For years I have clung to the academic excuse that climate change is ‘not my field’. But politics is my field, and the climate change slow burn is far less about ‘the science’ and more about politics. This week in the House of Reps, Nationals MP Llew O’Brien called ‘bulls**t’ on Labor’s climate con.

Bowen responded on Facebook:

‘Swearing in Parliament won’t change the science.

‘Climate change is real. It is here. And it is making natural disasters more severe and more frequent.’

The science? I’ve heard this referred to as ‘the scientific consensus’. Is it a consensus, or is it a conclusion developed through the rigorous application of the scientific method?

One of the key problems is that ‘the science’ and politics work hand in glove.

When Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was attacked by ‘100 authors against Einstein’, he famously quipped, ‘If I were wrong, then one would have been enough.’ Imagine if we were forced to listen to the 100 and not the most famous of smart people?

It’s funny what you think about when you drive through Australia’s breadbasket at all hours of the morning.

Past the letterboxes huddling together for protection from the extreme weather. The paddock bashers waiting patiently for the school bus to return. The hay bales marking the acres like tombstones to the fallen grass. The wildlife turning it on as if you’re driving through a zoo at carnivore feeding time.

It gives one time to think without the distractions of social media and the endless media cycle.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is ‘the windscreen phenomenon’. Many of us can recall when the road-trip windscreen was covered in squished bugs. A few years back, this didn’t seem to be happening so much. It was sold as proof of climate change.

Never mind the drought. My windscreens, helmet visor, and motorbike gear are plastered with squished bugs again. Does that mean that climate change is over?

I recall some 20 years ago the ACT government put on a free documentary at Manuka Oval, the place where the Prime Minister’s XI typically plays against the touring team. It was Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

A UK High Court ruling found that some aspects of the documentary were ‘alarmist’ and alleged it had exaggerated or misrepresented several claims, including the extent of sea-level rise, already-evacuated Pacific atolls, CO₂ as the direct driver of past temperature changes, and the sole role of warming in Kilimanjaro’s snow loss, polar bear drownings, and Lake Chad’s drying.

The Court required the documentary to include ‘corrective guidance notes’.

It is my view that the documentary involved political advocacy which included conflated scientific observations with worst-case framing. It is also my opinion the documentary simplified causality and adopted short timelines to drive a sense of political urgency.

The screening of Al Gore’s production occurred in the early years of the ACT Labor government which went on to govern with the support of the ACT Greens from 2008.

I remember the event being promoted within academia. I was in the early part of my PhD and career as an academic at the time. Who knew how thoroughly climate change would be adopted as settled fact?

I’ve since heard Canberra academics argue that people in the Southern Tablelands support wind farms, and that because the ACT government outsources its virtue signalling to NSW wind and solar farms, electricity prices are cheaper in the ACT. (I think these people live in a different realm with our $275 saving promise.)

For decades, Australia has been slipping into the slow climate narrative that has cost us in terms of access to reliable and affordable energy. Minister Bowen, as the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, has put this political advocacy into overdrive with taxpayers’ money.

If the science is ‘settled’, then how so?

The peer-review process is no longer an exercise in advancing human knowledge. It is, in my opinion, a process where the consensus acts as the Great Gatekeeper of Knowledge You’re Allowed to Believe. It’s nuts.

I wrote some time ago an article for the controversies section of an Australian journal on the need to add a road-user charge to EVs. Given those who cannot afford to buy an EV pay a quasi-road use charge through the fuel excise, it beggars belief that those who can afford to buy an EV get to use them without contributing to the declining fuel excise revenue.

Not only that, but when Victoria attempted to implement a road-use charge for EVs, it was taken to the High Court where the charge overturned. That sent us back decades in the efficacy of our transport policy. Now our ‘lawmakers’ are too scared to touch it as the fuel excise dwindles in terms of revenue while at the same time driving up the cost of living. (Where’s our ‘Energy’ Minister in all of this?)

But back to my point. My ‘peer’ reviewers rejected my 2,500-word ‘controversies’ article by each writing 5,000-word responses to tell me why I was ‘wrong’. They treated a policy controversy as a scientific one and answered it with volume rather than engagement.

So many academics report that if their ‘research’ is not on trend, then it simply won’t be published. The ranking of research journals has also meant that Australian journals are rarely ‘A+’, which means that you can’t be promoted unless you publish work that is more relevant to an international audience.

You can’t make this stuff up. To get Australian taxpayers’ money for research, you need to be published in the best international journals that don’t give a toss about Australia. This means our taxpayer-funded researchers are sometimes conducting research that benefits everyone else except those who paid for it. Go figure.

So, when Chris Bowen tells me it’s ‘the science’, I call bulls**t.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you’d like to support his writing, please shout him a drink over at Donorbox.