Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The recent announcement of savage cuts to climate change research within the CSIRO demonstrates that, although the government may have changed its leader, the ill-informed policies of the former Prime Minister remain in place. Despite the rhetoric, there is no evidence that the Turnbull government gives any more weight to the importance of science than its predecessor and has just as little understanding of the importance of measurement, in particular of the changes in the physical processes that are driving climate change. Why else would the CSIRO have been ordered to abandon the measurement of the change in climate, and why else would the critical Cape Grim carbon dioxide observatory in Tasmania be at risk of closure?

Until the first decades of the 17th century the teaching of natural sciences was based upon Aristotle's Physics, a fourth century BC text that described natural phenomena according to so-called common-sense explanations. For example, Aristotle stated that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects—a common-sense idea that was not overturned until 1589, when Galileo demonstrated by measurement that all objects fall at the same velocity regardless of their mass. Aristotle's ideas held sway in the Western world for almost 2,000 years. The fact is that measurement and mathematics often contradict seemingly common-sense ideas, such as the idea widely held in ancient times that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Mathematical analysis of measurements led, for example, to the prediction in 1865 of the existence of radio waves by James Clerk Maxwell and in 1905 to an understanding of the source of nuclear energy by Albert Einstein.

These days measurement and mathematics demonstrate that carbon dioxide emissions are driving up global temperatures and that carbon dioxide dissolving in sea water is acidifying the oceans, yet many members of the government reject these findings. According to the ABC, in September 2014 the then Prime Minister considered setting up a task force to investigate the credibility of the temperature measurements published by the Bureau of Meteorology that provided evidence for global warming. Apparently the Prime Minister was convinced that Aristotle's common-sense physics made more sense than modern science and, not content with wrecking the CSIRO, had the Bureau of Meteorology in his sights.

Following the intervention of the Minister for the Environment, the intention to conduct a due diligence review of the Bureau of Meteorology was abandoned. Instead, in 2015 a committee was set up to investigate the claims. The committee found that the Bureau of Meteorology had not been adjusting its measurements to fit a pattern of global warming and reported that there was a clear trend of increase in both the raw and homogenised temperature data and that temperature patterns exhibited in a variety of other datasets had a similar character. Climate change research remains important and this government should now come right out and support it.