Don’t Worry Everyone, Pauline Hanson Reckons Climate Change Is Not A Problem Because Dinosaurs
"There was once an ice age," Hanson said as part of her bizarre defence of the Adani coal mine. "There was once a flood throughout Australia here. Water. It was all through Central Australia."
Pauline Hanson is not a good person to ask about science.
She doesn’t have a scientific background; she has held no leading position at any university in the world; and her party, One Nation, have a history of flaunting empirical fact.
Yet, because the 24-hour media cycle demands its sacrificial offering of hot takes and soundbites, Pauline Hanson being asked about science is once more what we have received.
During a televised presser this morning, Hanson was asked about her support of Adani, the mining company that has been approved for a massive, environmentally-devastating project in Australia.
When pushed on the devastating impacts of climate change — both projected and actual — Hanson sang her same old tune.
“What happened to the dinosaurs, how did they die? Humans didn’t create it.” Pauline Hanson has put her support behind the controversial Adani coal mine ahead of protests this week, denying the effects of climate change. #9Today pic.twitter.com/PZMBjcE3xy
— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) April 22, 2019
“There’s no scientific fact to all this,” Hanson said, posturing (incorrectly) that there are no scientific, peer-reviewed papers that link the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef to human-induced climate change.
But when it was pointed out that many of the farmers that Hanson likes to claim to speak on the behalf of support the need to do something to combat the worst effects of climate change, the politician produced this stunningly incomprehensible soundbite, which deserves to be read in full:
“This has been a fact of life, right from the time that Earth was here. We’ve been going through climate change as an Earth. There was once an ice age. There was once a flood throughout Australia here. Water. It was all through Central Australia.
“We didn’t have the industrialists here in this country at that time. There has been changes. What happened to the dinosaurs? How did they die off? Humans didn’t create it.”
This is not a new argument, of course, and climate change deniers will presumably continue to use it as the worst effects of global warming continue to ramp up. But just because it’s common, doesn’t make it any less baffling. No, Pauline, human-induced climate change didn’t kill the dinosaurs. Meteor-induced climate change did. What does that change, exactly?