Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2009-2010 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2009-2010. I also welcome this opportunity to address the parliament through this Main Committee regarding my concerns about the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme legislation which passed through the House two weeks ago and is now before the Senate. On that occasion I was unable to join in the debate because the debate was gagged. I do welcome this opportunity to express my concerns and share them with my constituents. That legislation was entitled the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, and as the debate was gagged before I was able to speak, this opportunity is important to me and my constituents because not only will it impose a higher tax on the people and the families of Australia, particularly the families in my electorate of Hughes, but also because I am very concerned that the very basis of this legislation—the global climate model managed by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology—has now been shown to be structurally unsound.

I spoke on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation late last year and I refer my constituents and other interested persons to my speech on 28 October, which is located on my website, www.dannavale.com, In that speech I said that this legislation was a fraud upon the people of Australia and that I was utterly opposed to it. Since then this legislation has also been seen for what it really is: it is a contrived piece of wedge politics by a self-serving, morally bankrupt Rudd Labor government. The people of Australia have shown that they are sick of such selfish, political manoeuvring, and on their behalf I invite the Rudd Labor government to get serious instead of tricky spin politics. Specifically, it is high time that the Rudd government began to deal with the hard evidence-based scientific facts that are already before them. I specifically refer to two very important peer reviewed scientific research papers that provide clear and irrefutable evidence that the global climate model jointly managed by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology is structurally unsound.

These Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills are actually grounded on this global climate model. Again, I take the time to point out that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and its associated bills—or the very title of these bills—should cause alarm amongst educated Australians because they will know that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but it is a vital fertiliser. I was amused the other week to hear the member for Rankin expose an unusual ignorance about this important life-giving compound. He expressed his amusement at my description of carbon dioxide as a potent fertiliser and, up to now, a free fertiliser at that. The horticulturists of Australia will read his disparaging comments with their own collective bemusement as they pump life-giving carbon dioxide into their greenhouses to promote vigorous plant growth to provide food for their fellow Australians. Carbon itself is the building block of everything that lives on our planet; indeed, nothing lives without it. Yet the Rudd Labor government continues to try to deceive the people of Australia by maintaining the unscientific claim that life-giving carbon is a pollutant.

Wikipedia proclaims:

Carbon forms the backbone of biology for all life on earth.

A doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will take around a century and, as well as causing a free 20 to 50 percent increase in food production depending on the crop type and local conditions, it will also lead to an anthropological greening of the planet earth by promoting more vigorous growth of vegetation in natural landscapes.

However, the title of the emissions trading scheme legislation is only the first thing that concerns me about this legislation. More importantly, I also hold very real concerns about the scientific premise upon which these bills are based. This House, the scientific community and the people of Australia should be made aware that the global climate model from our scientists at the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, upon which Garnaut relied to produce his report to the government, has since been shown to be structurally unsound and its conclusions are therefore seriously flawed.

As I have foreshadowed earlier, I have two peer reviewed scientific research papers that provide clear and apparently irrefutable evidence that the global climate model jointly managed by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology is structurally unsound. The lead authors were Garth Paltridge and Frank Wentz respectively. Both these papers state explicitly in plain English that their real world observations flatly contradict two key speculative underlying theories on which the joint CSIRO-Bureau of Meteorology global climate model is based. The pre-eminence of observations over theories is a cornerstone of science. Accordingly, these now disproved theories should already have been expunged from the joint CSIRO-Bureau of Meteorology global climate model.

What I do not have today, pursuant to my request in my letter of 14 December to Senator the Hon. Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, is two written, testable hard science rebuttals to these two research papers by Paltridge and Wentz. In my letter of 14 December, I concluded by saying

Since the cited papers explicitly contradict key underlying theories on which the joint. CSIRO/BoM GCM is based, I expect the rebuttals will be to hand and anticipate receiving copies early in the New Year and well before the CPRS Bills are reintroduced.

