Tony Abbott’s climate policy is an expensive con job

‘The policy he has is a con job that you have when you think that climate change is absolute crap,” acting Labor leader Penny Wong said.

“If we keep emitting (carbon dioxide) at the rates we are now, in another three or four decades, 2013 will look like an average year – perhaps even a cool year.

Record sparks hot debate on Tony Abbott’s climate policy The Age, January 4, 20146 reading now Peter Hannam and David Wroe The Bureau of Meteorology on Friday confirmed that last year was the hottest nationwide in more than a century of standardised records, with mean temperatures 1.2 degrees above the 1961-90 average.

The 12 months easily eclipsed the previous annual record set in 2005,…….The report sparked a heated political exchange, with Labor accusing Prime Minister Tony Abbott of remaining stuck in the belief that global warming was ”absolute crap” – a remark he infamously made in 2009.

‘The policy he has is a con job that you have when you think that climate change is absolute crap,” acting Labor leader Penny Wong said…….

The report also follows a fierce attack on climate change science this week by businessman Maurice Newman, the chairman of Mr Abbott’s business advisory group. In a newspaper opinion article, Mr Newman branded climate change a ”scientific delusion”.

Acting Greens leader Richard Di Natale accused Mr Abbott of ”listening to people who are part of the tinfoil hat brigade”. Dr Di Natale said it went against all evidence for the government to unwind the carbon tax. ”The experts right around the world are telling him loudly and clearly that we’ve got a big problem on our hands and we’ve got to start taking action to fix it.”……..

Climate experts, though, have been surprised national temperature records were broken by such large margins not least because key weather patterns such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation in the Pacific remained in a neutral phase.

“Australia has set a new record-high temperature in a period when there’s been no El Nino event (and) global temperatures have not increased so rapidly,” said David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne. “So this is particularly unusual.”

Australia’s records “cannot be explained by natural variability alone,” Professor Karoly said. “This event could not have happened without increasing greenhouse gases, without climate change.”……

Professor Will Steffen, a climate scientist at the Australian National University and a member of the Climate Council, said temperature trends have been “sharply upward” since the 1960s and predicted 2013 will look a lot less remarkable in years to come.

“When you accumulate more heat in the atmosphere, the odds are you’re going to see more high-temperatures records broken,” Professor Steffen said.

“If we keep emitting (carbon dioxide) at the rates we are now, in another three or four decades, 2013 will look like an average year – perhaps even a cool year. http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/record-sparks-hot-debate-on-tony-abbotts-climate-policy-20140103-309si.html