Antinuclear

One of their [climate denialists] cheerleaders is Frydenberg’s successor in the resources portfolio, Queensland senator Matt Canavan.

Canavan has form as a climate science doubter. A fortnight ago he told Sky News that the impact of carbon emissions had been “overhyped” by “certain interest groups” — in line with an earlier newspaper article in which he advocated funding “scientists who take a different view”.

August 2, 2016 “……..Malcolm Turnbull’s Cabinet reshuffle saw climate and energy combined for the first time in the one portfolio, which I think was a good decision. Putting coal-power champion Josh Frydenberg in the job may not be, but in this new regime I am prepared to keep an open mind.If he is to understand the perils of burning coal, Frydenberg first has to come to grips with the science of climate change. His performance on ABC’s Lateline last week shows he has work to do.

“I absolutely accept that man is contributing to climate change,” he declared. But that is not really how it is. Saying we are contributing to climate change is like saying the sun contributes to a warm day, or Hawthorn contributed to winning last year’s AFL premiership.

In the cautious words of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there’s a 95 to 100 per cent chance that human activities have been the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century. We have not just contributed to climate change — we have caused it.

In the same Lateline interview, Frydenberg said Australia’s 2030 target — emissions 26 to 28 per cent lower than in 2005 — was “very ambitious” and among the highest in the world on a per-capita basis.

We have already heard the same from Abbott, Hunt and Turnbull.

All have failed to acknowledge our unhappy record of long being the G20’s highest per-capita emitter, skated over much tougher European targets, and ignored completely the all-important target of zero emissions.

He is playing to the many holdouts in the Coalition who still do not accept the real and present danger of climate change and the rising urgency to address it.

One of their cheerleaders is Frydenberg’s successor in the resources portfolio, Queensland senator Matt Canavan.

Canavan has form as a climate science doubter. A fortnight ago he told Sky News that the impact of carbon emissions had been “overhyped” by “certain interest groups” — in line with an earlier newspaper article in which he advocated funding “scientists who take a different view”.

In that article, published in The Australian in December, Canavan cited a research paper by Hamburg-based climatologist Bjorn Stevens which he claimed showed that a doubling of atmospheric carbon causes warming of “just” 2.2C rather than the IPCC’s upper limit of 4.5C.

Canavan seems to have based his claim on a blog post by an independent scientist who used Stevens’s data to extrapolate his conclusion. That was picked up by Fox News in a story headlined “New Climate Paper Gives Global Warming Alarmists One Helluva Beating”.

If Canavan had ignored the media hype and contacted the author directly, as others did, he would have found that Stevens disagrees with the extrapolation and wants global warming taken more seriously.

Canavan relies for his climate information on “sceptical” bloggers, the kinds of people he thinks should be funded, presumably out of the public purse, to dispute mainstream science. In light of his promotion to Cabinet, that is very disconcerting…….http://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/talking-point-new-ministers-political-comments-on-science-raise-concerns/news-story/6f52b024e067a61795347c8d2802b4c8