Open Letter to Leaders
Dear Messrs Morrison, Joyce, Albanese and Bandt
Firstly, I acknowledge former Senator Arthur Sinodinos as Minister for Science and his predecessor Hon. Greg Hunt MP who made possible my cross-examination of government agencies on climate science.
Forty-one years after the United Nations (UN) held its first climate conference in Villach, Austria and thirty-three years after formation of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC), the issue of global warming, as it was first known and later became climate change, is still tearing apart the coalition, driving Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon out of parliament and, after turning over eight party leaders, hot dispute continues to rage.
Yet if there was solid scientific data underpinning the policies it would have been resolved long ago.
Independent economist and former First Assistant Commissioner in the Productivity Commission, Dr Alan Moran, estimates the cost of climate policies and consequent renewables policies averages
$1,300 per household each year, which with Australia’s mean income at just $49,000, is an unbearable burden on families. The cost to our nation each year is $13 billion and the aggregate economy wide costs are double that. These figures cannot be sensibly refuted since they are sourced in state and federal government budget papers and reports.
This report’s Executive Summary is Attachment 1 hereto.
Australia is spending some $19 billion a year in subsidies and subsidised private investment in wind and solar, close to 15 per cent of the private non-dwelling investment. Our country has the world’s highest per capita cost of subsidies for wind and solar, double that of the second highest nation.
Another far greater cost has been the Howard-Anderson federal Liberal-National government taking farmers rights to use the land they paid for and own. It did so via the state governments in order for the Commonwealth to avoid paying just terms compensation under our constitution’s Section 51, Clause 31, an amount federal MPs have reportedly estimated to be around $100-200 billion. This uncompensated theft is documented to have been done so that the Howard-Anderson government could comply with the UN’s Kyoto Protocol. It is now a large component of our country’s compliance with the UN Paris “Agreement”.
http://www.conscious.com.au/docs/new/Hansard-1_Beattie.pdf
Despite the community’s use of this sacrifice for the supposed “community good” the community did not pay for it. Instead, farmers paid for the lot.
An additional cost is the loss of jobs due to wind and solar because studies show that for each wind and solar job, 2.3 jobs are lost in the unsubsidised real economy’s productive sector. According to the Institute for Public Affairs, over the last decade for every new solar and wind job created, there were five manufacturing jobs destroyed.
The total direct cost of climate and energy policies to our economy is in the range of many hundreds of billions of dollars. Combined with inefficiencies and lost opportunity, costs will be in the order of trillions of dollars.
Upon entering the Senate my first action was to invite the Commonwealth Scientific and Industry Organisation (CSIRO) to present its data justifying the claim to cut carbon dioxide produced from human activity. Many politicians have said inside and outside parliament that they rely on advice from CSIRO for their position and policy on climate.
In total I have had three personal presentations from CSIRO, the last being at CSIRO’s request. This has been supplemented with information prised from Senate Estimates hearings.
Throughout this process, including Senate Estimates hearings, I insisted on the CSIRO presenting “logical scientific points”, being the empirical scientific data as evidence within a logical scientific framework proving cause and effect. That is, quantifying the specific impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate and climate factors such as atmospheric temperature, rainfall, drought and storms. I have always insisted on getting the specific location of the empirical scientific data and the location of the logical scientific framework proving cause-and-effect because this combination is what decides science.
Importantly, it is the only basis for honest, effective, efficient, sound, sustainable policy.
As a duly elected representative of the people and as a servant to the people, I see it as our responsibility to ensure fairness and integrity for our constituents. It is our role as parliamentarians representing the people to hold governments accountable on behalf of taxpayers and all constituents. I hope that you are all in agreement with this approach, the scientific approach.
In addition to seeing my responsibility as one of ensuring that policies are based on solid objective logical scientific points, it is my duty and my aims to:
- Protect freedom
- Protect our natural environment
- Restore scientific integrity vital for sound and sustainable policy
- Protect our economy and security
- Protect the human spirit: ending unfounded climate fear and guilt while restoring people’s universal connection with nature
It is my duty, on behalf of our constituents, to hold you accountable to the Australian people who pay the price directly and indirectly for your claims and policies. That is this letter’s purpose.
1. Politicians admit and/or show they have no scientific evidence as proof carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut
As Prime Minister from 1996 through 2007, John Howard was responsible for introducing the Renewable Energy Target (RET) subsidising wind and solar. Late last year he expressed regrets for introducing the RET.
He was the first leader of a major federal party to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as policy. Subsequently Tony Abbott later correctly labelled ETS’s as Carbon (Dioxide) Taxes.
Despite these initiatives and the Howard-Anderson Liberal-National government’s deceitful stealing of farmers’ rights to use their land, on 6 November 2013, six years after being dumped from office, John Howard advised a British global sceptic think tank that on climate science he is agnostic. He admitted he did not have the science to back his government’s climate actions.
On 21 November 2016, Senator Ian Macdonald, the Father of the Senate, looked across at me in the chamber and thanked me for starting the debate on climate science that he said had never been held in our parliament. Although I have tried to have that debate, the parliament has still never debated climate science despite that being the claimed basis for your climate and renewable energy policies.
Many Senators and MPs have privately confided in me that they do not believe there is any scientific basis for your climate and renewable energy policies. This includes members of the Liberal, Labor and National parties and indeed many have enthusiastically encouraged me to keep holding parliament accountable on climate science.
Attachment 2 contains copies of letters from MPs and Senators with the courage and integrity to answer my request for evidence and in doing so, they confirm that they have never been presented with empirical scientific evidence quantifying the specific effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate.
