The day before Resources Minister Madeleine King released the government’s strange Future Gas Strategy, the European Union’s climate change monitoring service, Copernicus, announced that April was the hottest April on record, extending an 11-month streak in which every month had set a temperature record.

On the same day, The Guardian published a survey of the climate scientists who are part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asking them what degree of warming they think the Earth is likely to get to.

Eighty per cent of them said the warming would be at least 2.5 degrees Celsius of global heating, while almost half said it would be at least 3 degrees. Only 6 per cent thought the internationally agreed 1.5 degrees limit would be met.

Two years ago the Australian Academy of Science published a report looking at the consequences of what half of the world’s scientists now think we’re heading for: “At 3 degrees Celsius of global warming, many of Australia’s ecological systems would be unrecognisable.”

“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”

Next day Madeleine King bounced out of bed, feeling net-zero........

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