Fake News - Global Warming Consensus

[Ann]

No, I only read actual climate science literature.

Heaven + Earth certainly falls within that category Rob. It is most certainly all about climate science, it is written by Ian Plimer who is an Australian geologist, Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, previously a professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide. He was Professor and Head of the Melbourne University, Professor and Head at the University of Newcastle. He has published more than 120 scientific papers and has been awarded the Eureka Prize (1995, 2002), the Centenary Medal (2003),the Clarke Medal (2004). He is very well qualified to write on this subject with authority.

Of course this book doesn't agree with your position on Climate Change, however I feel all intelligent debate can only take place when all parties have studied and are familiar with both sides of an argument. To only investigate opinions which are agreeable to one's own point of view is stultifying to intelligent argument. I am sure you would agree with that?

 

[explod]

Worth checking the following. You are amid the Dud's Ann. There is fact and there is fiction and they cannot be mixed.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/misinformers.php

 

[rederob]

Of course this book doesn't agree with your position on Climate Change, however I feel all intelligent debate can only take place when all parties have studied and are familiar with both sides of an argument. To only investigate opinions which are agreeable to one's own point of view is stultifying to intelligent argument. I am sure you would agree with that?

I know Plimer.
He has made no meaningful contribution to climate science that I am aware. His geology credentials are excellent.
I am familiar with climate science and if there is a credible "argument" from the so called "other side", please offer it.

 

[basilio]

Heaven + Earth certainly falls within that category Rob. It is most certainly all about climate science, it is written by Ian Plimer who is an Australian geologist, Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, previously a professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide. He was Professor and Head of the Melbourne University, Professor and Head at the University of Newcastle. He has published more than 120 scientific papers and has been awarded the Eureka Prize (1995, 2002), the Centenary Medal (2003),the Clarke Medal (2004). He is very well qualified to write on this subject with authority.

Of course this book doesn't agree with your position on Climate Change, however I feel all intelligent debate can only take place when all parties have studied and are familiar with both sides of an argument. To only investigate opinions which are agreeable to one's own point of view is stultifying to intelligent argument. I am sure you would agree with that?

Ann Ian Plimer has no credibility with regard to discussing climate science and that book was a load of bollocks. If you would like a more detailed analysis consider this review. But if you still want to consider this as "serious science" I'll totally understand.

No science in Plimer's primer

• By Michael Ashley
• TheAustralian
• 1:00AM May 9, 2009

Heaven and Earth By Ian Plimer Connor Court, 503pp, $39.95
ONE of the peculiar things about being an astronomer is that you receive, from time to time, monographs on topics such as "a new theory of the electric universe", or "Einstein was wrong", or "the moon landings were a hoax".
The writings are always earnest, often involve conspiracy theories and are scientifically worthless.

One such document that arrived last week was Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth. What makes this case unusual is that Plimer is a professor -- of mining geology -- at the University of Adelaide. If the subject were anything less serious than the future habitability of the planet Earth, I wouldn't go to the trouble of writing this review.

Plimer sets out to refute the scientific consensus that human emissions of CO2 have changed the climate. He states in his acknowledgments that the book evolved from a dinner in London with three young lawyers who believed the consensus. As Plimer writes: "Although these three had more than adequate intellectual material to destroy the popular paradigm, they had neither the scientific knowledge nor the scientific training to pull it apart stitch by stitch. This was done at dinner."

This is a remarkable claim. If Plimer is right and he is able to show that the work of literally thousands of oceanographers, solar physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, and snow and ice researchers during the past 100 years is fundamentally flawed, then it would rank as one of the greatest discoveries of the century and would almost certainly earn him a Nobel prize. This is the scale of Plimer's claim.

Before reading any further, I examined Plimer's publication list on the University of Adelaide website to see what he has published in refereed journals. There are a scant 17 such papers since 1994, two as first author with the titles "Manganoan garnet rocks associated with the Broken Hill Pb-Zn-Ag orebody" and "Kasolite from the British Empire Mine". Absolutely nothing on climate science.

