As the populist rightwing One Nation surges in the polls, its position on climate change is fixed firmly on the denial of decades of evidence showing the planet, and Australia, are getting hotter.
The science linking the burning of fossil fuels to rising temperatures is 130 years old and, as the evidence has stacked up, Australians are feeling it with increasing weather extremes.
That should mean that climate science denial becomes untenable. But for One Nation denial and conspiracy are at the heart of its position on climate change.
Earlier versions of One Nation’s energy and climate policies were literal cut and pastes from the website of the now defunct climate denial group the Galileo Movement, where the former coalminer Malcolm Roberts was the project manager before being elected as a One Nation senator.
One Nation still doesn’t accept the planet or Australia is warming and claims extreme weather was more prevalent before 1960.
“This is like saying the Earth is flat,” says Prof Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist and expert on weather extremes at Australian National University.
“It’s bullshit. There’s a wealth of evidence that extreme heat events are increasing worldwide since the 1950s. We see increased intensity of droughts and heatwaves and the intensity of tropical cyclones is increasing. But you can’t argue with stupid.”
Research from CSIRO a decade ago suggests views on climate change can be influenced by how a person votes, rather than the other way around. So votes for One Nation could see more people rejecting climate science.
Dr John Cook, an expert on climate science denial and an honorary research fellow at the University of Melbourne, says One Nation is “not only out of touch with the scientific evidence, they’re even out of touch with the rest of the climate denial community.”
“Over the last decade, climate misinformation has been transitioning from science denial to attacking climate solutions,” he says.
“The scientific evidence for human-caused global warming is so undeniable, denying the science has become untenable and climate misinformation has had to make a strategic retreat.”
Unconvinced
Despite melting glaciers, rising seas, increasing heat and rainfall extremes, worsening bushfire weather and warnings from scientific academies around the world that the planet is heating at an alarming rate, One Nation says it’s not convinced.
One Nation is also unconvinced that temperatures in Australia in recent decades have been the hottest on record, preferring instead to point to pre-1910 temperature readings to make a claim that it was hotter back then. It wasn’t.
Researchers have looked closely at these pre-1910 records and found temperatures from 1860 to 1909 were similar to those from 1910 to 1959. Since 1960, maximum and minimum temperatures had all risen significantly.
The independent Berkley Earth group has also used pre-1910 temperatures to chart Australia’s changing temperatures. They also show Australia has warmed significantly since the 1880s.
The Bureau of Meteorology doesn’t use temperature observations from before 1910 in its official long-term climate dataset (the dataset that shows Australia has warmed by 1.5C since 1910).
Temperature readings before then were too often taken by non-standardised equipment (think thermometers exposed to the elements), making them less reliable.
But One Nation points to one single weather station – Nobby’s in Newcastle – claiming this shows no pattern of warming and, because of that, people should doubt that Australia is warming.
Dr Linden Ashcroft, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, has led research into the older temperature records.
“To base a claim that climate change isn’t happening because of this one weather station is a classic example of cherrypicking, where a person finds a piece of information that supports the story they want to tell while ignoring all the other evidence.
“Temperatures are warming across Australia.”
‘A common trope’
One Nation references a 2015 study to suggest a 41,000-year cycle of the Earth’s tilt could be causing severe droughts and floods.
Prof Kristine DeLong, one of the authors of that research at Louisiana State University, said One Nation’s use of the study was “a common trope of the anti-human-induced climate change movement”.
“Is there natural climate change on long 100,000-to-10,000-year scales? Yes. The ice ages were real, and our planet went through dramatic changes on 100,000-to-10,000-year timescales; these changes are not on the timescale of a human life span or cause weather events.”
One Nation wants Australia to leave the Paris agreement, and would push to close down the federal climate change department “and all related agencies, regulations and programs”.
“We are the only political party to question climate science,” the party says.
Maybe they should ask themselves why.
Net zero conspiracies
One Nation doesn’t see “net zero” as an attempt by Australia to do its share of global efforts to avoid the worst outcomes of the climate crisis, but instead as “a vehicle for creating a socialist Australia in which citizens are forced under comprehensive government control”.
One Nation claims this is part of a conspiracy of “restricting and controlling people’s movement, diets, employment, housing, education and purchases” and points to a quote from former World Economic Forum chair Klaus Schwab that in the future “you’ll own nothing and be happy”.
But Schwab never actually made the statement. Instead, it’s origin was an essay from a Danish MP about a hypothetical future city where renting services has taken over from material possessions and AI and robots do most of the work.
Rising electricity costs
One Nation blames “net zero” and renewable energy for increases in the cost of living and a “massive increase” in electricity costs.
It’s a false claim One Nation’s high-profile New England MP, Barnaby Joyce, repeats often, as does the Coalition and it is rarely challenged by broadcast journalists.
“It’s a load of rubbish,” says Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems expert at the University of New South Wales.
“We have an ageing system that needs replacing and the cheapest way to do that is with renewables and storage.”
While electricity prices in Australia have gone up, experts say it has very little to do with renewable energy and almost everything to do with rising international gas prices (supercharged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) and increased coal costs.
Research from CSIRO suggests if 82% of Australia’s electricity was to come from renewables backed by storage, the cost of generation would be a third less than current prices.
One Nation also claims the “cost to Australian taxpayers” of the renewable energy transition is “estimated at $1.5tn”. This is not true.
Net Zero Australia, the group of academics behind that estimate, have said the figure is a misrepresentation of their work and not a representation of a cost to taxpayers.
Instead, the group has said, the figure is an estimate of the cumulative capital investment needed by 2030 to reach net zero, most of which would come from overseas investors.
Embracing coal
One Nation wants to have three modern “ultra super-critical” coal plants built in Australia and claims they could generate electricity at $50 to $70 per megawatt hour (the party says these plants have lower emissions than Australia’s current fleet – but why they would care about that when they reject the link between CO2 and global heating is anyone’s guess).
Those prices contrast with detailed CSIRO estimates showing the same modern coal plants if built today would generate electricity at between $121 and $195 per MWh, depending on how often they were able to run.
Griffith University researchers also looked at what would have happened to wholesale electricity prices if, instead of adding renewables to the system in recent years, only coal and gas was added.
They found excluding solar and wind would have meant 30-50% higher wholesale electricity prices.
One Nation claims Australia has the highest electricity prices in the world outside Europe, but prices for electricity across different economies are notoriously difficult to compare given the different regimes around tax and subsidies.
According to the Australian Energy Council, prices in Australia are just 1c higher per kilowatt hour than the OECD average. When prices were adjusted to account for the cost of living across different economies, Australian prices were well below the OECD average and equal to or less than more than 20 countries, including Japan, the UK, Mexico and Columbia.
