GREENPEACE co-founder Patrick Moore’s views on climate change - arguably the one of the most controversial and complex modern issues - are not popular or mainstream.
But he stands by his divergent opinions with an inflexible conviction, unafraid to publicly proclaim his supporting scientific theories.
Dr Moore’s visit to Australia in recent weeks has been described as a “climate change information tour” targeting thought leaders and those prepared to be pragmatic on the controversial topic.
Organised by the Galileo Movement, which helped bring Lord Christopher Monckton to Australia in 2010, Dr Moore held public forums in capital cities and meetings with concerned politicians.
Dr Moore said the Galileo Movement was an organisation of “like minds”, concerned about public policy who want to ensure “good science and intelligence is used in making decisions, as to how we move forward”.
“I think the reason I came to their attention was because earlier in the year in the spring I was asked to testify before the US Senate Environment Committee on the subject of climate change,” he said.
“My opening statement to the Committee was that there is no scientific proof the small amount of warming that has occurred in the last 150 years is due to human activity.
“My second sentence is always this; if there was scientific proof, they would write it down on a piece of paper and show it to us.
“But they just say things like ‘the science is settled, the evidence is in or the evidence is overwhelming’.
“But if you look at those statements, they’re actually information-free,” he said.
“There’s no content to them so to say the science is settled is an assertion but there’s no fact or evidence or proof of anything in a statement like that.
“I find it amazing they can gloss over the evidence and when you ask them for the actual evidence of the direct causal relationship, they’ll then provide you with the theoretical or hypothetical.”
A laptop of evidence
Dr Moore takes out his laptop - an Apple Mac - to produce a collection of websites and graphs detailing climate change data, to help support and assert his argument.
Ironically, as the conversation turns to genetically modified (GM) cropping technology, he praises the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for helping bring Golden Rice to the market. Golden Rice was developed to help address vitamin A deficiency, which causes the deaths of millions of children in developing countries.
He rebukes claims by anti-GM campaigners that 270,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since Monsanto entered the seed market, causing “genocide”.
Dr Moore highlights a graph showing cotton yields in India, since Bt cotton was introduced, have increased from 300 to 500 tonnes per hectare and total production has doubled.
He points to another contrasting graph that shows India has a lower suicide rate than the US.
“These guys are spreading this bullshit all over the world that thousands of farmers are dying from suicide from drinking Monsanto’s glyphosate, because they're going broke due to GM seeds; or at least that’s their story,” he said.
While happy to discuss GM crops – or Golden Rice in particular - Dr Moore redirects conversation to his key topic: climate change.
“There’s been a 65 million-year cooling trend on planet earth and everyone’s worried about it getting too hot – it’s just nuts,” he said.
'Slight bit of warming'
Asked what his message was for our federal politicians, for whom carbon trading has been central to recent political and economic debate, Dr Moore said: “There’s no scientific evidence that humans are the dominant cause of the slight bit of warming that has occurred in the last 150 years”.
“CO2 (carbon dioxide) should be classified as a nutrient, a food, a fertiliser – but governments would call it a pollutant – that’s the crux of the debate,” he said.
“There’s no proof that it’s causing any harm but there’s ample proof that it is the most important food for all life on earth.
“If there was no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this would be a dead planet - there would be no life on it - because it is the main food for all of life, including us.
“We have to eat plants, and the plants use the sun to turn carbon dioxide into sugar to give themselves energy and to put into their fruits and roots and then we eat the fruits and roots and seeds and get that energy into our bodies and use it to run ourselves.
“So we’re basically using the CO2 the plants took out of the air, to run our own lives,” he said.
“And it’s not just about having CO2 in the air – we need more than 150 parts per million CO2 in the air because below that threshold the plants die.”
Farming economic future threatened
Asked why Australian farmers, as key land managers, should care about what he’s saying, Dr Moore said: “Because the economic future of themselves and their children is being threatened by this movement and for no good reason”.
“If the cure is worse than the so called disease, it’s not a very good idea to take it,” he said.
“Here they are telling us we have to end our addiction to oil but what would happen if tomorrow morning, all the oil was cut off?
“There are a billion cars that have to start, never mind tractors and buses and planes and trains and trucks.
“How would you get the food to the store if we stopped using oil?
“It’s just a fact that if we didn’t have oil at this point in our history, a lot of people would die,” he said.
“They’re talking about the impact of global warming will be catastrophic, so we have to prevent the catastrophe by what, making a worse catastrophe?
“They’re saying nothing short of the downfall of western civilisation and capitalism will satisfy us - that’s the only way to solve this problem.”
Dr Moore said all anti-carbon legislation should be scrapped because “carbon dioxide is good”.
“They call it carbon pollution but it’s not carbon – it is carbon dioxide,” he said.
“That’d be like saying oxygen is water pollution – H2O has oxygen but it’s not water.”