Australian MPs and senators have been attending briefings in Canberra this week by some of our country’s world-leading climate scientists.



The timing to bring our elected representatives up to speed is apt, given the UN climate change talks in Paris are less than six weeks away.

Relevant too because, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the world has just had its hottest September on record – a record that covers 136 years.

Last month the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute made the offer to brief representatives from all parties on climate science. The environment minister, Greg Hunt, Labor’s environment spokesman, Mark Butler, and the Greens senator Larissa Waters all backed the effort.

@Mark_Butler_MP & I met w/ climate experts today. Read Labor's plan to tackle climate change https://t.co/ihcPiyuCiD pic.twitter.com/Vsk6lmDaau — Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) October 20, 2015

From reports, all the briefings were well received. All except one, that is.

On Monday evening, three of the scientists also provided a briefing to the Coalition’s backbench committee on the environment. The way this briefing was received and essentially ambushed tells us a lot about the ideologically driven anti-science that infects elements of Australia’s Liberal party. The story is worth telling.

The Liberal MP for Hughes, Craig Kelly, the chair of the committee, had accepted the invitation to host some scientists. In attendance would be the Global Change Institute director and marine biologist and coral reef expert Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Dr John Church, a world-leading scientist on sea level rise from the CSIRO and Prof Mark Howden, a chief research scientist at CSIRO and also the director of the Climate Change Institute at Australian National University.

But on the Friday, the scientists were told that Kelly had also invited three representatives from the “free market” thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs to also make presentations. This was, apparently, to provide “balance”.

Dr Bob Carter, the IPA’s science policy adviser, is associated with about 10 conservative thinktanks and climate denialist groups around the world. One of those is the Heartland Institute in the US, famed for its billboard campaign that tried to equate the acceptance of global warming with the beliefs of a terrorist mass murderer. Carter rejects the science showing human emissions of carbon dioxide are driving dangerous climate change.

Another climate science denialist invited by Kelly was Dr Jennifer Marohasy, a “senior research fellow” at the IPA. In recent months Marohasy has been claiming repeatedly that Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology has been part of a conspiracy to deliberately doctor historic temperature data for the express purposes of making the record show more warming.

The third invited IPA associate, Brett Hogan, wrote a report about the “life saving potential of coal”.

In my view, neither Carter nor Marohasy have any credibility as experts in climate science. They have almost no relevant peer-reviewed publications on the issue and they work for an ideologically blinkered thinktank with a long record of promoting fringe views on climate science.

But the fact that elements of the Liberal party think they are the equivalent of respected scientists with long and distinguished publishing records is embarrassing but telling of the antipathy and paranoia towards climate science held by some Liberals.

On Wednesday Marohasy was interviewed about the Monday-night briefing by the ever-angry radio personality Alan Jones, who thinks that human-caused climate change is a hoax.

Jones relayed to his listeners the claims of British climate science denialist Lord Christopher Monckton that the UN had plotted to remove from office both the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott. Apparently, the “Turnbull faction had worked in conjunction with the UN” to unseat Abbott. It’s a conspiracy.

Jones accused one named scientist that because he had received funding from the government he would simply “tell them what they want to hear”.

Defamatory statements such as this directed at respected scientists are so commonplace among climate science denialists that they go almost unnoticed.

I asked Hoegh-Guldberg, Church and Howden about the briefing session, where about 15 Coalition MPs and senators were in attendance. Church told me:

The details of the briefing were changed after we agreed to do it – at no time were we advised this was to be a debate. But it was not what I would call a debate – that is a contest of ideas. Rather the loudest and shrillest voice was what prevailed and playing the person – particularly people who were absent – seemed more important than the quality of the facts. The tone was very different the following day when the audience was there to learn more and to explore the issues further.

Howden, who was speaking about climate change and food security, said the briefings he had attended on Tuesday were “very positive” with people from all parties asking “questions that were sensible”.

Monday evening was a very different attitude. It was a bunch of people you would categorise as climate change deniers but some did have a slightly more inclusive view. Predominantly the questions reflected the perspectives of the other three participants [Marohasy, Carter and Hogan]. Bob’s presentation was gentlemanly but not consistent with the data and current understanding of the science.

Hoegh-Guldberg said the response to the briefings on the Tuesday had been “fantastic”.

There was no debate as far as I could tell at all about the realities of climate change. The questions were about the appropriate level of cuts, about what we should do and how to adapt to the inevitable aspects of climate change. Quite different actually from a few years ago when I was part of similar briefings. The issue has matured to a point where effectively they now understand what’s science and what’s bogus. With the change of leadership [to Malcolm Turnbull] the issue has advanced rather smartly. It has moved from anti-science to something more like a competition between the three parties as to who can be the most responsive to the issue. The Monday evening, though, was unpleasant. We had people shouting. We have heard all of the old arguments before a million times – ‘CO2 is plant food’ … ‘climate change isn’t happening’ … that sort of thing. It was disappointingly uninformed. The scientists were from premier institutions taking time to address the committee. Then we had three people from the IPA – clearly lobbyists. What they were saying was not based in reality or science – it was an anti-intellectual environment.

Kelly, who was joined by fellow MP Dennis Jensen at the meeting, did take to his Facebook page to post some details about Monday’s briefing, which he described as “informative and vigorous”.

In another Facebook post, Kelly seemed unhappy that “supporters of the Warmist gravy train” didn’t want to “debate the facts”. He also has a thing about climate change “totalitarians”.

Kelly has reposted material from Monckton claiming that global warming has stopped. It hasn’t.

The Queensland Greens senator Larissa Waters told me she was “honoured” to support the science briefings (she had a one-on-one briefing herself) but was “disappointed” more Labor and Liberal MPs hadn’t turned up.

But commenting on the events of Monday evening, she said:

Despite the vast scientific consensus on climate change, climate denialism runs rife in the Coalition. It’s a special type of delusion that comes with accepting massive political donations from fossil fuel companies. We’re lucky to have eminent climate scientists in Australia and insulting them with some warped view of reality that sees a belief contrary to the scientific consensus placed on an even platform is whacky in the extreme.

The Turnbull government will take its much-criticised targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions to Paris next month.

The presence of outright denial of climate science among elements of his party will stay at home. But how much damage will it do to his credibility while his representatives are away?