George Monbiot's response to Ian Plimer

Ian Plimer's work of climate fiction is riddled with schoolboy errors

Seldom has a book been more cleanly murdered by scientists than Ian Plimer's Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth, which purports to show that manmade climate change is nonsense. Since its publication in Australia it has been ridiculed for a hilarious series of schoolboy errors, and its fudging and manipulation of the data. Here is what the reviews have said.

Professor David Karoly, University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences:

"Given the errors, the non-science, and the nonsense in this book, it should be classified as science fiction in any library that wastes its funds buying it. The book can then be placed on the shelves alongside Michael Crichton's State of Fear, another science fiction book about climate change with many footnotes. The only difference is that there are fewer scientific errors in State of Fear."

Michael Ashley, professor of astrophysics at the University of NSW:

"Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not "merely" atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer's book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken. "

Professor Kurt Lambeck, earth scientist and President of the Australian Academy of Science:

"If this had been written by an honours student, I would have failed it with the comment: You have obviously trawled through a lot of material but the critical analysis is missing. Supporting arguments and unsupported arguments in the literature are not distinguished or properly referenced, and you have left the impression that you have not developed an understanding of the processes involved. Rewrite!"

Here are a few examples of the nonsense in this book (thanks mostly to Tim Lambert at Scienceblogs):

1. Plimer uses a graph, without attribution, produced for the Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4. The programme altered the timeline, creating the false impression that most of the rise in temperature last century took place before 1940. After an outcry by scientists, subsequent editions of the programme corrected the timeline. But Plimer leaves the graph – and its convenient error – intact.

2. He claims that Arctic sea ice is growing. Oh no it isn't.

3. He claims that Mount Pinatubo released "very large quantities of chloroflourocarbons, the gases that destroy the ozone layer." It didn't.

4. Like the Great Global Warming Swindle (from which several of the claims in his book appear to originate), he claims that volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans. In fact humans produce 130 times more CO2 than volcanoes.

5. He claims that only 4% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by humans. In fact the pre-industrial concentration was roughly 280 parts per million. Human activities have now raised this to 387ppm. Work it out for yourself.

6. He says "it is not possible to ascribe a carbon dioxide increase to human activity". As David Karoly points out, "burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide enriched with carbon isotope 12C and reduced 13C and essentially no 14C, and it decreases atmospheric oxygen": in other words you can ascribe the increase directly to human activity.

7. Professor Michael Ashley noticed in Plimer's book: "an almost word-for-word reproduction of the abstract from a well-known loony paper entitled "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass". This paper argues that the sun isn't composed of 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, as astronomers have confirmed through a century of observation and theory, but is instead similar in composition to a meteorite. It is hard to understate the depth of scientific ignorance that the inclusion of this information demonstrates. It is comparable to a biologist claiming that plants obtain energy from magnetism rather than photosynthesis."

8. He confuses the Sun's rotation with orbital motion around the solar system's centre of gravity.

There are dozens like this. Ian Enting shows that Plimer:

- misrepresents the content of IPCC reports on at least 13 occasions as well as misrepresenting the operation of the IPCC and the authorship of IPCC reports;
- has at least 17 other instances of misrepresenting the content of cited sources;
- has at least 2 graphs where checks show that the original is a plot of something other than what Plimer claims and many others where data are misrepresented;
- has at least 6 cases of misrepresenting data records in addition to some instances (included in the total above) of misrepresenting data from cited source.

You'd think all this would be enough to bury the book. You'd be wrong. In one of the gravest misjudgments in journalism this year, the Spectator has made the book's British publication its cover story, with the headline "Relax: Global Warming is all a myth". Its story consists of a hagiography of Plimer by James Delingpole, a man who knows – and cares - less about science than I do about Formula One. Plimer's book, he says, is "going to change forever the way we think about climate change", as it demonstrates that anthropogenic global warming "is the biggest, most dangerous and ruinously expensive con trick in history." Delingpole takes the opportunity to cite the usual conspiracy theories about the "powerful and very extensive body of vested interests" working to suppress the truth, which presumably now includes virtually the entire scientific community and everyone from Shell to Greenpeace and The Sun to Science magazine. That took some organising.

What this story shows is that climate change denial is a matter of religious conviction. The quality of the evidence has nothing to do with it. It doesn't matter how comprehensively the sources have been discredited, or how ridiculous the claims are. People like Plimer will cling onto anything, however improbable, that allows them to maintain their view of the world.

www.monbiot.com

Trinity Wetlands

Recentle Denis Walls, one of the founding members of The Cairns Greens, wrote an article which was published in the Cairns Post. If you would like to read this article use the link below.

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B266TGO0Pc4lZWI2N2JmZjgtMmJlNy00MDc4LWI1NDEtN2IxMGE3ZTE1MWJm&hl=en

Climate Change

I am a member of the greens and since the greens want to block the governments Emissions Trading Scheme I have started to take more of an interest in it. So when a neighbor of mine mentioned he was going to a presentation about climate change I went with him.

Professor Ian Plimer.
People are responsible for global warming – a load of hot air.

This is the introductory statement flashed on the screen at the start of Professor Plimer’s presentation. When I saw this introductory statement on the screen I realized Professor Plimer was a climate change skeptic, he believes in climate change he just doesn’t believe humans are responsible for it, he believes it is a natural phenomenon.

