She's one of the world's leading climate researchers. He's one of the world's leading science fiction authors.

She investigates extreme weather events and how human-made climate change could turn the Earth into a lived dystopia. He envisions and describes a utopian future when humans have found a way of living in harmony with the planet.

She works with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global organisation that collects and assesses what we know about climate change and how it can be tackled. He writes about a fictional global governance body in The Ministry for the Future, where people successfully develop strategies to fight the most existential threat humans have ever faced.

They are scientist Friederike "Fredi" Otto
and science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson.

On October 3, Otto and Robinson join us for a live conversation online, where climate science will meet climate science fiction. They will explore the following questions:

  • How can literary fiction help us find ways out of the climate crisis?
  • How can scientific research motivate people to act?
  • How much science is good for science fiction?
  • And how do researchers feel when their findings look like the plot of a dystopian novel?

Friederike Otto and Kim Stanley Robinson will discuss these themes and more, and you are invited to join them.

When?         Sunday, October 3, from 7 to 8 p.m. CEST

Where?        klimafakten.de on youtube

The event will be moderated
by Zulfikar Abbany, Senior Science Editor at DW.

 

 

 

Fredi Otto and Kim Stanley Robinson:
Chroniclers of the climate crisis

Born in 1982 in the North German coastal city of Kiel, Friederike Otto is among the top scientists exploring the links between climate science and extreme weather events — a field known as "attribution research." She is associate director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and an associate professor with the Global Climate Science Programme. Otto was a lead author on the IPCC's sixth assessment report, which was published in August 2021. (And she is a member of klimafakten.de's Scientific Advisory Board.)

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the most popular science fiction authors. His Mars Trilogy, published between 1993 and 1999, won international acclaim as a modern classic of the genre. Robinson was born in 1952 in Waukegan, Illinois. He has focussed on our relationship with nature throughout his work. His novel The Ministry for the Future describes how humans master our climate crisis with a mix of social, political, economic, technological and legal innovations. (Here you can read our book review.)

 

This event is taking place in collaboration between klimafakten.de, DW and The New Statesman.