One Nation Questions Climate Science; Should Ask Why

As the populist right-wing One Nation party surges in opinion polls, it maintains a firm stance of denying decades of evidence that the planet and Australia are warming.

The scientific link between fossil fuel combustion and rising temperatures dates back 130 years, and as evidence has accumulated, Australians are experiencing its effects through more frequent weather extremes.

This mounting evidence should render climate science denial untenable, but for One Nation, denial and conspiracy theories form the core of its climate stance.

Earlier iterations of One Nation’s energy and climate policies were directly copied from the website of the now-defunct climate denial group Galileo Movement, where former coal miner Malcolm Roberts served as project manager before his election as a One Nation senator.

One Nation still does not accept that the planet or Australia is warming and claims extreme weather was more prevalent before 1960.

“This is like saying the Earth is flat,” says Prof Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist and expert on weather extremes at Australian National University.

“It’s bullshit. There’s a wealth of evidence that extreme heat events are increasing worldwide since the 1950s. We see increased intensity of droughts and heatwaves and the intensity of tropical cyclones is increasing. But you can’t argue with stupid.”

Research from CSIRO a decade ago suggests views on climate change can be influenced by how a person votes, rather than the other way around, indicating that votes for One Nation could lead more people to reject climate science.

Dr John Cook, an expert on climate science denial and an honorary research fellow at the University of Melbourne, says One Nation is “not only out of touch with the scientific evidence, they’re even out of touch with the rest of the climate denial community.”

“Over the last decade, climate misinformation has been transitioning from science denial to attacking climate solutions,” he says.

“The scientific evidence for human-caused global warming is so undeniable, denying the science has become untenable and climate misinformation has had to make a strategic retreat.”

Despite melting glaciers, rising seas, increasing heat and rainfall extremes, worsening bushfire weather and warnings from scientific academies around the world that the planet is heating at an alarming rate, One Nation says it remains unconvinced.

One Nation is also unconvinced that temperatures in Australia in recent decades have been the hottest on record, preferring instead to point to pre-1910 temperature readings to claim it was hotter then, a claim that is not supported by data.

Researchers who closely examined these pre-1910 records found temperatures from 1860 to 1909 were similar to those from 1910 to 1959. Since 1960, maximum and minimum temperatures have risen significantly.

The independent Berkeley Earth group, using pre-1910 temperatures to chart Australia’s changing climate, also shows that Australia has warmed significantly since the 1880s.

The Bureau of Meteorology does not use temperature observations from before 1910 in its official long-term climate dataset, which shows Australia has warmed by 1.5°C since 1910.

Temperature readings before 1910 were often taken with nonstandardized equipment, such as thermometers exposed to the elements, making them less reliable.

One Nation points to a single weather station—Nobby’s in Newcastle—claiming this shows no pattern of warming and therefore people should doubt that Australia is warming.

Dr Linden Ashcroft, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, has led research into the older temperature records.

“To base a claim that climate change isn’t happening because of this one weather station is a classic example of cherrypicking, where a person finds a piece of information that supports the story they want to tell while ignoring all the other evidence.”

“Temperatures are warming across Australia.”

One Nation references a 2015 study to suggest that a 41,000-year cycle of the Earth’s tilt could be causing severe droughts and floods.

Prof Kristine DeLong, one of the authors of that research at Louisiana State University, said One Nation’s use of the study was “a common trope of the anti-human-induced climate change movement.”

“Is there natural climate change on long 100,000-to-10,000-year scales? Yes. The ice ages were real, and our planet went through dramatic changes on 100,000-to-10,000-year timescales; these changes are not on the timescale of a human life span or cause weather events.”

One Nation wants Australia to leave the Paris agreement and would push to close down the federal climate change department “and all related agencies, regulations and programs.”

“We are the only political party to question climate science,” the party says.

Maybe they should ask themselves why.

One Nation does not see “net zero” as an attempt by Australia to contribute to global efforts to avoid the worst outcomes of the climate crisis, but instead as “a vehicle for creating a socialist Australia in which citizens are forced under comprehensive government control.”

One Nation claims this is part of a conspiracy to “restrict and control people’s movement, diets, employment, housing, education and purchases” and points to a quote attributed to former World Economic Forum chair Klaus Schwab that in the future “you’ll own nothing and be happy.”

Schwab never actually made that statement; its origin is an essay from a Danish MP about a hypothetical future city where renting services replace material possessions and AI and robots do most of the work.

One Nation blames “net zero” and renewable energy for increases in the cost of living and a “massive increase” in electricity costs.

This false claim is repeated often by One Nation’s high-profile New England MP, Barnaby Joyce, and by the Coalition, and is rarely challenged by broadcast journalists.

“It’s a load of rubbish,” says Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems expert at the University of New South Wales.

“We have an ageing system that needs replacing and the cheapest way to do that is with renewables and storage.”

While electricity prices in Australia have increased, experts say it has very little to do with renewable energy and almost everything to do with rising international gas prices, supercharged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and increased coal costs.

Research from CSIRO suggests that if 82% of Australia’s electricity came from renewables backed by storage, the cost of generation would be a third less than current prices.

One Nation also claims the “cost to Australian taxpayers” of the renewable energy transition is “estimated at $1.5tn,” which is not true.

Net Zero Australia, the group of academics behind that estimate, has said the figure is a misrepresentation of their work and does not represent a cost to taxpayers.

Instead, the group says the figure is an estimate of cumulative capital investment needed by 2030 to reach net zero, most of which would come from overseas investors.

One Nation wants to build three modern “ultra super-critical” coal plants in Australia and claims they could generate electricity at $50 to $70 per megawatt hour, though the party’s rationale for caring about emissions while rejecting the link between CO2 and global heating is unclear.

Those price claims contrast with detailed CSIRO estimates showing that such modern coal plants, if built today, would generate electricity at between $121 and $195 per MWh, depending on how often they operate.

Griffith University researchers also examined what would have happened to wholesale electricity prices if only coal and gas had been added to the system in recent years instead of renewables.

They found that excluding solar and wind would have resulted in 30–50% higher wholesale electricity prices.

One Nation claims Australia has the highest electricity prices in the world outside Europe, but international price comparisons are notoriously difficult due to differing tax and subsidy regimes.

According to the Australian Energy Council, prices in Australia are just 1 cent higher per kilowatt hour than the OECD average, and when adjusted for cost of living, Australian prices are well below the OECD average and equal to or less than those of more than 20 countries, including Japan, the UK, Mexico and Colombia.

Graham Readfearn is an environment and climate correspondent at Guardian Australia.