Professor Plimer is a highly educated and experienced geologist and held a lot of impressive environmental positions. If you want to see the introductory page to his book which outlines his expertise click the following link, it is quite impressive.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AW66TGO0Pc4lZGhicW5qNl8zZ3NyN3J6aGg&hl=en

So I sat through the presentation and , as you would expect, it was a good show. Professor Plimer spoke with authority and there were graphs and slides and charts, the Paleolithic this and the interglacial that. “We need only look back in time and we can understand everything”, he likes the word time. At the end of it I thought “boy no wonder there is so much confusion on this issue, so many experts telling me different things”.

So at the end we had question time and the professor seemed to be enjoying himself as the supportive listeners asked him questions. Until one particular person named Nick, who proclaimed himself to be a greene, asked him some questions. “I believe the consensus of opinion” began Nick but the professor cut him off curtly, “belief is a word for religion. I don’t deal in belief I am a scientist, I deal in facts, and consensus is a word used by politicians”. The professor went on to another question, from the consensus in the room everyone else was quite happy with that.

The respect I had for professor Plimer dropped a little after that, the professor seems quite certain of his interpretation of the ‘facts’ but doesn’t seem to understand simple English. The word 'believe' is quite easy to understand, the professor believes he is right even though the majority of professors and learned men with great experience believe he is wrong. Perhaps the reason he can’t understand the word consensus is because if he did he would have to admit that the consensus among scientists of equal or greater stature than himself is that he is wrong.

Finally there was one other matter during the professors presentation that made me question him. During the presentation he mentioned that many of the scientists who oppose his conclusions are paid by grants from governments or environmental institutions, if there were no environmental issue they would not receive funding. The implication is obvious: these scientists have lost their objectivity and are motivated by financial gain. In the course of question time a lady asked the professor about his considerable connections to the mining industries and the financial support thay are giving him. His annoyed answer to that was “the cosmic dust in the atmosphere remains the same regardless of who pays for the research”.

Now when a person holds one particular standard for himself but a different usually higher standard for others, isn’t there a word in the English language for that?

Welcome to Cairns Greens Blogspot

Two centuries ago a philosopher asked the question: What happens when a finite resource, such as the earth, meets an ever expanding consumer species, such as mankind? This theoretical question will be answered in the lifetime of our children.

Our history is replete with cultures which denuded their environment then degenerated into religious zeal and War. These cultures had the luxury of moving to greener pastures except for those on Malta and Easter Island where the civilizations vanished into a cataclysmic cloud of destruction. I would like to point out that we live on an Island called earth, an oasis in a barren solar system.

The greens have for decades been telling the world about the importance of the environment, they were spat on, abused and arrested. Through it all their strength of character and personal convictions spurred them on to continue the struggle. Now the whole world is realizing the importance of the environment and our precarious place in it.

The traditional political parties appropriated the greens credo and put on a new green jacket, relegating the greens to a subordinate role, but where would we be now if the greens had not persisted. Even now many people think it is already too late. I am not one of those, I believe all the solutions are already in front of us they need only be implemented, but the traditional parties of Labor and Liberal will not implement them. They have put on the green jacket more for political reasons than from a conviction that something must be done. The focus of the two mainstream parties remains the same, liberals believe in economic rationalism and labor focuses on an improved quality of life for the working class.

The world has grown with the advance of economic rationalism and improving the quality of life for the working class is ongoing, but we live in the 21C, the arcane concept of us and them will destroy us. We, as a species, must evolve to embrace this new world, we must rise to the occasion or suffer the consequences of our own failed nature. If we cannot rise to the occasion Gaia will create an environment which will shake our civilization to its foundations, if we do not prove ourselves worthy to be the dominant species on this planet, if we are so stupid as to be the progenitors of our own destruction, then God will not protect us, we are not the center of the universe only the center or our own universe.

There are two main problems associated with saving the world. The first is vested interest and the second is that the pollution problem is not a local issue but a worldwide phenomenon. The world was barely able to sustain the two developed areas of Europe and America, now China, India, Russia and many minor players such as South America, Indonesia, south east Asia and the middle east are industrializing. They want the lifestyles of the rich and famous and who can blame them, we sell it so well. In an environment of economic and political competitiveness the world and its ecosystems have been relegated to a secondary issue, it is being torn apart. To any sane person the consequences of such a mindset are obvious.

Vested interest is quite easy to understand, people who make money out of a business which pollutes the earth, and particularly the air, subordinate the general good to their own personal gain. This is quite natural, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, these people will protect their vested interests regardless of the consequences to others. Their priority is their bank account. They promote ideas, ethics, concepts and arguments which supports their cause using any and all possible means to ensure the bottom line; their bank balance. We can’t blame them morally for doing this, it is only natural in a hierarchical cut throat society such as the one we live in. The good thing is we live in a democracy and it is your vote which will ultimately determine the direction we go in.

The second problem with pollution, particularly Carbon Dioxide Emissions, is the fact that we cannot fence off the air or the ocean. Much as economic gurus proclaim “everything should be owned” no one had yet stamped their authority on the air or the oceans. The pollution emitted by America, Europe, Russia, China and India is breathed by us all, the consequences of global warming and climate change are born by us all. When was the last time you saw all these countries agree on anything. People only agree and are willing to change their ways of thinking when disaster looms. We hold on dearly to our pet beliefs.

The greens have shown understanding, perception and foresight, the earth itself has proved them right. Surely those who foresaw and forewarned us of the problem are the ones most suited to deal with it. Don’t wait until the disaster is irrevocable before trusting those who warned you it was coming.

The greens are an intelligent socially upstanding group of people putting in time and personal effort for the creation of a better society in a modern world. We couldn’t do better than to have people like this in responsible positions of government in the city council, the state government and in the federal senate.

EXPERIMENTAL BLOG

This is the first blog on this space, I hope this space will become a benificial communication tool for cairns.