Senior Liberal MP Craig Kelly has dug his heels in, after coming under fire over his climate denial in a train-wreck interview on morning television in the UK.

Mr Kelly called a meteorologist who dressed him down on air as an “ignorant pommy weather girl” in a Facebook post on Tuesday morning.

Yes I’m a Meteorologist
-A degree in Physics & Meteorology
-4 yrs as an aviation forecaster at the RAF
-12 yrs as a broadcast meteorologist
-Attended a @WMO Climate course last year & upto date with all the science #NotAWeatherGirl #IKnowWhatImTalkingAbout#DoYou?#ClimateChange https://t.co/fvwTpzftTI

— Laura Tobin (@Lauratobin1) January 6, 2020

As deadly fires continue burning across the south and east of Australia, Mr Kelly was fronting Good Morning Britain to defend the Prime Minister and his own comments about climate change, oil and coal.

It comes after Mr Kelly told the BBC on Saturday that fires were a result of “drying” of the environment but that Australian scientists had disproved any link between climate change and drought.

• Read Tuesday morning’s bushfire latest here

While Scott Morrison has stressed in recent days there is “no dispute” about the impact of global warming, Mr Kelly has doubled down on his comments while under questioning from Good Morning Britain hosts, saying the bushfire crisis was due to a lack of hazard reduction burning.

The backbencher was called a “disgrace” and told to “wake up”.

“To try to make out as some politicians have to hijack this debate, exploit this tragedy and push their ideological barrow, that somehow or another the Australian government could have done something by reducing its carbon emissions that would have reduced these bushfires is just complete nonsense,” Mr Kelly hit back.

Craig Kelly MP defends Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s response to the wildfire crisis and says there isn’t a link between climate change and bushfires.@piersmorgan | @susannareid100 | #GMB pic.twitter.com/Mz0dxJSK5T

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) January 6, 2020

The show’s weather presenter Laura Tobin slammed Mr Kelly as “not a climate sceptic” but a “climate denier”.

“Australia have just had in 2019 their highest year temperature-wise ever recorded and their driest year ever record with forecast temperatures that go back over 100 years,” Tobin said.

“At the moment we want everyone to commit in the world to be one-and-a-half degrees to lower our global temperature rise. You can’t even commit to two degrees.

Laura Tobin takes on climate change sceptic and Australian MP Craig Kelly, who believes global warming was not the cause of the Australian bushfires.

Watch here – https://t.co/cxCJjHrWnR@Lauratobin1 #Australia pic.twitter.com/dcJD37AyxG

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) January 6, 2020

“You have the second-highest carbon emission per person on Earth and you are burying your head in the sand … this is a climate emergency.”

Defending the PM’s controversial Hawaii holiday, Mr Kelly said, “The only thing the national leader can actually do on this is basically wait until he gets response from those state premiers asking more resources”.

“Any time one of those state premiers has come forward and said we need something, the Prime Minister has done that – he’s shown leadership.”

Host Piers Morgan hit back, describing Mr Morrison’s disaster response as a “dereliction of his duty as leader of Australia”.

“The truth is, he was absent when the fires were burning. Scott Morrison thought the right response to these fires erupting in Australia was to go lie on the beach in Hawaii,” Morgan said.