Prominent political figures continue to dismiss or distort the evidence on climate change. Their claims collapse under even basic scrutiny, revealing resistance rooted not in science but in ideology and self-interest.

We frequently hear challenges to the reality of climate change, especially from figures on the political right. Often the challenges have very weak bases, but still they are propounded. Let’s look at three figures and the claims they have made.

First, Tony Abbott. Abbott’s denial of global warming is long-standing and he has stated it frequently. He once said that a century of photos at Manly Beach showed no signs of sea level rise, which is well established by empirical measurement and presumably results from temperature rises bringing about the melting of polar ice. Abbott’s statement was close to comical: he was rejecting the evidence of scientific measurement for happy snaps taken by people frolicking on the sand.

Abbott has also said that because extreme cold kills more people globally than extreme heat, global warming should be welcomed. The problem is that warming is likely to increase the frequency and intensity of heatwaves and with that the number of deaths when they occur. Moreover, rises in sea level are likely eventually to threaten many coastal cities and to undermine the viability of some of them. Sea level rise is already affecting low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean, where the viability of nations is at risk.

Second, Colin Boyce, National Party MP and recent aspirant for his party’s leadership in Canberra. Boyce has said in federal parliament that we should “celebrate” global warming, not be concerned about it. Here, he is with Abbott in seeing warming as a positive for the human condition especially in relation to agricultural productivity. In his maiden speech in 2022 Boyce said that the argument that global warming might be problematic was based solely on computer modelling and that predictions of sea level rise had been proved wrong.

He was unequivocally wrong on both points. The empirical evidence of sea level having risen by more than 20cm on average over the past 150 years is incontrovertible: measurements from tidal gauges and more recently satellite imaging have made this abundantly clear. Moreover, the predictions – which suggest that further significant sea level rise by 2100 is very likely – relate not to the recent past of a few years or even decades but to the long-term future. They are based on the momentum which underlies observed temperature increases, and these are rising at increasing rates. This is not controversial among scientists.

Boyce has badly missed the time frame of the debate and mis-stated the role of computer modelling.

And finally, Donald Trump. In the midst of a severe outbreak of very cold weather over most of the eastern half of the USA in January, Trump challenged what he called the climate “ insurrectionists” to show how this could occur if warming was occurring. This too was close to comical. Trump was misunderstanding the science: nobody has claimed that cold weather cannot or will not occur in a warming world. The evidence is about gradual overall warming in very small amounts, globally, not about warm weather rendering cold weather non-existent.

These men have a strange comprehension of the nature of evidence, recent trends in global temperatures and the predictions that scientists have made. All of them have views that are mired in matters close to their own hearts – Abbott’s in his fundamentally conservative belief in the importance of continuing the way things have been in his lifetime, Boyce’s in the fortunes of the three coal-fired power stations, the coal-seam gas industry and the aluminium industry in his Queensland electorate of Flynn, and Trump’s in his mantra of mining and extraction for fossil fuels: “Drill, baby, drill.” None of them is keen on embracing the notion that the world is changing, possibly inexorably and potentially dangerously, and that new ways of thinking about it are needed. Their resistance on climate change is reflexive, not intellectual.

They are unable to see the evidence that they don’t wish to see: it would be confronting to them and to the bases of their thinking. Thus they deny the evidence and debunk the predictions based on it. Trump thinks climate change and warming are “fake”, whereas they are actually inconvenient in the sense that they do not conform to his world view. This way of dealing with reality is familiar in his modus operandi generally: what he wants reality to be is what has driven the world in the recent past. To him, it has been successful and it must not be challenged.

The three reject what is and what objective projection suggests is likely to be coming. Their mindsets are trapped in an economy and an environment that is disappearing. They have no basis for a coherent policy in relation to climate change because they deny the climatic reality that is around us. In particular, they seem oblivious to the possibility that climate change is linked to weather-related disasters.

One difficulty, of course, is that Abbott, Boyce and Trump will not live to see what will probably occur over the next few decades. They will not be proved wrong in their lifetimes: rises in average global temperatures are slow, seemingly tiny and not able to be sensed by individuals, and these three are all elderly or approaching elderliness. But small changes can have big effects over long periods and temperature rises, with momentum for the future, are on track to be highly consequential.

Science cannot be trumped by personal preference, even the preference of those who are, have been or might be powerful, and nature does not bend to the wishes of individuals. Nor does it bend to myth, misunderstanding or misinformation.