Backbench forces Josh Frydenberg into humiliating climate policy backdown

Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg
 has a fine line to walk on climate policy.

Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has been forced into an humiliating U-turn on climate change policy less than 48 hours after releasing details for a pending review.

After two days of vocal opposition from the Coalition backbench, the minister has shelved plans for a review of the direct action climate policy next year to examine whether to introduce an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity industry - a form of carbon pricing.

It is understood skittishness in the government leadership group led to the idea being dropped on Tuesday.

It follows Fairfax Media reporting on Monday, based on an interview with Mr Frydenberg, that the long-awaited review would consider such a scheme while focusing on limiting electricity price rises, maintaining energy security and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Backbench forces Josh Frydenberg into humiliating climate policy backdown.”

Letter writers articulate their mystification with climate doubters

Those who understand the emerging dangers of climate change are mystified as to why so many doubt what has been unequivocally proved by and agreed to by most of the world’s scientists who work in atmospheric and related sciences.

Letters are now mostly written
on keyboards - the traditional
pen and paper are largely gone.

The Melbourne newspaper, The Age, has letters almost every day from people articulating their dismay, here is a couple from today’s paper.

One Nation inanity

One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts (The Age, 5/8) claims climate change is either not occurring or is part of a scientific conspiracy. Firstly NASA, which had the scientific capability to put humans on the moon, has provided clear data that the world is heating up and, as a direct result, sea levels have risen 70millimetres since the early 1990s. Mr Roberts has not provided any answers to the cause of increasing global warming and the rise of sea levels.
As a biological scientist, I cannot imagine why hundreds of the world's best scientists would want to trash their careers or legacies by promoting a falsehood or conspiracy. They would have nothing to gain and everything to lose. If I had worked in the fossil fuel industry, as Malcolm Roberts has, I might have the opposite view on global warming.
David Beardsell, Balwyn North

 It's simple science

I heard Malcolm Roberts, with his climate change-denying rhetoric, speaking on radio. With this vast mistrust of science, it is a wonder that he is game to get in an aeroplane or go to a doctor. After all, science is science. I wonder how and why such a person gets elected when his thinking is so backward.
Bill Proctor, Launching Place

Hunt U-turn a farce

New Science Minister Greg Hunt's U-turn on climate change research (The Age, 4/8) is stunning in its inconsistency. His government, through inaction or deceitful intent, has overseen the destruction of CSIRO's world-leading research on climate science. It now has the gall to reverse this decision. The damage has already been done and the 15 new positions will not return the quality or breadth of research that existed. I do not know whether to laugh or cry at the complete stupidity of it all.
Tony Priestley, Fitzroy