TREPIDATION grading towards naked fear is understood to be sweeping Tasmania's rural communities over climate change's rumoured onset.
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Such raw emotion is based not so much on the impact of what was once termed the greenhouse effect as country folk bracing themselves for an onslaught of effete big-city "heat refugees".
These bike-riding skinny latte sippers are set for a Tassie country learning curve as they master sheep slaughtering, chicken raising and curly kale growing after relocating from warming mainland capital cities to our presumed milder climes.
"The threatened invasion's worrying us folks so much we've chained the gates and unchained the dawgs," a bucolic North-East source revealed to this correspondent before removing the straw from his mouth to add that he lived "out the back of Ringarooma somewhere".
We assumed his use of the word "somewhere" meant that either our man didn't want heat migrants knowing the exact locality of his shack or he had just momentarily forgotten where it was.
Either way, the alleged threat to civilisation of added heat appears to have been confirmed by Melbourne-based world-warming worrywart authors Jane Rawson and James Whitmore in their newly released tome The Handbook (Transit Lounge, $29.95).
Subtitled Surviving and Living with Climate Change and obviously targeted at trendy, yet furrow-browed, black-skivvie-clad metrosexuals, The Handbook offers tips on "how to survive and adapt" to a warming planet.
Even if - and we are sure we speak for all Tasmanians who have only just survived what appears to be this island's longest and coldest winter - a better answer would be to how much longer we have to wait before any pledged, or threatened, extra 2 degrees extra kicks in.
Yet it is the authors' prediction that so-called "subcultures" will move to Tasmania ("though not all parts") that will cause most concern.
Where will these sleek-haired and groovily attired survivalists settle?
We have placated our Ringarooma-area man (and possibly his fierce mutts) by suggesting that any trendies would need at least to live but a short bicycle ride from an acceptable flat white.
Naturally enough with a steaming coffee machine operated by a snooty barista recently relocated from either Fitzroy or Balmain.
Another handbook suggestion, the environmentally aware proximity to "a rail line", will cut out an entire North-East scenario unless the Scottsdale line is reopened or the rail bed deployed as a bike track.
Mobile phone and NBN access are obligatory, natch.
Meanwhile, we point out that any sissified inner-city Sandalista seduced into assuming that a rural location is for them will be disabused by this book.
Especially with a chapter titled "17 Skills to Help You Look After Yourself (and Others)."
These include growing and preserving food before things get weird: "Learn how to avoid pregnancy if contraception isn't easily available."
And if you fail that exam: "How to deliver a baby."
The authors then get down and dangerous with: "Kill an animal ... this might be a sheep you've raised for meat or a wild animal you've hunted."
Further hints include learning to "handle any vehicle ... and maybe even a horse", and (get this, you smug Ringaroomans) "chop wood and build, light and maintain a fire".
Good ol' Tassie skills, every one of 'em.
We intend reassuring our Ringarooma area citizen that, on reading The Handbook, effete, black-clad trendies will turn pale and not relocate to your neck of the woods any time soon.
Nope, you'll find them all cowering in the darkened back room of a Fitzroy cafe, suffering an attack of the vapours. And not necessarily from the heat.