Enlarge / A general view of the reopening of Australian Parliament on April 18, 2016.

There is, sadly, no shortage of politicians who reject the conclusions of climate science, and that rejection frequently relies on amateurish and conspiratorial “debunkings” of actual science. So many have gone this route that it takes a lot to stand out from that crowd, but Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts managed it last weekend.

Roberts joined the Senate this year, representing Queensland as a member of the small, far-right populist One Nation Party. He spent his career in the coal industry before retiring in 2006 to focus on opposing climate science and climate policy full time.

Senator Malcolm Roberts. (credit: David Foote AUSPIC/DPS)

In August, Roberts sparred with physicist Brian Cox on ABC’s Q&A program, claiming that global temperature data had been manipulated by NASA to create the appearance of global warming—much to the consternation of Cox.