Day 3 – Meeting Tom Wigley, Getting French version of Climate Gamble

I heard this morning that due to the French officials closing some incoming roads to Paris, it might be that the books won’t get here until Tuesday. Oh well, this is something I cannot do anything about, so I guess there is no sense to get stressed about it. The books will come when they come.

Me and Tom, hanging out, chatting about climate and energy.

On a much more positive note, I met personally with Tom Wigley, who is a pretty famous climate scientist (<- that’s a classic Finnish understatement right there for those who did not get it). I would even go on to say one of the most famous ones there is. He has been researching the subject for 40 years or so.

Me and him and Eric had a really nice discussion about climate change, energy, nuclear power and plenty of other stuff. Turns out he became a supporter of nuclear power as one of climate solutions pretty much the same way I did; doing the math, seeing the evidence, and learning a bit more about nuclear power than we are normally fed through mass media and the anti-nuclear propaganda-machine.

Tom reserved a signed copy for himself as soon as we get some. He will certainly get it.

Too bad I couldn’t hand him our book yet, but I got a picture of him checking out the one copy I had with me (I brought it from Finland, anticipating it could be needed). I will hopefully have the chance to sign a copy for him later this week with my co-author Janne, who is arriving on Tuesday.

Oh, and our aforementioned discussion was shot on video as well (by David and Derek). So I have proof, hah!

After that we all went for lunch. What a day. I’m constantly pinching myself to see if I’m awake or dreaming.

And it doesn’t end there. After that we went to check out the French translation of Climate Gamble that had a special printing of 1000 copies done just for COP21. I got a few copies with me, and talked with Isabelle who helped a lot with the French translation about the negotiations, nuclear as part of the solution to climate change and more (we got this on tape as well). It’s all pretty amazing really. Starting with a self-published pamphlet in Finnish like nine months ago, ending up getting published by EDP Sciences in French.

I hope the books will finally arrive tomorrow (Tuesday 1^st Dec). At least the tracking id from TNT shows they should be getting near. Janne will certainly arrive tomorrow, and James Hansen will be having a panel discussion with none other than Naomi Klein, amongst some other celebrities. That should be interesting.