Additionally, I wrote to senators and MPs who have claimed that carbon dioxide from human activity is a problem and needs to be cut, asking that they “provide the specific location of the empirical scientific data within a causal framework proving that carbon dioxide from HUMAN activity is a danger, or pending danger, or threat and needs to be cut. Please also provide the specific scientific publication(s) title(s), authors’ names and page numbers”.
Attachment 3 contains a list of Members of Parliament to whom I wrote together with their replies. All failed to provide the scientific evidence.
The four who replied, including you Prime Minister Morrison, showed a disturbing ignorance of science and of the basis for honest, sound policy.
Kevin Rudd is another Prime Minister who showed complete ignorance of science as he turbo-charged the Howard-Anderson destruction of energy policy claiming that 4,000 scientists in white lab coats had provided the evidence in the UN IPCC’s 2007 science report. In correspondence with him in 2008
I pointed to the UN IPCC’s own data on the number of reviewers who endorsed the claim about human carbon dioxide causing warming and needing to be cut: it was just five, and there’s doubt they were scientists.
These numbers cannot be sensibly refuted because they are from the UN IPCC’s review of chapter nine in its 2007 report, being the sole chapter claiming warming and attributing it to carbon dioxide from human activity. Additionally, there is no empirical scientific evidence proving causation in that chapter, nor in the other sole chapters making that claim in the UN IPCC’s 2001 and 2013 reports nor, from preliminary checks, in the 2021 report.
Not only did Mr Rudd mislead the people about the numbers of academics involved, he implied that science is a popularity contest, a game of consensus. The arbiter of science is not consensus. Rather, it is the provision of objective empirical evidence quantifying cause-and-effect. He debased science and misled Australia and parliament.
Turning to the Greens: for decades and continuing today, the Greens mislead people when they peddle emotional stories, use pictures of cuddly koalas, and/or invoke fear and guilt instead of science. Eleven years ago, on 10 October 2010, I was a joint panelist with Senator Larissa Waters in a Brisbane forum on climate. As a fellow panelist I challenged her to a debate on the empirical scientific evidence and on the corruption of climate “science”. She jumped to her feet to say she would not debate me. As did the WWF Climate Change Manager, Kelly Caught, who was on the panel with us.
On Monday 9 September 2019 I challenged Senator Di Natali, the Greens Senate Leader at the time, and Senator Waters to provide the empirical scientific evidence and to debate me. Both failed to do so. Today is Day 779 without their response despite my frequent reminders, calls and challenges.
During the 2016 election I challenged Senator Waters and Mr Mark Butler, then Labor spokesman on climate, to the same challenge when they attended a public forum together.
Senator Waters is a lawyer and should know what constitutes evidence. Yet, instead of providing evidence, her senate claims, exaggerations and omissions repeatedly misrepresent science, nature, climate and humanity. Emotion is not scientific evidence.
Tellingly, not one Greens parliamentarian has shown any interest in, or desire to understand the empirical scientific data on climate and all prefer to rely on emotional stories and misrepresentations of climate and nature. The Greens show enormous disrespect for our universe, for nature, for our planet, for our parliament and for all Australians.
In response to my requests, Senator Matthias Cormann as leader of the government in the Senate, repeatedly failed to provide the empirical scientific evidence needed to justify the government’s climate and energy policies and often justified his government’s policy with his claim that we need to fulfil our obligations to foreign organisations. Now as head of the OECD’s “unaccountable international bureaucracy”, to use Prime Minister’s Morrison’s term, Matthias Cormann is pushing Australia into agreeing to yet another UN campaign.
His replacement as the government’s Senate leader, Senator Birmingham, embarrassed the government again when on Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 of this month, the government initially refused to release modelling of the future use of hydrocarbon fuels on which it claimed it had based its 2050 Net Zero policy. Clearly that was in accordance with the government’s tactic to hide the modelling and the assumptions on which that modelling is based. A casualty of the climate wars is the loss of truth and the loss of accountability.
Now we learn that you, Prime Minister Morrison, see the UN’s 2050 Net Zero campaign as necessary to fulfil commitments to President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The actions of Senator Matt Canavan and Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce provide an interesting insight. Prior to entering parliament, I corresponded with both when Mr Joyce was a Queensland Senator and Matt Canavan was his Chief of Staff. I spoke with Matt Canavan. Both were clearly sceptical that carbon dioxide from human activity was affecting climate and Senator Joyce was arguably the most effective sceptical speaker in Australia’s parliament.
Later, when Tony Windsor threatened Mr Joyce’s campaign for the New England electorate, the Prime Minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull, showered the electorate with $400 million dollars of taxpayer funds to install wind turbines – the gift that keeps giving to farmers as landowners and voters, even when not generating electricity.
Barnaby Joyce’s scepticism fell silent.
Senator Canavan meanwhile was promoted to cabinet and fell publicly silent. In December 2015, before I entered the Senate, Senator Canavan spoke in a Senate speech saying that he believes that carbon dioxide from human activity has a warming effect and taken alone would lead to a one-degree Celsius increase in (atmospheric) temperature. Later, during a Senate division, I asked Senator Canavan about his claim and he simply said that we must be affecting the planet, yet when I asked for the empirical scientific evidence to back his claim, he slid sideways away from me on the bench. Silent.
Later in the lead up to the 2019 federal election after One Nation made coal an issue, Senator Canavan murmured quietly that coal is not evil, yet continued voting for Liberal policies that undermine coal. Recently, as One Nation leads the increase in political support for coal, Senator Canavan utters whisperings that imply he may again be sceptical toward climate alarm.
