Australia's One Nation under climate science denial - The Guardian

Link to video: Stephanie Banister: 'I don't oppose Islam as a country'

Oh, how the world laughed at Stephanie Banister – the extreme right wing Australian election candidate who told a TV interviewer that Islam was a country.

Wasn't it just side-splitting to hear the 27-year-old One Nation hopeful get her Qu-ran's mixed up with her harams?

What fun to hear her re-write the Jewish faithful as a congregation of Jesus-followers?  You could have knocked me down with a kippah.

The Queenslander claimed she was a victim of selective editing from the television network Channel Seven, which aired the interview. She's since pulled out of the election race.

But virtually every major news outlet in the developed world covered Banister's gaffs.

After twisting its satirical knife every which way, US television political comedy The Daily Show suggested Banister had set "a new low watermark for electoral ignorance".

But after reading her party's stance on climate change, I beg to differ.

One Nation appears to have gone shopping to the Climate Science Denial Mart and come back with the whole deli counter of debunked talking points.

"What's really behind all the global warming hoopla," One Nation's website asks.

"Power.  It's the same old Marxist/Communist/Fascist collectivist shtick, dressed up in new clothes. Global warming is all about a power grab by a wealthy elite and their collectivist sycophants — using the (United Nations) as a cover and tool."

Elsewhere, One Nation accuses the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO of engaging in the corruption of science.

Much of the material is near identical to that offered by the climate science denial organisation the Galileo Movement, whose patron – Sydney shock-jock Alan Jones – says human-caused climate change is a hoax and the science is "witchcraft".

One Nation New South Wales Senate candidate Pauline Hanson even cites the Galileo Movement's project leader Malcolm Roberts, asking readers to check out a document which Sydney Morning Herald environment editor Ben Cubby has described as a "pile of horse shit".

Now, while you probably wouldn't expect the Christian Democrats to jumble its religious lexicon, the party is as equally clueless as One Nation about the current state of climate science.

According to the Christian Democrats, there are "equally reputable scientists" who say that climate change "is not, and never was driven by CO2 levels".

This ignores a recent study, co-authored by fellow The Guardian environment blogger Dana Nuccitelli, about 97 per cent of scientific studies on climate change in the last 20 years all agree that global warming is caused by humans. It also ignores all the major science academies in the developed world.

The CDP says it is "agnostic" about human caused climate change, which is a bit like saying you're an agnostic about the laws of physics.

Definitely not an agnostic, but rather an all-out worshipper of anti-science, is the Christian fundamentalist Rise Up Australia Party, led by a Melbourne Pastor who thinks humans have only been on earth for 6,000 years. Rise Up Australia also drafted in UK Independence Party figure Lord Christopher Monckton earlier for a pre-election push.

Key minor parties in Queensland – Katter's Australia Party and Palmer United Party – have also chosen to put debunked fringe ideas above sound science.

Katter's Australia Party says: "The scientific case is not made out and nor is there empirical evidence connecting carbon emissions to global warming - the argument is simply not sustainable."

The Palmer United Party doesn't say anything about climate change aside from saying it wants a national commission to investigate the "carbon issue" but its leader, billionaire miner Clive Palmer, is a climate science sceptic.

Palmer tried to play-down the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by telling an ABC television audience that "97 per cent of carbon dioxide is from natural sources" – as if this was somehow relevant.

One Nation also does this sweet little climate denial two-step that tries to suggest that carbon dioxide is both inconsequential but also powerful enough to be the life force of the planet.

Pauline Hanson writes: "Carbon dioxide is Nature's invisible, tasteless, odourless trace gas essential to all life on Earth."

Perhaps she's been reading the same talking points as Opposition leader Tony Abbott, who earlier this year dog whistled to the climate denial crowd when he described emissions trading as "a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one."

Abbott has said in the past that he thinks climate science is "crap" but has also said he thinks it does contribute to climate change.

But Abbott's Liberal Party is riddled with representatives scornful of the risks of burning billions of tonnes of fossil fuels annually to load the atmosphere with that all-powerful (but also trace gas) carbon dioxide.

In Queensland, the state party's rank and file members voted last year in favour of a motion to ban the teaching of climate science in schools.

The motion was proposed by a party member who claims to have debunked the greenhouse theory using just two fish boxes and a roll of cling film in an experiment he cooked up in his kitchen.

Maybe it's time to quote some wise words from that former One Nation candidate and religious philosopher Stephanie Banister.

"Everyone in the world has a lot to learn about day to day stuff. Everything in life is just about learning."

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Russian scientists may have found new life under Antarctic ice

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian scientists believe they have discovered new life forms sealed off for millions of years in a subglacial lake deep under the Antarctic ice, the RIA news agency reported on Thursday.

After more than a decade of stop-and-go drilling, Russia pierced through Antarctica's frozen crust last year and took back samples of water from a vast lake that has lain untouched for at least 14 million years.

Scientists say the icy darkness of Lake Vostok, under some 3,700 metres of ice, may provide a glimpse of the planet before the Ice Age and clues to life on other planets.

"After excluding all known contaminants, bacterial DNA was found that does not match any known species in world databases," Sergei Bulat of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute told RIA.

"If it (the bacteria) had been found on Mars, then without a doubt we would have said there is life on Mars - but this is DNA from Earth," he said. "We are calling this life form unidentified or unclassified."

Scientists from the United States and Britain are close on Moscow's heels to probe what life may exist in one of the most extreme environments on Earth.

This year, a U.S. expedition said they had seen living cells under a microscope in field samples taken from the shallower subglacial Lake Whillans, but more study is needed to determine what kinds of bacteria they are and how they live.

A British effort to reach a third body, Lake Ellsworth, was called off in December because of problems drilling.

What life is found in the icy depths may provide the best answer yet to whether life can exist in the extreme conditions on Mars or Jupiter's moon Europa.

The Russian discovery came from analysing water that froze onto the end of the drill bit used to bore through to Vostok - the largest of a network of hundreds of lakes under the ice cap that acts like a blanket trapping the Earth's geothermal heat.

Bulat and other members of Russia's Antarctic mission could not be reached for comment to Reuters on Thursday.

But Bulat told RIA that scientists are waiting for more samples from the lake to confirm their discovery.

Because of the technology used to keep from polluting the pristine lake, Russia will only obtain clean water samples - uncontaminated by drilling fluid - for analysis later this year.

To answer concerns kerosene and anti-freeze from the borehole would seep into the lake, Russian engineers withdrew the drill to allow the water to percolate up into the borehole and freeze there, only returning this year to collect it.

But Bulat said the unknown microbes were found after separating out species of bacteria that are known to exist in the drilling fluid.

"When we tried to identify the DNA, it did not coincide with any of known species. It's degree of similarity was less than 86 percent," Bulat told RIA.

"That is practically zero when working with DNA. A level of 90 percent tells us the organism is unknown."

Frozen samples from deeper in the borehole collected during this year's Antarctic summer season in February are now being carried back by boat and are due in St Petersburg in May.

"If we again identify the same group of organism in that pure sample of water, then we can confidently say we have found new life on Earth," Bulat said.

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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