One Nation senator-elect asks repeatedly for ‘empirical data’ – and the celebrity physicist has plenty at hand

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The celebrity physicist Brian Cox came prepared to the ABC’s Q&A on Monday night with graphs, ready to counter claims by his co-panellist, the climate denier and Australian senator-elect Malcolm Roberts.

Roberts, one of four senators elected from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, took the first opportunity to espouse long-refuted climate-denialist claims, including that warming stopped more than 20 years ago, starting the so-called “hiatus” or “pause”.

But Cox produced a graph of global surface temperatures of the past century and immediately debunked the myth, pointing out it is a misunderstanding caused by looking at a small sample, starting from an unusually warm year two decades ago.

ABC Q&A (@QandA) We've had a pause in warming & NASA corrupted data, says Malcolm Roberts. @ProfBrianCox examines the graphs #QandA https://t.co/HTNk4Bzrk1

Cox didn’t stop there. “Also, secondly, I’ve brought another graph. It is correlated with that, which is the graph that shows the CO2 emissions parts per million in.”

Viewers on Twitter joined in. When Roberts argued that sea level rises had been “entirely natural and normal”, a number of people posted graphs showing the steep rises.

John Englart EAM (@takvera) #qanda Roberts is wrong. Latest mean global #sealevelrise to end of 2014 chart by CSIRO https://t.co/OxSxmhzg6b pic.twitter.com/Cu6eZ86sPU

Roberts repeatedly said he wanted to see “the empirical data”. But when the data appeared to refute what he said, he argued that scientists had conspired to manipulate it.

“The data has been corrupted,” he said at one point, arguing that Nasa and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology had manipulated data to make warming look unusual. That led to questioning about whether he was sceptical that Nasa landed people on the moon, which Roberts denied.

Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) It's amazing how much people who have no understanding of climate science at all keep saying "show me data!" after ignoring all data. #QandA

Greg Hunt, the former environment minister and current minister for industry, innovation and science was also on the panel and was asked about the CSIRO’s move to climate research cutbacks.

Hunt said the CSIRO had made that decision but that he had reversed it: “I made the decision that under our watch it would be given priority.”

ABC Q&A (@QandA) The maths on the CSIRO just doesn't add up, says @LindaBurneyMP. @GregHuntMP & @ProfBrianCox respond #QandA https://t.co/qgNniJgzP0

But the host, Tony Jones, pushed Hunt on how many climate scientists would be lost from the CSIRO after the changes were complete: “Very briefly, give us some numbers. How many were sacked, climate scientists and how much did you re-employ?”

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Hunt refused to answer, saying: “I’ll let others go over the history of that.”

As the Guardian has previously reported, the CSIRO will sack 35 climate scientists but there will be 15 new hires. The organisation will therefore lose 20 of its roughly 110 climate scientists.

The panel also dealt with the Nauru files, the largest cache of documents to be leaked from within Australia’s asylum seeker detention regime, published by the Guardian last week. They included more than 2,000 incident reports, many involving children and many involving allegations of physical or sexual abuse.

Jones asked Linda Burney, Labor’s spokeswoman for human services, whether Labor took responsibility for the abuses on Nauru.

Burney appeared to minimise Labor’s role in the establishment of the centre. “I mean, the minister has made the point that the Labor government had some role in establishing Nauru, that’s true,” Burney said.

Jones responded: “Some role? You established it.”

She agreed and called for greater oversight and openness about the operations in the detention centre.

Hunt was also asked about the leaked reports and responded by saying all the allegations needed to be investigated and reminded the audience of the “context”: that everything that occurred was to stop people dying at sea as they tried to come to Australia by boat.