It seems that Labor’s former leader Bill Shorten is not the only MP whose position depends on his audience at the time.
I will be writing formally to Senator Canavan and others to invite them again to either provide the empirical scientific evidence as the basis for cutting carbon dioxide from human activity, or to come clean and stop voting for policies hurting coal and making electricity affordable.
According to media reports, Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce reportedly started edging to a deal with the Prime Minister on 2050 Net Zero on the basis that the PM would give Mr Joyce an extension on the Inland Rail to Gladstone. The latter makes perfect sense and there is no need for horse-trading, yet this example shows how projects and policies, costing the taxpayer many tens of billions of dollars, are made.
Indeed, the Nationals in early 2021 developed a policy on manufacturing with coal-fired electricity at its heart and within two weeks the Liberals reportedly caused the Nationals to drop it. Damn the science. Damn integrity.
Current Labor Senator Jenny McAllister is among those in parliament whose entry into politics was based on previous experience as policy advisers on climate advancing policies claimed to be based on science, yet never presenting the logical scientific points. Senator McAlister substitutes smears such as “climate denier” instead of logical scientific points and has never presented the evidence.
Several Labor Senators have proclaimed to me their deep disdain for Labor climate and energy policies wrecking workers’ jobs. Some enthusiastically agree with me in private on my stance on climate and energy and that Labor’s policy is nonsense, unfounded and damaging.
I turn now to consideration of CSIRO, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the UN’s IPCC because many politicians publicly proclaim that their position and policy on climate relies on one or more of these three entities.
2. Freedom of Information requests and parliamentary library searches
Freedom of Information requests and Parliamentary Library research shows that from 2005 through 2020, no member of federal parliament was given empirical scientific evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut. Those searches show that MPs have been fed nonsense and short bulletins and/or the joint CSIRO-BOM glossy booklet entitled “State of the Climate Report”. MPs not familiar with science, seem to see the report implies evidence when it merely confirms natural variation in weather and climate with no empirical scientific statistically valid evidence of a change in climate, much less a change due to carbon dioxide from human activity.
3. Cross-examining CSIRO
In its three presentations to me from September 2016 to July 2017, the CSIRO’s climate research team stunned me with their abysmal level of understanding of climate and of science. Their repeated complete failure to do due diligence and their lack of understanding of the scientific process is staggering. These are documented in my report entitled ‘Restoring Scientific Integrity’ together with information gleaned in Senate Estimates hearings from 2019 to the present. The report is available as Attachment 4 and at the following link:
https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/200831-Examination-of- CSIRO-Evidence-for-Climate-Policies.pdf
This report provides a summary of the discussions and transcripts from meetings with CSIRO.
Additional links in the document’s References and Appendices give an in-depth appreciation of analysis of the supposed “evidence” CSIRO provided.
Attachment 5 provides this, which is available at the following link: https://checkvist.com/checklists/635622
In the context of seeking CSIRO’s empirical evidence to justify climate policies, CSIRO admitted that it has never stated that carbon dioxide from human activity is dangerous. When we asked why politicians are saying they attribute that claim of danger to CSIRO, CSIRO’s senior executive overseeing climate at the time, Alex Wonhas, said – we would need to ask the politicians. We asked Minister Hunt’s representative who was in the meeting, and he advised that he did not know why.
CSIRO admitted that temperatures today are not unprecedented. Given that claims of anthropogenic (human caused) climate change are based on claims of unprecedented global warming, this is a stunning admission.
In its first presentation after nearly 50 years studying climate, CSIRO’s climate team presented us with one sole paper on temperatures, Marcott et al (2013) and one sole paper on carbon dioxide, Harries et al (2001) as evidence. After admitting that today’s temperatures are not unprecedented, CSIRO claimed that Marcott was evidence of unprecedented rate of temperature rise. Under scientific scrutiny, our team demolished the Marcott paper. CSIRO tacitly admitted as such and effectively withdrew the paper from scrutiny. CSIRO had thus provided no empirical scientific evidence that temperature was changing at an unprecedented rate.
In the whole process of cross-examination of CSIRO’s offerings, CSIRO has never quantified any specific impact of carbon dioxide from human activity. Thus, there is no basis for policy aimed at cutting carbon dioxide from human activity.
Additionally, this means there is no way of measuring progress toward policy goals.
And there is no way of costing the policies and their net impact on climate and on the economy. Yet both are essential for making sound, sustainable policy.
CSIRO ultimately relies upon unvalidated computerised numerical models of climate that give unverified and erroneous projections claimed to be “evidence.” The UN IPCC itself admits the poor quality of the models in being unable to call their output forecasts and merely downgrading that to projections, or essentially scenarios.
In CSIRO’s third presentation it tendered a second paper on temperatures Lecavalier (2017) and a second paper on carbon dioxide, Feldman et al (2015). Under scientific scrutiny, both failed abysmally. CSIRO then tendered five papers, including some that contradicted CSIRO’s earlier offerings, along with a broad reference to the UN IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, without being able to specify the location in the report of any logical scientific points proving carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut.
CSIRO relies on discredited and poor-quality papers on temperature and carbon dioxide and fails to provide any specific empirical evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut.
CSIRO admits to not doing due diligence on papers and reports nor on data from external agencies.
Embarrassingly, CSIRO revealed little understanding of papers it cited as evidence. That means that policies costing hundreds of billions of dollars and with flow on impacts destroying trillions of dollars across the economy over time are based on … nothing scientific.
