Steve Fielding has published an article at The Punch today, explaining his decision to “fight” in the Senate on the issue of climate change. Let’s follow on from yesterday’s climate change thread with a discussion of Fielding’s latest offering.

On my first reading, I have two immediate reactions:

  1. He seriously loves that graph, and equally seriously misunderstands the hypothesis he claims it disproves. The fact that a hypothesis predicts a correlation does not mean that we should expect a perfect correlation – especially in a complex system such as the global climate where all manner of other variables are involved, and especially over such a restricted range (15 years).
  2. Does he genuinely believe Al Gore had a moral obligation to meet with him, no matter what else Gore had scheduled? And could there be any plausible explanation for why the meeting didn’t eventuate, other than Fielding’s claim that Gore was “running away”?

That’s all I’ll say for now – have at it.