Universe-wide climate change?

As others in the blog world have picked up: four of Australia’s coalition MP’s raised doubts about the consensus that humans are causing climates change. Whilst this in itself is nothing new, the interesting aspect is their justification:

The four backbenchers have questioned the link between human activity and global warming, saying Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Neptune are also warming up.

Nuclear physicist and West Australian MP Denis Jensen, former ministers and NSW backbenchers Jackie Kelly and Danna Vale, and Northern Territory MP Dave Tollner say the hypothesis of “anthropogenic" or human created global warming was based on theoretical models and unproven economic assumptions. (The Australian)

I have to say, using Astronomy to cloud the issue is a new one to me.

"Climate change is a natural phenomenon that has always been with us and always will be," they said in a document challenging the findings of a cross-party parliamentary report looking at carbon capture options for Australia.

"It is the natural property of planets with fluid envelopes to have variability in climate. Thus, at any given time, we may expect about half the planets to be warming. This has nothing to do with human activities," the four said. (Reuters Article)

Novel, fascinating but unsupported by science. And what these four backbenchers don’t explain to us is why our world hasn’t been warming at the current rate for millions of years (and why it is now) or why all the hundreds of other pieces of evidence presented in the 4th assessment report from the IPCC are wrong. Granted, that may take some time.

I wonder what it must be like to have political representation from someone with this level of insight? I must say, you’d have to be a bit worried!