If the Marcott and Lecavalier papers are the best the CSIRO has today, upon what did CSIRO rely in the decades before 2013?
As detailed in Attachment 4, CSIRO allows politicians and journalists to misrepresent CSIRO science without correction.
In their answers to my questions at Senate Estimates CSIRO Chief Executive, Dr Larry Marshall and CSIRO Executive Director – Environment, Energy And Resources, Dr Peter Mayfield, misled parliament.
See Attachment 4.
After failing to provide empirical evidence that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and needs to be cut, CSIRO failed the easier request of providing empirical scientific evidence identifying anything unprecedented in climate during the last 10,000 years and proving it was due to carbon dioxide from human activity.
I then set an easier goal during Senate Estimates hearings when I asked CSIRO to provide empirical evidence showing any statistically significant change in any climate factor due to carbon dioxide from human activity and to specify the statistical analysis techniques used in doing so. Again, CSIRO failed to do this, yet Dr Mayfield claimed he had.
These findings cannot be sensibly refuted because they are largely admissions from CSIRO climate team members and are factual observations.
The parliamentary library found a Freedom of Information request that a third party had made on CSIRO, being a redacted letter from CSIRO to then Senator Arthur Sinodinos apparently associated with CSIRO’s responses to its presentations to me. That letter shows the possibility that CSIRO failed to tell Senator Sinodinos the full facts and possibly misled the Senator.
In Dr Marshall and Dr Mayfield providing misleading statements to the Senate, it raises serious questions as to CSIRO’s competency and/or integrity and I would be willing to pursue this with the government.
Serious questions are raised about Ministers such as Greg Hunt, who publicly stated that they relied on CSIRO and BOM for their position on climate, yet according to Freedom of Information requests and parliamentary library searches, neither agency sent him scientific evidence. In CSIRO’s September 2016 presentation to me, Minister Hunt’s adviser said he was not aware of where the concept of danger arose.
Mine is the first prolonged and persistent cross-examination of a government science agency on climate science anywhere in the world. CSIRO failed. This has significance beyond our country because CSIRO plays a core part in fabricating UN IPCC climate reports.
If CSIRO ever provided to you any specific logical scientific points quantifying the effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate, please specify date, title of report, author’s name, page number(s) and when it was received.
If not, why not? Why has CSIRO not presented logical scientific points to advise you? Was CSIRO asked the wrong questions because modern governments do not understand what is needed for policy?
The CSIRO Chief Executive and senior climate staff have repeatedly relied upon logical fallacies that are alternatives to science, including “appeals to name/authority”. Relying on such alternatives instead of science indicates CSIRO does not have the specific logical scientific points. If CSIRO had the logical scientific points, they would have tendered them and not relied on the logical fallacies.
CSIRO was once highly respected internationally for its scientific acumen. On the topic of climate, it failed to produce the basic logical scientific points and showed an embarrassingly poor and deficient understanding of science, of scientific processes and of basic due diligence. My team’s cross- examinations of CSIRO’s presentation confirm that on climate CSIRO lacks integrity.
Policy-driven “science” is not science.
4. Bureau of Meteorology (BOM)
My Freedom of Information request and parliamentary library searches reveal that BOM has not given any members of parliament the logical scientific points quantifying the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate.
In answer to my Senate Estimates question in May 2021, BOM admitted that its revision of its temperature dataset in 2018 is the reason that graphed temperatures in its 2018 State Of The Climate (SOTC) report when compared with its 2016 edition, show a linearly increasing upward adjustment to temperatures for the years since 1970 to the present.
It is remarkable that adjustments were not naturally variable yet were linearly increasing and resulted in a uniformly higher and linear rate of temperature increase that exaggerates short-term warming.
This lends credence to calls from Liberal-National MPs, including Craig Kelly, Cory Bernardi, George Christensen and Gerard Rennick, together with prominent scientists and researchers, for an independent inquiry into BOM’s adjustments of its temperatures. Minister Greg Hunt effectively blunted Prime Minister Tony Abbot’s order at the time for such an inquiry.
Additionally, the fact that BOM’s metadata is so wildly inaccurate raises serious questions about the integrity of BOM’s temperature data.
BOM is the source of CSIRO’s temperature data and as the analysis of CSIRO’s work in Attachment 5 shows, when the El Ninos of 1997 and 2016 are considered, it seems the temperature has not risen since 1996.
That conclusion is in agreement with the data on atmospheric temperatures from satellites that America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) operates.
Separately, independent researcher Bill Johnston’s statistical analysis of temperature data confirms no trend in temperature data.
BOM only displays data from 1910 onwards, with 1910 being in the coldest period of the last 150 years. Reliable Australian weather station recordings show that Australian temperatures across our country were warmer in the 1880s-1890s than today and the temperature recording methods did not change in 1910. Yet, in its public presentations of data, BOM excludes the warmer temperatures before 1910.
BOM and CSIRO jointly produce their bi-annual State Of The Climate reports that actually verify natural variation in climate and weather and contain no logical scientific points that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate. Yet the reports’ wording cleverly and deceptively implies there is a change in climate and implies that it is due to carbon dioxide from human activity.
The former leader of the government in the senate, Senator Cormann, MPs and others often incorrectly cited and often continue to incorrectly cite the reports as the basis for their belief that carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut.
The current Director of BOM, Dr Andrew Johnson, was formerly the Executive overseeing CSIRO’s Climate Change program.
