Former Australian PM says climate change is 'probably doing good'

[Mittens]

Our friends down in the other side of the world are not wasting their time and decided to one up Trump on climate change.

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has suggested climate change is “probably doing good” in a speech in London in which he likened policies to combat it to “primitive people once killing goats to appease the volcano gods” .

Abbott delivered the annual lecture to the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a climate sceptic thinktank on Monday evening. The Guardian and several other media outlets were blocked from attending the event but a copy of the speech was later circulated.

Abbott told the group the ostracisation of those who did not accept climate science was “the spirit of the Inquisition, the thought-police down the ages”. He also reprised his 2009 assertion that the “so-called settled science of climate change” was “absolute crap”.

Measures to deal with climate change, which Abbott said would damage the economy, were likened to “primitive people once killing goats to appease the volcano gods”.

Australia failing to meet Paris targets and more renewables needed, report says

“At least so far,” he said, “it’s climate change policy that’s doing harm. Climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm.”

“There’s the evidence that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide – which is a plant food after all – are actually greening the planet and helping to lift agricultural yields. In most countries, far more people die in cold snaps than in heatwaves, so a gradual lift in global temperatures, especially if it’s accompanied by more prosperity and more capacity to adapt to change, might even be beneficial.”


When he was prime minister, Abbott said he took the issue of climate change “very seriously”. But since he was deposed as prime minister by his Liberal party colleague and bête noire Malcolm Turnbull in 2015, Abbott has returned to many hardline views he had tempered as leader.

He told the GWPF Australia needed “evidence-based policy rather than policy-based evidence” and took aim at a 2013 study that showed that 97% of scientists agree humans are driving climate change, “as if scientific truth is determined by votes rather than facts”.

Climate change and energy policy has been a divisive issue in Australia for more than a decade, with Abbott consistently at the centre of the division. From the backbench, Abbott has pushed the Turnbull government to reject policies that would favour renewable energy.

In his speech, Abbott blamed Turnbull’s failure to campaign on energy prices during 2016 for the narrowing of the government’s majority at that year’s election.


“After a net gain of 25 seats at the previous two elections, when we had campaigned on power prices, we had a net loss of 14 when we didn’t. And subsequent events have made the politics of power once more the central battleground between and within the two main parties,” Abbott said.

On Monday the federal energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, indicated the government did not intend to follow its chief scientist’s recommendation that it should implement a clean energy target. Abbott welcomed that news in London, calling it “belated”.

“Even if reducing emissions really is necessary to save the planet, our effort, however Herculean, is barely better than futile; because Australia’s total annual emissions are exceeded by just the annual increase in China’s,” Abbott said.

Recent research from the Australia Institute found the country was the only wealthy nation still breaking energy emissions records.

The GWPF is chaired by Nigel Lawson, who served as Margaret Thatcher’s treasurer. Lawson has been an outspoken critic of climate science and recently incorrectly told the BBC the global temperature had slightly declined in the past decade. The BBC was heavily criticised for leaving his assertions unchallenged.

John Hewson, who led the Liberal party from 1990 to 1994, said Abbott’s speech to Lawson’s group “sees him in like-minded, if disturbingly deluded, company”.

“Tony Abbott has had a long history of playing short-term politics, for his own political benefit, with the existential threat posed by a rapidly changing climate,” Hewson said.

“Abbott was effective in opposition – a man of nope rather than hope. His basic thrust is that if you can’t understand it, don’t believe it, or accept it. When it comes to climate, and the magnitude and urgency of the challenge, Abbott is prepared to deny the undeniable, and to ignore the risks and costs if left to future generations. History will undoubtedly judge Abbott and Howard and their small band of deniers harshly. When they could have acted on climate and emissions they failed as leaders, miserably.”

A clean energy target is not 'unconscionable', Tony Abbott. Wrecking climate policy is | Katharine Murphy

Abbott’s speech – titled Daring to Doubt – contained echoes of his mentor and prime ministerial predecessor John Howard, who gave the same annual lecture to the GWPF four years ago. In 2013 Howard said climate “zealots” had turned the issue into a “substitute religion”.


Abbott, who trained to be a Catholic priest, called climate change a “post-Christian theology” and said the decline of religion in society had left a hole in which other forms of “dogma” could take root.

A Lancet study in 2015 supports Abbott’s claim that more people die from cold weather than hot. But the World Health Organisation has found that by 2050, climate change will cause 250,000 extra people to die each year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.

Abbott went on to deny many of the central findings of the UN’s climate science body and claimed, without providing evidence, that climate records had been “adjusted” and data sets “slanted”.

“Contrary to the breathless assertions that climate change is behind every weather event, in Australia, the floods are not bigger, the bushfires are not worse, the droughts are not deeper or longer, and the cyclones are not more severe than they were in the 1800s,” Abbott said. “Sometimes, they do more damage but that’s because there’s more to destroy, not because their intensity has increased.

“More than 100 years of photography at Manly beach in my electorate does not suggest that sea levels have risen despite frequent reports from climate alarmists that this is imminent.”


Scientists often refrain from linking single weather events to climate change, saying only that they fit with what they expect to see more of because of climate change.

But as the Earth warms and scientist better understand climate change, weather extremes have been shown to have been made more likely due to greenhouse gas pollution. In Australia, the record hot winter just passed was made 60 times more likely by climate change. Researchers have also linked warming sea temperatures to the catastrophic rainfall and flooding that killed 35 people in Australia in 2011.

