Hansard: thoughts and position on global warming and climate change, Gardiner
Author: Philip Gardiner
Published on: 01-July-2010
HON PHILIP GARDINER: I am very fortunate to be given the floor. I will speak about the issue of global warming from a perspective different from that suggested by Hon Robin Chapple in his motion. I heard the minister talk about the initiatives that the Western Australian government is taking. My view is that the fundamental point in all this is the intensity with which we are taking action. Whether we have any intensity in acting on global warming is dependent on how we, especially in chambers such as this, believe the science. Global warming is not all because of us. We all know that huge natural forces are influencing climate change; it is about how the earth’s orbit around the sun alters and the amount of wobble in the earth’s axis—it is about a whole lot of different external issues, too.
However, what we are talking about here today is the anthropogenic influence. In our own National Party group we have just begun to focus on this. There is a wide discrepancy of views about the significance of the influence that mankind is having on our climate. Until we agree as a group and until we as a chamber of representatives of our electorate can better understand the science, we will not give the intensity to what we might have to do if we are going to stop ourselves from running like lemmings towards a possible cliff, because we are contributing so strongly to the changes in our climate. I am not saying that we are totally contributing to climate change, but I want us to understand the science first.
The molecule CO2 is complex. How many of us in this chamber really understand that? I certainly did not until my youngest son said, “Dad; it must be pretty easy to prove whether a molecule of CO2 will increase the temperature; why don’t you get a tent and pump it full of carbon dioxide and see what happens to the temperature?” I thought, “Well, why don’t we find out what CO2 is doing to increase the temperature of our atmosphere?” What we do know is that CO2 is about 0.4 per cent of the atmosphere, and it is a molecule that attracts radiative heat. The heat comes in from the sun in short wavelengths and reflects off the earth in a longer wavelength that the CO2 molecule absorbs. It absorbs it at a rate that causes the earth at ground level to warm. Over the past 50 years—since the mid-1940s—the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from about 270 parts per million to about 378 parts per million today. That is about a 30 to 40 per cent increase, which increases the temperature by about one watt per square metre.
That is how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change measures it. It is worthwhile reading the IPCC report or parts of it. I have read Plimer, the biggest sceptic, and I have heard Monckton, another sceptic. The rhetoric is cumulative, but until we start getting away from the rhetoric and start looking at some basic foundation truths, how will we ever determine a policy with the intensity we may need to? We will not have any intensity unless we believe with some passion that the facts we hear are valid outside the rhetoric.
One extra watt of heat per square metre is being generated as a result of the increase in CO2 from about 270 to 378. What happens with that heat? It causes water to evaporate. Water becomes another greenhouse gas because, as it evaporates—in the same way steam evaporates from a kettle—it releases heat into the atmosphere. That is another four watts per square metre. With five watts per square metre occurring across the whole world, it is a simple mathematical calculation to demonstrate that it will increase the world’s temperature by one degree Celsius.
It is the radiated heat that comes from the sun hitting the earth in short wavelengths that are then reflected back in longer wavelengths that causes that temperature increase when it is captured by CO2. As it goes up higher, that gets reflected back to the earth again, and so there are feedback loops in this complex meteorological scientific environment, the dynamic of which mankind is attempting to understand for the first time in the past 20, 30 or 40 years. We as decision makers in this place need to understand that and read widely enough—I emphasise the term “widely enough”; we need to read both sides, the sceptics and the so-called alarmists—so that we can sift through the science to convince ourselves where we stand. That is why I think that former Prime Minister Mr Rudd failed with this carbon pollution reduction scheme. He assumed that we all must have thought that global warming was true. He failed to assume that there is a lot of scepticism, and there was no effort to educate us. I like what the state minister is saying about schools: schoolchildren should be taught about the facts of the science of global warming. That will be a start to get at the base level, because this is a bottom-up show. We have to believe it at the ground level to get the movement to make decisions to improve things.
In terms of Hon Robin Chapple’s motion about carbon footprints, I believe that that is the way we have to go at the end of the day. Every business and every household should be legislated for, as they are for tax returns, so that they fill in a carbon footprint form every year. Then there should be a cap. I believe in the emissions trading scheme strategy to get a carbon price, because that is the only free market way that allows us the freedom of choice to make a decision about what to do if we all believe that we have to reduce carbon emissions. If we do not care about that, we are lost. We have to understand the science so that we have the belief that carbon is increasing our temperature, damaging our living environment and creating a real risk for our children in the future. We must have that passion before we start thinking about what we are going to do to change it. The emissions trading scheme has a strategy that gives us the choice. It may not have been constructed in the right way by the former Prime Minister—I have a different view about how we should construct it—but it is the direction we have to take at some time if we believe the science.