Now, before I am accused of attacking the man and not the argument, let me point out that scientists regard peer-reviewed journal publications as fundamental for advancing science. They allow ideas to be exchanged, tested, improved on and, quite frequently, discarded. If Plimer can do what he claims, and can prove that human emissions of CO2 have no effect on the climate, then he owes it to the scientific community and, in fact, humanity, to publish his arguments in a refereed journal.

Perhaps we will find a stitch-by-stitch demolition of climate science in his book, as promised? No such luck. The arguments that Plimer advances in the 503 pages and 2311 footnotes in Heaven and Earth are nonsense. The book is largely a collection of contrarian ideas and conspiracy theories that are rife in the blogosphere. The writing is rambling and repetitive; the arguments flawed and illogical.

He recycles a graph, without attribution, from Martin Durkin's Great Global Warming Swindle documentary, neglecting even to make the changes that Durkin made following an outcry over the fact that the past two decades of temperature measurements had been mysteriously deleted.

Plimer claims that scientists such as himself, who do not agree with the consensus, are labelled deniers, "yet their scientific doubts are not addressed". Nothing could be further from the truth. All of Plimer's arguments have been addressed ad nauseam by patient climate scientists on websites or in the literature.

To appreciate the errors in Plimer's book you don't have to be a climate scientist. For example, take the measurement of the global average CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This is obviously important, so scientists measure it with great care at many locations across the world.

Precision measurements have been made daily since 1958 at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, a mountain-top site with a clear airflow unaffected by local pollution. The data is in excellent agreement with ice cores from several sites in Antarctica and Greenland. Thousands of scientific papers have been written on the topic, hundreds of scientists are involved from many independent research groups.

Plimer, however, writes that a simple home experiment indoors can show that in a week, CO2 can vary by 75 parts per million by volume, equal to about 40 years' worth of change at the present rate. He thinks this "rings alarm bells" on the veracity of the Mauna Loa data, which shows a smoothly rising concentration.

While it is undoubtedly true that if you measure CO2 in your home it could vary by large amounts from day to day -- depending, for example, on whether you have the windows open or closed, or how many people are in the house at the time -- this is not the right way to measure a global average. That's why scientists go to mountain-tops or Antarctica or to the isolated Cape Grimm on the Tasmanian coast rather than measuring CO2 in their living rooms.

Incredible as it may seem, this quality of argument is typical of the book. While the text is annotated profusely with footnotes and refers to papers in the top journals, thus giving it the veneer of scholarship, it is often the case that the cited articles do not support the text. Plimer repeatedly veers off to the climate sceptic's journal of choice, the bottom-tier Energy and Environment, to advance all manner of absurd theories: for example, that CO2 concentrations actually have fallen since 1942.

Plimer believes "global warming" occurring on Mars, Triton, Jupiter and Pluto proves human emissions of CO2 don't affect Earth's climate. He believes that once CO2 levels reached 200ppmv (about half of today's value) the CO2 had absorbed almost all the infrared energy it could, and further increases will not have much effect. He believes global warming does not lead to biological stress. He believes volcanoes emit significant quantities of chlorofluorocarbons. He believes the sun formed on the collapsed core of a supernova. All these ideas are so wrong as to be laughable: they do not offer an "alternative scientific perspective".

Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page120 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.

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.

Michael Ashley is professor of astrophysics at the University of NSW.

 

[Ann]

I know Plimer.
He has made no meaningful contribution to climate science that I am aware. His geology credentials are excellent.
I am familiar with climate science and if there is a credible "argument" from the so called "other side", please offer it.

It is a 493 page book heavily referenced on each page. Unless you have read the book Rob it would be impossible to hold a discussion about it.....and I don't see it as the 'other side', I see it as an alternate view. Debate, discussion, peer review, challenging results and projections done by those with different outcomes are a demonstration of a healthy scientific community. Closed minds and closed arguments can never be legitimate science. They can only ever be seen as substantiating a particular narrow focus of outcome.