Sea level rise is one of the least controversial aspects of climate science. It is progressing at 3.4mm per year globally, according to the Australian government’s Ozcoasts website. Perhaps not enough to appear in photographs against other variables, such as daily tides, but over time scientists agree this will cause problems with coastal housing and infrastructure.

https://amp.theguardian.com/australi...bly-doing-good

[Vyuvarax]

Our friends down in the other side of the world are not wasting their time and decided to one up Trump on climate change.



https://amp.theguardian.com/australi...bly-doing-good

Always obvious a person doesn't understand science when they think all carbon is available at any layer of the atmosphere. Did you post this article to embarrass climate change denialists? If so, good work, it's a success.

[Heladys]

Hey, careful with the message there. Climate change can't be a good thing if it doesn't exist.

Stick to the carefully-defined talking points.

[Kujako]

Trump said it first!

[Mormolyce]

Tony Abbott is a repulsive piece of shit and it's a permanent black mark on Australia that he ever became Prime Minister. A Howard era bootlicker, political shit smear and career dog whistler.

He's pretty much persona non grata with both parties these days. Deposed by his own party while still in office.

He is now opportunistically attempting to piggy back on far right wing fervour to get back into power, by his own admission he has a fart's chance in a hurricane though.

- - - Updated - - -

Our friends down in the other side of the world are not wasting their time and decided to one up Trump on climate change.

Note that our present Prime Minister, from the same party, is not a climate change denier.

[Trifle]

Also keep in mind it was relatively recently that Australia had to come up with a new colour for their heat maps because temperatures were literally off the scale, exceeding 52 degrees Celsius (126 Fahrenheit) in central Australia.

[Wyrt]

Abbot has already been a stupid piece of shit. If temperatures keep rising Australia may well be uninhabitable some day.

Abbot's pretty much the perfect example of why not being able to directly elect your leader is a bad thing. Then again, people don't even make good choices when they can directly elect their leader.

[Tijuana]

Abbot has already been a stupid piece of shit. If temperatures keep rising Australia may well be uninhabitable some day.

Abbot's pretty much the perfect example of why not being able to directly elect your leader is a bad thing. Then again, people don't even make good choices when they can directly elect their leader.

Australia has been uninhabitable before, and it will someday be so again, regardless of anything humans do. It's the natural order of things.

[Crissi]

yes, Im sure losing the GBR could be interpreted as a "good" thing...

[Mormolyce]

Abbot has already been a stupid piece of shit. If temperatures keep rising Australia may well be uninhabitable some day.

Well, more so :P

[breadisfunny]

Australia has been uninhabitable before, and it will someday be so again, regardless of anything humans do. It's the natural order of things.

guys the earth was once uninhabitable and will one day be so again, regardless of anything humans do. it's the natural order of things.

[Tijuana]

guys the earth was once uninhabitable and will one day be so again, regardless of anything humans do. it's the natural order of things.

That is a bit more dubious. Parts of the earth have been uninhabitable in the last couple hundred thousand years, while others were still fine.

[Masark]

Note that our present Prime Minister, from the same party, is not a climate change denier.

Not much of an improvement, because he still is uninterested in actually doing anything about it and continues to push coal over renewables.

[Gref]

best way to start a day really I wake up every day login this forums as I see it far better than most news sites and see this shit. It reminds me the minister who said "a little bit radiation is good for you" after almost all the tea crops affected by Chernobyl disaster.

Is there a webpage where I can read daily achievements of humanity? scientific breakthroughs etc, some positive stuff?

[Mormolyce]

Australia has been uninhabitable before, and it will someday be so again, regardless of anything humans do. It's the natural order of things.

This sentence is painful to read.

[Wyrt]

Well I mean... Can living in Australia get any worse than it is?

Calm your tits, its a joke

Yeah, they could be forced to live in Tasmania when the rest is uninhabitable.

[Trifle]

That is a bit more dubious. Parts of the earth have been uninhabitable in the last couple hundred thousand years, while others were still fine.

Australia has been inhabited for between 42,000 and 48,000 years, so isn't that pretty much the same thing ?

[Dezerte]

This sentence is painful to read.

World-ending asteroids are natural too, let's not do anything to stop one - think of the costs and the economy!

[Spectral]

“There’s the evidence that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide – which is a plant food after all – are actually greening the planet and helping to lift agricultural yields. In most countries, far more people die in cold snaps than in heatwaves, so a gradual lift in global temperatures, especially if it’s accompanied by more prosperity and more capacity to adapt to change, might even be beneficial.”

This claim was new to me and struck me as probably wrong, so I went and looked it up. Much to my surprise:

The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.

Because the study included countries under different socio-economic backgrounds and with varying climates, it was representative of temperature-related deaths worldwide, the study said. The sharp distinction between heat- and cold-related deaths is because low temperatures cause more problems for the body's cardiovascular and respiratory systems, it added.

Well, that's an interesting tidbit anyway.

[Mormolyce]

This claim was new to me and struck me as probably wrong, so I went and looked it up. Much to my surprise:

Well, that's an interesting tidbit anyway.

It's not that surprising, a lot of old people still perish every winter around the world. Heat doesn't have as clear a vector to kill large numbers of people.

Not really relevant though, the impact of climate change isn't going to be related to temperature extremes causing direct human deaths but rather the economic damage of rising sea levels, bushfires, agricultural impacts, extreme weather events etc.