SCIENTISTS have criticised the Family First Senator, Steve Fielding, for promoting "misinformation" that the sun could be to blame for recent global warming.
David Karoly, a climate change expert at the University of Melbourne, said Senator Fielding was also wrong to argue that debate about the influence of the sun on recent rises in global temperature had been stifled.
Independent teams of scientists had been assessing the evidence for many years, Professor Karoly said. "There has been a rigorous debate."
The conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause of climate change had been accepted by more than 70 of the world's science academies.
Senator Fielding had been "misinformed by a group of people who probably have a vested interest", Professor Karoly said. The contribution of the sun "has been addressed over and over again".
Paul Cally, professor of solar physics at Monash University, said a gradual increase in solar activity during the first half of last century might have contributed up to 30 per cent of global warming.
"But it was totally swamped by man-made effects late in the 20th century," Professor Cally said. "It is very clear if you look at the data."
He was concerned by misrepresentation of science because "it may cause us to do nothing when when we really need to be doing a lot".
The former chief of atmospheric research at the CSIRO, Graeme Pearman, said scepticism was healthy, but it was "silly" of Senator Fielding to think he had suddenly hit on an idea scientists had not thoroughly considered and dismissed.
The conclusion that global warming was not due to natural causes, like solar flares, was the result of "25 years of research", Dr Pearman said.
Senator Fielding also said he had been influenced by a recent book on climate change, Heaven And Earth, by a University of Adelaide geologist, Ian Plimer.
Professor Plimer's book has been heavily criticised by other Australian scientists for its selective use of evidence, most recently by the president of the Australian Academy of Science, Kurt Lambeck, who said it was sloppy.
"[It] is not a work of science," he said on ABC radio. "It is an opinion of an author who happens to be a scientist."
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