If BOM has the logical scientific points proving carbon dioxide from human activity harmfully affects climate and needs to be cut, then BOM needs to provide it together with the raw data allowing proper public scientific scrutiny.
On the topic of climate, BOM’s integrity is questioned.
5. Chief Scientist
No Chief Scientist has ever provided or located any logical scientific points proving that carbon dioxide from human activity harmfully affects climate and needs to be cut. Yet previous Chief Scientists Professor Penny Sackett, Professor Ian Chubb and Dr Alan Finkel all advocated for government policies cutting carbon dioxide from human activity.
The current Chief Scientist, Dr Cathy Foley AO, came from CSIRO.
As a Senator I asked Dr Finkel to present the logical scientific points and scheduled a presentation from him in the company of Senator Sinodinos as Science Minister. After 20 minutes I politely challenged one of his statements and his response was to admit that he is not a climate scientist and that he did not understand it.
Yet, he had previously made many public statements advocating for government policy to cut carbon dioxide from human activity and did so implicitly on the basis he does understand climate science. He continued to imply such statements after his admission to me.
We were then promised a proper four-hour session, at which time he would present his evidence and we would cross-examine his claims. Yet soon before the scheduled date of the presentation, Senator Sinodinos’ office advised that the Chief Scientist would be overseas.
CSIRO was then scheduled in his stead and during its presentation, as stated above, CSIRO failed to provide the logical scientific points as evidence.
If the current Chief Scientist has the logical scientific points quantifying the effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate, I welcome her presentation to me of the scientific evidence.
In my first Senate speech on Tuesday 13 September 2016 I said – “Australians should be able to rely on the information from Australian government bodies and institutions (such as CSIRO) but we can’t”. That remains true and valid.
6. United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC)
Australian and international colleagues and I have reviewed every UN IPCC report except the latest in 2121 on which I’ve started analysis.
The first UN IPCC report in 1990 contains evidence that temperatures were warmer 1000 years ago than they are today.
That evidence was removed for the UN IPCC’s second climate report in 1995. That report claimed carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut. Yet that claim was reportedly based on one scientist, Ben Santer, reversing the conclusions of the climate scientists who had concluded that there was no basis for the UN IPCC’s claims about the effects of carbon dioxide from human activity. Reportedly Santer did so without the scientific team’s consent.
The UN IPCC’s third report 2001 was based on the notorious, infamous and unscientific “Hockey Stick” temperature fabrication that statisticians debunked and completely discredited. Some people have described the hockey stick fabrication as fraud. This graph purporting to show stunning temperature rise was splashed around the world in scary headlines and then quietly dropped from the next UN IPCC report. Mission accomplished – fear and alarm instilled in politicians globally.
Subsequent UN IPCC reports ultimately rely only on unvalidated computerised numerical models whose assumptions and structure are widely questioned and ridiculed among climatologists. The models are not validated, vary widely in conclusions and have already been proven hopelessly wrong. Yet in UN IPCC reports the outputs from these models are mislabelled as “data”.
The UN IPCC itself downgraded the models’ outputs from ‘forecasts’ to being merely ‘projections’. Yet this is what the UN relies upon for its alarmist climate claims.
Each report contains a sole chapter claiming warming and attributing it to carbon dioxide from human activity. I have read each of the sole chapters in 2001, 2007 and 2013 being chapters 12, 9 and 10 respectively and none contains logical scientific points. Preliminary analysis of the most recent report’s chapter 3 fails to find any logical scientific points for the UN’s claims.
Quoting from The Australian newspaper’s Chris Mitchell on 13 September 2021 – “The words “code red for humanity” do not appear in IPCC 6, even though they were all over Australian media reports last month. Those words were the political spin from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Lazy environment writers reported that spin, but ignored the fact IPCC 6 had toned down temperature forecasts, found little evidence of increasingly severe storms and admitted much of the warming built into the system might take more than a century to eventuate.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/journos-must-focus-on-facts-of-climate-science- and-politics/news-story/290a3488a9347e8926115fff52e4af79
This is how the UN operates.
The world’s peak body for national science organisations is the InterAcademy Council. Its 2010 review of UN IPCC processes and procedures used in the UN IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report was damning and confirmed what was widely known among climatologists: The UN IPCC produces systematically poor science and corrupts climate science. Nothing of significance has changed since 2010 because the UN IPCC is a blatantly politicised entity.
My 2014 review of the UN IPCC’s work on climate is here:
https://www.climate.conscious.com.au/docs/new/2_AppendixIPCC.pdf and was made in consultation with climate scientists and climatologists around the world and written for a lay audience.
It is astounding that now the UN, ill-informed political leaders and journalists cite and rely upon a socially awkward 18 year old teenage girl instead of logical scientific points, in the UN’s concerted move to attract altruistic and naïve teenagers instead of relying on scientists.
Yet senior government officials like the government’s former leader in the senate, Senator Cormann and former Environment Minister Greg Hunt have stated that they rely on UN IPCC reports for their beliefs and policies.
The notorious UN bureaucrat Maurice Strong created the UN IPCC 1988 and it has been operating for 33 years. While Maurice Strong was subsequently connected with the UN’s ‘oil-for-food scandal’ and with suspected crimes in America and went into exile in China, the UN IPCC has failed over more than three decades to produce the empirical scientific data as evidence within a logical causal framework proving cause-and-effect.
No one has been able to specify the location of such evidence quantifying the effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate.
The UN IPCC has a history of scandals and is devoid of integrity.
