Tony Abbott Reckons Climate Change Is Doing “More Good Than Harm” Because Cold Kills People Too

Good morning, friends! The planet is slowly warming due to human stupidity, and Tony Abbott just gave a speech saying he reckons that’s probably a good thing.

The former Prime Minister, who has no science-related qualifications whatsoever and has eaten raw onions with the skin on multiple times, gave a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (a climate-sceptic think tank) in London this morning. In that speech, he said that climate change is “probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm” for a number of reasons, including that carbon dioxide is “plant food”.

Extraordinarily, he also alleged that “in most countries, far more people die in cold snaps than in heat waves, so a gradual lift in global temperatures…nmight even be beneficial”. He didn’t offer any supporting evidence for this or any of his positions, probably because very little exists.

Woah. Has Tony Abbott read, literally, nothing about climate change? https://t.co/LDv4l6fSpG pic.twitter.com/y6AuSF155f

— Bridie Jabour (@bkjabour) October 9, 2017

Despite the fact that the science is indeed very settled on global warming, Abbott continued to triumphantly declare that the consensus of scientists is just “absolute crap” and “the spirit of the Inquisition, the thought-police down the ages”.

“Primitive people once killed goats to appease the volcano gods. We’re more sophisticated now but are still sacrificing our industries and our living standards to the climate gods to little more effect,” he said, speaking like a man calmly rebutting actual science with facts and not just wild idiocy.

In fact, the closest Abbott came to actually providing evidence was suggesting that people taking pics at Manly Beach over the years hasn’t demonstrated sea level rise. As for whether natural disasters are increasing in scale, he reckons that “sometimes, they do more damage, but that’s because there’s more to destroy”.

Abbott didn’t just talk about climate change however; the speech is peppered with generic self-owns about literally everything.

“In Australia, we’ve had ten years of disappointing government,” he said, despite the fact that two of those years were his own.

“Everywhere, there’s a breakdown of public trust between voters and their leaders for misdiagnosing problems, for making excuses about who’s to blame, and for denying the damage that’s been done,” he continued, while in the same breath denying the damage of climate change.

“The lesson I’ve taken from being in government, and then out of it, is simply to speak my mind,” was his conclusion. Personally, Abbott, I’d say that to speak your thoughts, you need to actually do some thinking first.

Global warming isn’t happening. Also it’s good.

— Jeff Sparrow (@Jeff_Sparrow) October 9, 2017

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If you want to have a good laugh, you can read the full transcript of Abbott’s speech on his personal website here.