Perhaps these two gentlemen have explained climate change to Brendan Nelson

As part of its ongoing 'climate change is a myth perpetrated by green leftists' series, The Australian recently published the work of Messrs Evans and Jensen. Dr David Evans, a self-styled 'rocket scientist', is a former employee of the Australian Greenhouse Office. In hindsight, that appointment was probably as constructive as say, appointing Senor Fawkes pageboy for the House of Commons, for the good doctor appears to have had his head turned rather too swiftly for someone intimately involved in the climate modelling process. Dennis Jensen is one of the handful of Western Australian MPs who subscribe to the 'Howard as demigod' thesis, and are on the record as skeptical of the IPCC-inspired policies adopted by almost every social democratic party in the world.

Evans' piece, which has been dissected by Tim Lambert, boils down to three essential points. First, Evans does not give credence to the very modelling he was engaged to produce and hence will not accept any conclusions that either correlate observations with modelled outcomes, or predict the effect of various phenonmena on climate. This means Lambert's references to such visions of orbital forcing or carbon dioxide effects on temperature will fall on deaf ears.

On top of this rejection of modelling, Evans also rejects data showing temperature rises and adopts a very short-term view of climatic variability, suggesting the Earth is now cooling again. What makes me suspicious of such claims is the fact that climate skeptics do not suggest the Earth is reverting back to normal service but is in fact cooling (from the hottest part of the last several hundred years!).

Evans' third tenet is that the Vostok ice cores no longer support the C02-warming causal link as the warming follows the C02 by 800 years. This is widely accepted. He uses this fact as a stick to beat Al Gore as a misleading alarmist politician. Evans' problem lies in the second bit of data: for 800 years the temperature rises but C02 does not, then the two rise together for around 4200 years as the Earth emerges from an ice age. This supports the argument that increased sunlight raises temperature, gradually warms the earth and releases C02 and methane via melting permafrost. Has anyone spoken to Putin and Medvedev about the double-decker carbon sink they have in Siberia?

Basic common sense should cause someone with a scientific background to act cautiously and take appropriate precautions. Evans makes no mention of what will happen to the oceans absorbing ever larger concentrations of C02, nor the chemically proven fact that carbon dioxide is less soluble in warmer water. He ends his piece with the charge of 'criminal negligence and ideological stupidity' against the ALP. I would counter that by saying that if the ALP knew of both great environmental risk and the impending threat posed to our major coal and steel industries and did nothing to reposition the economy the charge would be made out.

Mr Jensen appears to be following Kipling's injunction to keep his head when all around him are losing theirs. His piece is basically a cry for nuclear power, regardless of climate change. It is also a cry for debate, although given those who seek that debate are largely disinterested in observations, conclusions, logical inferences and fair play, one does wonder what sort of debate the member for Tangney is advocating. Jensen believes that energy measures are tokenistic and that solar and wind are 'as yet unproved'. He implies climate advocates are today's flat-earthers, suggesting he subscribes to the Galileo Complex. Given most of Jensen's fellow-travellers would gladly locked Signor Galilei up for the term of his natural, it seems an odd piece of identification.

On the cost of emissions trading, Jensen states:

If all carbon in the stationary power sector were to have a $50-a-tonne price of carbon dioxide imposed (as is the case for the European price for CO2), it would mean a cost burden of $660 a year for every Australian, or more than $2500 per household, according to data I have received. These would not all be direct costs from the emissions-trading scheme, but also from higher prices of products that would flow through as a result of increased production costs. Those higher costs would make some businesses unviable, and they would have to close or move offshore.

Firstly, the Rudd Government's Green Paper indicates that $20 per tonne is the starting carbon price. Australia is years behind the EU and the $50 per tonne mark is unlikely to be reached for some years. Jensen makes no allowance for increased use of gas or an escalation in renewables (Rudd's 20% 2020 target seems to have escaped his notice). If we use the average power bill of $1020 per annum, we get a $163 rise at $20 a tonne for carbon. This means a $50 per tonne price adds $407.50 to your average bill. Assuming no renewable uptake, this means $252.50 is the price rise from stationary energy usage alone by business. All of which is great, except Jensen fails to include the compensation payable for price increases: remember, it's supposed to be the polluter pays, not the consumer. Also Jensen needs to answer, if these businesses are unviable because of associated emissions costs, is that because they cannot pass them onto the consumer? In which case, his $252.50 per household secondary emissions costing is surely higher.

Being a nuclear advocate, Jensen does not include the transport sector in his calculations, and the imposts created by high oil prices on freight costs. The biggest threat to business at present comes from oil prices and interest rates, and it will only be businesses that do not reform their practices early that will be vulnerable to the degree Jensen postulates. Given nuclear will require tremendous government support, surely that would feed into major stationary energy price rises of the very ilk Jensen criticises.

It is these true believers in business as usual (with nuclear variations) that Nelson's policy seeks to placate. Rather than offering certainty, the central demand of business, these dictates would add great uncertainty: whether any action would be taken at all under a Coalition Government and indeed the very viability of an export sector propped up by extractive carbon-intensive industry.

For the rest of us, we should learn some basic chemistry about carbon dioxide, keep a weather eye out to see if the birds are singing earlier this year and do what we can to make a difference, whether that be recycle, turn off the lights or push our politicians for action. Those are our best guides in sorting the climate fact from fiction.