This afternoon I had the opportunity to ask questions in the Senate Committee on “Lessons to be learned in relation to the Australian bushfire.”
I chose to ask my questions to Greg Mullins who is a Climate Councillor with the (Tim Flannery’s) Climate Council. Mr Mullins wasn’t too keen on answering my questions and took the name calling route rather than providing the evidence I asked for.
“I’m a retired person, I don’t have time to deal with denialists who can’t accept settled science.” Mr Mullins is the person who the Greens rely on as their climate expert during the recent bushfires.
Transcript
[Senator Roberts]
Thank you chair, and thank you Mr. Mullins for attending today, and also thank you very much for your service over many years, in fact nearly half a century.
I’m very pleased that the opening sentence, in fact the opening line of your presentation, you used the word empirical, and when I first used that in the senate in 2016 and in the media a lot of journalists were running off getting their dictionaries and senators were giggling and carrying on. I am pleased to see that you have used that word empirical.
There is another part to that though that needs to be proven when it comes to cause and effect. It’s not just the word empirical, not just the empirical data, but also presenting that in a causal framework that establishes cause and effect, and you’re with me on that?
[Greg Mullins]
Uh, yes.
[Senator Roberts]
I’ve had to use data because I’ve had to manage people’s lives and make sure people stayed alive, so I always relied on empirical data and understood cause and effect especially investigating safety incidents to establish cause.
Now in your opening paragraph and in your recommendation one you state irrefutable empirical scientific data concerning warming climate proven to be caused by burning of coal, oil, and gas is resulting in worsening and more frequent extreme weather events that spawned the 2019 bush fires. Could you please tell me the specific source of your empirical scientific evidence within a logical structure proving cause and effect that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate?
I’d like to know the specific title of the publication, I’d like to know the specific page numbers in which the data is presented, and in which the causal relationship is established.
Now I know you’ve used a lot of references from SBS, The Guardian, the Greens Party, The Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the ABC, but I would like to know the specific location of the specific empirical data that scientifically proves cause and effect that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. Could you do that for me please either on notice or now?
[Greg Mullins]
Uh, senator or chair, do I have to answer this question? Senator, I’ve read your website, I’ve read, or tried to read, a lot of your stuff that you’ve published, and so I’ve read very widely for and against. I don’t think there would be any purpose served me trying to convince you of what thousands of scientists agreed on and the settled science, and it is settled science, and I’m at a loss to know how to deal with your assertion, I won’t call it a question.
[Chair]
Thanks Mr. Mullins, Senator Roberts.
[Senator Roberts]
Can you provide me with one title of empirical scientific evidence in a causal framework establishing cause and affect?. Not one?
[Greg Mullins]
Look I could provide many for you, but I’m a retired person.
[Senator Roberts]
One would do, just one.
[Greg Mullins]
I frankly don’t have the time to deal with denialists who can’t accept settled science.
[Chair]
I think what I propose, thanks Senator Roberts.
[Greg Mullins]
That was not an admission, it was exasperation senator.
[Senator Roberts]
Now we have talked also about-
[Chair]
You’ve got one last question Senator Roberts if that’s okay, we are out of time.
[Senator Roberts]
Yeah one more question, that’d be fine. Are you aware, Mr. Mullins, that in my cross-examination of the CSIRO that the CSIRO’s acting head of climate change admitted to me that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented and that the CSIRO admitted to me in an earlier presentation in Sydney that they have never said that carbon dioxide from human activity poses a danger and they never will say it.
Are you aware that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented?
[Greg Mullins]
Senator, now that’s a very broad question. Are you talking about hundreds of millions of years when the dinosaurs were roaming the earth or when humans, and look I say again, I have read your material and the assertions made therein under the guise of being in scientific language, and I find it very concerning and quite muddled, and I’d be very surprised if the CSIRO said what you’ve just stated just as you said that I didn’t have any reference, it wasn’t true.
[Senator Roberts]
Thank you very much chair.
[Chair]
Thanks senator Roberts,
