Tony Abbott’s political opponents have seized on confirmation that 2013 was Australia’s hottest year on record, arguing it should compel the prime minister to abandon his plans to scrap the nation’s carbon pricing laws.

Labor and the Greens used the latest Bureau of Meteorology records to demand the Abbott government rethink its policies on climate change. The acting Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, branded Abbott a “reckless ideologue who ignores the science and is intent on listening to people who are part of the tinfoil hat brigade”.

Abbott went to the election in September with a promise to scrap the carbon tax and replace it with his “direct action” policy – including tree planting and an emissions reduction fund to provide incentives for cutting greenhouse gas output.

Labor and the Greens have refused to support the carbon price repeal bills in the upper house, making it likely Abbott will have to wait until the new Senate composition takes effect in July to pass the laws. Labor maintains its support for an emissions trading scheme and advocates moving from the current fixed carbon price to a lower, floating price this July – a year earlier than legislated by the Gillard government.

In its annual climate statement, the bureau said 2013 was Australia’s warmest year since records began in 1910, with a mean temperature 1.2C above the 1961-1990 average and 0.17C above the previous record set in 2005.

The acting Labor leader, Penny Wong, said the bureau was an institution well respected by Australians and its “deeply concerning” findings about warming trends confirmed “yet again” that climate change was real.

“In fact, the only people that don’t believe that climate change is real are prime minister Abbott, his cabinet and some of his advisers,” Wong told reporters in Adelaide. “He thinks it’s absolute crap and the policy he has is a con job that you have when you think climate change is absolute crap.”

Wong acknowledged climate change was a global problem that required a global solution, but said Australia needed to be part of that response.

Wong characterised Abbott’s direct action plan as a policy of “doing nothing”, saying experts had made it clear it would not work. “He has a policy which is all about inaction on climate change … What I worry most about is how we’ll look to our children and our grandchildren and what we will say to them in years to come if we go down the path that Tony Abbott wants to go down.”

The environment minister, Greg Hunt, defended the government’s climate policy, saying it was committed to cutting emissions by 5% by 2020.

“The ALP’s own figures show that under a carbon tax Australia’s domestic emissions rise from 560m to 637m tonnes between 2012 and 2020,” he said in a brief statement on Friday.

“By contrast, we’ll reduce emissions and achieve the 5% target by directly cleaning things up. In the end, the carbon tax is just an electricity tax.”

Abbott has insisted the government will not increase funding for its direct action policy, even if it fails to meet the 5% reduction target within the allocated budget – an outcome predicted by two attempts to model the plan.

Di Natale said Abbott should demonstrate his acceptance of the need for strong action on climate change by safeguarding the existing clean energy laws and ensuring Maurice Newman stood aside as chairman of the prime minister’s new business advisory council.

Newman this week argued Australia had fallen “hostage to climate change madness” but he believed the “scientific delusion” was crumbling amid suggestions the global temperature could drop to little ice age levels. Newman also accused the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of “dishonesty and deceit” as it focuses on “exploiting the masses and extracting more money” in a climate crusade.

Di Natale said Abbott should not listen to a “crackpot conspiracy theorist who thinks this is all part of some great game that’s been developed by those of us who care about the planet and the future for our kids”.

Di Natale said the bureau’s report showed that the evidence for climate change was getting clearer by the day. “What more evidence does Tony Abbott need before he abandons his reckless plans to unwind our clean energy laws and to start taking effective action?”

Last month, the government released a green paper outlining its plans for an emission reductions fund. The paper asked for ideas about extra regulations to “complement” the fund, which will provide payments to businesses and organisations that submit ideas for emissions reductions to competitive tenders, starting about the middle of the year.

Several business groups wanted the Coalition to consider buying some carbon reductions overseas, but Hunt ruled this out, insisting the Coalition would “clean up Australia in Australia”.

Abbott spent years in opposition campaigning against Julia Gillard’s carbon tax and has characterised the repeal as a measure to help Australians with their cost of living and improve the nation’s competitiveness. Abbott did not send a ministerial representative to UN climate talks in Warsaw in November, but said he accepted “that climate change happens, that mankind, humanity, make a contribution to it and it’s important that we take strong and effective action against it”.

A study released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in November said carbon taxes and emissions trading systems were the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions and should be “at the centre of government efforts to tackle climate change”.