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

It is my pleasure to present a petition. Normally, we do not necessarily associate ourselves with petitions but I certainly associate myself with this.

The petition read as follows—

To the Honourable The Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives

This petition by citizens and taxpayers of Australia draws the attention of the House to large sums of Government income that are being spent on programs, subsidies, compensations, commissions, etc. with the aim of achieving a national target of a 5% reduction in the human production of carbon dioxide from that of the year 2000 by 2020, without a high-level, incisive cost/benefit study having been conducted.

We the undersigned, being citizens of Australia, request The House to do all in its power to establish an inquiry to determine the real benefits and the total costs to this nation from Government spending to reduce human production of carbon dioxide and from subsidies for renewable energy and regulations limiting the use of carbon-based fuels.

from 424 citizens

Petition received.

These policies relating to climate change are costing us a fortune. One needs just look at the Renewable Energy Target and the carbon tax to see that these policies are making many of our industries uncompetitive. Indeed, the bill that has been brought on in the House today by the Labor opposition, the Qantas bill, highlights the cost of this tax and these policies to our industry. Qantas has had to pay $106 million over a 12 month period in carbon tax. Tell me that that is something that is sustainable and that business and industry can afford. The thing we need to look at is some of the background to what is actually causing these policies—that is, the whole climate change issue. Look at the Bureau of Meteorology. The Bureau of Meteorology stated that last year was the hottest year on record. They base that on the fact that their records went back to 1910. In fact, the records go back a lot longer than that. The 1890s and very early 1900s were very hot, but the bureau says that data was unreliable. Okay, let us accept that as being true. If the data prior to 1910 in Australia was unreliable, what does that say about other places in the world? Think of Africa and Dr Livingstone, I presume, in 1871. The IPCC data goes back to 1850: how reliable is that data? Even if the rest of the planet's data is reliable, for Australasia, a huge chunk of the planet, there is unreliable data, but the Bureau of Meteorology is quite happy using that data. You cannot have it both ways.

The Bureau of Meteorology also processes or manipulates, or however you want to call it, data. This needs to be adequately explained. I am not saying that there is anything insidious about it but the methodology that they use needs to be explained. Why is it that processed data from a number of temperature measuring stations shows a significant warming trend when the actual raw data shows flat or decreasing temperature trends? Once again, I am not saying that it is a conspiracy, but it would be good to know the methodology. Why is it that models used by the IPCC and the Bureau of Meteorology have been unable to project future outcomes accurately and they have been changed retrospectively to reflect what in fact has occurred? Have a look, for instance, at global average temperatures: 95 per cent of the global circulation models used by the IPCC have been unable to replicate the halt in temperature that we have seen in the last decade and a half. Mechanisms proposed to try to explain this halt, such as deep ocean warming sucking up the heat that would otherwise have gone into the atmosphere, neglect a few facts, such as why was this mechanism inoperative between 1975 and about 2000, when there was warming of the atmosphere? Indeed, given that the science is so-called settled, why were these mechanisms not used prior to this halt to predict the halt? Why have they been unable to predict precipitation changes? Why is the signature expected of the major feedback mechanism, the water cycle in the so-called upper tropical troposphere hot spot, nowhere to be found that is associated with positive feedback of the water cycle? Why is it that rent seekers like a whole lot of the Pacific islands, such as Kiribati, talk of inundation due to sea level rise when, for instance, Kensch et al have found that the majority of those Pacific islands have increased in size since World War II? Why the lack of being forthcoming with data such as the shonky scientist Michael Mann of hockey stick infamy, Phil Jones of the Hadley CRU— (Time expired)