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June 9, 2009
Senator Fielding, the Family First Senator, attended the Global Warming: Was it ever really a Crisis conference hosted by the Heartland Institute. The institute, which stands for free market environmentalism (ie., is opposed to governmental regulation proscribing polluting activities), is not a natural science research institute. It's position is that public health campaigns against smoking are based on "junk science".
Penny Bradfield
In his 'open mind' op-ed in The Australian Fielding says that his concerns arising from his fact finding tour are scientific ones, rather than policy ones about how to best address market externalities. He says:
I heard views that challenged the Rudd government's set of "facts". Views that could not be dismissed as mere conspiracy theories, but that were derived using proper scientific analysis. 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's argument is that these are the sorts of questions about the science of climate change need to be answered before any emissions trading scheme (environmental legislation to deal with market externalities of greeenhouse gas emissions) can be properly considered.
What Fielding has embraced is the claim that carbon emissions are not driving global temperatures, on the grounds that during the past decade carbon emissions have been increasing rapidly but according to some scientists global temperatures have not been rising; that through the past 100 years, global temperatures have not changed in proportion to the changes in carbon emissions; and that solar radiation is both highly correlated to global temperature changes, and is a plausible alternative explanation for global warming.
Fielding's position is actually a denialist one, ie that global warming is not caused by human actions. It is solar activity that is the cause. We can also infer that he assumes that the market is able to correct the negative externalities of industrial production, because market mechanisms left to their own devices contain built-in incentives for environmental degradation. Fielding, consequently, is opposed to governmental regulation proscribing polluting activities. Thirdly, his open mindedness is limited as he views his environmental opponents in the public debate as being caught up in "alarmist rhetoric and extreme ideology."
If this is not his position, and if he were as open minded as he claims he is in the op-ed, then he would have also visited genuine primary research bodies, such as NASA’s GISS at Columbia, or NOAA’s Climate Diagnostic Centre at Boulder on his US fact finding tour. He didn't. It would appear that Fielding has also not bothered to arrange briefings on the scientific questions ----eg., whether solar radiation is a plausible alternative explanation for global warming----through the CSIRO or the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra. That he hasn't done this means that he not making a genuine attempt to enter the debate and that the criticisms from global warming scientists about his solar flare explanation is warranted.
We can infer that Fielding's position is a political one---he is acting to prolong the transition away from coal and other fossil fuels. Fielding frames his political opposition to an emissions trading scheme in scientific language so as to lend credibility to his blocking of environmental reform. His politics is to exempt coal-fired power stations from an ETS, or to provide them with free permits. In acting as the political representative for the Victorian coal industry Fielding has placed himself on the margins of the debate on the right kind of political action.
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So Senator Fielding once again signals that he will act as a roadblock to reform.