ReportageOver the entire 800,000-­year record, atmospheric carbon dioxide has never peaked over 300 ppm. For all of human history, it sat around 275 ppm until about 200 years ago, when we began to dig up and burn coal to fuel the Industrial Age. In 1950, it punched through the 300-­ppm historic ceiling. In mid-May, as the forests of the Northern Hemisphere dropped their leaves, the planet exhaled atmospheric carbon dioxide at a new daily record of 421 ppm.

ReportageMelbourne: 31 August 2020 Covid cases: Australia 25,746; [i] World 25,162,019[ii] Atmospheric carbon dioxide: 414.48 ppm[iii] LIKE PRETTY MUCH everyone lucky enough to be working as the pandemic rages, we’re doing so from home. Him downstairs, me upstairs, yoked to our devices...

ReportageDoes the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Edward Lorenz, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1972   SOMETIME IN 1906, butterfly hunter Albert Stewart Meek disembarks from an old pearler named Hekla on the...

ReportageIN 1975, AS Papua New Guinea claimed its independence and imagined its future, officials set about commissioning a Parliament House for Port Moresby which might embody the spirit of the newly sovereign nation. It was a challenging task in...

ReportageTHE CAPTAIN STEERING Australia's Antarctic science program into its second century can't risk getting caught in the wake of history as he casts off from Hobart's Macquarie Wharf and heads south down the Derwent River.In the summer of 2013...