So it erupts, and then how long would we wait for real bad consequences?

In the worst case, and in our analysis, it was really a matter of weeks.

This meant that from the time the volcano started behaving strangely until the massive eruption, the world had only a few weeks to try to understand the consequences and what to do about it.

At the point of the eruption, it was really immediate in terms of everyone being affected.

What that results in is us saying, well, hang on a minute.

The volcano is not behaving strangely now.

Let's think what could happen maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, maybe in 100 years.

What can humans do to help prepare for a tricky situation if that were to happen?

Um, what are some of the biggest challenges Britain faces in preparing for hotter summers, especially when it comes to protecting vulnerable groups such as older people, children, and those with existing health conditions?

The biggest challenge is this overarching difficulty of trying to be able to continue our lives in a healthy and safe manner despite the intense heat and humidity which we are expected to experience.

At these levels, children have trouble focusing and learning at school.

Teachers are not going to be able to teach as well as they usually do because of the heat and the humidity.

A lot of elderly people are living alone.

We need to somehow be able to check on them to ensure that they are drinking enough water and keeping cool, and that's very hard without using electricity, which is so expensive and many people cannot afford.

And then those who have preexisting medical conditions, trying to get their prescriptions, trying to get to the doctors, trying to get to the hospital, they're on public transport without cooling.

Definitely

Can you tell us why that is?

This idea is fundamental to scientists studying disasters.

It is absolutely not my idea, but I've taken it up and tried to improve it, publicize and promote it on the basis that disasters do not need to happen.

Yes, of course, the environment gives us plenty.

Earthquakes, storms, avalanches, tsunamis, landslides, volcanic eruptions.

We know today that they're happening.

We know more or less where they could happen.

Looking ahead, what opportunities are there to change how humans influence disasters?

What are the significant problems in the world, political, cultural, social, economic, environmental, that your field can do something about? And how can it make a contribution to that?

To me, the number one problem is how the ideology has emerged and taken hold that certain individuals can acquire far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far more than others.

No one is saying that we should all have the same income and the same assets.

But when we look at the numbers of the top 0.01%, when we look at the numbers of the richest 10 and 50 people, that gap is unconscionable.

And it's quite worrying how people will latch onto a symptom like human-caused climate change and say everything is about that symptom when it's one symptom among many.

And if we tackled that fundament of the ideology of wealth misdistribution, by definition we would stop human-caused climate change and deal with the impacts as well as all the other consequences.

So that's sort of two enfolded problems.

So will AI transform your job or will AI take your job?

So can you say a little bit about how the different authors address those themes?

Yeah, so this makes Antarctica and Antarcticness so unique in the world.

The fact that there is no indigenous peoples there, well, at least as far as we know, that it is very hard to get to and very expensive to get to.

And the environment can be very harsh.

So even if you do arrive there, you have to be certain that you have the equipment, the skills, and the mentality in order to manage to survive there.

This lends itself very well to the dominant cultures over the past centuries, who were the imperialists, who were the colonialists.

And this theme is really about control.

So now, Turning around to yourself, what are you doing next? What's your next big project coming down the line?