Meet our new Senator for climate change scams and new world order conspiracies

Pauline Hanson wants ‘the true facts’ about climate change made public. Apparently the ‘true facts’ are those presented Malcolm Roberts – the man driving One Nation’s climate change agenda and a potential new Senator. Mr Roberts, the newspapers report,  wants climate scepticism taught in schools and is of the view that scientists warning of climate change are part of a corrupt conspiracy. The idea that such views might be given a platform in the country’s Senate is positively terrifying.

But it gets worse when you read what Mr Roberts has actually written on the subject. His ‘research papers’ are hundreds of pages of poorly sourced quotes, simplistic analysis, and bombastic assertions.  I sat down to read CSIROh! with an admittedly not open mind but thinking I’d be addressing point by point issues; instead it’s just endless foolishness cloaked in a veneer of quasi-academic language and backed up by, well, nothing. There’s really no more point in attacking it point by point than there would be in proving that the Earth was not flat or that we’re not controlled by Martian overlords masquerading as bacteria. To try to deal with this point by point is not only giving Robert’s writing a validity that it doesn’t deserve, but just ends up being a boring and repetitive refutation of statements that have no basis.

Roberts continually asserts that there is no empirical evidence or scientific proof for global warming and, in a lovely bit of circular sophistry, validates this by pointing to many scientists refusal to address his claims. To give you an example of his circular process of validating his assertions, he wrote to prominent scientists and told them that if they did not respond by his arbitrary deadline “I will assume you do not disagree with my report.” His introduction to the report says:

I’ve written to many of the people whose behaviours, opinions and/or claims are discussed in this report and whose core claim is that human CO2 caused Earth’s latest modest cyclic global atmospheric warming that ended in 1998. Most have responded. All have failed to provide empirical scientific evidence and logical scientific reasoning for the basis of their core claim. All seemed reluctant to address my questions adequately. They failed to meet my reasonable need for integrity, reassurance and understanding.

If you don’t respond you’re agreeing, and if you do respond you don’t meet his standards. You simply cannot argue with someone so deeply enmeshed in their own world view.

It is that world view which is behind Roberts’ explanation for why the climate change conspiracy exists. He asserts, and not subtly, that the world is controlled by a cabal of, Jewish of course, bankers who are using manufactured climate change to create a single world government. That’s not an interpretation of his words, that’s what he explicitly says over several hundred pages of writing. A series of manufactured and out-of-context quotes are used to support his thesis that  there is “A New World Order admitted by prominent national leaders” and that “The objective is global control through global socialist governance by international bankers hiding control behind environmentalism.” This isn’t just the stuff of conspiracy theories, this is the real thing – your basic conspiracy theory.

Roberts clearly believes he is one of a small number of people who can see through a global conspiracy and is frustrated that almost everyone else has been taken in and refuses to debate this with him.That wouldn’t matter if his views were not about to be given a platform either indirectly through Pauline Hanson or directly if he becomes a Senator. Nothing is going to change the outcome now, but it’s important to understand the thinking of a man who will be in a position to push for the teaching of climate scepticism in schools, for the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology to be reviewed, and for who knows what to be done in relation to the New World Order.

I’d encourage readers to take a look at Roberts’ writing and form their own view.

If that leaves you too depressed it’s then worth reading this article which includes journalist Ben Cubby’s response to Roberts’ demands:

In considering your request that I identify errors in the report you sent to me – CSIROh! Climate of Deception? Or First Step to Freedom? – I find myself confronting an unusual problem: how does one critically analyse a pile of horse shit?