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

Minister, there's conclusive overwhelming evidence from two global experiments that have overwhelming proven that cutting carbon dioxide from human activity can have no effect on the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In 2009, after the global financial crisis, the world endured a recession—everywhere around the world, except for Australia, because we were rapidly punching out exports to China of coal and iron ore. But the rest of the world suffered a dramatic downturn. That led to a dramatic downturn in the use of hydrocarbon fuels. That led to a dramatic reduction in 2009 of carbon dioxide from human activity. Yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued increasing. In 2020 we had another severe recession, almost a depression, around the world due to government COVID restrictions. Again we saw the use of hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas—plummet, as it does in most recessions. That meant production of carbon dioxide from human activity plummeted, yet the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued increasing without inflection. That shows, twice now, that massive cuts in human dioxide carbon output did not result in any change in the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. In fact the levels of carbon dioxide continued to increase.

It's pointless to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. Nature shows us. You don't have to listen to you or me; nature has already shown us that. Nature alone determines the level of carbon dioxide; humans have no effect. Why are you corrupting the science? You've had unmeasurable assertions. I've given you the basis for crime in these policies, the corruption in these policies overseas, yet you don't blink. What I would like, Minister, is for you now to cite any report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has the specific location, page number and chapter number of the empirical scientific data as evidence within a logical scientific point—in other words, the data within the framework that proves cause and effect. Just give me the page number, the title and the date, please.