Not Dead Yet — Peter Menadue

"Listen, you moron, man-made global warming's complete garbage. It's a conjob that pointy-headed scientists invented to get more funding." Gary Maddox sat in the back of his battered van, staring through a one-way glass panel at a street lined with dilapidated houses, broken fences and cracked pavements. A factory nearby pumped out a shitty odour. Even the weather seemed worse than anywhere else in Sydney. His main focus was a rundown bungalow about thirty metres away. Nine-thirty. Burke usually left home about now. Gary sipped coffee from a thermos and listened, on his transistor radio, to a shock-jock trade insults with the inane and insane. All the callers were angry, spoke in the same nasty accent and were never wrong. "Of course the Polar Ice Cap's melting, you drongo. It's made of ice. Ice melts. Nothing weird about that. Look in your whiskey glass the next time you get drunk. You'll work it out." The caller got feisty: "You know nothing about global warming - you're just a blow-hard."