“And as the summer unfolded, it became evident that it’s not just smoke, and not just Canada. This has been the summer from climate hell all across the Earth, when it ceased being possible to escape or deny what we have done to our planet and ourselves” says Professor Michael Flannigan, of Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, who has been studying the interaction of fire and climate for over 35 years. “Temperatures are rising at the rate we thought they would, but the effects are more severe, more frequent, more critical. It’s crazy and getting crazier.” NYT August 23, ’23
Following the most bizarre climatic summer on record, Cambridge Forum starts its new season by considering what our uncertain future holds, in a new series: Living on Borrowed Time.
The forum features Jeff Goodell, NYT bestselling author and contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Mike Flannigan, Research Chair for Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science at Thompson Rivers University and the Scientific Director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science.
Goodell’s latest book, The Heat will Kill You First presents a searing examination of the impact that rising temperatures will have on our lives and on our planet. Flannigan has been studying fire and weather/climate interactions including the potential impact of climatic change and lightning-ignited forest fires for over 40 years.
Jeff Goodell is the author of six previous books, including The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, which was a New York Times CriticsTop Book of 2017. He has covered climate change for more than two decades at Rolling Stone and is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow.
Mike Flannigan is the Research Chair in Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science at Thompson Rivers University as well as the Science Director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science located at the University of Alberta.
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