Unless and until the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology provide two written, testable hard science rebuttals to these two research papers, their joint global climate model is structurally unsound and its forecasts are exaggerated and misleading. In consequence, the recommendations in the Garnaut report are rubbish recommendations based on disproved science and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is an unmitigated disaster for Australia.

The Rudd government has shown its utter disregard for the wellbeing of ordinary Australians by proceeding with the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills without first holding the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology to account and insisting that they either provide these two rebuttals or fix their global climate model and provide updated forecasts. The CPRS will impose great hardship and extra costs on my constituents and on the people of Australia. The Rudd government has clearly put the second term ambitions of the Labor Party first and the welfare of the people of Australia a distant second. Unsubstantiated and half-baked disparagement of these two empirical discoveries appears to be sufficient for the Rudd government, but it is not acceptable for the Abbott opposition, nor for the people of Australia, nor for the wider scientific community.

For members of the scientific community—and for all those who are interested—the two empirical discoveries are reported in the following peer reviewed scientific research papers. Paltridge et al were published in the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology, volume 98, Nos 3 to 4, pages 351 to 359, February 2009, and were published online on 26 February 2009. The title of their research paper is ‘Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data’ by Garth Paltridge, Albert Arking and Michael Pook, February 2009. Wentz et al were published in the journal Science, Volume 317, pages 233 to 235, 13 July 2007, and were published online on 31 May 2007. The title of their research paper is ‘How much more rain will global warming bring?’ by Frank J Wentz, Lucrezia Ricciardulli, Kyle Hilburn and Carl Mears, May 2007.

Once the joint CSIRO-Bureau of Meteorology global climate model is made compliant with the empirical discoveries reported in these two papers, it will forecast an increase in global temperature of 0.2 degrees Celsius to 0.5 degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2. Compliance with just one of these empirical discoveries, even without the other, will lead to a forecast of under one degree Celsius. A doubling of CO2 in isolation—that is, without any consequential changes in the atmosphere—will cause a temperature increase of around 0.8 degrees Celsius.

The major global climate models, including the joint CSIRO-Bureau of Meteorology global climate model, use now-disproved speculative theories about consequential changes in the atmosphere to provide massive positive feedback, which amplifies the 0.8 degrees Celsius by factors of four to over eight, and so predict temperature increases of three degrees Celsius to over six degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2.

In particular, the major global climate models are based on two speculative theories: first, that the amount of water vapour in the upper troposphere increases as CO2 and temperature increases, whereas Paltridge discovered that, in the real world, the amount of water vapour in the upper troposphere decreases; and, second, that evaporation increases by about 1.7 per cent per one degree Celsius increase in temperature, whereas Wentz discovered that, in the real world, evaporation increases by around seven per cent per one degree Celsius increase in temperature.

Evaporation is extremely important in keeping the earth cool. Oceans cover around 71 per cent of the earth’s surface and provide around 86 per cent of the evaporative cooling. If there were no evaporative cooling and we had to rely almost entirely on greenhouse gas affected by radiative cooling, the average global temperature, instead of being around 15 degrees Celsius, would be around 67 degrees Celsius. So if you want to warm up the virtual world on your computer screen, this is very easily accomplished. All you have to do is follow the example set by the CSIRO and constrain virtual evaporation.

I do not have—and very few members in this place have—any background in science, and for this reason we are understandably cautious. However, we must not allow ourselves to be intimidated. Those of us in government must make every effort possible to ensure that the advice presented by a group of scientists does not mislead the people of Australia. In this instance, the science speaks clearly and eloquently and makes plain to all of us the fact that the joint CSIRO-Bureau of Meteorology global climate model is structurally flawed.

I will now read an extract from the research paper by Garth Paltridge and his colleagues. ‘Water vapor feedback in climate models is positive mainly because of their roughly constant relative humidity (that is, increasing specific humidity) in the mid-to-upper troposphere as the planet warms. Negative trends in specific humidity as found in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, or NCEP, data would imply that long-term water vapor feedback is negative―that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2.’

