Giles Parkinson at the Guardian has an excellent rebuttal to this claim by Australian opposition leader Abbott. For those who underestimate the power of the internet, this particular quote is salient:
Leaving aside Abbott’s own Direct Action policy – which his spokesman on climate change issues, Greg Hunt, explained yesterday would include a “reverse auction” of this very same invisible substance that can’t be delivered – the issue goes beyond Abbott’s understanding of financial markets. It tells us about where he and his advisors source their information to frame their climate change policies. And as his “climate science is crap” comment revealed in 2009, it’s usually from the depths of the climate denier blogosphere.
The denialists have two projects and one goal. Their projects are muddying the waters by nitpicking, and muddying the waters by innuendo. Their goal is providing cover for cynical politicians in service of moneyed mining interests. People think the denialists are negligible because nobody takes their arguments seriously. But that is neither their project nor their goal. The making of vaguely plausible claims and defending them with vaguely plausible arguments is what they do, but what they are doing is not “arguing” in any respectable, productive, socially benign sense of the word argument.