Australian science has gone overboard for ‘climate action’

A potted Australian net-zero history begins the imperial policy-heyday of "Liberal" Party grandees Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull.

Lucy refashions Sydney, for endless growth

Kitted in hard-hat, high-vis, and safety-specs, central-planner Lucy descended 2017 from her nine-figure Point Piper eyrie. Giving the hoi polloi glad tidings foreshadowed the previous year.

Via her Greater Sydney Commission plaything, the overstretched metropolis of five million could "grow properly" to "three Sydneys" by 2056. At least eight million contented burghers would enjoy seamless thirty-minute commutes.

"Three cities" morphed to six , only this year they vanished entirely, from NSW planning portfolio. The Committee for Sydney growth-lobby wept for Lucy's "bold long-term vision".

Committee needn't cry. NSW retains its "vision" for 2050 net-zero. "Boldly" cramping three million more (largely imported) aspirants into Sydney's high-rises and far-flung fields.

Malcolm redraws Australia, for "climate action"

When not sinking National Broadcast Network or rebirthing Snowy Mountains Scheme, Point Piper's other half had global fish to fry.

Early 2016, as prime minister, he had his environment minister sign Paris Agreement, coming into force late 2016. Pre-committing us to UN "climate action for net zero".

This was "contested" at our 2016 election, right? Not quite.

Sure, "climate action" was an issue. For 2030, you could have the 26-28% "cut" in emissions from Coalition, Labor's 45%, or an enthralling 63-82% from Greens. The underlying "net zero" folly was never put to voters.

It still isn't. Today's PM adlibs "netting" emissions from the 40-year Woodside-gas extension to "zero" as if for real. Rather than ruing this $200 billion resource-giveaway, social-justice warriors wail about a Pacific "carbon bomb". Comforted however, by Albanese's symbolic "climate visa" for Tuvaluans.

The climate-cowed Ley opposition has a special working-group re-examining net-zero. The PM's top climate-change (CCA) "adviser" lectures them, don't play "politics" or deny the "science". It's not net-zero that's science - it's rising CO2 levels.

To give Malcolm his due, he really did ask voters about same-sex marriage. Which they embraced, with the same vigour that would later reject Albanese's Voice.

This new study warns, net-zero isn't credible

Few "stakeholders" are more "committed" to net-zero than Australian academics and scientists. Riffing on Hollywood science-fiction, CSIRO vows to science the "shit" out of it.

What of non-climate-scientists, laid low by climate-envy? They could retool, as did celebrities Ross Garnaut, Tim Flannery, and Andrew Forrest. Nobody notices the difference, in the global north. Elite New York Times will chat you up.

In 2025, net-zero's looking like a travesty of world-science, on a par with the supremacists' crash-tackling of Darwinian evolution-theory. That didn't turn out great.

Has science not had second thoughts? Seriously, you try trawling the literature, for sceptical research.

What you tend to find instead, say here and here, are climate-scientists warning of burning fossil-fuels today, only to "pay" tomorrow. Like, net-zero's not working, so net-zero harder.

They can see the forever graphs – population rising, GDP and consumption rising, CO2 rising, temperatures rising. A layperson might think, maybe climate-policy doesn't quite cut it?

"Committed" scientists have different logic-circuits. Never mind the strife-torn world, their climate-urgency is greater than ever, because it's "five minutes to midnight".

Of all ways to "rescue" the environment, climate-action looks the most elitist and least promising. To avoid "racism" towards the global-south, it plays down obvious vectors of societal and environmental strife. Little tiny things like massive overpopulation, land-clearing, logging, habitat destruction, water-insecurity, and species-extinctions.

Economists and a geographer wrote this June 2025 France-UK study. In effect, they estimate you'd need a forest the size of North (and Central) America, to carbon "offset" the reserves currently held by corporate Oil & Gas. This would be insanely expensive.

At some risk of research-overkill, this study shows yet again, climate-policy can never deliver convenient environmental-fixes, under Earth's (Australia's) increasing overpopulation load.

Yet techno-optimists imagine, sweeping cuts to actual-emissions A, plus steep acceleration of carbon-captures B. This latter would derive from planting greenery to the max, shakier forms of land-sea sequestration, plus unknown technologies C. To be discovered by next week, perhaps.

