Liberals' attack on climate science is 'embarrassing', say scientists
Scientists dismiss calls by some Liberal Party members to review basic climate science within days of Australia announcing a key emissions target as worrying and ignorant Now is probably not the best time if there ever was one for a minority within Australias Liberal party to be excreting climate science denialist brain farts. The government is expected to announce within a week or two its proposed target to cut greenhouse gas emissions beyond the year 2020. This will be the target Australia takes to Decembers international climate talks in Paris and it will further put the Australian government under international scrutiny . So far, there is a substantial gap between the supposed agreement to keep global warming below 2C and the levels of cuts governments say theyre willing to make to get there. But one smallish rump of the Liberal party a rump some within the party might like to have removed thinks the whole climate science thing needs a review before Australia signs anything in France. Heres a quick recap. The Liberal partys regional and rural committee put a motion to the partys national council meeting to: ... examine the scientific evidence that underpins the man-made global warming theory and investigate the reasons for the failure of computer models, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and prominent individuals to predict, among other things, the pause in global warming this century. Liberal MP Dennis Jensen and Liberal senator Chris Back supported the motion, but rather than hold a debate it was referred to the partys policy committee. Twelve scientists then wrote to Jensen and Back, offering to brief them on the science. Jensen accepted. Jensen claimed to the ABC there were at least 10 members of his party who shared his climate denialist tendencies. With some prodding from ABC Radio National host Fran Kelly, Jensen set out why he thought the science needed a review. Why not just accept the assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? No good, said Jensen, because this body was guilty of institutionalised groupthink. Jensen was similarly unimpressed with the experts who had co-signed the letter, saying only two of the signatories were climate scientists. Because some of the scientists were experts on the impacts of climate change, Jensen dismissed them presumably because theyre experts in something he doesnt believe in. Jensen attempted to make some scientific points too. He claimed if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled, this would deliver 1.1C of global warming if CO2 was acting in isolation which, of course, never happens. Ever. In Jensens mind, the evidence that adding CO2 to the atmosphere can kick off feedbacks in the system to create more warming is not compelling at all. So not compelling is the well-established understanding that CO2 warms the atmosphere. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour - a greenhouse gas. Presumably not compelling either is how as sea ice and snow melts, this exposes darker surfaces beneath, which absorbs more heat and cuts the amount of solar energy reflected back out to space , causing more warming. Jensen also claimed that 98% of climate models had way overstated recent global temperatures. I asked Professor Steve Sherwood, director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales and a lead IPCC author about Jensens points (he had more to say too, which well get to at the end). He told me: There is overwhelming theoretical support and observational evidence for positive feedbacks on global temperature. Moreover the climate sensitivity desired by Jensen is inconsistent with Earths climate record, which shows 2-5C of warming every time CO2 doubled. You can throw away the climate models and we still know we have a serious problem. Victoria Universitys Professor Roger Jones, also an IPCC author, said Jensens argument that climate models were overstating warming did not hold water and pointed to a recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change . That study examined global temperatures for every 15-year period from 1900 to 2012 (starting with 1900 to 1914, then 1901 to 1915 and so on) and compared these to temperatures delivered by climate models. The study found no evidence that climate models systematically overestimated global temperatures. Jones said he would not be surprised if the current El Nino delivered a marked shift in global temperatures, as high as 0.3C, and that this would push the planet into a new regime. He added: I have no interest in briefing Jensen or his colleagues. The world is doing that quite effectively and speaks with a louder voice than I do. Professor Matthew England, also of the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW, told me Jensen was being fooled: Jensen is showing a worrying ignorance of the science. And hes being fooled by dodgy analyses put out by lobby groups determined to delay action on reducing fossil fuel emissions. Colleagues overseas cant believe we have elected representatives who still dont get the science. Its an embarrassment. Jensen said any review into the science would have to be conducted from people outside the system which seems to me to be another way of saying dont give me any actual experts. Im wondering if a Liberal Party review of the science might sound a bit like the Republican-led US House Science Committee hearing last year, reviewed here by Jon Stewart. So who does Jensen think is worth listening to? In September 2013, Jensen promoted the views of that most eccentric of climate science denialists, Lord Christopher Monckton , saying he thought that most of the viscounts views were entirely reasonable. I dont know if Jensen ever did clarify which of Moncktons views he thought were reasonable, but the British viscount himself did pen a colourful nine-page response to my questions. Jensens parliamentary colleague, the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has a different view of Monckton, once describing him as a vaudeville artist and a professional sensationalist with no credibility, politically or scientifically. So back to Sherwood, who has evidently had enough of the attacks on the credibility of his profession from non-experts. Ill leave you with his thoughts: If Jensen would like to have scientists investigated yet again, let him do it. If my colleagues or I have been guilty of what the likes of him are claiming, we deserve to go to jail. But please ask him to also investigate climate sceptics, whose claims have repeatedly been shown to rest on misrepresentations of the evidence. I am getting tired of my own integrity and that of my colleagues being questioned for political reasons when our conclusions are based on a deliberate, careful and completely open scientific process, the opposite of groupthink. These groundless accusations have gone on for long enough.