The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, MP
Leader of the Opposition
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Sir:

Re: Global Warming and Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)

In your statement regarding the ETS, you say that ‘The Coalition supports, and supported when in Government, an environmentally effective and economically responsible ETS being put in place in Australia as part of a co-ordinated global response to climate change’. You then set out nine points that define the Opposition’s policy on this critical question.

Missing from your list is recognition of a key alternative. Australia’s carbon footprint is about 1.0 percent of the global total. Accordingly, nothing that Australians do can have any effect on global warming. How then is it ‘economically responsible’ for us to incur the high costs of transition to ‘clean energy’ when it will have no effect on the reduction of global warming? Isn’t it, indeed, irresponsible to pursue this course?

In criticism of the Government, you urge that commitment to a detailed ETS be determined only after the December Copenhagen conference. This is a plausible position because numerous international conferences over the years have not generated effective international cooperation, most recently the UN climate change conference in Bali, in December 2007. The conference was attended by more than 180 nations and many NGOs. The aim was to prepare the next stage of international response to climate change when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. Prime Minister Rudd strongly endorsed the Kyoto protocol, distinguishing his position from the Howard government, which had rejected it. This is however a symbolic issue because the Howard government had accepted the global warming concept in 2005 under Senator Ian Campbell, Minister for Environment and Heritage. So had the governments of NSW and Victoria.

Your statement makes no mention of a key parliamentary figure in this debate, Senator Steven Fielding. His extensive investigation of the supposed science of global warming, which included a discussion with the Hon. Senator Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water, persuaded him that there is no solid evidence for man-made global warming due to release of anthropogenic CO2. Sen. Fielding’s documentation is relevant to the Opposition’s position on this question (see Appendix).

A member of your own party, Dr Dennis Jensen, Member of Tangney, wrote an essay, Nine Facts about Climate Change, in which he thoroughly rejected the global warming myth. His expertise is presumably relevant to the Opposition’s policy.

Another Australian vital in this debate is geologist Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science. Professor Plimer documents what is now established among hundreds of scientific critics of global warming. Let us begin with the alleged culprit, recently labeled a ‘pollutant’, CO2. In fact, CO2 is a very minor factor in atmospheric warming. Much more important is water vapor. Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter the atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants. At 368 parts per million, CO2 is a minor constituent of earth’s atmospher – less than 1 percent of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth’s current atmosphere is CO2 meagre. C02 is not a ‘pollutant’, as is often said. It is the life blood of plants, which convert it to oxygen; animals do the opposite conversion. In short, life on earth is carbon based and CO2 is essential to the process. In a summary statement of his position, Plimer writes: “To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable – human-induced CO2 – is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.” Plimer’s book is endorsed by Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, a long-term critic of global warming.

Rejection of the validity of IPCC global warming claims is extensive among experts, including not a few former IPCC members who have converted from believers to skeptics. Among them are:

Richard Lindzen, an M.I.T. Meterologist who was among the first critics. He states that global warming advocates “are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn’t happen even if the models were right.”

Freeman Dyson, an eminent physicist, says the models used to justify global warming alarmism are “full of fudge factors” and “do not begin to describe the real world.”

Hendrik Tennekes, director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, states “there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies” used for global warming forecasts.

Claude Allègre, member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, he was among the first to sound the alarm on the dangers of global warming. His view today is that ‘The cause of this climate change is unknown’. Allègre is French President Sarkozy’s advisor on climate change.

S. Fred Singer, physicist at George Mason University and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project. He states: ‘The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it. Instead, the warming seems to be part of a 1,500-year cycle (plus or minus 500 years) of moderate temperature swings.’

Dr. Edward Wegman, former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences, demolishes the famous “hockey stick” graph that provided an icon for the global warming alarm.

Dr. David Bromwich, president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology, says “it’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.”

Prof. Paul Reiter, Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute, says ‘no major scientist with any long record in this field’ accepts Al Gore’s claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.

Dr. Christopher Landsea, past chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones, says ‘there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity’.

Dr. Antonino Zichichi, one of the world’s foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter – calls global warming models “incoherent and invalid.”

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research, says the U.N. “based its global-warming hypothesis on arbitrary assumptions and these assumptions, it is now clear, are false.”

Prof. Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo, says “most leading geologists” know the U.N.’s views “of Earth processes are implausible.”

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, founding director of the International Arctic Research Center, says that much “Arctic warming during the last half of the last century is due to natural change.”

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station’s Astrometria project says that “the common view that man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations.”

Dr. Richard Tol, Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls the most influential global warming report of all time “preposterous… alarmist and incompetent.”

Dr. Sami Solanki, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, argues that changes in the sun’s state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming: “The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.”

In addition to these names assembled by Lawrence Solomon in his book, The Deniers, American Senator James Inhofe has assembled the names of 700 scientists who reject global warming. Let me repeat: 700. This fact is at odds with the dismissal of dissenters as a small sect of Flat Earthers who repudiate science. Sen. Inhofe points out that Al Gore is among those who avoid answering critics by using this charade to deny their existence: there’s nothing to debate, so let’s get on with the urgent task of saving the world. On his website Inhofe points out that Gore’s annual consumption of kWh exceeds by twentyfold the average consumption for three bedroom houses. Gore’s home has 26 rooms, and he travels by private jet, leaving a large carbon footprint.

Let us consider the recently established Department of Climate Change. Its explanation of Australia’s position is a template of PM Rudd’s well known position. ‘Australia’s leadership in becoming a low carbon nation can show other countries what can be done. While Australia must act, we can only succeed in providing a safe future for our children if the whole world acts together to reduce carbon pollution’. Ponder the galactic ambition: world population is 300 hundred times that of Australia and it includes two nations whose populations exceed 1 billion. Can the devoted Prime Minister of a small population lead the world? That he can’t even acquire a seat on the UN Security Council makes one doubt! Again, since our contribution to the CO2 of global warming is less than 1 percent of the world total, our most costly and rigorous carbon reductions would have NO impact on global warming. Why then should the Rudd government impose financial and employment burdens on in the name of a lofty goal that will have no practical effect? But the Department’s most egregious and grossly anti-scientific bias is its complete silence about the abundant criticism of the global warming. Instead, its motto prevails: ‘Think Climate. Think Change. We cannot afford not to’.

I hope that my comments will be of some service in calibrating the Opposition’s position on this very important issue.

Yours truly
Hiram Caton, PhD, DLitt