A forward look towards the year's end should see the touting of Hard Rain: Climate Change - What They Are (Not) Telling You to prospective publishers and commencement of the next book project. This may well be on the environmental aspects of nuclear power.

Odds and ends
Concatenation Science Communication's complaint to Offcom (the official UK broadcasting watchdog) regarding the nefarious Channel 4 documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, is apparently one of a number similar objections raised by the science community. Among the latter, a major submission by a body of scientists is being sent after mid-summer, and so this matter will not be resolved until the autumn.
      The hardback edition of Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects sells out! This caught publishers CUP so much by surprise that I have been told that I will have to wait for my bulk supply of free author copies. While it is not common for an edition to sell out in the first month of publication, CUP had listed the title in its catalogue and on-line for a few months beforehand. CUP say they are now printing more, meanwhile there are copies of the paperback.
      Nature Futures The science journal Nature is to resume publishing its back-page science fiction stories in the autumn and Concatenation's genre wing is to continue to be allowed to post the best-of-season exemplars.
      UK Science for Heritage Strategy One of the current bits of regular activity is a basic press liason opration for the Crossness Engines Trust (who have restored one of the huge Victorian steam sewage pumps used to clean the Thames following the Big Stink. This now connects with Concatenation Science Communications science policy work as the UK is developing a strategy to enable the latest science and technology conserve UK heritage. A forum has been set up in response to a House of Lords report and Concatenation is participating to represent the Trust.
      Britain's rain and floods in July Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects has a section on flooding and much throughout on precipitation and global warming. Given the billions of pounds damage caused by the July floods, with the benefit of hindsight the problems of flooding could have been emphasised, but then that would have attracted the criticism of sensationalisation. The science is sound and the book does appear to be predictive: not just here but also with other issues in the news such as the limited value of biofuels and the pointless use of tree planting as a financial way of carbon offsetting. I have therefore placed excerpts on-line for free access and linked off halfway down this page.
      Parliamentary (Science) Links Day The 2007 Parliamentary (Science) Links Day was ably organised as ever by the Royal Society of Chemistry. This year's theme of Earth, wind, fire and water neatly leads into 2008 being the UN themed year of planet Earth. It was also the day before PM Tony Blair left office and so one of the last speeches David Milliband gave as Secretary of State for the Environment.

Summer 2007 (June) In addition to drafting the next book (Hard Rain below), a series of climate change talks (loosely to promote the CUP book) begins with one with former employers at the Institute of Biology. Other venues in the series are mainly universities but also include the occasional public meeting (more for the public undertanding of science than book promotion as the book is written at university primer level). +++ A number of different articles have also been written for in-house magazines/journals of a number of professional science bodies. First up is one appearing in Geoscientist in the late summer. Stop Press: It concerns the IETM / PETM event 55 million years ago when volcanic action is thought to have ignited a similar amout of fossil fuel as we are likely to burn in the this century added to the last. Thank you Geological Society for letting me show it here.

Summer 2007 (May) A single advance copy of Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects arrives. Looks good. Over 500 pages but one typo found in a table. This last is one of the things I hate about getting a new publication. One of the things I like is that I am already using it for reference. Now it is a six month wait while journal editors get their review copies (July/August) from CUP, then get the book reviewed and print these up (November onwards).

Easter 2007 marks the 20th anniversary of The Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation. This is a bit of fun conducted by our group of mainly scientists and technicians who have an interest in SF. A small, low-key, publicity campaign is conducted the first output of which is some promotion on the BBC's national Radio 4 programme 'Open Book'.   The multi-disciplinary science journal Nature extends its memorandum of understanding so as to allow The SF & F Concatenation to reproduce for free on-line access a seasonal selection of its earlier 2000 run of 'Futures' stories.

Spring 2007 Attend a meeting of the London Assembly's Environment Committee (on behalf of an urban tree regeneration project). Normally this would be too much diary detail to cite, but surprisingly this is a first for Concatenation Science. I have not, for over a decade, been a stranger to the corridors of Westminster and Whitehall. However the London Assembly is completely new ground.

Spring 2007 Page proofs for Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects arrive and worked on: at 500 pages it is big. Cambridge University Press allow the inclusion an extra one-page appendix to cover briefly the IPCC 2007 report. The book appears on CUP's UK on-line catalogue.   Meanwhile work on a popular climate change book continues. Working title Hard Rain: What They're (Not) Telling You About Global Warming courtesy of Concatenation co-editor, physicist Graham Connor.

Winter 2007 Participate in the IPCC two-day discussion meeting at the Royal Society on the forthcoming main report of its first working group. The summary of the IPCC report was published the previous month while the main reports will be published co-incidentally around the same time as Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects and, again conicidentally, by Cambridge University Press. In one sense this meeting was make-or-break for the forthcoming Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects as this book needs to capture both the science the IPCC used in its report and the flavour of the scientific discussion the IPCC authors have privately. As it transpired it seems that Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects is nearly bang on in terms of the tenor and the climate ground covered by the forthcoming IPCC report as well as much of the behind the scenes discussion.