Orchestrated climate denial: Malcolm Roberts and the Galileo Movement

Malcolm Roberts isn't just another Cooker. He has been part of the integrated networks fighting climate action for decades.

One Nation, Australia’s small nativist party, can look like a faction of conspiracist Cookers lacking connection to power. Malcolm Roberts, Queensland senator, however shows the networked drive to make this most rightwing of Australian political parties into a far right force.(1)

When Roberts uses the violent extremist term “remigration” meaning forced mass deportations, he marks the intent to make One Nation into one of the far right parties which have become nodes in European governing coalitions, controlling supply. When he claimed NASA is manipulating climate data, he probably played stupid for a conspiracist audience.

Roberts is an intergenerational coal man. Son of a coal miner turned manager, he became a member of the Mine Managers Association of Australia himself. He worked for several coal companies, eventually becoming a consultant after earning an MBA.

Roberts is also a typical example of climate obfuscation activism. He can be found on the rolls of Clexit (= climate exit), the Saltbush Club, Principia Scientific International and on the advisory board of the Carbon Sense Coalition. He also led the Galileo Movement body.

These types of civil society bodies can host many of the same names, connecting the forces fighting climate action around the world. The purpose of the proliferation of front groups is to create a chorus of voices, some performing “researched” policy recommendation, others performing fake grassroots (astroturf) opinion, to push public and political viewpoints towards the funders’ goals. They import material from other “think tanks” in the global networks.

The Saltbush Club features some of the same figures active in the Atlas Network partners list in Australia. Those “think tanks” have been pivotal in the disruption of climate science knowledge in the community, and celebrate the breaking of steps towards limiting the threat of the catastrophe. They have also had extensive fossil fuel funding at founding, and over the years, although their donor lists are kept secret. While Saltbush was reportedly founded by the former BHP Chairman Jerry Ellis, Crikey described it as “clustered around the formidable figure of Hugh Morgan, one-time CEO of Western Mining and Liberal Party grandee.” Morgan was one of the driving forces behind the Australian founding of Atlas Network-partnered and related “think tanks,” many promoting mining interests.(2) His earlier activity is documented in Dominic Kelly’s Political Troglodytes and Economic Lunatics: The Hard Right in Australia. Also listed at Saltbush are Gina Rinehart, the only current publicly confirmed Australian Atlas partner donor, and Campbell Newman, a former Atlas partner director.

In 2023, one member, Neil Killion, spoke at a Saltbush “meeting in which he discussed the beginnings of a ‘national network’ that would include old school climate deniers, anti-renewables campaigners and the remnants of the post-Covid freedom movement.” Former Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce’s interest in moving across to One Nation may reflect that the far right of Australian politics thinks they can echo Nigel Farage in the UK. Speculation that he might be the next British Prime Minister is real.

In 2016, the year of his first political victory, Roberts also delivered a speech at a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI, Atlas partner) event in DC with Trump’s CEI pick to head the Environment Protection Agency transition team. Environmental journalist Graham Readfearn described the event as bringing together “some of the world’s most notorious and longest-serving climate science deniers.”

Roberts took his steps into politics from the Galileo Movement, where he was “volunteer project leader.” This Australian body worked to obfuscate the gold-standard science that the climate is warming which portends disaster. Andrew Bolt was an advisor to the group until its implicit antisemitism drove him to separate himself. Roberts had claimed, as Crikey summarises, “that climate change science had been ‘captured by some of the major banking families in the world’ who form a ‘tight-knit cabal.’” Alan Jones was a “patron.”

Many of the world’s busiest climate obfuscators feature in that list of “eminent” advisers, not least Christopher Monkcton.

One that is particularly noteworthy is Fred Singer. He was an American “star” of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, the book that tracks half a century of the science disruption movement funded by industry. Singer had a founding role as one of the Cold War scientists who gave himself over to fighting against science as a fight against “communism.” That investigation portrays him as one of the key tools of industry’s projects to prevent government interfering with the tycoons’ freedom to poison.

