Tony Abbott dares us to reject evidence on climate, but reveals a coward
Tony Abbott titled his London speech on climate change “Daring to Doubt” – a challenge, if you will, to reject mountains of evidence and instead lick your fingers and shove them into the plug socket of denial. Go on, I dare you.
Throughout his speech, the former Australian prime minister urged listeners to think that dismissing decades of research backed by the world’s leading scientific institutions required bravery and fortitude, rather than other less celebrated human attributes.
But what would constitute bravery for a conservative politician like Abbott? Changing your mind when the evidence tells you you’re dead wrong, or saying what you’ve always said, using the logical fallacies that you’ve always used? One step is brave, the other is cowardly.
Abbott was giving the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s annual lecture – an “honour” previously bestowed on his spiritual and political mentors John Howard and Cardinal George Pell.
Nobody should be surprised that what we got was an absolute crap speech from a man who confessed he still thinks climate science is “absolute crap”.
Abbott went for the whole canon of tired climate science denial talking points – carbon dioxide is just food for plants, the climate has always changed, it’s the sun – in what constituted a warmed-up meal of misinformation with a side order of supercilious gravy.
Several leading Australian climate scientists have hit back. How tired they must get of debunking this stuff.
Abbott’s speech was also chockfull of internal contradictions.
He suggested a conspiracy to tamper with temperature readings, but admitted the globe was warming. He described carbon dioxide as a “trace gas” and dismissed its role in warming, but elsewhere thought warming (which might not be happening) would be good. And the “trace gas” is insignificant, but not when it comes to its ability to “green the planet” and help plants grow.
Professor Steve Sherwood, deputy director of the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre, read the speech and said it was “the usual mix of misdirection, falsehoods and tirades against ‘brigades’ who supposedly say this and that but are never clearly identified”.
Abbott told the thinktank – which had denied requests from seasoned climate reporters to attend – that past climate changes that occurred millions of years ago showed there was nothing to worry about now.
“Abbott is trying to hide the fact that it is the scientists themselves – who know more about past climate changes than he does – who are sounding the alarm,” said Sherwood.
The former prime minister confined his scientific missteps to seven or eight paragraphs in the middle of his speech.
Professor Mark Howden, director of the ANU Climate Change Institute, said Abbott’s claim that other factors, such as sunspots cycles or wobbles in the Earth’s orbit could be just as important as carbon dioxide, was simply false.
“The evidence that our climate is changing due to human activity is overwhelming,” said Howden. “2016 was globally the hottest year on record, surpassing the 2015 record, surpassing the 2014 record. There is 99.999% certainty that humans are driving the observed temperature rises via greenhouse gas emissions.”
Abbott’s claim that “no big change has accompanied the increase in carbon dioxide concentration” was “problematic”, said Howden, given “research shows that the world has already warmed by approximately 1C since pre-industrial times”.
“We are already experiencing changed patterns of rainfall, more and more days with extreme temperatures, increasingly intense natural disasters and rising sea levels, impacting on almost all facets of life in Australia.”
Professor Andrew Pitman, director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, said while it was true that CO2 is essential to life, “life also requires many trace elements that at higher concentrations are toxic”.
“It is a myth to imply that because CO2 is essential to life, more of it is good.”
Abbott also deployed another favourite talking point from climate science misinformers – that warming (which, remember, he thinks might not be happening) will cut the number of people dying of cold.
Pitman said this argument, too, was misleading, saying: “It is true that in rich countries which tend to be in the mid to higher latitudes, some warming might help reduce deaths from cold. In the lower latitude countries – the subtropics and tropics – people rarely die of cold. In contrast they die of heat and lack of clean water.
“So, countries responsible for global warming might gain a minor benefit from warming while those least responsible will wear the consequences.”
Dr Liz Hanna, an expert on the impacts of climate change on human health, said human-caused warming was already implicated in the deaths of many thousands.
“In 2003, 70,000 people died in western Europe, and in 2010 a further 55,000 people died in Russia and eastern Europe. These figures far exceed deaths from cold snaps. The decade 2001-2010 saw a 2,300% increase in heat deaths above the previous decade. Mr Abbott’s assertions don’t tell the whole story, as they’re based on what has happened in the past rather than what is projected to happen in future. While more people die from cold than heat in Melbourne at the moment, this will reverse as more summer days reach the high 40s.”
Away from his errors on the evidence, Abbott tried to characterise climate science and environmentalism as being hamstrung by a religious-type fervour that gets in the way of “common sense”. Abbott said:
As a Roman Catholic libertarian free market ideologue, Abbott is, presumably, immune to such group think.
Climate scientist Ben Henley, of the University of Melbourne, also spots Abbott’s facile argument. In an email he told me:
“By implication, Abbott superstitiously questions the foundations of science, and in doing so, he questions the same scientific method which discovered wifi and penicillin, and proved the Earth was not flat.
“Abbott presents an absurdly and intentionally distorted viewpoint, reminiscent of a conspiracy theorist.”
Abbott’s attitude to climate change seems to rest on a Boy’s Own “who dares wins” approach to policy that’s neither brave or daring. It’s stupid.
Graham Readfearn is the Guardian’s Planet Oz opinion columnist
Abbott presents an absurdly and intentionally distorted viewpoint, reminiscent of a conspiracy theorist