Sci-fi writer (among many hats) Sonny Whitelaw [personal website here], curator of https://climateandnature.org.nz/ kindly agreed to answer some questions
1. A bit about who you are/where you grew up.
I was born in Sydney, Australia; my family had a holiday home on a northern coastal town. I grew up surfing, snorkelling, and running around the local rivers on a small dinghy, fishing and trapping mud crabs. I was endlessly fascinated by the natural world, particularly dynamic earth system processes, something my high school geography teacher must have realised because she always asked me questions that sent me to the library on weekends. One of those questions was, ‘What is isostasy and eustasy?’ Trying to understand why ice ages came and went and the complexity of sea level changes led me to study coastal systems at the University of Sydney. It was 1975, straight after the devastating coastal erosion caused by the 1974 storms, so there was a lot of interest on the topic.
2. Do you remember when/how you first heard about carbon dioxide build-up as a potential problem and what your reaction was?
There was no specific ‘ah ah!’ moment when I Iearned the connection between CO2 and global temperatures. It just made sense, because it explained the primary mechanisms driving eustatic sea level changes.
3. How did you come to be doing a Masters at U of Sydney?
Starting an MA in 1979 was a natural extension to understanding how sea level changes during the Eemian (125kya) created the coastal landscapes where I had spent much of my childhood.
From 1979-1981, to understand the implications for future coasts,
4. Do you remember who put you onto the CO2 Newsletter, and what your reaction to it was?
I was reading everything I could find on the mechanisms for global temperature change. When I saw your post of the CO2 Newsletter, I immediately recognised it, so it must have had an impact on me at the time.
5. What’s your favourite climate fiction and why?
Favourite climate fiction: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. But my favourite books are non-fiction because they generate so many cool ideas. Current favourite: Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp.
6. Tell us a bit about your own books, and also “what next?”
I lived on a yacht in Vanuatu for 20 years, making a living as a freelance photographer and features writer. When I moved back to Australia in 2000, I wrote a novel. It won an award, and was invited to write tie-in novels based on the television series Stargate-SG1 and Stargate Atlantis. In 2008, I moved to Aotearoa New Zealand. The unfolding story of climate change is far more compelling than fiction, so I now write lengthy reports in my capacity as technical climate change advisor for Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu.
7. Complete this sentence – “It’s important to know, at least in outline, the loooong history of our awareness of carbon dioxide build-up because…
this one gas acts like a control knob on the planet’s thermostat. And we’re turning it up at pace.” (And I’m 100% sure I stole that from one of the many climate scientists telling the same story).
8. Anything else you’d like to say.
In 2005, I was signing Stargate novels at a science fiction convention when someone asked me, ‘What’s it like to walk through the Stargate?’ Similar questions popped up over the next few years. No amount of explaining convinced them that the Stargate wasn’t real and that the stories were entirely fiction. I was also coming up against climate change denial, which is also rooted in fallacies and fiction. So I went back to uni to find out why, and ended up with an MA thesis titled ‘The Attraction of Sloppy Nonsense’. Still doesn’t help me convince climate denialists that believing in bullshit is not a survival strategy.
[see interview about The Attraction of Sloppy Nonsense here.]