Climate change deniers can never quite get their story straight. They can’t really decide whether it’s not happening at all; or if it’s happening but human activity has nothing to do with it; or if it’s happening and it’s actually good.
Seems like perennial parliamentary pest Tony Abbott has fallen firmly in the latter camp today. In a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London-based climate skeptic organisation, Abbott reiterated his skepticism about climate science, and suggested that an increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is actually… good as hell:
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.
He also called out the so-called “thought police” who demean those with the courage and sheer force of will to bring up deeply discredited science as evidence that climate change is not real.
Abbott described efforts to address the looming, catastrophic threat of climate change as like “primitive people once killing goats to appease the volcano gods,” which is potentially a bit rich from the bloke who reckons university gender theory classes are going to result in the apocalypse.
If you’re particularly inclined to read the whole address of a man whose only purpose in life is to sook endlessly about losing the only job he ever wanted in the world through his own baffling actions, then it is here.
For the rest of you – enjoy your Tuesday.
