Carbon Trading scheme

not only is the trading scheme absolutely pathetic signalling the failure and hypocorism of the current government it might not actually pas senate

Family First senator Steve Fielding has made up his mind on climate change - the world is not warming now, and humans aren't changing the climate.

The government and the country's top scientists have tried to convince Senator Fielding, who holds a crucial vote in the upper house, that global warming is real.

But he's released a document setting out his position.

"Global temperature isn't rising," it says.

On emissions trading, Senator Fielding said he wouldn't risk job losses on "unconvincing green science".

The document says it is a "fact" that the evidence does not support the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous global warming.

Senator Fielding later sought to clarify his position, saying he believed in global warming, but he did not think the world was warming now and did not think humans were causing global warming.

"Over the last 15 years, global temperatures haven't been going up and, therefore, there hasn't been in the last 15 years a period of global warming," Senator Fielding told AAP.

"I think that global warming is real, and climate change is real, but on average global temperatures have stayed steady while carbon emissions have increased over the last 15 years.

"Man-made carbon emissions don't appear to be causing it."

Because of the numbers in the upper house, Senator Fielding's verdict means the government will have to rely on the opposition to get its emissions trading scheme (ETS) legislation passed.

The Senate was initially supposed to vote on the ETS this week, but that now appears unlikely as the legislation has been shunted towards the bottom of the agenda.

Making it more unlikely is a plan by independent senator Nick Xenophon to move a motion that there be no vote this week.

Parliament is due to rise for the two-month winter break on Thursday.

Even if there were a vote, it is unlikely the ETS legislation would be passed due to a lack of support from crossbench senators and the opposition.

The opposition wants to avoid a vote so as to not give the government a first double-dissolution trigger, which could lead to an early election.

In order to get a double dissolution trigger, the government must fail to pass the same bill twice with a gap of three months between the two votes.

Constitutional law expert Professor George Williams from the University of NSW said that by putting the ETS legislation at the bottom of the agenda, the Senate had already likely avoided a double-dissolution trigger.

However, if senators refused to debate the legislation this week, or refused to sit longer hours to get to a debate, that could still lead to a double-dissolution trigger, Prof Williams said.