The pattern was set when it became clear that tobacco was causing an epidemic of lung cancer in the 1950s. The tobacco industry was set to be devastated. Instead the sector used a PR machine to muddy the waters of debate, selling doubt. It is estimated that over 20 million people died of tobacco-related disease in that period of delay in the US alone. In the Global South, it is feared that a billion more could die this century as tobacco continues to profit where it can.

The pattern of deploying scientists from (usually) unrelated fields, driven by ideology, to be a central part of disrupting civic knowledge about threats to lives and the habitability of our surroundings was used repeatedly. Singer was deployed against pollution controls related to acid rain which continues to threaten food production. He was deployed on nuclear winter, on ozone depletion and against climate science. He fought the link that ozone depletion might cause a surge in melanomas for industry’s freedom to pollute.

Fred Singer was at the 2016 CEI climate denial meeting that Roberts attended in DC.

Many of the other names on the Galileo adviser list can be found connected to Atlas partners and other think tanks funded by fossil fuel.(3) Tim Ball from the Canadian Atlas partner the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and Dick Lindzen from the Exxon-funded Atlas partner the Cato Institute are high profile North American figures. Peter Ridd has operated out of the Australian Atlas partner the Institute for Public Affairs (IPA).

In 2016, Tim Ball celebrated Trump’s EPA team’s agenda.

Malcolm Roberts and his tenure at One Nation must not be dismissed as Cooker nonsense. There are decades of work invested in the messaging operation he is conducting. (4)

(1) In this video, Tom Tanuki almost certainly correctly claims credit for instigating the Australian denigration of conspiracist/freedom/anti-vaxx movement people as Cookers, the cooked. He discusses the engagement of David Limbrick MP with the movement and term. Limbrick represents the Liberal Democrats/Libertarian Party in Victoria (and failed in an attempt to bring the goals to federal parliament). Those iterations were both founded by a longterm Atlas partner figure and Mont Pelerin Society member, John Humphreys. MPS is considered the “steering committee” of the Atlas Network. It is worth noting this political party as connected to the Atlas Network partner operations in Australia and also its engagement with the Cooker movement. This Neil Chenoweth article in the Australian Financial Review tracks Humphreys’ connection with Tim Andrews (Atlas partner Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, MPS), bringing Kochtopus (largely the Atlas Network, but Koch specifically in this article) connections to Australia.

(2) For example, Morgan was involved with the founding of the Samuel Griffith Society which is listed in the Mont Pelerin Society page at DeSmog as having three MPS members.

(3) Tim Ball: Canadian. Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Atlas), Exxon-funded Friends of Science. Obstruction on ozone hole. Natural Resources Stewardship Program (NRSP) fossil fuel entwined.

Warwick Hughes: Tasman Institute. Australian neoliberal think tank founded by Mont Pelerin Society’s Michael Porter. (Co-designed Victoria’s Kennett reforms with the IPA).

Dick Lindzen: American. Distinguished senior fellow for the Exxon-funded Cato Institute (Atlas).

Peter Ridd: Global Warming Policy Foundation (Tony Abbott also) with its dubious funding and extensive links to Atlas, Adjunct Fellow at the IPA (Atlas). From within the IPA, he founded the Australian Environment Foundation which has a different way of defending the environment from that which the name might convey.

Climate obfuscation: Bill Kininmonth had links to Heartland Institute (Atlas partner with biggest climate denial record). Bob Carter (Atlas partner Institute of Public Affairs IPA). Ian Plimer (IPA links), David Archibald. Garth Paltridge (NSRP). Jo Nova and David Evans. Des Moore (IPA links). John Nicol (IPA subset). David Flint. John McLean (allegedly an amateur used by IPA’s Jennifer Marohasy as an “expert”). Pat Michaels (Competitive Enterprise Institute - Atlas partner). Joe D’Aleo Atlas Heartland Institute funding.

Barnaby Joyce has cited the IPA in his new draft bill against Net Zero.

Several of these figures also belonged to the Australian Climate Science Coalition which was a grandchild of the IPA:

(4) Roberts was not present when One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, tried to gain Koch funding while in America towards loosening Australia’s voting laws, against climate and for the unleashing of gun ownership.