These utopians don't care that earth's carbon-cycle can scarcely absorb half of A, nor that B is elusive and impermanent. Their sentimental story – now Australian "law" - is that A minus B will "net" to zero. Whenever that happens, planet-earth will kindly respond with lower high-temperatures D, not higher high-temperatures E. Good luck with that.

Australian academia and science are climate-partisans

Republican US has repudiated net-zero and scourged illegal immigration. Labour Britain is also pushing back against net-zero and open-borders. "Progressive" Labor Australia is going the other way.

Even though, broadacre carbon "offsetting" or "farming" has a farcical Australian history. Defying the evidence, governments insist it's the real emissions-reduction deal. Few Australian scientists would dare retest those French findings.

Tame, government-driven, climate-change research is Australia's research flavour of the decade. Relegating useful R&D that might diversify our narrow-gauge economy, highly dependent on quantitative-peopling plus iron-and-hydrocarbon exports.

However, there is one recent WA-European study, warning Australia's "boundless" soils will be a net CO2 emitter not storer.

Like the French report, this WA research has few parallels. By its nature, it undermines Garnaut's fanciful claims for Australia's "immense" carbon-sink. Implies guru Ross, we might be able to sequester not just once, but twice, our entire national emissions. Sky's the limit.

With rare exceptions, Australian "science" has become a partisan for the Labor government's contradictory pairing of open-borders and net-zero.

As Exhibit A, consider Australian Academy of Science. Up until the 1990s, assisted by Flannery, this influential NGO worked with government on the driest continent's limited carrying capacity.

Now, like government, they've pivoted to UN north-south rhetoric. Why worry about water or other resources, when earth's carrying capacity could be anything from "two billion" to a "trillion"? Always remembering, what peace-loving "Ghandi" [sic] once said.

For Exhibit B, stroll across to Australian National University (ANU), the only one of our 40 universities that's not state or private.

They're in the wars, over their cannibalistic budgeting and staffing. Caring Senator Pocock is onto it. Federal Education Minister will sort them - as if.

Their previous Nobel-laureate vice-chancellor became a Home Affairs pinup for mass migration. Recklessly overcommitting ANU to the student-migration boondoggle and carpeting his campus with student high-rise.

Faking "fundamental" knowledge, ANU's Migration Hub is equally cosy with Home Affairs. When not bidding for a migration-research "institute", they're claiming absurd immigration "shortfalls" or attacking sensible net-migration measures.

Naturally, this ANU is a major propagandist for climate-policy net-zero, not omitting the 11.55pm trope. "Experts" at their Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions lobby for 2035 net-zero, 2050 lacking sufficient virtue.

Including ICEDS, CCA, and CSIRO, Labor government maintains a footy-team of climate-energy acronyms. On the contestable proposition, that blanket-renewables must be our least-cost solution in an inevitably net-zero world.

Out on an ideological limb, Labor's Treasury imagines said "zero" transforming the lucky country into a "post" carbon, energy and economic "superpower". Highly unlikely. Treasury neoliberalism having purged our old industrial base, we don't get a new one on a platter.

Where Australian science ought to be

Here's a thing about science. It's meant to be over-there and curiously dispassionate, tirelessly proving/disproving all manner of testable (or null) hypotheses. Not up close and personal, pressing its thumb on national (and international) applause-meters.

How much would you trust Australian "science" generated by Treasury doctrine and its team of climate-acronyms? By the Sydney UNSW climate-unit, or other state universities?

Whatever our utopian law dictates, anthropogenic emissions "netting" to zero was and is highly contestable, inviting academic sleuthing. Even more so, the elite groupthink that said "zero" can restore our ever struggling environment and "transform" our narrow economy.

For the non-elite, however, net-zero heralds austerity not comfort. But "inconvenient" Australian research is rare – and gets ignored. Conservative stakeholders IPA and CIS wave cautionary flags. Our other resources-titan, Gina Rinehart, dubs net-zero a magic pudding .

With only isolated media and political support, these parties get little traction, against the national (that is, nationalistic) tide of "climate science". You wouldn't be that welcome at PM's upcoming productivity love-in if querying his net-zero open-borders catechisms.