This open letter is meant to reassure you and ask you to – in turn – reassure Australia’s children that they need not live in fear of man-made global warming.

I write in response to two things.

First, what appears to be your obsession (verging on hysteria) with ‘Climate Change’ – the phrase you have repeated rather too often in your election campaign appearances. It is the phrase that encapsulates all the fears about burning fossil fuels that were deliberately unleashed over 30 years ago when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established specifically to propagate the notion that burning coal etc would fry the earth. It was a politically driven and predetermined end result that even the smartest people have fallen for.

Secondly, the heartbreaking images of children weeping in fear of a planet about to catch fire.

I don’t hold you personally responsible for the latter, but Climate Change activists (like John Kerry of Washington) are collectively responsible for the reprehensible and relentless fear campaign that has so terrified some children that they weep openly at the disaster fantasy painted for them. Show them an image of a bushfire and blame it on ‘Climate Change’; show them an image of a wild storm and blame it on ‘Climate Change’. It is those panic-stricken children that concern me most.

I realise that you first have to understand that you are badly misinformed before you can convince the children that they can relax, smile, and look forward to a normal life in the pursuit of happiness. (Their teachers won’t…)

So as briefly as possible, here are some of the main facts that you could take into consideration and then convey to the children of Australia, all scientifically factual:

• The amount of carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere is 0.04 per cent.
• The amount of that in man-made emissions is 3 per cent (of 0.04 per cent).
• The percentage of that 3 per cent coming from Australian emissions is 1.3 per cent.
• It has not been shown that the man-made emissions of that (3 per cent of 0.04 per cent) drive warming, while the rest, 97 per cent, do not.
• The sun (especially its spots) plays a major role in our climate.

‘Not sure what the motive is for the attribution of extreme events, other than to build political will for Climate Change policies,’ said respected climate scientist, Judith Curry. ‘The point,’ she continues, ‘is that extreme events don’t have all that much to do with warming per se, they have to do with atmospheric circulation patterns which are dominated on decadal time scales.’

‘Why didn’t humans, polar bears, emperor penguins, and other poster animals of the green activists die in the previous warmings when the temperature was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than now?’ asked (rhetorically) acclaimed Australian geologist and author, Professor Ian Plimer.

In his latest book, Green Murder, he warns that, ‘We may be the first civilisation destroyed not by the power of our enemies, but by the ideology and ignorance of our teachers, and the nonsense that they are teaching our children. Young people no longer want to hear the truth, engage in debate, or read because they don’t want their cherished illusions destroyed.’

He challenges the ‘cherished illusions’ of the mainstream’s ruling orthodoxy.

‘Some 500 years ago, the mainstream establishment said the sun rotated around the earth. 150 years ago, the mainstream scientific bodies said that manned flight was impossible, 100 years ago, the mainstream scientific opinion was that flight across the great oceans was impossible, 90 years ago, the mainstream opinion was that space flight was impossible and 80 years ago the mainstream opinion was that the continents did not move. In all cases, the mainstream was wrong.’

It may not be politically convenient to tell children that – contrary to the ruling orthodoxy – there is no consensus about the drivers of Climate Change.

But you, as a leader, Mr Albenese, could refer to another scientific treatise on this subject such as Why scientists disagree about global warming by Craig Idso, Robert M. Carter (1942-2016), S. Fred Singer, in a paper published by the Heartland Institute:

‘The most important fact about climate science, often overlooked, is that scientists disagree about the environmental impacts of the combustion of fossil fuels on the global climate. There is no survey or study showing ‘consensus’ on the most important scientific issues, despite frequent claims by advocates to the contrary.

‘Scientists disagree about the causes and consequences of climate for several reasons. Climate is an interdisciplinary subject requiring insights from many fields. Very few scholars have mastery of more than one or two of these disciplines. Fundamental uncertainties arise from insufficient observational evidence, disagreements over how to interpret data, and how to set the parameters of models. The IPCC, set up with the specific goal of convincing the world’s policymakers that man-made CO2 is dangerous for the global climate, is not a credible source. It is an agenda-driven, political rather than scientific body, and some allege it is corrupt. Finally, climate scientists, like all humans, can be biased. Origins of bias include careerism, grant-seeking, political views, and confirmation bias.

‘Probably the only “consensus” among climate scientists is that human activities can have an effect on local climate and that the sum of such local effects could hypothetically rise to the level of an observable global signal. The key questions to be answered, however, are whether the human global signal is large enough to be measured and if it is, does it represent, or is it likely to become, a dangerous change outside the range of natural variability? On these questions, an energetic scientific debate is taking place on the pages of peer-reviewed science journals.’

Please tell the children about these reassuring facts, Mr Albenese, quoting the key conclusion of the Idso et al paper:

‘…any human global climate impact is within the background variability of the natural climate system and is not dangerous.’

NB In case you don’t read this when published, I’ve sent a copy to your parliamentary office:  A.Albanese.MP@aph.gov.au