The CSIRO will meet Malcolm Roberts to discuss global warming after the innovation and science minister, Greg Hunt, intervened to help the One Nation senator obtain a briefing.
Roberts told Guardian Australia he would listen to the evidence, despite having described climate data that contradicted his view as “corrupted”.
In Senate question time on Thursday Roberts asked the minister for resources and Northern Australia, Matt Canavan, for “the specific location of data that proves claims that humans affect global climate change”.
Canavan replied that the Coalition accepted the science on climate change, which Roberts derided as the “opinions and beliefs of the CSIRO”.
Roberts asked the government in question time and in writing to help arrange a meeting with the science agency. A CSIRO spokesman confirmed on Friday Hunt had done so.
Roberts told Guardian Australia the CSIRO would brief him in the next two weeks.
“My core aim is, as always, to get the empirical data that underlies their claim that carbon dioxide is affecting global climate, because they’ve never provided it before,” he said.
The CSIRO publishes a wealth of such data on the Climate Change in Australia website.
The CSIRO spokesman said: “CSIRO does not speak on the details of meetings with individuals, including members of parliament and senators.”
Roberts has consistently rejected arguments that humans cause global warming, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus.
He demanded evidence in his inaugural speech on Tuesday and in an appearance on the ABC’s Q&A, but when data was immediately produced on air, he said it had been corrupted by manipulation by Nasa and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Asked if he would accept CSIRO’s data when he met its representatives, Roberts said: “What we’ve said all along quite openly is that we’re all ears.
“We are going to give them every opportunity to show that humans are affecting global climate. It’s about listening not talking – giving them a fair go to explain it now that I’m a senator.”
In his inaugural speech Roberts said atmospheric temperatures fell between the 1930s and the 1970s.
“Temperatures are now cooler than 130 years ago and this is the reverse of what we’re blatantly told by the Bureau of Meteorology that has manipulated cooling trends into false warming trends,” he said.
Roberts’s claims have already been the subject of rebuttals, including by Guardian Australia and Steven Sherwood, director of the climate change research centre at the University of New South Wales.
Sherwood said: “Scientists have all interpreted the evidence, going back decades, and unanimously agree that it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that humans are increasing carbon dioxide and this is causing warming.
“There is not a single respectable atmospheric scientist in the world whom I know of, who disagrees with either of these conclusions.”
A spokesman for Hunt said “the minister has been one of the strongest advocates for climate science in Australia”.
“The minister has a standing offer to any members of parliament to facilitate meetings with the department or key agencies such as CSIRO.”