 

[basilio]

It is a 493 page book heavily referenced on each page. Unless you have read the book Rob it would be impossible to hold a discussion about it.....and I don't see it as the 'other side', I see it as an alternate view. Debate, discussion, peer review, challenging results and projections done by those with different outcomes are a demonstration of a healthy scientific community. Closed minds and closed arguments can never be legitimate science. They can only ever be seen as substantiating a particular narrow focus of outcome.

Ann READ THE XXXXING REVIEW I POSTED !

Yes I am shouting - and swearing. Plimers book has so many totally demonstrable fallacies it cannot stand as a representation of anything except lies and deception. It has no credibility. Offering it as an alternative point of view just damages your credibility.

 

[rederob]

It is a 493 page book heavily referenced on each page. Unless you have read the book Rob it would be impossible to hold a discussion about it.....and I don't see it as the 'other side', I see it as an alternate view. Debate, discussion, peer review, challenging results and projections done by those with different outcomes are a demonstration of a healthy scientific community. Closed minds and closed arguments can never be legitimate science. They can only ever be seen as substantiating a particular narrow focus of outcome.

Ann, exactly what is it that you propose be discussed?
I am not aware that Plimer is well versed in climate, but if there is anything you have found which would overturn Micheal Ashley's earlier review, then please offer it.
There are tens of thousands of papers on climate. If you think there are problems with what they present, where do these problems lie?

 

[Ann]

Ann Ian Plimer has no credibility with regard to discussing climate science and that book was a load of bollocks. If you would like a more detailed analysis consider this review. But if you still want to consider this as "serious science" I'll totally understand.

No science in Plimer's primer

• By Michael Ashley
• TheAustralian
• 1:00AM May 9, 2009

Heaven and Earth By Ian Plimer Connor Court, 503pp, $39.95
ONE of the peculiar things about being an astronomer is that you receive, from time to time, monographs on topics such as "a new theory of the electric universe", or "Einstein was wrong", or "the moon landings were a hoax".
The writings are always earnest, often involve conspiracy theories and are scientifically worthless.

One such document that arrived last week was Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth. What makes this case unusual is that Plimer is a professor -- of mining geology -- at the University of Adelaide. If the subject were anything less serious than the future habitability of the planet Earth, I wouldn't go to the trouble of writing this review.

Plimer sets out to refute the scientific consensus that human emissions of CO2 have changed the climate. He states in his acknowledgments that the book evolved from a dinner in London with three young lawyers who believed the consensus. As Plimer writes: "Although these three had more than adequate intellectual material to destroy the popular paradigm, they had neither the scientific knowledge nor the scientific training to pull it apart stitch by stitch. This was done at dinner."

This is a remarkable claim. If Plimer is right and he is able to show that the work of literally thousands of oceanographers, solar physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, and snow and ice researchers during the past 100 years is fundamentally flawed, then it would rank as one of the greatest discoveries of the century and would almost certainly earn him a Nobel prize. This is the scale of Plimer's claim.

Before reading any further, I examined Plimer's publication list on the University of Adelaide website to see what he has published in refereed journals. There are a scant 17 such papers since 1994, two as first author with the titles "Manganoan garnet rocks associated with the Broken Hill Pb-Zn-Ag orebody" and "Kasolite from the British Empire Mine". Absolutely nothing on climate science.

Now, before I am accused of attacking the man and not the argument, let me point out that scientists regard peer-reviewed journal publications as fundamental for advancing science. They allow ideas to be exchanged, tested, improved on and, quite frequently, discarded. If Plimer can do what he claims, and can prove that human emissions of CO2 have no effect on the climate, then he owes it to the scientific community and, in fact, humanity, to publish his arguments in a refereed journal.

Perhaps we will find a stitch-by-stitch demolition of climate science in his book, as promised? No such luck. The arguments that Plimer advances in the 503 pages and 2311 footnotes in Heaven and Earth are nonsense. The book is largely a collection of contrarian ideas and conspiracy theories that are rife in the blogosphere. The writing is rambling and repetitive; the arguments flawed and illogical.

