Steve Fielding's warming to the climate doubters

SAYETH the Bible: "Out of the mouths of babes and Steve Fielding hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger."

OK, Psalm 8 doesn't actually mention the Family First senator, and it has taken some 18 months for him to say something noteworthy, but the wait was worth it. For Fielding, in just one trip to Washington, has discovered what he does not know about global warming and climate change and what's more has found that the Rudd Labor Government has not explained why it is rushing through repugnant legislation that will hurt the Australian economy, destroy jobs and throw hundreds of thousands out of work. Fielding's finding is of historic proportion. He has returned with a series of serious questions about the Rudd Government's agenda that go to the heart of the most important piece of legislation to come before the Parliament since the introduction of the GST. This is revolutionary stuff. Fielding had hitherto shown himself to be fairly innocuous, lacking the political nous of his Independent colleague Senator Nick Xenophon, but prepared to listen to arguments. He is, however, an engineer (just having had a real job or studied a real discipline places him ahead of the majority of Labor MPs who have nothing but experience within the ALP to bring to Parliament), and is neither a climate sceptic nor a climate extremist; an open-minded person. As he has said since his return, he is trained to listen to both sides of the debate in order to make an informed decision. "Any scientist worth their salt will tell you that in order to form a conclusive view about any topic, you need to properly explore all available possibilities, and until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions," he wrote in The Australian yesterday. "However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide and author of Heaven And Earth, I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive." Instead of swallowing Labor's line on global warming, Fielding decided to listen to experts. He attended a conference in the US at which he heard views that challenged the Rudd Government's set of "facts". Views that he could not dismiss as mere conspiracy theories - views derived using proper scientific analysis. He found there were a whole series of issues that had not been raised either in discussion with the Rudd Government or through the compliant Australian media, huge sections of which have unquestioningly embraced fanciful and totally unscientific notions of human-induced global warming. "The idea that climate change is a result of the variation in solar activity and not related to the increase of CO2 into the atmosphere is not something I can remember ever being discussed in the media. The question of whether global warming is a new phenomenon or something that is just part of the naturally occurring 1500-year climate cycle was never raised in any of the discussions I have had with the Rudd Government. Has the Government considered these questions, or has it just accepted the one scientific explanation for climate change at face value?" Fielding asked. "These are the questions that I believe need to be answered before any emissions trading scheme can be properly considered." Fielding wants to ask these questions of Penny Wong and her advisers, as he did when he met experts from US President Barack Obama's staff. He wants to know why she is so confident carbon emissions are driving global temperatures when during the past decade carbon emissions have been increasing rapidly but, according to some scientists, global temperatures have not been rising. He wants to know why, through the past 100 years, global temperatures have not changed in proportion to the changes in carbon emissions. He wants to know whether she has considered the effect of solar radiation on global temperature changes, and if so, why can this not be a plausible alternative explanation for global warming? He also wants to know whether the parliamentary library's legendary independence has been co-opted by those pushing the climate change agenda, the Greens, the modelling enthusiasts and the nihilists. Fielding has emerged as a champion of scientific inquiry. Watch now for the spinmeisters and mythmakers as they try to strike him down.