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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 2941 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Perhaps Moscow is an old-fashioned metaphor nowadays - I was thinking of a Napoleonic reference - but anybody who will not go all the way through to the end of the line is obviously not worth being on the bandwagon.

I think it is worth making the point at the very outset of this debate that, despite all the rhetoric, we actually know very little about how human involvement contributes to the release of greenhouse gases and the creation of the so-called greenhouse effect. While we, no doubt like many parliaments across Australia and the world, talk about the greenhouse effect as if it were some kind of proven fact, I would like to bring a slightly different perspective to this debate. I would like to begin by referring to the remarks made last November on Radio 2CN by Professor Ian Plimer of the Melbourne University School of Earth Sciences.

Members will recall Professor Plimer, a quite celebrated scientist in recent years. Professor Plimer was the man who took on the creationist argument in the Supreme Court of Victoria. He had a very celebrated battle with a representative of the creationist argument. That was a very interesting debate. I will not talk about that at much length, but I seek leave to table a transcript of interview between Elizabeth Jackson and Professor Plimer in which he talked about the greenhouse effect.

Leave granted.

MR HUMPHRIES: I want to read briefly from that interview. He was asked by Elizabeth Jackson about the greenhouse effect and about climate generally. Ms Jackson said in respect of climate:

It's changed so dramatically you'd hardly recognise it these days.

Professor Plimer replied:

Well, it depends on which days you compare it to. If you compare it with 15,000 years ago we were in the grips of an ice age. If you compare it with 15 million years ago we were enjoying a wonderful steamy greenhouse. If you compare it with 115 million years ago we were at the South Pole and also enjoying a wonderful steamy greenhouse with mountains behind us bringing down bits of ice, et cetera. If we go back a thousand million years, well we were in the grips of one of the biggest icehouses that ever existed on planet earth.

He went on to say:

We've had greenhouses and icehouses and, whenever I hear someone talk about greenhouse, the temptation to yawn just overwhelms me.

He went on to make some very telling points about the greenhouse effect. The point about all of this is that it is clear that we need to be cautious about how much we assume about this debate based on the limited knowledge we have about the causes of the greenhouse effect and the contribution particular actions of human beings will make

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