Edition 12
Hot Air
- Published 6th June, 2006
- ISBN: 9780733318603
- Extent: 284 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm)
In a remarkable new essay, veteran journalist Murray Sayle provides a new way of thinking about the causes and consequences of climate change.
Sayle travels from the monitoring station at Cape Grim through the Tasmanian wilderness and back in time to the Dutch Republic, the creation of capitalism and the origins of the hydrocarbon civilisation.
He puts the problem we now face in sharp focus: how to sustain a globally expanding population with finite resources.
Hot Air showcases the key flashpoints in this global debate with erudite essays, insightful analysis and personal reflection.
It will challenge the way you think about what is happening and what can be done.
In this Edition
Time, gentlemen, please
MUCH OF THE geology I once learned is long forgotten, but what remains, indelibly, is an awareness of time, geological time. Much of my work was in the late Devonian, more than three hundred million years ago. That did not long seem strange: it...
It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it
THERE HAS BEEN a great deal of environmental change in the Australian region over the 50,000 years that people have lived here. There is going to be a lot more of it in the future, too, whether or not the specifics of current climate-change...
Corals under siege
THERE'S NOT MUCH of a laugh to be had on the topic of global warming but American futurist Bruce Sterling does his best. Sterling's weapon is satire; his tools include the blog and the after-dinner speech. In his "Viridian Manifesto" (Whole Earth, Summer 1999),...
Changing public attitudes to long-term issues
IF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY is to survive, the next century will have to be a time of transformation, not just in technological capacity but also in our approach to the natural world and to each other. The second report in the Global Environmental Outlook series...
Beyond greed
IS THIS WHOLE global warming scenario real or, as some newspaper columnists like to suggest, a massive conspiracy by self-serving scientists and self-appointed environmentalists who are trying to maximise their own resources, influence and power? Interestingly, we are starting to see both prominent political...
Riding Australia’s big dipper
AUSTRALIA'S HISTORY DURING the past 150 years has often revolved around fossil fuels. They have affected not only daily life but the rise and fall of Australian states. They have shaped turning points in local politics and international relations. Thus, the outbreak of war...
Sunset ports on the new trade routes
WHEN ERNESTINE HILL, the pioneering Australian journalist, visited what she called the "ports of sunset" on the West Australian coast in the 1930s, travelling rough with her swag and typewriter, she encountered bits and pieces of Australia's maritime history that have since largely been...
Overloading Emoh Ruo: the rise and rise of hydrocarbon civilisation
Shortlisted, 2006 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, Science WritingShortlisted, 2006 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, Literary Work Advancing Public DebateShortlisted: 2006 Eureka Prize, Science JournalismNO ONE DISCOVERED global warming, although it has been going on for most of the past 12,000 years. The suspicion that human...
My ten Cadillacs
WHEN I WAS nine, I won ten Cadillacs from my father in a bet. The deal was that I'd be able to claim my luxury American gas guzzlers when I was twenty-one. Until then, my father reserved the right to win them back through...
Return to the river
I STEERED THE raft with my paddle buried deeply by the stern and we sped down the final drop of Newland's Cascades on the Franklin River amid the din and spraying water caused by the helicopter's down draught as it perched on a rock...
How green is my valley?
Everybody talks about the weatherbut nobody does anything about it.– Mark TwainTALK OF A hotter, wetter climate is all the go, but I beg of you, don't talk to me about rain. Since moving on to thirteen slushy hectares in one of Australia's wettest...
Confessions of a weather nut
IT WAS AN innocent enough remark. "Looks like rain," he'd said, gesturing toward the bank of clouds looming over the city."No way," I said, shaking my head."Well, those clouds look pretty threatening to me.""Those are not rain-bearing clouds," I insisted. "It's a common mistake...
Resource managers, altruists or just farmers?
LIKE OTHER FARMERS in Australia's cropping belt, David Kreig was dismayed by the way the weather seemed to be continuing to get hotter and drier. In 1995, he bought a property north of Hay, in south-western New South Wales, a region whose climatic history...
We are all Tuvaluans
View images of Tuvalu featured in Edition 12: Hot Air at photographer Jocelyn Carlin's website. TATOU NE TUVALU Katoa – "We are all Tuvaluans" is often used in Tuvalu as an expression of national unity, calling on islanders to pull together in the collective interests of their tiny,...
The brown peril
AS A STUDENT of Mandarin at Beijing's Tsinghua University in 1999, I made almost monthly visits to the home of a retired academic, who would arrange the purchase of books for my university's library. Visits with Mrs Liang and her husband were always occasioned...
The gang of six lost in Kyotoland
THE ROTATING VAGARIES of diplomatic timetables decreed that the United States unveil its climate change trump card on the banks of the Mekong River. The new answer to the danger of rising sea levels went public in the tiny capital of landlocked Laos. The...
Knocking on the door
MY HOME IS in a small community on the New South Wales far south coast and when New Year's Day 2006 dawned, the prediction was for a stinker. There was even an expectation the day might be the hottest on record, almost certainly the...
Downstream
Whatever lies under a stoneLies under the stone of the worldThe Green Centipede – Douglas Stewart A MONTH AFTER the funeral of Wilfred Lampe's mother, and having not seen or heard from Wilfred, Mitchell the publican was delegated to drive out to the house in the...
Flame bugs on the Sixth Island
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2006 GO DOWN TO the rock pools when the evening tide is out and there is a chance you will see them. Sometimes one will swim in among the mangroves in the tidal flats but the rock pools are best....
The future from the bottom of a boat
THE HOUSES IN the estate are all the same. Low-slung brick with dry brown roofs and yards. The fences are thin fibro planks woven slackly between raw concrete uprights. Deb doesn't trust the fence. It's like someone tried too hard to make something out...
Featured Contributors
Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko is an award-winning Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage. Her first novel, Steam Pigs, was published...
Patrick Holland
Patrick Holland is the author of five books including The Mary Smokes Boys which was shortlisted for the Age...
Matthew Condon
Matthew Condon is the author of ten novels and story collections, including A Night at the Pink Poodle, winner...
Murray Sayle (1926–2010)
Murray Sayle was a distinguished Australian journalist, television documentary maker and novelist.His long career in print journalism began with...
