Abbott’s climate change statement ‘debunked’

Michael Slezak writes in The Guardian (23.1.16) that Sophie Lewis, from the Australian Research Council’s centre for excellence in climate science, has dissected Abbott’s 2013 statement on climate change.

‘In 2013, the UN’s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, linked bushfires in Australia to climate change. Abbott called such claims “complete hogwash” and said drawing links between broken records and climate change was a sign of desperation. He went on: “The thing is that at some point in the future, every record will be broken, but that doesn’t prove anything about climate change. It just proves that the longer the period of time, the more possibility of extreme events.”

‘Superficially it seems to make sense: if you wait long enough, you’re bound to see records fall. Lewis suspected many people shared Abbott’s interpretation, and set out to show it was wrong.

‘Lewis says she was frustrated by the gap she saw between what the science showed and what some politicians said was happening. In a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Weather and Climate Extremes, Lewis pulls Abbot’s comments apart, shred by shred.’

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