The skies over Melbourne are full of smoke. The setting sun glows red against the gray. I haven't been to the towns where bushfires have killed more than 180 people. I'm pretty sure I don't want to.

It's not a subject you can escape. The papers are full of pictures and accounts. One striking photograph in The Age show a newly married couple who had braved the fires to go through with their ceremony. They face the camera as flames devour the hills behind them.

I spent the day at the Melbourne studios of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, talking about my book on the consequences of climate change with radio stations across the continent.

Again and again, the question repeated itself: Can we confidently attribute the fatal fires to climate change?

My answer: No. But since a warming world will mean more hotter days of the type that laid the kindling for the inferno, the fires offer us a glimpse into the future. As signposts in the road we're headed down, they offer us a chance to consider if this is really the direction we want to choose.

Tomorrow, I give a talk on climate change at Melbourne's Writers at the Convent. My wife was planning to take our four-year-old son to see the kangaroos at an animal sanctuary just outside Melbourne. She can't. The fires are threatening the area. The sanctuary is closed until further notice.