Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and our Future

"Yes, it’s a book about the poles. It starts off with him in an aeroplane. So you think it’s going to be a book about somebody jumping around the Antarctic and the Arctic looking for dinosaur fossils and having a lovely time. But in fact it’s a profound book about the effect that the two ends of the Earth—the polar regions—have had on global climate throughout geological history, and how change there today will seriously affect us. I never knew how many kinds of ice there are! Ice that’s blue because it’s so compressed, that gets buckled up against mountains in Antarctica as ice caps move. That there are huge lakes under Antarctica which haven’t seen air for thousands or millions of years. And how, when an ice shelf breaks up, that happens from the bottom up, not the top down. There’s a huge amount of science in this. He explains Milankovitch cycles, about warming and cooling cycles and its effects on human habitation and migration. About the influence of a warming Arctic on Arctic peoples. So it’s a wide-ranging book. But, if I were to say what this book was about in one word, it’s a book about climate, and how climate influences everything. I mean, there are dinosaur footprints too, and who doesn’t like a dinosaur? I think so. But I think many of us—and I include myself in this—still don’t quite realise the effect that the poles have on climate, and have had throughout geological history. We’re talking about difference between a centimetre of ocean rise, or sixteen feet. That’s a big difference! A big difference for London, and for many places in the world. I don’t actually look forward to this next stage. Well, I do, because I think when we chose the shortlist we had fascinating discussions about what we liked and disliked in books about science. What I’ve loved about the committee is that we are all real readers, and reading these books have made us ask questions about ourselves, and to consider things from supply chains to genocide in Tasmania to what it might mean to have a neurological condition that made us forget our pasts. I’ve really looked forward to our meetings, and we have all been able to see the merit in not only the shortlisted books, but all those on the long list as well. There are books by first-time authors, books written by journalists and scientists who have written books before. I guess I’d like to reiterate that one of the things that I think we saw in all of these books is that there are moral dimensions in scientific decision-making. Science is not in a glass box or an ivory tower, it is part of the society in which it occurs. Sometimes the decisions scientists have to make, or feel they have to make, are not easy."