CANBERRA, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- A swag of leading Australian politicians on Tuesday criticized former Prime Minister Tony Abbott after he said that global warming was "probably doing more good than harm."
Speaking at the Global Warming Policy Forum in Britain overnight, Abbott, now a backbencher for the governing Liberal government, said that "far more people" die during cold snaps, and that a "gradual lift" in temperatures might benefit the world, something which drew the ire of his Parliamentary colleagues back in Canberra.
Speaking on Sky News television on Tuesday, deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek described Abbott's speech as "nuts."
"This is just weird stuff from the former Prime Minister. I've been to Kiribati where people's homes - which used to be on dry land - are now in the ocean," Plibersek said.
"We know that climate change is having an effect in Australia as well, and to be denying it in this way is so intellectually inconsistent. It's just nuts."
Meanwhile Greens Senator and national spokesperson for Healthy Oceans, Peter Whish-Wilson, said that there was far too much evidence pointing to the contrary for Abbott to make such uninformed comments, declaring that the former PM's speech "demeans" the work of climate scientists.
"Almost half the Great Barrier Reef is dead from mass coral bleaching, summer after summer we have unprecedented heatwaves and bushfire risk," Whish-Wilson said on Tuesday.
"Australia has out-and-out the best climate scientists in the world and the widespread publication of Tony Abbott's (opinions) ... demeans the work of climate scientists and demeans us all."
Speaking in London overnight, Abbott also said it was a myth that natural disasters were doing more damage in modern times, simply saying that there was "more to destroy" in the 21st century.
"In Australia the floods are not bigger, the bushfires are not worse, the droughts are not deeper or longer, and the cyclones are not more severe than they were in the 1800s," Abbott said at the forum.
"Sometimes, they do more damage but that's because there's more to destroy, not because their intensity has increased.
"(And) in most countries, far more people die in cold snaps than in heatwaves, so a gradual lift in global temperatures, especially if it's accompanied by more prosperity and more capacity to adapt to change, might even be beneficial."
