Antinuclear

In his speech, he derided climate change mitigation advocates as “alarmists” and “zealots” for whom “the cause has become a substitute religion”. He also said that politicians should not heed the advice of scientists when making policy, and repeated the denialist line that climate change was natural: “Of course the climate is changing. It always has,” he said. 

Most extraordinarily, for man who was renowned by the media as having the pulse of Australians, he made the claim that:

The high tide of public support for over-zealous action on global warming has passed. My suspicion is that most people in countries like ours have settled into a state of sustained agnosticism on the issue……..

Now that the drought has broken, Howard asserts, most people have become climate agnostics.

Agnosticism is a synonym for “skepticism” or “unbelieving”. With deeply ironic theological overtones, an agnostic is someone who believes that nothing can ever known about the existence or non-existence of God. Applied to “climate agnosticism” it implies that nothing is know or can be known about whether climate change is real or caused by human activity. (It is real and is caused by human activity.)

Does his view hold up? Are Australians climate agnostics?

The Essential Report, a regular poll of topical issues and voting intentions in Australia, asked the question:

Do you believe that there is fairly conclusive evidence that climate change is happening and caused by human activity or do you believe that the evidence is still not in and we may just be witnessing a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate which happens from time to time?

The results are shown in the graph below, tracking along with the two-party preferred vote. [graph in original article]

This shows that although acceptance of man-made climate change fell in 2010 after the federal election, it has remained fairly consistently a majority.

Similarly, while belief in “natural fluctuation” rose during the three year scare campaign run by Tony Abbott against the carbon price, but fell sharply in May 2013. Climate denialism also does not follow support for the Liberal/National party, although the latest poll numbers suggest that only 36% of LNP supporters accept human-caused climate change, compared to 67% Labor supporters and 82% Greens party supporters………

In Australia, the figures are very clear. A majority of Australians accept that humans are causing global warming. John Howard is simply wrong with regard to Australia……

n Australia, extremist business figures like Maurice Newman have used the national pulpit of The Australian newspaper to repeat discredited denialist talking points. Even publishers like Fairfax publish conspiracy-laden denialist articles seeking to discredit the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Media reporting of climate denial may not have seen a majority of Australians become denialists, but it does reinforce the beliefs of people who are denialists………http://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/2014/jan/19/australia-john-howard-climate-change-attitudes-polling-agnostics