Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a short contribution to this matter of public importance regarding climate change. The Greens are deniers of natural climate change. The average world temperature is about 14.5 degrees, and science shows us that we cannot stop natural climate change; we can only make preparations to survive it. The JLN has climate change policies based on that unescapable fact. Ice-core samples from Antarctica show that about 110,000 years ago the average world temperature was also about 14.5 degrees. And because of natural climate change, which is caused by variations in the earth's orbit around the sun, the average world temperature rose about five degrees very quickly to around 19 degrees. The variation in the earth's orbit then made the average global temperature collapse very quickly, to bounce around five to 10 degrees, causing an ice age that lasted until about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, when, just like clockwork, the average world temperature changed and warmed and rose very quickly again to 14.5 degrees.

The scientific record shows that no amount of windmills, solar panels, renewable energy targets or Australian pensioners paying over-the-top prices for their electricity will stop the earth's temperature heating up by another four or five degrees if that is what natural cycles dictate. In fact, the Antarctic ice-core samples show that about every 100,000 years the average world temperature quickly rises two to five degrees from today's average of 14.5 degrees without any help from humans burning fossil fuels. Why don't the Greens and other deniers of natural climate change acknowledge these scientific facts? Why won't the Greens acknowledge the fact that if the world temperature did rise two degrees it would not be unusual, extraordinary or beyond the limits compared with scientific records shown in ice-core samples?

The whole Greens political movement would collapse if people no longer felt guilty about demanding cheap, reliable power from their governments. The uninformed Greens cretins who say we can stop world climate change by shutting down our cheap, reliable base load power stations and replacing them with expensive, subsidised, unreliable solar panels and inefficient wind turbines and make our manufacturing industries, families, farmers and pensioners pay for some of the most expensive power in the OECD should be shown the disrespect, contempt and political wilderness that they deserve.