Australia’s chief scientist has urged the local scientific community to “stand up and be counted” to lift public understanding in the national climate change debate.
Professor Ian Chubb told a parliamentary inquiry today the debate should be a “contest of ideas” and not an agenda-driven conflict.
“The scientific community as a whole has a great deal of responsibility to ensure science is elevated to where it once used to be, and not to be subject to attacks by people with all sorts of agendas,” Professor Chubb told the joint select committee inquiry in Canberra.
Australian Greens senator and committee member Christine Milne had asked Professor Chubb for his view on the success of sceptics in painting climate change science as a quasi-religion, with believers and non-believers.
Professor Chubb described media coverage of climate science as “ordinary” and said he was disappointed by the weight given to non-credible views.
“It’s raised doubts where doubts should not exist,” Professor Chubb said.
“Science will always have some level of uncertainty, but if you’re 95 per cent certain your house is going to burn down, do you do nothing? I don’t think so.”
Professor Chubb called for all scientists to be more proactive on the issue of climate change.
“I don’t think it’s helpful that it’s left to very few,” Professor Chubb said.
“The majority of scientists should be out there explaining to the public - why they do science, how they do science and how they accumulate scientific evidence.”
A contest of ideas was central to scientific progress, he said.
“Getting that scientific progress and contest of ideas in the public domain is also an important part of how we lift the level of understanding,” Professor Chubb said.
He criticised personal attacks on climate change scientists, such as death threats, saying calls for scientists to be “thrown in jail” as “reminiscent of a time long past”.
“It’s deplorable,” he said.
“There are people being attacked for saying something people don’t want to hear.”
He told the inquiry he would not comment on the Gillard government’s carbon price plan or the opposition’s direct action plan.
Professor Chubb said climate change would affect food security in the future.
“I’m worried about the world’s capacity to feed its population, which is growing to 9 billion when we can’t feed 7 billion,” he said.
Earlier today, Treasury officials rejected claims the department’s carbon price modelling would collapse if the US did not introduce an emissions trading scheme.
Treasury macroeconomic executive director David Gruen told the inquiry the department had made assumptions about international climate change action based on the “best information” available now.
“The modelling is based on the US taking action, but it’s not based on the US taking action specifically as an emission trading scheme,” he said.
Dr Gruen said the US could take action through regulatory measures.
Last week, opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said Treasury’s updated carbon tax modelling was worthless “because it’s based on a fantasy that the United States would be part of a global trading scheme by 2016”.
The federal government has introduced 19 bills as part of its plan to introduce a carbon emissions price from mid-2012.
The price would be fixed at $23 a tonne and raised over three years, before a floating market-based scheme started in mid-2015.
The joint select committee on Labor’s so-called clean energy future legislation hearing continues.
