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

I certainly will, because the issues of peer review, climate science and the need for geosequestration are intimately related. As an example of my own about the aspect of peer review, I wrote a paper called ‘Target aspect dependent radar cross-section: the effect on assumed beam angle’. Because I was not working for DSTO in my personal time, I sent the paper from my home address. But, with one of my emails, I also sent the return email address for DSTO. Guess what? Without my knowledge, the IEEE Magazine of Antennas and Propagation actually published the paper. This is a peer review journal, and they gave my affiliation as DSTO. This is the thing: there are all these elements that are intertwined with peer review.

Let us have a look at the peer review system with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—that is intergovernmental, Prime Minister, not international; and there are fewer than 1,000 scientists, not 4,000 scientists. There is an inherent problem with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The inherent problem goes right down to its mission statement, which is:

The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.

This is a field of science that has had more than $50 billion pumped into it. The key words are ‘human-induced climate change’. Let us say that they proved human-induced climate change was not happening. What happens to that research money? What happens to the IPCC itself? By its own mission statement, it ceases to exist.

We have the issue of data and transparency. I read out the mission statement; it includes ‘transparency’. Phil Jones, the head of the Hadley Centre—one of the major repositories of global temperature data used by the IPCC—said:

Climate scientists should think about data quality more often, so that there is no opportunity for incorrect data to sow seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the reality of climate change.

Steve McIntyre was looking at statistically evaluating the data, and he happens to be somewhat sceptical of anthropogenic climate change. Phil Jones, when asked by Steve McIntyre for data, said: ‘We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try to find something wrong with it?’ That is what science is about. It is about falsification. Phil Jones, in this instance, is not about science; he is about a religion, because he does not want to be proved wrong.

Upton Sinclair, a great political writer in the early part of the last century, in a book called I, Candidate for Governor: and How I Got Licked, wrote:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

I think it is critical to also consider that in this argument.

On the issue of the science being settled, we are so certain about climate science! We know exactly what is going on—no room for doubt! This is what CSIRO puts as a disclaimer on its climate change science:

The projections are based on results from computer models that involve simplifications of real physical processes that are not fully understood. Accordingly, no responsibility will be accepted by CSIRO for the accuracy of the projections inferred from this brochure or for any person’s interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in reliance on this information.

In other words, we will put out this data but do not hold us to it; but, by the way, this whole climate science area is absolutely beyond doubt. What we have with this issue is institutionalised group think. Where pay packets are concerned, that obviously has an effect. Have you ever wondered why so many scientists who question climate science have the title ‘emeritus’? It is because they do not actually have any pecuniary interests related to the output of such data. You get similar situations within defence, but that is entirely another story.

The question is: where is the research funding for devil’s advocates who question whether this view is correct? The Noel hypothesis on this whole area of science should be that all of the climate change that we observe is natural, and then work should be done to prove that it is not. Instead, the Noel hypothesis has been distorted towards the view that the majority or all of climate change is human induced, and then try to prove that it is wrong. It is an incorrect assumption from the start.

Some of the stuff that comes up is interesting. The World Wildlife Fund blame climate change for the coldest August in Sydney for more than 60 years. Yes, it is global warming because Sydney had a really cold August! They say that the freezing temperatures are proof of the urgent need to cut carbon pollution. Sir David King, who was the head of the British federation of scientists, said shortly after the tsunami that it highlighted climate change risk. What? It is quite interesting what you get. Global warming has been associated with so many things. If you want to get a research grant, put the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ into your application. For instance, in relation to geophysical research letters, a group of scientists said that global warming will slow the earth’s rotation. In another issue of geophysical research letters, geophysicist Felix Landerer said that global warming will speed the earth’s rotation. Global warming is now being fitted into things like the earth’s rotation.

What about the Australian experience? Dr Wendy Craik blames the low level of the Murray-Darling system on climate change. However, I have a time series graph, which I seek to table, from the Bureau of Meteorology—obviously a very biased organisation—showing average rainfall for the Murray-Darling Basin. Guess what folks? It is almost no different from what we have observed over the last 100 years. What we do have is overallocation and catchment mismanagement; it is not an issue of too little rain. What about other data? We see that, by all measures, temperatures have gone down since 2001. Ocean temperatures have gone down since 2004. So what are the scientists trying to blame it on now? Latent heat. We cannot measure it; it must be latent heat. It is called situating the appreciation rather than appreciating the situation.

I will cut to the chase. The final thing—and I seek to table this document as well—is that the predictions are that there will be an upper tropos or tropical troposphere heating the atmosphere due to well-mixed greenhouse gasses. Observations show that there has been no such heating whatsoever. I could go to many more examples that clearly demonstrate that even within the IPCC there is considerable question—(Time expired)

See this speech in context