John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bearing in mind the speeches by the opposition tonight, I hope they listen to what I have to say. Despite the relentless denials of global warming by vested interests that support the opposition, evidence supporting the government's decision to take measures to combat climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions grows ever stronger. The unprecedented floods in eastern Australia and the record heatwaves and high temperatures in the south-west of Western Australia last summer, together with significantly reduced rainfall levels, all correspond to the well-tested predictions of climate change models.

In Australia, rain-bearing weather systems driven by higher than average Indian Ocean temperatures have dumped record-breaking rainfall in the eastern states, while around the world exceptional conditions have led to extremes of heat and cold. On 2 March this year in some locations in Victoria—Madam Deputy Speaker, I know you would be aware—rainfall broke monthly records in just a single day, and Wodonga recorded 88 millimetres of rainfall in a few hours, which broke the previous March monthly record of 84 millimetres set in 1926. An estimated 70 per cent of New South Wales was flooded or under threat of flooding on 5 March during a time that is normally one of the driest months of the year.

The United States has experienced its fourth warmest winter since records began in 1895 and, while still in what was technically winter, the country experienced a weather pattern normally seen in early summer. Many areas experienced temperatures 10 to 22 degrees above average. At the same time 650 people died in Europe and Asia in February. They were frozen to death in the intense cold that has been linked to changes in atmospheric circulation caused by global warming.

Whilst ignoring the record-breaking temperatures in North America, climate change deniers deceitfully point to the frigid European and Asian temperatures as evidence that global warming is not occurring. Of course, selective use of the evidence by climate change deniers is not new, but the exceptional conditions experienced in the northern hemisphere do deserve a brief explanation. The recent freezing conditions in Europe have been associated with changes in the weather system, known as the North Atlantic Oscillation, together with reductions in sea ice in the Barents-Kara Sea located to the north of Norway and European Russia.

Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research explained that the current weather pattern:

… fits earlier predictions of computer models for how the atmosphere responds to the loss of sea ice due to global warming.

He further said:

The ice-free areas of the ocean act like a heater as the waters are warmer than the Arctic air above it. This favours the formation of a high-pressure system near the Barents Sea, which steers cold air into Europe.

Of course, none of this evidence for the growing impact of global warming driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is of any consequence to the opposition. Ignorance is not evidence, nor should it be the basis of policy, despite the claims of the opposition to the contrary.

The CSIRO's report, State of the climate 2012, paints an alarming picture of the ongoing deleterious effects of the cumulative effects of carbon dioxide emissions on the world's climate. The report notes that the long-term warming trend is continuing, each decade having been warmer than the previous decade since the 1950s. The warming trends observed around Australia are consistent with global-scale warming that has been measured during recent decades, despite 2010 and 2011 being the coolest years recorded in Australia since 2001. Importantly, however, 2010 and 2011 constituted the wettest two-year period ever recorded in Australia.

I am sure that, given the evident hostility of the opposition to the CSIRO and the important work of its scientists, were the opposition to take over the government of our country the CSIRO would be forced to change its name from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation to the Climate Science Information Rejection Organisation.