Climate change skeptic Dick Waburton has been at pains to say that his views on climate science have not influenced the outcome of the RET Review panel he headed.
But he was only too happy to conflate the two issues in a television interview with far right commentator, climate denier and renewable energy hater Andrew Bolt on Sunday.
Bolt wanted to know why Australians were being “forced” to use more green power, which was costing money and not lowering global temperatures.
“Either I am mad or we are looking at one of the greatest frauds of our lifetime,” Bolt said, much to the amusement of Warburton.
A smiling Warburton agreed that the RET made only a “small reduction to emissions”, and “not a lot of difference in global warming at all.”
He described the RET – and the prospect of injecting more electricity into an oversupplied market – as a “market distortion that we do not need.”
He then went on to respond to Bolt’s question about the rise in global temperatures:
Warburton: “As I read the facts coming through, temperatures have not risen since 1998, it’s just been just a flat area, even though carbon emissions have gone up, the temperatures have not. Which is quite against what the modeling has said.”
Bolt: “So if temperatures have not risen much, why have we spent $9 billion on a scheme that makes zero difference? What the hell are we doing this for?”
Warburton: “Well, the suspicion was that the temperatures would rise, but they haven’t done so – the same was the effect that electricity demand would rise, but hasn’t done so. So, the models going back to 2010, or earlier on the temperature thing, were wrong. What we are attempting to do is to bring it back into proper perspective again.”
Bolt: “Shouldn’t your report say, ‘this is crazy, end it now’?”
Warburton: “Well, I don’t say it is crazy, in the report, I keep words down to a more basic level. We do say it is a time for a change. Why should we spend this amount of money to pump more electricity into an oversupplied market? We do say it should be ended now.”
Bolt: “If the government takes your recommendation on board, with luck we will see no more wind farms despoiling the countryside.”
Warburton: “If they take the first option, that is correct.”
Later, Bolt asked Warburton whether – having been described as a climate science denier and a former oil industry executive (he is a former chairman of Caltex) – he had a vested interest?
Warburton: “I have no vested interests at all in this. I just like to study the facts. And the facts at this stage are speaking for themselves.”
