Page 2586 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 October 1992
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I do not think Ms Ellis quite understood what she meant when she wrote this motion. If she had not used the words "the use of fuel and" it would have been a good motion, because the ACT Government is developing and encouraging energy efficiency - and so it should. I am a bit ambivalent about the motion. I do not think it says what Ms Ellis meant it to say. The first part is entirely tolerable and acceptable. It is something that the Assembly could well do; but, if Ms Ellis thinks she is going to score a couple of points down in Tuggeranong because of it, I do not think that is going to happen.
It makes you really wonder why we are spending time in the Assembly here on this Wednesday morning discussing such a motion. There will be no value when we have finished discussing it, except that we will tell each other how great we are. I do not think that is what we were put here for. I would prefer to see us discussing something productive such as Mr Lamont's motion, which I notice he keeps shoving back down the business agenda because he does not want to discuss it.
MR STEVENSON (10.58): I heard a comment about a warm inner glow and I could not help remembering the opening statements by Ms Ellis that we are all going to fry in the hothouse. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration of what was said.
Ms Ellis: The humour displayed by the Opposition on this subject dismays me. Go ahead, Mr Stevenson.
MR STEVENSON: I do not know whether I should comment on that or not. Nevertheless, let me comment on the statements on so-called global warming or the greenhouse effect. I think it is obvious that the greenhouse effect is an entirely natural phenomenon that prevents the Earth from freezing. We well acknowledge that. So, when people talk about a greenhouse effect they talk about a so-called enhanced or increased global warming over a long period of time. The convolutions that have been gone through, to maintain this absolute farce for so long without people having an opportunity to see the facts, are absolutely amazing.
Let me present in a nutshell something that would require any intelligent individual to relook at the idea that we have a problem with enhanced global warming. East Anglia University was one of the early proponents of the idea that during the last century the global temperature rose by 0.5 degrees. In 1979 NASA started to do satellite sweeps - they are doing two satellite sweeps - and collect global temperature data. That is somewhat better than some of the earlier models because it does not pick up data where you get a heat sink problem. Collecting global temperatures just outside airports, as has been done, and just outside urban areas - where you have a build-up of heat or a heat sink - does not necessarily give you valid scientific data. It gives you nonsense. Nevertheless, NASA have collected the data. Since 1979, with their global satellite sweeps, they have shown that there has been no - I repeat no - significant global temperature increase. NASA has shown - and these are the latest figures, released last week - that the global temperature has dropped in the last year by 0.7 degrees.
So, I suppose that now the people pushing the so-called enhanced global warming line will be rushing around saying that an ice age is coming again, as they did in 1975 when around the world we saw headings such as "Ice Age Imminent", three-hour documentaries on the coming ice age and other
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