He recycles a graph, without attribution, from Martin Durkin's Great Global Warming Swindle documentary, neglecting even to make the changes that Durkin made following an outcry over the fact that the past two decades of temperature measurements had been mysteriously deleted.

Plimer claims that scientists such as himself, who do not agree with the consensus, are labelled deniers, "yet their scientific doubts are not addressed". Nothing could be further from the truth. All of Plimer's arguments have been addressed ad nauseam by patient climate scientists on websites or in the literature.

To appreciate the errors in Plimer's book you don't have to be a climate scientist. For example, take the measurement of the global average CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This is obviously important, so scientists measure it with great care at many locations across the world.

Precision measurements have been made daily since 1958 at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, a mountain-top site with a clear airflow unaffected by local pollution. The data is in excellent agreement with ice cores from several sites in Antarctica and Greenland. Thousands of scientific papers have been written on the topic, hundreds of scientists are involved from many independent research groups.

Plimer, however, writes that a simple home experiment indoors can show that in a week, CO2 can vary by 75 parts per million by volume, equal to about 40 years' worth of change at the present rate. He thinks this "rings alarm bells" on the veracity of the Mauna Loa data, which shows a smoothly rising concentration.

While it is undoubtedly true that if you measure CO2 in your home it could vary by large amounts from day to day -- depending, for example, on whether you have the windows open or closed, or how many people are in the house at the time -- this is not the right way to measure a global average. That's why scientists go to mountain-tops or Antarctica or to the isolated Cape Grimm on the Tasmanian coast rather than measuring CO2 in their living rooms.

Incredible as it may seem, this quality of argument is typical of the book. While the text is annotated profusely with footnotes and refers to papers in the top journals, thus giving it the veneer of scholarship, it is often the case that the cited articles do not support the text. Plimer repeatedly veers off to the climate sceptic's journal of choice, the bottom-tier Energy and Environment, to advance all manner of absurd theories: for example, that CO2 concentrations actually have fallen since 1942.

Plimer believes "global warming" occurring on Mars, Triton, Jupiter and Pluto proves human emissions of CO2 don't affect Earth's climate. He believes that once CO2 levels reached 200ppmv (about half of today's value) the CO2 had absorbed almost all the infrared energy it could, and further increases will not have much effect. He believes global warming does not lead to biological stress. He believes volcanoes emit significant quantities of chlorofluorocarbons. He believes the sun formed on the collapsed core of a supernova. All these ideas are so wrong as to be laughable: they do not offer an "alternative scientific perspective".

Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page120 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.

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.

Michael Ashley is professor of astrophysics at the University of NSW.

Have you actually read the book Bas?

This is a review done by Michael Ashley. Note the dismissive style and manner he reviews a piece of scientific literature. It is not done in a manner one would expect for a peer revue but from one who is attempting to denegrade a long and really interesting piece of scientific literature written by one of Australias' most respected, highly qualified and recognized scientists.
In all fairness and balance, let's look at Michael Ashley's qualifications.

His role is Chair, School of Physics Staff Committee at the University of NSW, his qualifications
M.Sc. Cal. Tech. and B.Sc., Ph.D. ANU.
His research group at the UNSW is Astronomy in Antarctica.

Michael teaches all years from 1st to Honours, and PhD. He currently teaches first year physics, computational and experimental physics, energy and environmental physics, stellar structure and the interstellar medium, and a mechanical engineering class on wind turbine design. He has previously taught classical mechanics, electronics, programming in C and Python, and a general studies class on artificial intelligence. He has supervised over 45 Physics Honours and 4th year engineering projects.

Research Interests:

• Antarctic astronomy: this is the last great frontier for ground-based astronomy. Our group at UNSW is leading the Australian push to establish a large optical/infrared telescope on the antarctic plateau. Twelve of our graduate students have been to Antarctica, several have wintered over.
• Terahertz astronomy from Antarctica: I am collaborating with Craig Kulesa at the University of Arizona on a 0.6m THz telescope at Ridge A in Antarctica.
• Instrumentation & computing: my long term interest has been in electronics and computing (both hardware and software) with the goal of building new and interesting astronomical instruments.

