What Senator Fielding asked Senator Wong

Here is the list of questions Family First Senator Steve Fielding asked Climate Change Minister Penny Wong on Monday - questions to which he has yet to get an answer:

This briefing paper outlines questions put forward by Senator Steve Fielding to the Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, the Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett and Professor Will Steffen.

 

While the questions below are those which the Senator would like answered, the supporting material has been supplied from some leading scientists from Australia and overseas.

 

These are questions Senator Fielding would like answered so he can make an informed decision on whether or not an emissions trading scheme is the best course of action for Australia to take to deal with climate change and global warming.

 

The Senator remains open minded and has requested that the government address these questions, the answers to which are fundamental to shaping any climate change legislation.

 

QUESTION 1.

Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period (see Fig. 1)?

 

If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?

 

QUESTION 2.

 

Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth’s history (Fig. 2a, 2b)?

 

If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions; and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?

 

QUESTION 3.

 

Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling. (Fig. 3)?

If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?

(No link to the briefing paper and its graphs.)

 

I’m disappointed, but not surprised, unfortunately, that the media has shown so little interest in what questions were actually asked, and why Wong so struggled to answer. We are interested in the science, aren’t we?

 

Andrew Bolt

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Interestingly, The Australian has been trying to get Professor Sackett to write a piece for its opinion pages that answers Senator Fielding's questions. You'd think she'd jump at the opportunity. I mean, the science is settled isn't it? Should be the easiest thing therefore to put the good senator's mind at ease. And yet...

 

SINCE open-minded Family First senator Steve Fielding reported on his climate change excursion to the US on this paper's opinion pages, opinion editor Rebecca Weisser has been doing her level best to persuade the government's chief scientist Penny Sackett to help Fielding out by writing a piece in reply. Her assistant helped Sackett dodge the bullet by saying she couldn't possibly make the deadline (Strewth tried that tactic once; never again). Weisser offered to extend the deadline, but it must be terribly busy in Sackett's office as no one has managed to get around to replying.

 

Now, I have no doubt that Professor Sackett is a very busy woman indeed, but I also suspect that there's a faint air of exasperated panic in her office also at the moment.

 

While climate change is real, because the climate is always changing, the alarmist case for "catastrophic" climate change has never had any real world evidence to support it.

 

This may surprise people. But it is true. There is no evidence to support the hysterical speculation of scientists committed to the cause, (many of whom, such as James Hansen, have gone too far with their alarmist predictions to easily go back and thus have to admit that they were wrong), and the assorted other hangers-on and carpetbaggers that have attached themselves for various reasons to the climate change bandwagon.

 

The basis of their speculation about doomsday is nothing more than a series of computer models that even the IPCC admits do not even come close to properly understanding the complexity of the climate system.

 

So as Senator Fielding rightly asks of Senator Wong, how on earth can these things be used to frame public policy that will involve disruption to our lives and economies on a scale never before seen in human history?

 

Especially as we actually know that the hard evidence of geological history clearly shows the alarmist case to be false.

 

The earth has been much warmer in the past and has had much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere than today, (though NOT necessarilly at the same time), and the world didn't reach a "tipping point," it didn't end.

 

The oceans did not become acidic.

 

And really, if performance of predictions made is reckoned to be the critical factor in judging a scientific hypothesis, then you'd have to say that global warming alarmism isn't doing very well, as this graph clearly shows.

 

 

Ignore the purple line, as that represents a sceptic over-egging his own pudding.

 

The red, orange and brown lines represent IPCC model predictions for the earth's average global temperature assuming increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

 

The yellow line is its model temperature prediction assuming NO increase in CO2 levels.

 

The blue and green lines (and their extensions) are what happened in the real world.

 

Even the IPCC's no CO2 increase model predicted higher temperatures than actually occurred.

 

However, as we all know, CO2 emissions continued to rise rapidly in this time.

 

At the least this should give us cause to draw back, calm down and at least think it possible that we might be mistaken.

 

And we do have time to do that, despite what the preachers of the new eco-religion tell you.

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous