Guest essay by Eric Worrall

One Nation Federal Senator and hardcore climate skeptic Malcolm Roberts, who recently skewered TV Physicist Brian Cox on national TV, has demanded the Australian Chief Scientist provide evidence that humans cause climate change. The response so far is less than confident.

One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts asks chief scientist for proof humans cause climate change One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts is yet to be convinced that climate change is real and is caused by humans. He has asked chief scientist Dr Alan Finkel to spell out his logic in asserting that human-induced carbon emissions have been rising since the start of the Industrial Age, that this causes global warming and that warming produces climate change. Senator Roberts told a Senate committee on Thursday his requested summary of the logic and the empirical evidence behind climate change did not need to be long. “Like me – short and simple,” he said. … It had also been established that atmospheric CO₂ levels had been rising measurably from human activity since the start of the Industrial Age and that global temperature was rising. The effect of warming on climate wasn’t clear. “We have models to try to predict what that will be and that’s difficult,” Dr Finkel said, adding that models did predict significant climate change. …

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/one-nations-malcolm-roberts-asks-chief-scientist-for-proof-humans-cause-climate-change-20161020-gs7d5f.html

I suspect this challenge is going to get very uncomfortable for Australia’s chief scientist.

Malcolm Roberts, a qualified and highly experienced mining engineer, is one of the few elected Australian politicians with the skill and meticulous attention to detail required to dissect anything the bureaucrats who run government science organisations can throw at him.

His demand for proof that humans cause warming has struck at the weak point of the entire AGW scare campaign – because there isn’t any proof available to provide. Just a load of conjecture, based on a weak set of models which don’t work very well.

Most people agree that adding CO2, considered in isolation, should produce a mild warming effect. But the entire climate scare campaign is based on models which assume that the initial warming effect from anthropogenic CO2 is dramatically amplified by feedback, by climatic responses to the initial warming.

The problem is there is no evidence this amplification is actually occurring – models which assume amplification perform woefully when compared to real world observations, far worse than models which assume no amplification, or very little amplification.

I think it is a fair bet that the Roberts challenge to the Australian scientific community is going to be very interesting to watch. They government scientists cannot simply ignore Roberts. The current Aussie government almost lost the last election, so they desperately need the continued support of Roberts and other small party and independent senators to maintain control.

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