Have you read all the way through Australia’s first national climate risk assessment yet and scoured the many technical reports published to back it up?
Of course you haven’t.
The main report is 280 pages long and has about 20 reports underpinning it, several of which span more than 100 pages.
The process had input from more than 250 experts and generated more than 15 new national datasets.
But the thrust of the report’s content is pretty crystal clear – climate change is already affecting all aspects of Australia – from its economy to its communities – and as temperatures rise, so will the problems they generate. This is definitely not news.
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Deluge of misinformation
But along with a deluge of information in the report – some old and some new – has come a reliable downpour of misinformation from climate sceptical politicians and commentators.
On Tuesday, backbench Nationals senator Matt Canavan was given ten minutes on Radio National’s flagship Breakfast program to tell listeners that the report was all just hype.
“It’s a cynical attempt to spread fear and panic among people,” said Canavan, who said this was evidenced by the fact that “the headlines” in the report had warned about increased cyclones.
“Not until you get to the detail of the reports, do you read that in fact, cyclones have been decreasing in Australia, and they only have low confidence that they may increase, they may have no change, or they may increase. You don’t get that in the headlines.”
But did the report actually say in its “headlines” that cyclones might increase? No.
Cyclones are a “priority hazard” looked at in the report, but the overview document says this about them: “While some hazards are likely to occur less often, when they do occur, they may be more intense and occur in different locations than previously. For example, it is anticipated that Australia will see fewer tropical cyclones, but proportionally more will be severe under all warming levels (medium confidence).”
Canavan set up a straw man argument that there was a contradiction between the headlines in the report and the detail. But there wasn’t.
Net zero bun fight
The Coalition is in an internal bun fight over its support for a goal to get Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions down to net zero by 2050.
Canavan is one of the most outspoken critics of net zero, and he told the ABC his party’s grassroots members had voted in multiple state conventions to get rid of the policy.
“Shouldn’t we be investing in things that make us sovereign and independent as a country? Net zero doesn’t do that,” said Canavan.
To offer an example, Canavan said Australia no longer manufactured urea – the key agricultural fertiliser. This was, apparently, because of net zero.
Canavan doesn’t say that one of the world’s biggest urea manufacturing plants is being built in the Pilbara, one that could produce two million tonnes of the fertiliser each year. Why didn’t net zero stop those plans going ahead?
Australia currently imports about four million tonnes of urea and analysis published by industry group GrainGrowers suggests about half of current imports come from the Middle East.
Canavan says he wants Australia to have sovereign capability – but not, it seems, if it comes down to generating more of our own energy from renewable sources like the sun and wind to reduce our reliance on imported oil?
Alarmist buttons?
On Sky, presenter Chris Kenny was similarly dismissive of the findings of the climate risk assessment, characterising it as a “public relations document pushing the alarmist buttons” designed to soften up the Australia public ahead of the government setting a new climate target.
While “climate alarmists” and the climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen told the public that extreme weather events were getting worse, Kenny claimed they were not.
“The trouble is the data doesn’t support this,” said Kenny.
“Floods and bushfires are in line with our history, and most of the heat records we’ve seen broken are only records because we’ve lowered the earlier ones.”
Kenny doesn’t say which floods he means (coastal or riverine), but in any case, they are difficult to compare across time because of changes to rivers made by dams or because developments have been built on floodplains.
But according to State of the Climate report from scientists at the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, there has been an observed increase in the intensity of rainfall coming from storms.
“Heavy short-term rainfall events are becoming more intense,” the latest report said.
It is well accepted though that as sea levels continue to rise, so will the risk of coastal flooding.
Scientists have linked an increase in the area of forests burning in Australia to climate change, and the country’s fire season is now longer and many areas have seen an increase in the frequency of days with dangerous fire weather.
Dr Andrew Dowdy, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne and an expert on extreme weather in Australia, says: “The peer-reviewed science shows that severe fire and flood risk factors have already increased due to human-caused global heating, such that rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are needed including by using more renewable energy sources.”
Kenny’s claim on temperatures likely has its origins in a decades-long campaign from climate science contrarians to claim a conspiracy – with no evidence – that the Bureau of Meteorology deliberately tampers with its temperature records to make global warming seem more pronounced than it is.
Like many other national weather agencies, the bureau makes adjustments to data in its long-term dataset to account for changes at individual sites that might skew the record (think of a building going up next to a weather station, or a station being moved to a new location).
Multiple reviews have endorsed the bureau’s methods and, in any case, Australia’s warming trend is visible in data that is adjusted and unadjusted and individual site heat records don’t use adjusted data anyway.
Graham Readfearn is Guardian Australia’s environment and climate correspondent