I have asked that the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology provide a written, testable, hard-science rebuttal to this empirical discovery made by Garth Paltridge and his colleagues, but so far they have failed to do so. Garth Paltridge and his colleagues published their empirical discovery in February 2009. An ethical scientific organisation would be expected to have made its computer-created virtual world—that is, its global climate model—compliant with this discovery about what happens in the real world well before the end of 2009.

I will now read an extract from the research paper by Frank Wentz and his colleagues.

Climate models and satellite observations both indicate the total amount of water in the atmosphere will increase substantially due to global warming at a rate of 7% K^–1

seven per cent per one degree kelvin.

However, the climate models predict global precipitation will increase at a much slower rate of 1-3% K^–1. A recent analysis of satellite observations does not support this prediction of a muted response of precipitation to global warming. Rather, the observations suggest that precipitation and total atmospheric water have increased at about the same rate over the last two decades.

For the information of members, a degree kelvin is equal to a degree Celsius, and global evaporation must equal global precipitation over time scales longer than a month.

Again, I have asked the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology to provide written, testable, hard-science rebuttals to this empirical discovery by Frank Wentz and his colleagues. But, again, they have failed, so far, to do so. Frank Wentz and his colleagues published their empirical discovery in May 2007. An ethical scientific organisation would be expected to have made its computer-created virtual world—that is, its global climate model—compliant with this discovery about what happens in the real world well before the end of 2007. Since returning from his abortive trip to Copenhagen, Prime Minister Rudd seems to have become, silently, almost a closet climate sceptic. Prime Minister Rudd must put the welfare of the people of Australia ahead of Labor’s now-faltering ambitions for a second term and admit that, but for the intervention of the coalition, his disgraceful government would have enthusiastically and triumphantly led the people of Australia into an unmitigated disaster in Copenhagen.

The government has grounded its emissions trading legislation on the global model managed by a team of scientists at the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. This was made clear when, on 2 February this year, the Prime Minister felt the need to hide behind the scientists when he said:

We accept what the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia has said. We accept also what the Australian Chief Scientist has said.

The Prime Minister and his entire government can no longer hide behind the scientists. It was not a scientist but the Rudd government that decided to introduce the CPRS bills without first insisting on the rebuttals to the Paltridge and Wentz empirical discoveries. With that decision, the Rudd government stepped into the open and exposed its politically driven determination to proceed with the CPRS no matter what the science says or how clearly it says it. That decision was made by the Prime Minister, and he will be rightly held accountable to the people of Australia. Truth is the daughter of time.

The Australian recently reported what Australia’s Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett, said as follows:

Professor Sackett said climate change was a scientific reality but there was a need for absolute openness and rigour in the presentation of evidence, including recognition of which aspects of climate change science were imprecise and required further research.

I could not agree more. But a climate change of 0.2 degrees to 0.5 degrees Celsius is vastly different from the three degrees to over six degrees being forecast by the structurally unsound global climate models of the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology.

So where is the response from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology to the empirical evidence now presented by the Paltridge and Wentz papers? Where is the ‘absolute openness’, I ask Professor Sackett? Where is the ‘rigour’? How long do we have to wait—or does the deafening silence mean that the usual ethical practice of two of our leading and respected scientific organisations has been compromised by their political masters? If this is so, the scientific community as a whole will be devalued by such a manifest lack of professional ethics, and the people of Australia will be defrauded, just as I have suggested. Sadly, unless and until the scientists of the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology produce testable, hard-science rebuttals to these two scientific papers, the respect and the high regard with which these two prestigious organisations have been held in the past within the world’s scientific community will be seriously constrained.

I cannot and do not accept this dishonest legislation presented by the emissions trading bills. I do not support the immoral massive tax that it will impose upon the people of Australia on just about everything on the pretence of helping our environment. I do not support that legislation because it will do absolutely nothing for our environment. It has no mechanisms to do so. I do not support this legislation because it was based on science that has now been shown to be unsound and seriously flawed and, as such, that legislation will present a monumental fraud upon the people of Australia, and I will have no part in it.

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