it seemed the world was united. At the Rio Earth summit the world signed up to a programme of action to start tackling climate change. Even George Bush was there. But the consensus didn't last.
Iain examines the scientific arguments that developed as the global warming sceptics took on the climate change consensus. The sceptics attacked almost everything that scientists held to be true. They argued that the planet wasn't warming up, that even if it was it was nothing unusual, and certainly whatever was happening to the climate was nothing to do with human emissions of greenhouse gases. Iain interviews some of the key global warming sceptics, and discovers how their positions have changed over time.
Series: The Climate Wars

Aliens of the Deep

       Nature
James Cameron journeys to some of the Earth's deepest, most extreme and unknown environments in search of the strange and alien creatures that live there. Joining him is a team of young NASA scientists and marine biologists who consider how these life forms represent life we may one day find in outer space not only on distant planets orbiting distant stars, but also within our own solar system.
Aliens of the Deep is the result of expeditions to several hydrothermal vent sites in the Atlantic and the Pacific. These are violent volcanic regions where new planet is literally being born and where the interaction between ocean and molten rock creates plumes of super-heated, chemically-charged water that serve as oases for animals unlike anything ever discovered. Six-foot tall worms with blood-red plumes and no stomach, blind white crabs, and a biomass of shrimp capable of 'seeing' heat all compete to find just the right location in the flow of the super-heated, life-giving water or to fry.

Mission Blue

       History
Legendary oceanographer and TED prize winner Dr. Sylvia Earle is on a mission to save our oceans. Mission Blue is part action-adventure, part expose of an Eco-disaster. More than 100 scientists, philanthropists and activists gather in the Galapagos Islands to help fulfill Dr. Earle's lifelong wish: build a global network of marine protected areas, like underwater national parks, to protect the natural systems that keep humans alive.
As the expedition ends, the Deep water Horizon oil well explodes. With oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Sylvia and an environmental dream team race around the world trying to defend her 'Hope Spots'.