Miranda Devine: Fielding changes Canberra's climate

Of course, he has been pilloried for being diligent enough to do the job he was elected to do.

He has been derided by people without any training in mathematics or scientific disciplines, who regard science, probably, as they do their computers - as a little black box to be understood only by an elite council of infallible gurus who are incapable of impure motives. Who is the gullible one?

The online newsletter Crikey described Fielding's trip to the US as "a futile mission based on a misguided assumption", a sick "stunt" akin to the Chaser terminal child illness skit. "The world is way beyond debating the science of climate change", it said. Oh, yeah?

Fielding has been smeared as a religious nutter, even though the real religious nutters are the green zealots who are hell-bent on destroying farming and mining for the sake of, at best, a minuscule environmental benefit.

Maybe we're all just too, too bored to bother saving the planet

The trouble is not the lack of hard evidence but that hard evidence tends to be technical and unphotogenic, and not many media outlets do technical and unphotogenic these days.