When One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts delivered his maiden speech to the Senate on September 13 of this year, he used the occasion to attack the science of climate change. In his speech, Roberts labelled climate change a “scam”, said it was prone to “hyperbolic predictions” and accused no less auspicious an organisation than the Bureau of Meteorology of manipulating climate data.
If Pauline Hanson is her party’s multiculturalism and cultural sensitivity expert, Malcolm Roberts entered Parliament as the self-proclaimed One Nation party climate change expert (with a background in coal mining).
The following exchanges unravel the ideological war between One Nation and its fiercest opponent: science.
One Nation says: On One Nation’s website the party alleges that climate change scientists, the United Nations and global governments including Australia are part of a mass environmental deception. Keep in mind, neither Hanson nor any other senator in One Nation is a qualified scientist.
“Climate change should not be about making money for a lot of people and giving scientists money. Lets [sic] know the facts and scientific evidence to make a well informed decision as to how best to look after our environment.”
“Paris’ main role was to endorse the climate sham. It gives Hunt and Turnbull a way to keep moving Australia under tighter UN control. This is despite there being no empirical evidence that carbon dioxide from humans affects climate.”
Science responds: According to NASA’s website, there is a global scientific consensus that humans have contributed to climate change phenomena like global warming. NASA’s scientists include Dr Carmen Boening, who has a PhD in physical oceanography and is a part of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, and Dr Michael Gunson, an atmospheric scientist with a PhD in chemistry.
“Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”
The CSIRO, Australia’s leading scientific research organisation, is responsible for inventing wi-fi and Aeroguard insect repellent. The CSIRO has been monitoring climate data and producing biennial reports since 2012. CSIRO research indicates last century global sea levels rose by 20cm. Global temperatures in this century have increased year upon year, with 2015 ranking the warmest year on record. The CSIRO says it’s getting hot in here:
“The Bureau of Meteorology’s Manager of Climate Monitoring, Dr Karl Braganza said Australia was already experiencing the effects of climate change with record-breaking heat now becoming commonplace across the country.”
“CSIRO Senior Scientist and leader of the NESP Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub, Dr Helen Cleugh said the [climate] changes were due to an increase in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, which act like a blanket by keeping heat in the Earth’s lower atmosphere.”
Science finds: A report released on Monday by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies based at James Cook University titled “Life and Death after Great Barrier Reef bleaching” found the highest recorded bleaching levels at the Great Barrier Reef:
“Scientists have confirmed the largest die-off of corals ever recorded on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.”
“The worst affected area, a 700 km swath of reefs in the northern region of the Great Barrier Reef has lost an average of 67% of its shallow-water corals in the past 8-9 months. Further south, over the vast central and southern regions of the Great Barrier Reef, the scientists were relieved to find a much lower death toll.”
As the figure above indicates, coral bleaching is most acute in the northern section of the reef. Scientists from the ARC forecast that it will take 10 to 15 years for coral in the northern region of the reef to regenerate.
The central and southern portions of the reef remain in relatively healthy condition.
In an attempt to create a political splash last week, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party held a party meeting at Great Keppel Island, in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef.
One Nation reacts: Hanson, having never attended university, put forth her opinion that the reef was in “pristine condition”, going so far as to deny global warming had a significant impact on coral bleaching.
As the ARC figure shows, the southern part of the reef has been largely unaffected by bleaching events, precisely the location Hanson and Roberts chose to visit.
Science weighs in: An investigation by The Guardian earlier this year cited that warmer water temperatures due to global warming was responsible for coral bleaching. Scientists assert the levels of coral bleaching were made 175 times more likely by human carbon emissions.
One Nation deflects: One Nation seems to have found an ally in Alan Jones, who last month revealed he was the public face behind the government’s Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef Initiative. The initiative states that its aim is to promote more positive coverage of the reef in line with preservation efforts. However Jones characterised the organisation as challenging climate “Armaggedonists” and responding to those painting the Australian government as “environmental vandals”.
Pauline Hanson and her party, like Jones, prefer discussions of tourism and industry to scientific debates. While on Great Keppel Island, more than 1000 kilometres away from the site of the highest levels of coral bleaching ever recorded, Hanson reiterated her party’s position on climate:
“When we have these agendas that are actually destroying our tourism industry and businesses … we need to ask the questions, and we want answers.”
One Nation says: On November 7, Malcolm Roberts, a former coal mine manager who has worked in the coal industry since 1977, released his report titled “On Climate, CSIRO Lacks Empirical Proof“. Roberts repeated Hanson’s position that the Great Barrier Reef has not been adversely affected by global warming or extreme weather events:
“Green politicians, activists and nongovernment organisations tell us our Great Barrier Reef is dying yet scientific researchers and tour boat operators who live on the reef confirm that it’s thriving. What is threatened is the reef’s tourist industry as international tourists are scared away from visiting an imagined dead reef fabricated by emotional campaigns. Why?”
“Formerly as federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt reported to the UN on the state of our Great Barrier Reef. That undermined Australian sovereignty and governance. We have no responsibility to report to the UN. Australia’s governing document is our constitution.”
Roberts’ report levels wider criticism at the CSIRO, which, he says, “contradict science and history”. Roberts disputes the CSIRO’s assertion that humans have contributed to an increase in CO2 emissions and calls for an independent inquiry into CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation have a longstanding call for a royal commission into the “corruption of climate science”.
