Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want to discuss this issue which, at its core—quoting from the Greens—is about 'climate heating'. Really—about humans heating our climate! One Nation relies upon data, facts and empirical evidence proving causation. Senator Watt relies upon 'belief'.

Let's have a look at some data on another issue, and that is the Greens' claims. On 9 September 2019, I invited Senator Waters and then leader Senator Di Natale—remember him?—to present us with the empirical scientific evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut. I also challenged them to a debate on the empirical evidence and on the corruption of science. What have we heard since? Nothing; not a thing—just more claims and more beliefs. On 7 October 2010, I invited Senator Larissa Waters, who's now the Greens leader in the Senate, to debate me on climate and climate science corruption. She jumped to her feet and said: 'I will not debate you.' Six years later, in May 2016, five years ago, I challenged her again, along with the Labor Party, and again she wouldn't debate me. She won't debate me because they haven't got the facts.

So let's go instead to someone who used to be part of the Obama administration, Steven Koonin—or should I say Professor Steven Koonin. He has written a book called Unsettled, and he says: 'Heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900'—121 years ago. Secondly, he says, 'the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past 50 years'—so much for warming!—and, thirdly, that 'humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century'. These are facts. These are things that I have spoken about in the past in this chamber. Professor Koonin continues: 'Tornado frequency and severity are also not trending up, nor are the number and severity of droughts; the extent of global fires has been trending significantly downward; the rate of sea-level rise has not accelerated; global crop yields are rising, not falling; and, listen to this, while global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are obviously higher now than two centuries ago, they're not at any record planetary high—they're at a low that has only been seen once before in the past 500 million years', as I have said repeatedly. Since all that data that Mr Koonin uses is available to others, he poses the obvious question: 'Why haven't you heard these facts before?' He's cautious—perhaps overly so—in proposing the causes for so much misinformation. He points to such things as incentives to invoke alarm for fundraising purposes and official reports that mislead by omission. Exactly!

Let me touch on the CSIRO. The CSIRO have admitted to me—we've had three presentations from the CSIRO—under my cross-examination that there is no danger from carbon dioxide from human activity. They've admitted today's temperatures are not unprecedented. And they have claimed the rate of warming is, but their own papers reveal that that is false.

There is no merit to this matter of public urgency. We say: toss it in the can.