7. NASA-GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
Leaders, astronauts, managers, scientists in the esteemed American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been widely critical of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA- GISS) for its small climate group’s misrepresentations of climate initially under director James Hansen and later under Gavin Schmidt. Yet NASA-GISS’s misrepresentations of climate have stolen the false cloak of credibility under NASA’s esteemed name.
In 2016 in response to my letters to Gavin Schmidt holding him accountable for NASA-GISS’s tampering with Arctic temperature data, he was unable to justify NASA-GISS adjustments. In the process he inadvertently confirmed what many knew, that is that the four datasets in the world recording ground- based atmospheric temperatures are really fabricated from one sole dataset. Yet NASA-GISS publicly maintained the deception that the datasets were independent.
Further, that Global Historical Climate Network dataset had never been audited, until Australian climate scientist Dr John McLean conducted an independent audit finding it riddled with deficiencies.
While head of NASA-GISS, James Hansen, became infamous as a climate activist, and his agency became notorious for adjusting Artic temperature data that has been shown to be wildly corrupted.
Neither NASA nor NASA-GISS has ever produced the logical scientific points quantifying any specific effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate.
NASA-GISS statements on climate under James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt are widely seen as ideologically driven and lacking scientific integrity.
Yet politicians, academics and journalists swallow and peddle NASA-GISS’s proclamations under NASA’s excellent name.
8. Universities
On 7 March 2010 I invited the University of Queensland’s Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg “to identify specifically just one piece of scientifically measured real-world evidence proving causal relationship between human production of CO2 and global temperature. Just one.” He failed to do so. As with academic activists advocating cuts in carbon dioxide from human activity, Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg receives grants and other funding based on his climate advocacy. Like many such academic activists in other universities that governments fund, Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg has repeatedly failed to do so.
Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg and other academic climate activists have repeatedly failed to debate me on the climate science and the corruption of climate science.
James Cook University’s sacking of Australian Professor Peter Ridd, an internationally accomplished scientist fulfilling his first duty to accurately question the science, confirms the power of the politicised climate campaign.
9. Academics promoting climate activism and advocacy
Prime Ministers Rudd and Gillard sponsored a group of academic activists reliant on government grants and commissions. The most prominent of these have included Tim Flannery, Will Steffen, David Karoly, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Ross Garnaut, Matthew England, Leslie Hughes, Andy Pitman and Kurt Lambeck, who are spread throughout academia and academic associations and government committees. Many have been connected with international agencies pushing a globalist agenda. None have provided logical scientific points quantifying the effect of carbon dioxide from human activity and showing it needs to be cut.
All have either directly, indirectly or implicitly provided a misguided view of science, climate, nature and/or humanity and benefited from perpetuating the alarm. Some employ clever use of language and rely on astute use of words such as “may” and “if”, set in a context of suggesting truth.
When prodded to provide the science, their replies sometimes falsely say it’s in UN IPCC reports.
Ross Garnaut’s review was widely taken out of context as being based on the science. Yet its chapter 2 entitled ‘Understanding Climate Science’ states – “The Review takes as its starting point, on the balance of probabilities and not as a matter of belief, the majority opinion of the Australian and international scientific communities that human activities resulted in substantial global warming from the mid-20th century, and that continued growth in greenhouse gas concentrations caused by human- induced emissions would generate high risks of dangerous climate change.” The report blatantly admits that it is not based on logical scientific points yet was widely used politically and in the media, to entrench the need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity.
Until they produce logical scientific points their advocacy will lack integrity.
10. Govt agencies
Despite questioning and reviewing a wide range of government departments, agencies, authorities, administrative bodies, commissions and corporations, none has been able to provide me with the logical scientific points quantifying the effect of carbon dioxide from human activity. Some have been colourful in their responses including the Productivity Commission, whose answer to my question in Senate Estimates was, quote – “won’t second guess the IPCC”.
In Senate Budget Estimates hearings on 25 May 2021, the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources in response to my request for logical scientific points said:
- “The Climate Change Authority provides independent advice on climate change matters to the Government by undertaking reviews and other research tasks. In developing and providing its advice, the Authority is informed by climate science as referenced in our publications available on the authority’s website. Sources include assessments by the (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the World Meteorological Organization and research by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation (CSIRO), Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resources Economics and Sciences (ABARES)”.
I requested the specific location of empirical data within a logical framework proving and quantifying cause-and-effect. The Climate Change Authority gave a vague answer, failing to quantify the effect and failing to specify the location of the empirical evidence upon which it claims it relies.
This tactic applies across government departments, agencies, authorities, administrative bodies, commissions and corporations. Not one has provided the logical scientific points quantifying the effect of carbon dioxide from human activity and showing it needs to be cut.
None have been able to answer logically and scientifically why energy sources producing carbon dioxide are not “clean” because they produce carbon dioxide.
The assumptions on which these agencies base policies are unfounded and contradict the empirical scientific evidence to the enormous detriment of taxpayers and of the truth.
Parliamentary accountability has been completely overthrown just as surely as if a military coup had occurred.
In 1976 Liberal MP Michael Baume was the first MP to raise climate alarm based on carbon dioxide from human activity, in an apparent attempt to advocate nuclear energy, while in 1989 Labor’s Bob Hawke was the first Prime Minister to discuss climate after he first raised it as an MP in August 1980.
The Howard-Anderson Liberal-National government entrenched the claim of needing to cut carbon dioxide from human activity due to the advocacy of Senator Robert Hill who was a champion of UN Agenda 21.
The Rudd Labor government and the Gillard-Milne Labor-Greens government turbocharged such claims and broke a promise to not introduce a carbon dioxide tax.
