Where one stands on “climate change” has been such a vexed and often confusing issue, at dinner parties, over coffee, with the taxi driver, and in terms of media reporting of where the Australian public is at.

A simple reality is that most people are trying to make some reasonable sense of this seemingly profound threat, quite complex phenomenon, “the science”, and what seems to be happening in terms of global and local weather patterns and extreme weather events. And the myriad information lines available to us are often not much help, and the messages often confusing and conflicting. All, of course, further complicated by the contested politics, the carbon tax, and how to survive a climate change conversation. Not to mention, of course, the mediated nature of the average person’s encounters with climate change.