Science responds: Two weeks ago, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin Schmidt, an Oxford graduate in mathematics who was recognised as an author of a climate change report that won the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote a letter to Malcolm Roberts. In the letter, Schmidt brings attention to a number of Roberts’ “misconceptions”.
“You appear to hold a number of misconceptions which I am happy to clarify at this time. Firstly, in the graphs you show the data is quite clearly (and correctly) labelled as originating from GHCN. For your information, GHCN stands for the Global Historical Climatology Network and is a project of the NOAA National Centre for Environmental Information.”
“You appear to be mistaken as the effect of homogeneity adjustments (from whatever source) on Arctic temperatures.”
Schmidt refers Roberts to graphs pertaining to global surface temperature history and homogenised temperature calculations in the Arctic, which Roberts had previously rejected.
Roberts’ central conceit is that “there is no evidence that climate change is caused by human activity” and this is the one thing you haven’t really addressed – simply stating that 97% of people who are actually qualified to make this judgement do, in fact, make it, will not be accepted as empirical evidence (and, to be fair, it really isn’t.)
Of course, the key thing in any good conspiracy theory is to make arguments that are not actually rebuttable and Roberts will always reject any evidence on this as being mere statistical correlation with no counterfactual for comparison (because the counterfactual is “no humans” and he will always dismiss the pre-human record as not comparable.) Still, I think you could have done a better job, Jordan, in reporting the overwhelming statistical evidence that correlates mankind-generated activity and emissions with climate change.
Malcolm Roberts commits the fallacy of asserting that the theory of AGW states that any variation in atmospheric CO2 levels is due to human activity.
The maximum atmospheric CO2 levels in both hemispheres occurs in mid Spring. In both hemispheres, atmospheric CO2 levels decrease in the Summer (growing) seasons as plants take out an enormous amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. And then they increase in Winter as the growing season comes to an end and plants and animals return CO2 to the atmosphere.
The seasonal variation is more marked in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern because the Northern Hemisphere has more land mass than the Southern.
Roberts claims that the seasonal variation at Hawaii is due to the (more extensive) southern oceans releasing CO2 during the warmer southern Summer (northern Winter) and absorbing it during the colder southern Winter (northern Summer) as a result of Henry’s law (CO2 is less soluble in warmer water).
If this was true, then the seasonal atmospheric CO2 curve in the Southern Hemisphere (at Cape Grim in Tasmania for example) should show a maximum in late Summer and a minimum in early Spring, instead of the reverse. And the range between maximum and minimum should be larger instead of smaller than the range at Hawaii.
Roberts seems to be highly inconsistent. He claims that the Earth isn’t warming. And that any increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to warming, not human activity. And then he shows graphs showing that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing, including at the South Pole, with little or no seasonal variation.
So what is it?
He is an idiot.
Arguing science with Roberts and the One Nation crew is like trying to persuade a Christian fundamentalist that God didn’t make the world in six days. In short, you are wasting your time. One Nation, and a sizeable proportion of the Coalition are impervious to reason.
Alas, too true. And we have to share the planet with such irrational bigots, zealots, arseholes and worse.
Experience has taught the population to respond to every scientific study with the question: Who paid for it?
Scientists are for hire. They have brought this skepticism upon themselves.
That’s a very serious allegation you have made about science and those who train in it’s various diciplines, not to mention their academic integrity and professionalism. So you have some proof to support your claims? Or are you a bit like Malcolm Roberts – oblivious to facts and reality?
Petra,
No, no, no…
Scientists aren’t in it for the money. They’re not for hire. They’re in it to be right. Fame goes to the scientists who are genuinely right, not just apparently right.
If there’s any scepticism in the community, it’s for politicians and persons with an interest in maintaining the status quo, such as mining engineers.
Suggest this is a trolling account..
Since the name first popped up, the comments have ranged from dubious to garbage. Definitely a paid astroturf troll.
Petra, scientists have been dragged kicking and screaming to the “for hire” table because of the steady retreat by Governments from “public interest” science. The profit motive has no place in the research of what is real.
Roberts’ campaign is a key example of “the business-as-usual” religion charging its skeptics with blasphemy. Like earlier rants by Ian Plimer, it is well researched for any skerrick of opinion and half-truth to support his faith. I wonder how he will explain this to his grandchildren.
Roberts is a fool. It is really as simple as that.
He may have managed to get into the Senate on a fearsome fluke, but he is still a fool.
He uses words he does not really understand. Empirical evidence is right in front of him. He just has to open his eye.
I thought Bolt was a fool, this man leaves Bolt in his dust.
The science is incontrovertible. The problem has been know since Arrhenius did the calculations, longhand, in the mid 1800s. Sadly and tragically, here and now in the 21st century where we rely upon the products of scientific endeavour and discovery, people like Roberts get an audience with people like Petra, who probably has not the first idea about any of the scientific devices and procedures that benefit her daily. Yet they still feel they are qualified to have an opinion, because today, it is not about facts, it is about opinions. Opinions formed and bought by the very people who sell the filthy fossil fuels in the very first place, or perhaps Roberts and people like Petra refuse to believe that too, even though Exxon Mobil have admitted they knew the problem back in 80s, even though they still fund denialism brain drains.
Anything more inane and dangerous than replacing fact with fiction, observations with opinion, measurement with magic, wisdom with wishful thinking, is difficult to imagine. We are on a slippery slope to climate catastrophe and those who should be free to galvanise forces to tackle it have to waste the limited time left responding to these barking morons.
Denial of climate science should be made a crime against humanity. One day it likely will.