Claims by the Prime Minister's chief business adviser about climate change have been rejected by the head of the Bureau of Meteorology as "incorrect", irrelevant and "old red herrings".
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Earlier this month, Maurice Newman, the chairman of the Prime Minister's business advisory council, came under fire after he wrote in The Australian that scientific modelling showing the link between humans and climate change was wrong and the real agenda was a "new world order" led by the United Nations.
In a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, Greens climate spokeswoman Larissa Waters read through the opinion piece, paragraph by paragraph, asking the bureau's director of meteorology and chief executive Rob Vertessy to respond to Mr Newman's claims.
"There are multiple statements which assert facts about climate science which I'm intrigued on the bureau's view about," Senator Waters said.
"And given the invitation to do so, I shall go through them all."
Senator Waters began with Mr Newman's assertion that "95 per cent of the climate models we are told prove the link between human CO2 emissions and catastrophic global warming have been found…to be in error."
"That is incorrect," Dr Vertessy said.
Dr Vertessy responded with a single word – "rejected" – to another claim in Mr Newman's May 8 piece that "weather bureaus appear to have 'homogenised' data to suit narratives".
He also said Mr Newman's reference to record breaking cold weather in the northern hemisphere was "an old red herring that suggests that just because you're getting cold weather in the northern hemisphere it somehow discredits the fact that there is global warming occurring".
"The theory of global warming does not hold that there will be no cold weather anywhere," Dr Vertessy said.
"And in fact there's evidence to suggest that global warming will actually intensify the onset of some cold weather."
Senator Waters was prevented from asking Dr Vertessy to respond to Mr Newman's claim that global warming was a "hook" being used by the UN to impose a new centralised political order.
"If you want to ask him about the climate science that's fine but not about the UN," Liberal senator Simon Birmingham said.
"Ask DFAT if they think there's a conspiracy operating in the UN or not."
Senator Birmingham also said the bureau should not be required to respond to a "rhetorical statement" when Senator Waters asked Dr Vertessy if climate science supported statements by Prime Minister Tony Abbott that "coal is good for humanity".
"What I can say is the primary cause of global warming is the emission of CO2 and the primary reason CO2 emissions are increasing is from the burning of fossil fuels," Dr Vertessy said. "Coal is a fossil fuel."
Mr Newman's comments were described by the UN's top climate official Christiana Figueres last month as joke.
"I really don't take it very seriously because it doesn't respond to the reality or to facts," she said.