Tony Abbot removed the carbon dioxide tax yet entrenched the belief in cutting carbon dioxide through a Direct Action plan not based on science, before Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Hunt quietly pushed the framework for a global carbon dioxide Emissions Trading Scheme, effectively a carbon dioxide tax, through parliament.
Changes, without logical scientific points, in the positions of Matt Canavan and Barnaby Joyce completed the takeover of parliament contrary to the empirical scientific data.
While I have successfully used systems to drive positive behaviour and change culture to improve safety, quality, productivity and profit in businesses and companies, most leaders do not know of this method to change attitudes and behaviour. It’s clear Maurice Strong knew and used it globally to drive national leaders’ behaviour and words, and government behaviours and policies. Many strategies have been used to ingrain unscientific climate claims, including carbon dioxide ratings on appliances and cars, to indoctrinate children from an early age in schools, to political leaders spruiking the need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity.
11. Media misrepresentations
The media fanned parliament’s misleading of the people, despite no one in the media providing the logical scientific points quantifying any specific effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate.
12. Activists and politicians drive executives
Activists and politicians apply pressure to companies. In response to my written requests in 2014, BHP’s Chairman, Chief Executive and Coal Division President all failed in their replies to provide the logical scientific points proving that carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut. Yet BHP recently decided to exit the thermal coal business. Cutely, BHP continues to make huge profits from coking coal that is essential in steelmaking. BHP ultimately said it relied on UN IPCC reports, yet failed to specify the location or existence of any logical scientific points in those reports. There is none.
ANZ Bank Chief Executive Officer, Shayne Elliott, went further in response to my request for the logical scientific points when he answered that the science doesn’t matter, because in his opinion the political and commercial risks are now against funding new coal mines. Yet, due to high and increasing global demand for coal, new Australian coal mines are finding overseas funds readily available.
As with MPs who do not believe the climate narrative, I know of senior executives and directors who do not believe the climate narrative yet lack the integrity and the courage to state their position publicly for fear of being criticised.
13. Vested interests and beneficiaries of climate alarm
Maurice Strong is the father of unscientific climate alarm and after forming the UN IPCC in 1988 to create an aura of scientific endorsement, he entrenched climate alarm through fomenting the staged illusion of grass roots movements in UN conferences including Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Kyoto in 1996 and Paris in 2015.
At the same time Strong built systems to drive behaviour and enrich himself. He formed the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) to trade carbon (dioxide) credits. Al Gore invested in that and in 2007 Kevin Rudd, as Labor leader, brought Gore to Australia to peddle climate alarm with the intention of starting Labor’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) involving carbon (dioxide) credits that would ultimately pass through the Chicago Climate Exchange.
In Australia we now have politicians’ families benefitting from wind turbine subsidies.
In October 2021 Senate Estimate hearings, the government admitted that after a quarter of a century it still has no plan for disposing of toxic materials, including heavy metals in solar panels and wind turbines that have a short operating life of around 15 years. This is despite their massive scale, imposing a huge environmental and safety risk.
Communist China uses our high-quality coal to make wind turbines and solar panels for sale at a profit. We then subsidise the Chinese to install and run these turbines and panels, thereby driving massive increases in our electricity prices that force our manufacturers to move offshore to China with its affordable coal-fired electricity.
When Japanese aircraft bombed Darwin in 1942, Prime Minister John Curtin did not send Japan subsidies to help pay for the bombs destroying our productive capacity. Yet that is akin to what you advocate with your energy policies based on unfounded and unscientific climate policies.
14. Reality – tens of thousands of scientists oppose climate alarm
There are tens of thousands of scientists who are sceptical of the UN’s climate alarm and know that there are no logical scientific points showing the need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. I have assembled 17 international scientists and experts who can provide the empirical evidence showing carbon dioxide from human activity does not need to be cut.
These include internationally eminent climate scientist Dr John Christy, one of two people in charge of using NASA satellite data on atmospheric temperatures and presenting it as the world’s authoritative dataset on atmospheric temperatures. Dr Christy confirms that no one anywhere in the world has provided the logical scientific points quantifying the effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate. He was a UN IPCC Lead Author who resigned in disgust at the UN’s corruption of climate science.
Physicist Steven Koonin, formerly chief scientist of the Obama Energy Department recently expressed grave concern about climate alarmists hijacking climate science. The Wall Street Journal said, quote:
- “Mr Koonin argues not against current climate science but that what the media and politicians and activists say about climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly, demonstrably false.” In his recently released book he contradicts the four core points of the ‘climate orthodoxy’, quote: “Heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900” and “the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years. . . . Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century. . . .
Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago The
net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/how-physicist-steven-koonin- became-a-climate-truth-teller/news-story/1822e1ed8bbc3bc4175a889633203008
15. Reality – facts on carbon dioxide
When a colleague asked the UN IPCC whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant, it replied – “On your question about whether CO2 is a pollutant, I cannot answer that as I have not found the answer in one of our reports“.
The level of carbon dioxide in earth’s air is around 0.042%, being so low that scientists classify it as a trace gas. It is much, much less than 1% of earth’s air. It is only 4 one hundredths of 1%.
Attachment 6 contains further details on carbon dioxide.
16. Cost of policies
The cost of climate policies and consequent energy policies, and theft of farmers’ rights to use the land they bought is prohibitive. It’s immoral.
The cost of unaffordable energy is detrimental to jobs, livelihoods and to the natural environment. It’s immoral.
The cost of subsidising and making Communist China rich at our expense is absurd and undermines our security. It’s immoral and risky.
