The Senator From Denial - "Over The Past 15 Years, Global Temperatures Haven't Been Going Up"

[hatrack]

Family First senator Steve Fielding has made up his mind on climate change - the world is not warming now, and humans aren't changing the climate. The government and the country's top scientists have tried to convince Senator Fielding, who holds a crucial vote in the upper house, that global warming is real.

But he's released a document setting out his position. "Global temperature isn't rising," it says. On emissions trading, Senator Fielding said he wouldn't risk job losses on "unconvincing green science". The document says it is a "fact" that the evidence does not support the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous global warming.

EDIT

Because of the numbers in the upper house, Senator Fielding's verdict means the government will have to rely on the opposition to get its emissions trading scheme (ETS) legislation passed. The Senate was initially supposed to vote on the ETS this week, but that now appears unlikely as the legislation has been shunted towards the bottom of the agenda.

Making it more unlikely is a plan by independent senator Nick Xenophon to move a motion that there be no vote this week. Parliament is due to rise for the two-month winter break on Thursday.

EDIT

http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-national/global-warming-isnt-real-says-fielding-20090624-cw9p.html

[JohnWxy]

1. somebody needs to tell him he's holding that graph upside down.

[stuntcat]

2. Family First bible-thumping and anti-environmentalism will always go together

It's just weird how 'his image' raping the green Earth and wiping out hundreds of other species is totally acceptable to them. All it shows me is how wrong and brainwashed religious people all are. I'm tried of waiting for some of them to stand up for the environment.

[The Croquist]

3. He's wrong

15 years ago (1994) was the coldest year in the last 15 years. 1995 was warmer then 2008 but that is a cherry picking exception.

The earth hasn't warmed in the last 10 years (1999-2008) but the last ten years are still the 3rd warmest 10 year period of the 21 "10 year periods" on record and that doesn't include the truly weird 1998 that saw temperatures that were so far out of the norm that, except for the fact that every measuring system in the world recorded the spike, it would have been questioned.

There is no question that the average world temperature over the last 10 years is warmer then for the average world temperature over the 10 years starting from 1979.

This is from a "denier".

[depakid]

4. This guy's a real piece of work

A fundy nutter who got in because Labor played games with The Greens over preferences.

(preferences being Australia's way of doing instant runoff voting).

A curious piece on the chess board, Fielding allows the Rudd government to initiate what's called a double dissolution, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dissolution -which means a new election for ever Senator and MP -at essentially the time of their choosing.