‘Modern man is a forest butcher’, warned the pioneering science journalist Hugh McKay in 1923. ‘He is also an oil-spendthrift and a coal waster’, McKay continued, ‘recklessly spending his capital of fuel… with never a thought of the tomorrow when he will stand shivering and motionless in the middle of a coal-less, oil-less, treeless, steel-less [...]
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Posted 14 November 2006
† Tim Sherratt
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articles and book chapters § weather
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Also tagged: apocaplypse, arms race, atomic bomb, Cold War, crossroads, dung beetles, fear, global warming, Hugh McKay, Mark Oliphant, progress, Tim Flannery, time, turning points
‘I say emphatically that the climate has changed’, Henry Hodgson told the Argus in 1928. The experience of seventy-eight years brooked no denial, summers were milder, and thunderstorms were fewer. ‘It is no use telling me that weather bureau statistics do not bear this out’, he added defiantly. ‘You can do anything with statistics, but [...]
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Posted 01 January 2005
† Tim Sherratt
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articles and book chapters § weather
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Also tagged: Bureau of Meteorology, climate, cyclones, drought, global warming, heatwaves, Inigo Jones, long-range forecasting, meteorology, rainmaking, variability, weather
We live between weather and climate – between the daily experience of nature and our attempts to discern the patterns and regularities that define an Australian climate. In this land of extremes, where climatic variability is the norm, we are constantly challenged by the experience of change.
the charleville rainmaker Cloudy skies at last! On 26 September 1902, the drought-wearied residents of Charleville looked to the heavens with new hope. They knew, of course, that clouds offered no certainty of rain; too often before they had watched them drift on, merely taunting with the possibility of relief. But this time the people [...]