Let's look at his Memberships:


Matchmaker for the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, connecting journalists and government officials with climate scientists around the world.

Member, National Committee for Antarctic Research

Member, Optical Telescope Advisory Committee to Astronomy Australia Limited

Member, Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research Astronomy and Astrophysics from Antarctica Special Research Program

Member of the board of ACAMAR, the Australian-Chinese Consortium for Astrophysical Research

Member, International Astronomical Union

Member, Astronomical Society of Australia
https://www.physics.unsw.edu.au/staff/michael-ashley

 

[Struzball]

Worth checking the following. You are amid the Dud's Ann. There is fact and there is fiction and they cannot be mixed.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/misinformers.php

What a coincidence that skepticalscience.com would label every notable climate scientist who happen to not agree with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming as "misinformers".

As the believers like to say, when the subject is about climate science, we should listen to the climate scientists.
We should not be blindly following a so-called consensus.
And it's not helpful to label climate scientists who actually know what they're talking about as misinformers.

 

[rederob]

Have you actually read the book Bas?

This is a review done by Michael Ashley. Note the dismissive style and manner he reviews a piece of scientific literature. It is not done in a manner one would expect for a peer revue but from one who is attempting to denegrade a long and really interesting piece of scientific literature written by one of Australias' most respected, highly qualified and recognized scientists.
In all fairness and balance, let's look at Michael Ashley's qualifications.

His role is Chair, School of Physics Staff Committee at the University of NSW, his qualifications
M.Sc. Cal. Tech. and B.Sc., Ph.D. ANU.
His research group at the UNSW is Astronomy in Antarctica.

Michael teaches all years from 1st to Honours, and PhD. He currently teaches first year physics, computational and experimental physics, energy and environmental physics, stellar structure and the interstellar medium, and a mechanical engineering class on wind turbine design. He has previously taught classical mechanics, electronics, programming in C and Python, and a general studies class on artificial intelligence. He has supervised over 45 Physics Honours and 4th year engineering projects.

Research Interests:

• Antarctic astronomy: this is the last great frontier for ground-based astronomy. Our group at UNSW is leading the Australian push to establish a large optical/infrared telescope on the antarctic plateau. Twelve of our graduate students have been to Antarctica, several have wintered over.
• Terahertz astronomy from Antarctica: I am collaborating with Craig Kulesa at the University of Arizona on a 0.6m THz telescope at Ridge A in Antarctica.
• Instrumentation & computing: my long term interest has been in electronics and computing (both hardware and software) with the goal of building new and interesting astronomical instruments.

Let's look at his Memberships:


Matchmaker for the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, connecting journalists and government officials with climate scientists around the world.

Member, National Committee for Antarctic Research

Member, Optical Telescope Advisory Committee to Astronomy Australia Limited

Member, Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research Astronomy and Astrophysics from Antarctica Special Research Program

Member of the board of ACAMAR, the Australian-Chinese Consortium for Astrophysical Research

Member, International Astronomical Union

Member, Astronomical Society of Australia
https://www.physics.unsw.edu.au/staff/michael-ashley

You presented no science Ann.
What is the point of your post?

 

[Ann]

Ann READ THE XXXXING REVIEW I POSTED !

Yes I am shouting - and swearing. Plimers book has so many totally demonstrable fallacies it cannot stand as a representation of anything except lies and deception. It has no credibility. Offering it as an alternative point of view just damages your credibility.

You presented no science Ann.
What is the point of your post?

I wasn't offering up any science Rob. I was asking if you and Bas had read a really interesting book with all sorts of fascinating things not all related to climate change but a lot of interesting geological information of which Plimer is regarded as a major expert in his field. My response to Bas was to ascertain if he had actually read the book. The rest of the post was simply to add a balance of the review scientists qualifications, interests, work and affiliations. I leave it up to the reading public to decide themselves if he was sufficiently qualified to review the book. I made no comments or points about his fitness or not. I gave a link to show I had not omitted or distorted any of the facts about him.

