A website exploring the novel's themes of climate change and artificial intelligence
In his new book Our Fragile Moment, Professor Michael Mann goes back in time and examines all the critical climate-changing events in our planet’s history. He shows what lessons can be learned from each one, and more importantly what lessons can’t be drawn from these events. One of the most important lessons […] Read More
In our social media age, misinformation can spread like wildfire creating an ecosystem of reality denial, where truth has become subordinate to ideology and feelings have more weight than evidence. What can we do about it? Lee McIntyre, a research fellow at Boston University, has laid out a playbook on how to […] Read More
Judith Curry’s book Climate Uncertainty and Risk aims to provide a framework for understanding the climate change ‘debate’. She argues that the climate change problem and its solution have been oversimplified; that understanding uncertainty can help in better assessing the risks; and that uncertainty and disagreement can be part of the decision-making […] Read More
“Treating the world as if we intended to stay”, to quote Crispin Tickell, neatly summarises the growing recognition that we need to respond to the threats of climate change, over-population, and unsustainable exploitation of the planets resources. Can we, as the most advanced society ever to live on earth, manufacture a ‘soft […] Read More
On 12 September 1962, US President John F Kennedy famously announced “We choose to go the Moon in this decade…not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” Indeed the goal was achieved in July 1969, when the Apollo 11 crew successfully landed on the Moon. That audacious goal and the […] Read More
In simpler times we used have community dances. Boys would congregate along one wall of the dance hall, and the girls on the other. Those brave enough would approach the other side and a dance would ensue, while the more timid stayed within the comfort of their respective groups. The same dynamic […] Read More
What do you think of when someone mentions nitrogen? Maybe it would prompt the thought that it is fundamental to feeding the world’s eight million people. But it would come as no surprise if most of us would not know that for over a century, we have been “fixing” more and more […] Read More
Between 1766 and 1805, the Dublin Society made grants for planting a total of 55 million trees in Ireland. This was on the back of at least seven parliamentary acts dating back to 1698 which envisaged planting and preserving trees and woods, by encouraging tenant farmers to plant trees and to register […] Read More
“Machines have calculations. We have understanding. Machines have instructions. We have purpose. Machines have objectivity. We have passion.” So said former chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov speaking of artificial intelligence (AI). Kasparov sees an optimistic future for humans in their use of AI tools. He accepts that jobs will be lost to AI, but as a whole humans are in […] Read More
Husband and wife team Will and Ariel Durant spent forty years writing their celebrated eleven-volume history The Story of Civilization. In the process they made note of the recurring patterns of human behaviour so that they might illuminate “future probabilities, the nature of man and the conduct of states”. The result was […] Read More