The National Farmers Federation’s decision to make Professor Ian Plimer the keynote speaker at its National Congress is not a route to fresh debate, as NFF president David Crombie suggests. It’s a recipe for political inertia, something that agriculture can ill-afford.
Science is about movement. Unlike religion, in science something is right only until it is proven wrong. Every field of scientific endeavour has expanded exponentially since the 18th Century, when Isaac Newton and his energetic fellows in the Royal Society laid the modern foundations of the disciplines.
That movement and expansion of thought is occurring in climate change science, as it has been for decades.
Knowledge of “greenhouse gases” extends back to the 1820s. The hypothesis of a human-induced greenhouse effect was first proposed in 1938, and has since been mulled over, pulled apart and rebuilt several times over.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reviewed the published science on the subject four times since 1988, each time finding mounting evidence in favour of the hypothesis. The IPCC’s last report, in 2007, found it “very likely” that human actions are the cause of global warming.
That translates as, “very likely, but because it’s an enormously complex area, there’s some room for doubt”. It’s a more open conclusion that “we’ll all be rooned”.
Professor Plimer, on the other hand, has no doubt. He asserts that humans are not responsible for the rapid climatic shifts being recorded around the globe, and from a geological perspective, there is nothing out of the ordinary in those shifts.
The Professor makes some valid points—but his methods don’t help his argument, or the NFF.
By being absolute in his “it’s not us” conclusion, Professor Plimer creates a stalemate instead of the debate that the NFF says it wants.
Plimer v. the IPCC comes down to a binary argument—”Yes it is/No it’s not”—which even children quickly tire of. There is no room for movement and resolution.
Professor Plimer has also launched his assault on the human-induced warming theory using different rules to those he seeks to debunk.
He used scientific process, and his gift for communication, to achieve eminence as a geologist. He is not using scientific process in his critique of climate change science. His ideas on climate change have not been through the mill of the scientific peer-review process, leaving him wide open to be debunked himself.
The Professor says he can’t get his work published in scientific journals because of vested research interests intent on milking research funds from climate change alarmism.
In the absence of evidence, it’s left to the individual to accept that charge, or not.
But how does an individual—and the NFF—conclude that Professor Plimer and other skeptics are right, while the thousands of scientists who endorse the “anthropogenic warming” hypothesis are wrong?
The scientists who support the human-induced climate change theory are also capable of shooting rockets to Mars, tracking weather patterns around the globe, and plumbing the depths of the oceans. They inhabit the academies that are advancing technological know-how at a staggering rate.
It is a severe judgement that says they have it completely arse-about on climate change, and a severer one that implicates them in a conspiracy that tolerates no dissent.
Climate change science must be questioned—no question—but not from a position of prejudice or a political stance. Any debate that seeks a resolution requires mutual respect and some ground rules. In this case, the rules must be the scientific process. It is lumbering, imperfect, and has sidelined many good ideas, but it’s the best system we’ve got.
If the NFF wants to take up a cause, it should be to ensure the scientific process is working, and that the process does not exclude Professor Plimer or other sceptics from a fair hearing.
Finally, Australian agriculture needs a clear climate change signal from the NFF.
Our agricultural leadership has floundered on climate change. It tried ignoring it, without success. Late to the party, different agri-political and producer groups have had to formulate their own responses in the absence of overarching leadership on the issue.
The result is a patchwork of policy that varies from State to State, group to group.
The NFF now owes it to its membership, and the farm sector in general, to declare a firm position on climate change. It needs to give confidence to those who back whatever position it chooses, and give others the choice of withdrawing from the Federation to fight their own battles in Canberra.
Sitting on the fence is not an option. Without a position, the NFF risks drifting into a political backwater where it will be condemned to eddy around outside the main flow of debate, waiting for the world to come to it.
We know that doesn’t work.
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