When Senator Malcolm Roberts thanked 9/11 truthers and New World Order conspiracists for their science guidance

 

Unless you’ve either been living under a massive rock or in Mars-like isolation, you would have struggled to miss the recent exploits of Malcolm Roberts.

But if you have, here’s a very brief summary.

Roberts is a climate science denialist from Queensland who has been elected to the Australian Senate to represent the far-right One Nation party, led by Pauline Hanson.

He thinks climate science is a fraud being pushed by the United Nations, which wants to instill a world government.

His odd views have been irresistible to media outlets around the world and back home in Australia.

He had an argument with British Professor Brian Cox on Q&A that made international headlines.

He seems to be enjoying all the attention.

But back when Roberts was regarded by some as little more than a serial pest — haranguing politicians, journalists, scientists and government agencies for their endorsement of “climate fraud” — Roberts made a list.

The list, from February 2013, was an appendix to one of his many reports that “proved” human-caused climate change was a scam.  Continue reading “When Senator Malcolm Roberts thanked 9/11 truthers and New World Order conspiracists for their science guidance”

Column in The Australian calls climate denialist Malcolm Roberts a “complete nutter”. A glitch in the matrix?

I’ve written plenty of stories over the years having a go at the way Rupert Murdoch’s loss-making newspaper The Australian covers climate science.

So it would be a bit churlish if I didn’t point out when its coverage is, shall we say, a little more mainstream.

But first, some context. Continue reading “Column in The Australian calls climate denialist Malcolm Roberts a “complete nutter”. A glitch in the matrix?”

Spot the difference between climate policies of Pauline Hanson and denialist group the Galileo Movement?

So I wrote a piece on my Guardian blog yesterday pointing out how climate science denialist Malcolm Roberts could be in line for a seat in Australia’s Senate.

Others have had a crack at the story too, with the likes of Fairfax and News Ltd also publishing pieces on Roberts’ “wacky” beliefs.

Roberts is running for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, which is best known for its matriarch Pauline Hanson and her anti-Islamic rhetoric.

Her party wants to “ban the burqa” and install surveillance cameras in Muslim schools and mosques.

In short, Roberts thinks there’s an international cabal of bankers and socialists cutting across the United Nations, science institutions and the financial institutions, including the US Federal Reserve, who have conspired in some way to push “climate fraud” on the world.

Anyway, in my story I pointed out how it appeared that Roberts, the project manager for the Galileo Movement, had been behind One Nation’s climate policy.

Now rather than explain why I think this, you should instead play this little game of Spot the Difference and then decide for yourself!

hanson galileo

 

Climate change, the New World Order and spam-weary journalists

BEN CUBBY, the environment editor at the Sydney Morning Herald, admits he has an unusual problem – “how does one critically analyse a pile of horse shit?”

The horse excretion in question is a report – CSIROh! – Climate of Deception or First Step to Freedom – sent to Cubby by one of Australia’s most tireless – and some might say tiresome – climate science deniers, Malcolm Roberts. But more of Ben Cubby’s response later.

Malcolm Roberts is the volunteer project manager for the Galileo Movement – a climate science denial organisation whose patron is popular Sydney radio shock-jock Alan Jones who himself thinks human-caused climate change is a “hoax” and “witchcraft”.

Roberts’ “report” appears to have been sparked by an email from ABC Brisbane radio presenter Steve Austin back in February 2010.

“For some time now I have been receiving a barrage of your unsolicited emails about climate change and your analysis of IPCC flaws,” wrote Austin, who attached a copy of a CSIRO report on climate change and suggested Roberts respond. Austin promises he’ll send that response to the CSIRO and provide any feedback he gets.

Roberts is a former coalface miner and management consultant and in a declaration of  interests writes: “For extensive work performed in the mining industry I was paid money by mining companies (including three government-owned coal mining companies)….”

He claims to have foregone more than a million dollars in earnings for his unpaid work researching climate change. Part of that involved him travelling to the US to attend the Heartland Institute’s climate skeptics conference in New York in 2008, co-sponsored by Australian free market think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs.

Well, three years pass since the exchange with Steve Austin and finally Roberts sends him the report, which he must have been hanging out for. But here’s a prediction. Whatever the CSIRO or any other reputable research institution says to Malcolm Roberts about human-caused climate change, Roberts will not accept it. Why?

Continue reading “Climate change, the New World Order and spam-weary journalists”