Page 1928 - Week 07 - Thursday, 31 May 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
What an interesting statement. What do we have now? In June 1988, an American, Dr James Hansen, reasonably acknowledged as an expert at the time, told US Government hearings that serious droughts in America at the time were definitely caused by the greenhouse effect. He said, "We can state with 99 per cent confidence that current temperatures represent a real warming trend rather than a chance fluctuation". If anybody knows anything of science and he thinks that is science, he should study the field. That is not science. That is absolute nonsense.
Mr Connolly: It is a hoax like the Holocaust, eh, Dennis?
MR STEVENSON: That is an interesting comment from one of the Labor people. Wayne Berry made another comment a bit earlier - something to do with socialist greenies. It is true that there are such people, but there are also a lot of other people who are gravely concerned about our environment. Mr Wood said that even the Liberal Party has decided that there are some concerns with the environment. Not only the Liberal Party, but also even the Labor Party has decided that the environment is a wonderful political viewpoint. Graham Richardson so decided, not so long ago, at a Lorne Fabian meeting.
It is interesting to note that a lot of people have been jumping on the environmental band wagon for some time. I am only too happy to jump on band wagons all the time, because band wagons are usually being pushed by the people. As I have stated, I represent the people, and, if they push a band wagon, they can collect me up in it any time they like - in most cases.
About a quarter of a century ago, I was a founding member of the eco-action environmental group in Sydney. Indeed, more than 20 years ago I was studying the effect of gases and other emissions on the ozone layer.
Mr Berry: That was at the Church of Scientology, was it?
MR STEVENSON: No, it was done at Sydney University actually. At that time I was looking particularly at world-wide concerns that supersonic transports - Concorde specifically - would destroy our society as we knew it. I think we all recall the nuclear winter. It is not an uncommon thing for these matters to be presented to people and picked up by the popular media. True scientific statements which are totally distorted and misrepresented in the media do nothing else but scare the life out of people. So it was with the ice age scare, not true.
If you read the scientific literature, you find out that fluctuations occur in climate fairly regularly, but they tend to go in longer cycles over periods of thousands of years. But it is not a story to say that the ice age is coming in 5,000 years; you have to say, "The ice age is imminent". Indeed it is. From 1940 to 1980 the temperature of the globe decreased by 0.3 degrees Celsius. (Extension of time granted)
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .