The letter says: «We as Aussie farmers call on the Liberal Party conference to reject the motion put by the regional and rural committee of the Liberal Party questioning the basis of climate science, and instead call for post-2020 targets to cut carbon pollution that are in line with scientists’ recommendations of at least 40 per cent by 2025, and at least 60 per cent by 2030 over 2000 pollution levels.»
Producers of beef cattle, dairy, grain, lambs and vegetables signed the open letter to the conference in Melbourne, urging the Federal Government to take a strong policy of emission cut to climate change talks in Paris this year.
«We’re concerned that the WA rural Liberals have put a motion calling for a re-examination of all the evidence, while the important work of actually dealing with climate change might get lost,» said Marian McDonald, a dairy farmer from Gippsland in eastern Victoria.
Producers of beef cattle, dairy, grain, lambs and vegetables have signed the open letter to the Liberal Party conference in Melbourne, urging the Federal Government to take a strong policy of emission cut to climate change talks in Paris this year.
The farmers argued they were on the front line of climate change, and global warming above two degrees needed to be avoided.
«We need the Liberal Party and Greg Hunt in particular to know that there are plenty of farmers out there who support him going to Paris and pushing for tougher cuts,» said Ms McDonald.
«There’s no doubt we’re going to see drier winters, longer warmer summers and shorter springs.
«We’ve changed everything we do, even when we calve.
«In my father’s time, we calved in mid-July to avoid wet winters, and now during my time, wet winters are increasingly rare, and the norm is dry warm springs and ferocious summers.»
The McDonalds keep their cows cool with sprinklers, but she said it would get harder to stay profitable.
«Researchers have shown we’ve been losing a tonne of dry matter a hectare,» Ms McDonald said.
«Here that’s 200 tonnes of dry matter, and that costs around $300 each. So do the maths, that is a huge impost.»
But Dennis Jensen, a physicist and Western Australian Liberal backbencher, questioned their letter’s claim that extreme weather was worsening with climate change.
«Calling on us not to question climate science, while putting in errors, shows there is a need for better understanding of where climate science is at,» he said.
«There are significant areas where quite frankly the knowledge is nowhere near what the population thinks it is.»
The letter says that in Australia the number of hot days have doubled in the last 50 years, and heatwaves are more intense.
But Dr Jensen questions the link with CO2 levels.
«In CO2, for the last 15 years, the CO2 concentrations have been rising more quickly than earlier models projected, so we should have seen a more rapid rise, but the rise has been significantly less,» he said.
Cattle producer Sid Plant at Toowoomba, who has given hundreds of talks to farmers about climate science, debunks the theory that the climate might be coolling.
«It’s largely untrue,» he said.
«It’s more manipulating data sets to give you that idea.
«Generally speaking, the oceans have been absorbing a lot of the CO2 and soaking it up, and the ice around the planet and the tundra in Siberia have been warming and soaking up that heat.
«When all that ice is melted, it will become obvious how much we’ve been warming.
«We’ve been having more extreme rain events, climate events, and the simple science of convection, you’re going to have increases in falls of rain, and some places will have air settling, getting drier.»
Dr Jensen rejected the notion of «precautionary principle» in tackling climate change, when, he said, the world faced more serious threats.
«Well, if you take a precautionary principle and apply it to everything, should we be taking significant amounts of money and investing against an asteroid strike, where the potential consequences are catastrophic?» he asked.
Ms McDonald said the letter supported the Environment Minister taking a strong position to global talks.
«I hope that our assurances and support for Greg Hunt means he’s not stalled into doing yet another critique of the science, which is quite well established,» she said.
Source: ABC
