Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I fully support the report Between a rock and a hard place inasmuch as it addresses the specific terms of reference given to the committee. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, as far as the report does deal specifically with these issues, it is actually a very good document giving a very good account of the technology, economics and other issues relating to the science of geosequestration.

The problem is that the report strays well outside the terms of reference and makes unequivocal statements about global warming and the evidence relating to anthropogenic global warming. One of the supports that anthropogenic global warming relies on very heavily is the issue of consensus. However, as Margaret Thatcher stated, consensus is the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-one believes but to which no-one objects—the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. The unequivocal statements about AGW are not acceptable.

Indeed, in the last few days the Goddard Institute for Space Studies under James Hansen has been forced to change the surface temperature records for the contiguous USA as a result of errors that had been conducted in the GISS analysis. Instead of 1998 now being the hottest year on record for the US, it is now 1934. What is more, four of the hottest 10 years in the US are now found to have occurred in the 1930s, as opposed to only three in the last 10 years.

Kevin Trenberth, IPCC coordinating lead author, as quoted in our dissenting report, has stated:

Therefore the problem of overcoming this shortcoming, and facing up to initializing climate models means not only obtaining sufficient reliable observations of all aspects of the climate system, but also overcoming model biases. So this is a major challenge.

He could not have known how major this challenge would be. The error of the US surface data was found by Steve McIntyre, the same person who discovered the errors in Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph in the third IPCC report. As an ex-scientist, it concerns me that in both these cases Hansen and Mann did not make their data and algorithms available for peer review. In both cases it was perseverance by dedicated scientists that brought out these flaws.

If the temperature record of the US is found to be in error—and the US would have to have had one of the most accurate and reliable records on the planet—how much store do we place on the rest of the record, where similar secrecy on data and algorithms holds? The politicisation of this issue is so problematic that potential beneficial effects of temperature increase appear not to exist as far as the AGW adherents are concerned.

It is interesting that the late Roger Ravelle, the mentor spoken of in reverent terms by Al Gore in his movie, stated:

… the evidence for global warming thus far doesn’t warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate.

Indeed, in the case of Gore, the hypocrisy on energy use, where he uses 20 times as much energy as the average American, clearly indicates that Gore is pushing the issue for personal, financial and political gain. If he genuinely believed his polemic, he would use all measures possible to reduce his energy consumption. He is a hypocrite of the first order.

Unfortunately, the politicisation of this debate extends not only into Australia or into this parliament but indeed into this very committee. Witness the member for Wills, who wrote to leading Australian companies in a threatening way, asking:

Whether your company has donated any money to the Institute of Public Affairs—

and there were a variety of other institutes he named—

or any other body which spreads misinformation or undermines scientific consensus concerning global warming. If your company has donated such money in the past, is it continuing to do so?

Clearly, here is a member who not only lacks political judgement but clearly does not have a clue as to how the scientific process works. If he did have any idea, he would know that science advances due to scepticism and falsification, both of which he is actively attempting to quash. The problem with so much of the debate on this issue is that it is pseudoscientific, having scant regard for scientific process. If evidence contradicting the theory of AGW is produced, the AGW adherents quickly attempt to find some way of explaining away the contradictory evidence in such a way as to fit in with their paradigm rather than question whether their paradigm holds true. This is what is commonly known as ‘group think’.

People have asked me what it would take for me to accept the AGW hypothesis. I have thought long and hard about this. According to the adherents, the models are now so complete that there is no doubt that humans are the cause of most of the warming of the latter part of the last 40 years, as the models cannot attribute the temperature rise to anything else. If the models are so complete, then to satisfy me they should be able to predict for each of the next five years to within 0.1 degrees what the average global temperature would be. The only exceptions would be where there is some unforeseen, non-climatic event such as a large volcanic eruption. Given what Kevin Trenberth has said about modelling not being able to replicate current conditions, and given that by the IPCC’s own admission the understanding that six of the nine radiative forcing mechanisms are medium or low, I would not be surprised to find that the modellers are unable to make these predictions. That the chair of the IPCC has stated that Australia is correct in not setting CO emission reduction targets until the full details of the impact and implications of this are known indicates that the government is being prudent with its policy on carbon.

The point is that the costs are not minimal. The risk of this occurring has not been determined. It would be like Australia committing a very large part of the budget to examining ways of preventing an asteroid strike on the planet. Although the consequences of an asteroid strike would be catastrophic, the probability of its occurring is extremely low. As such, it would be imprudent to expend huge amounts of money on this. A similar sober assessment needs to be conducted with AGW. The problem is that it is not the Gores, Garretts or indeed members opposite who would suffer as a result of this.

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