While I will be pleased to discuss the many enormous impacts on costs for families and for our nation, the core issue is clearly mismanagement, shoddy governance and lack of parliamentary scrutiny and accountability. It is, in summary, a lack of integrity.
Why are you all proposing to address a claimed problem when you cannot quantify the effect on climate of carbon dioxide from human activity? Why are you proposing to address fabricated and unfounded climate alarm at a cost no one can quantify? Why are you proposing to address this non- problem when you cannot measure any progress towards arbitrary unfounded targets and cannot specify let alone measure benefits of doing so?
17. Core problem
The CSIRO has failed to provide the logical scientific points quantifying the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate. BOM has failed. The UN IPCC has failed.
NASA-GISS has never provided the logical scientific points. No Chief Scientists have provided it. No university anywhere in the world has provided it. No scientific paper or journal provides it. No government agency anywhere in the world has provided it. No academic or government funded commission has provided it. No beneficiary of government energy subsidies has provided it. No one has provided it, anywhere, ever.
The core problem is a lack of parliamentary accountability that all too often bypasses the primary policy question being – “Should we do something?” Until we answer that question, we cannot ask the second question being – “What should we do?”
Until we answer both these questions, it is wrong for politicians to be obsessed, as many are, with cutting carbon dioxide from human activity at great cost to our constituents. Instead, if answers to the first two questions suggest the need for a third question it would be – “How should we do it?” Various alternatives with varied costs and benefits would then be considered.
Prime Minister Morrison and Deputy Prime Minister Joyce; in the 2019 election campaign you hammered Mr Bill Shorten for going to the election with uncosted policies, yet you are embarking on the UN’s 2050 Net Zero campaign with uncosted policies based on unquantified impacts, and with no way of measuring progress.
Is that why you are keeping the modelling secret and out of parliamentary scrutiny?
Until you can provide the logical scientific points quantifying the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate, you have no authority and no right to burden the Australian people who are already paying dearly, for the dictates of “unaccountable, international bureaucracy” to quote your words, and who in future will pay prohibitively.
In the second paragraph of this letter, I mentioned the dispute raging about climate yet despite that not being settled, your four diverging views on climate have coalesced. Sadly, that is despite the policies you now push together not being in our national interest, nor in the planet’s interests. You are not joining because you have the data. Instead, you are joining together as the Liberal-National and Labor-Greens coalitions under UN dictates.
18. Call to action
Our constituents want to know:
- What you intend to do about CSIRO and BOM leadership that has allowed, indeed enabled and apparently encouraged parliament to force policies that will hurt our nation and its people without any evidence that such pain is needed, nor will it be effective?
- When will you restore farmers’ rights to use their land or compensate them?
- When will you restore affordable, reliable, secure coal-fired electricity?
- When will you enable our country to restore manufacturing jobs?
- When will you restore scientific integrity?
- When will you restore our sovereignty and restore our independence from what Prime Minister Morrison correctly labels the “unaccountable international bureaucracy”?
- When will you implement a register of politicians and former politicians with interests in subsidised solar and wind projects and/or the land on which such projects are located and/or in Carbon (dioxide) “Farming”?
- When will you provide the logical scientific points quantifying the effect of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate? And until you do so,
- How soon will you scrap all climate change policies and associated energy policies?
When will you introduce an Office of Scientific Integrity and Quality Assurance to prevent this recurring in the future?
Melanie Phillips said – quote: “The great political struggle of our times is not between left and right. It is between those who are connected to truth, reason and reality and those who are not. It reflects a fundamental division in the West, whose fate will be decided by its outcome”.
The struggle of all human existence is between control and freedom. Control uses lies, freedom welcomes and allows questioning, truth, facts and reason.
This climate issue is now about people’s living standards and our national security. It is about honesty and restoring effective governance. It is about care and integrity.
There is only one issue now. That is the destruction of parliamentary scrutiny and accountability for policies lacking any sound, sustainable policy basis. It is about restoring integrity.
Prime Minister Morrison, being quiet on the actual science is hurting the ‘quiet Australians’. In your speech entitled ‘You Matter’ on 29 April 2021 you said, quote:
- “Human dignity. Everything flows from this.”
and
“Because if you see the dignity and worth of another person, you’re less likely to disrespect them:
…You’re less likely to be indifferent to their lives, and callous towards their feelings”.
And, I add, less likely to disregard their universal human needs including security, stability, and integrity.
Until you can restore respect and care for the people, hold them dignified and retore integrity at home, you cannot go to Glasgow.
Please put Australia and Australians first. Restore dignity. Restore integrity.
I await each of you providing me with the logical scientific points quantifying the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on climate as the basis of your climate and energy policies.
In the absence of you providing such empirical evidence, please cease all climate and related energy policies immediately.
Yours faithfully
Senator Malcolm Roberts
Senator for Queensland
c.c. All Federal Senators
All House of Representative Members of Parliament
Scott-Morrison-Climate-Change-Letter
Dear Malcolm,
A copy of your Letter of 27 October 2021 was drawn to my attention to-day, and on reading only part of it and part of the attachments on your web site, I am pleased that you have collected together a much more comprehensive account of flawed science and extraordinary costs to the Australian people of the global warming scam, than was in your report to the Senate last year. Whether it will be read and believed is another question. That politicians and more of the public cannot see that the ultimate agenda of the UN and the IPCC to gain “world control” by various devious means is difficult to understand.
Hopefully your efforts will bear some fruit! Congratulations on what has been done so far!