Australia's Climate Denialist Senator Malcolm Roberts Fails High School Science in Maiden Speech

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Climate science denialists will often fool people, and sometimes themselves, by cherry-picking the bits of evidence they think fit theirย argument.

At other times, theyโ€™ll construct elaborate conspiracy theories about human-caused climate change being a front for a New World Order, with the United Nations as theย Illuminati.ย 

But often, they just get things badly, horribly, terribly, and embarrassinglyย wrong.

Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts, of the far-right One Nation party, had all this and more in his maiden speech to parliament this week. It made it all the way to the UKโ€™s BBC.

โ€œIt is clear that climate change is a scam,โ€ said Roberts, before laying down some hardcore sciencey-stuff on Australiaโ€™s upperย chamber.

He said thatย โ€œchanges in the carbon dioxide level [of the atmosphere] are a result of changes in temperature, not a cause.โ€ย This, despite scientists being able to check the chemical signature of carbon dioxide gases that show the extra CO2 comes from the thousands of millions of metric tons of fossil fuels being burned everyย year.

Roberts tried to boil his whole understanding of atmospheric physics into one neat little paragraph. It went likeย this:

โ€œIt is basic. The sun warms the earth’s surface. The surface, by contact, warms the moving, circulating atmosphere. That means the atmosphere cools the surface. How then can the atmosphere warm it? It cannot. That is why their computer models are wrong. The UN‘s claim is absurd. Instead of science, activists invoke morality, imply natural weather events are unusual, appeal to authority and use name-calling, ridicule and emotion. They avoid discussing facts and rely on pictures of cute smiling dolphins. These are not evidence of human effect onย climate.โ€

Now I havenโ€™t asked all of them, but Iโ€™m pretty confident that no climate scientist has ever used a picture of a dolphin โ€” even a cute, smiling one โ€” as โ€œevidence of human effect on climate.โ€ย  I might be wrongย though.

It’s Allย Greek

Said Roberts: โ€œLike Socrates, I love asking questions to get to theย truth.โ€ย 

So, in the spirit of Greek philosophy (or something) I asked some climate scientists about Robertsโ€™ statement on the โ€œcirculating atmosphereโ€ and how it โ€œcanโ€™t warmโ€ the planet.ย  And when I say I asked them, I mean I wasted their valuableย time.

Professor Matthew England, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW)ย Climate Change Research Center in Australia, toldย me:

โ€œWhere do you start? This denies that the atmosphere has any heat storage capacity, or that greenhouse gases re-radiate heat back down to theย Earth.

This really is high school geography that Malcolm Roberts has messed up here. We have known about the greenhouse effect since about the middle of the 19thย century.

We have directly measured warming of the oceans, for example, where about 90 percent of the human-caused heat has gone. You can measure that heat. And we know with absolute certainty that this heat has come from theย atmosphere.

Anyone in public office, as a Senator speaking about something as important as climate change, should be across these basicย facts.โ€

Professor David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, said, โ€œOf course, Malcolm Roberts isย wrong.โ€

โ€œThere is a wealth of โ€˜empirical evidenceโ€™ from observations of the surface energy balance at every observing site around the world with relevant instruments andย measurements.

Downward long-wave or infrared radiation from the atmosphere to the surface is a vital component to warming the Earthโ€™s surface. The atmosphere warms the surface and cools the surface. In fact, on average through day and night and over a whole year over the whole Earthโ€™s surface, downward infrared radiation is more important than downward solar radiation from the Sun in warming theย surface.โ€

Karoly also sent a schematic, derived from this journal paperย and published by the UN‘s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which Roberts hates. While criminally bereft of smiling dolphins, the image shows how greenhouse gases interact with the Earthโ€™sย surface.

Credit: IPCC Assessment Reportย 5

Professor Roger Jones, of Victoria University, Australia, has worked on several IPCC climate reports, which naturally will make Roberts uneasy.ย But he toldย me:

โ€œThere is so much wrong in these few sentences that it is almost beyond parody โ€” it turns the Senate Chamber into the theaterย of theย absurd.

Malcolm Roberts broke the first law of thermodynamics, which is the simplest โ€” the conservation of energy โ€” and then broke the rest ofย them.โ€

Dr. Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, also at the UNSWโ€™s Climate Change Research Center, started with the absolute basics by pointing out to Roberts that the atmosphere is made up of gas. Then she got a bitย technical.

โ€œGreenhouse gases which are present in the atmosphere absorb and re-emit particular wavelengths of radiation, under particular conditions. Each GHG [greenhouse gas] absorbs and re-emits certain bands of the long wave radiation coming off the Earth. Yes, some of these re-emitted bands go into space, but some also go back into the atmosphere, thus heating it up. Long wave radiation essentially equals heat. More GHG equals more absorption and re-emitting of long wave bands, and that equals an increase inย temperatures.โ€

So,ย there you haveย it.ย 

Roberts broke basic laws of physics, managed to forget high schoolย science, and ignored the properties of the greenhouse gases he claims to have studied while working in the coalย industry.

Apart from that, a pretty goodย effort?

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