[Australian Senator Stephen] Fielding put to the [Australian climate change] minister three questions:

1. How, since temperatures have been dropping, can CO2 be blamed for them rising?
   
   
2. What, if CO2 was the cause of recent warming, was the cause of temperatures rising higher in the past?
   
   
3. Why, since the official computer models have been proved wrong, should we rely on them for future projections?

The written answers produced by the minister's own scientific advisers proved so woolly and full of elementary errors that Fielding's team have now published a 50-page, fully-referenced "Due Diligence'' paper tearing them apart. In light of the inadequacy of the Government's reply, the Senator has announced that he will be voting against the bill.

The wider significance of this episode is that it is the first time a Western government has allowed itself to be drawn into debating the science behind the global warming scare with expert scientists representing the "counter consensus" - and the "consensus" lost hands down.

We still have a long way to go before that Copenhagen treaty is agreed in December, and with China, India and 128 other countries still demanding trillions of dollars as the price of their co-operation, the prospect of anything but a hopelessly fudged agreement looks slim. But even a compromise could inflict devastating damage on our own economic future - all for a theory now shot so full of holes that its supporters are having to suppress free speech to defend it.

- Climate Depot