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The lovely Alexa Smith, founder of ArtFuture, sent me these clips of her interviews with me during The Apocalypse Project: House of Futures exhibition. Thanks, Alexa!

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The Weather Millinery

Climate Change Couture

    You hear him frequently on public radio -- now meet the incomparable Dan Ariely when he introduces his new book The Upside of Irrationality! #more

  Summary

Here at Darwin's annual writers' event, Professor Tim Flannery launches his Wordstorm 2010 address with a primer on the basic science of climate change, which he argues was universally unchallenged until recent years when it's become a political football.

Flannery knows that problem first-hand, having been head of the Copenhagen Climate Council. He speaks of the media's attempt to discredit the Copenhagen talks and his deep disappointment at the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) not being passed in Australia's parliament. He offers a damning critique of the Rudd Government's "funking out" on this issue.

His address, based on a recent essay Now or Never, maps out how, in the next few decades, we are likely to see the collapse of major ice shelf, and therefore, rising sea levels.

Despite all this gloom and doom, Flannery remains optimistic about the climate change challenge. He favors new carbon reduction methods, such as the sequestration of carbon in soils, which can have a big impact.

Read More:

  The Weather Makers tells the dramatic story of the earth's climate, of how it has changed, how we have come to understand it, and of what that means for the future. Tim Flannery's gripping narrative takes the reader on an extraordinary journey into the past and around the globe, bringing us closer to the science than ever before. Along the way he explodes the many illusions that have grown up around this subject.

Tim Flannery - The Weather Makers | € 17,00 | paperback | 368 pages

  Expected October 2010:

Sometimes it's hard to be an optimist. In an ever more crowded and complex world, new challenges continue to confront us. It would be tempting to give up hope.

  Tim Flannery is here to offer us a change of perspective. And he is here to inspire us. He invites us to consider again our place on earth, what it really means to be alive.

  Here on Earth is a revolutionary dual biography of the planet and of our species. Flannery reimagines the history of earth, from its earliest origins as a chaotic ball of elemental dust and gases to the teeming landscape we currently call home. It is a remarkable story. How did life first emerge here? What forces have shaped it? Why did humans come to dominate? And when did we start to have an impact? More importantly, how has this changed us as a species?

  The awesome hand of nature has never been better portrayed than in this book. Nor, remarkably, the transformative power of ideas. From the most intense competition for survival, cooperation has emerged. The challenge we now face is to sustain our fragile hold on life.

  Our fate is in our own hands. But first we have to realise who we are.

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  In his powerful new novel, To the End of the Land, David Grossman tells the story of today’s Israel through the eyes of a mother whose son has volunteered for a second tour of duty in the army. Through her fears and her love, the deep stories of her son, her lovers, and all of their lives, Grossman portrays a country tormented by war, and casts light on the internal and external conflicts that have shaped many Israeli generations.

Grossman will be joined in conversation by Nicole Krauss, whose new novel, Great House, depicts the successive owners of a massive writing desk that causes them, in very different circumstances, to reflect on destruction and creation, on what we pass on to our children, and on how children absorb our own losses and dreams.

David Grossman is the author of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction, including See Under: Love, The Yellow Wind, The Book of Intimate Grammar, Be My knife, and Her Body Knows (two novellas). His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Grossman has received the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, Israel’s Emet Prize, and the Albatross Prize given by the Günter Grass Foundation.

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  In his powerful new novel, To the End of the Land, David Grossman tells the story of today’s Israel through the eyes of a mother whose son has volunteered for a second tour of duty in the army. Through her fears and her love, the deep stories of her son, her lovers, and all of their lives, Grossman portrays a country tormented by war, and casts light on the internal and external conflicts that have shaped many Israeli generations.

Grossman will be joined in conversation by Nicole Krauss, whose new novel, Great House, depicts the successive owners of a massive writing desk that causes them, in very different circumstances, to reflect on destruction and creation, on what we pass on to our children, and on how children absorb our own losses and dreams.

David Grossman is the author of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction, including See Under: Love, The Yellow Wind, The Book of Intimate Grammar, Be My knife, and Her Body Knows (two novellas). His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Grossman has received the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, Israel’s Emet Prize, and the Albatross Prize given by the Günter Grass Foundation.

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"Summary Celebrated author Bill Bryson will give a lecture in the Great Hall at the Guildhall in honour of the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society.

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