 

[rederob]

I wasn't offering up any science Rob. I was asking if you and Bas had read a really interesting book with all sorts of fascinating things not all related to climate change but a lot of interesting geological information of which Plimer is regarded as a major expert in his field. My response to Bas was to ascertain if he had actually read the book. The rest of the post was simply to add a balance of the review scientists qualifications, interests, work and affiliations. I leave it up to the reading public to decide themselves if he was sufficiently qualified to review the book. I made no comments or points about his fitness or not. I gave a link to show I had not omitted or distorted any of the facts about him.

True. But Plimer's book was clearly more interesting to you than me and perhaps a few other readers here.
Although you say:

...I feel all intelligent debate can only take place when all parties have studied and are familiar with both sides of an argument.

My point was the book had nothing to offer.
And many posts later it still appears to have nothing to offer. So again, what are you proposing for discussion relevant to climate science?

 

[basilio]

I did read the book Ann. It was badly written and offered explanations of geological activities that were just probably wrong. In my mind he destroyed his credibility in this field

I offered the review by Professor Michael Ashley because it incorporated a number of the most egregious examples of Ian Plimers scholarship. If you are interested in more critical analysis of the book check out the ref. But to make the point about the inappropriate way Ian Plimers uses the voluminous references consider this.

To give his arguments a semblance of respectability the book is replete with references. But the choice is very selective. Plimer will quote, for example, a paper that appears to support his argument, but then he does not mention that the conclusions therein have been completely refuted in subsequent papers. Elsewhere, he refers to a specific question raised in published work but does not mention that this issue has subsequently been resolved, has been incorporated in subsequent analyses, and is no longer relevant. Or he simply misquotes the work or takes it out of context. An example of this is a reference to my own in the Mediterranean where he gives quite a misleading twist to what we actually concluded.

Other examples can be identified in this section, and throughout the book. Together they point to either carelessness, to a lack of understanding of the underlying science, or to an attempt to see the world through tinted spectacles.

In terms of appreciating how misleading Plimer can be consider this

There is geological evidence that suggests that the Earth has gone through extreme glacial episodes in the distant past. Plimer states that change from extreme glacial to extreme warm conditions occurred within a few centuries. Whether this is correct or not is a legitimate point of debate. But further on, he states that to raise sea level by 4 to 6 metres from the melting of West Antarctica, in the near future, is Hollywood fantasy. That may well be true. But there is no consistency in his argument. If at one time the planet can exit from near-global glaciation conditions in a few hundred years, then why can a comparatively minor adjustment of the West Antarctica ice sheet not occur on the same time scale? Is it a case of seeing only what you want to see?

Plimer uses the example of ocean floor doming and sea floor volcanism to illustrate geological processes that have modified sea level. He states that during such events monstrous amounts of heat are released into the oceans and that huge volumes of water are displaced, causing sea level to rise. If I use his example of a 1000km x 1000km plateau raised by 1 kilometre, the volume of displaced water is about one million cubic kilometres, which when distributed over the oceans brings sea level up by about 3 metres. But the formation of these plateaux occur on a time scale of a million years and longer, and the associated rate of change is only of the order say, .03 millimetres per year, and this is about 100 times less than the rates observed today. Likewise, Plimer's monstrous amounts of heat released into the oceans do not produce a measurable global signal on the human time scale.


https://www.abc.net.au/radionationa...d-earth-global-warming-the/3147158#transcript

 

[Ann]

True. But Plimer's book was clearly more interesting to you than me and perhaps a few other readers here.
Although you say:

My point was the book had nothing to offer.
And many posts later it still appears to have nothing to offer. So again, what are you proposing for discussion relevant to climate science?

So you have read the book Rob. Let's discuss by page quotes the areas you disagree with in his contributions to the climate debate. I have my book beside me. That will bring the science into this thread.

 

[rederob]

So you have read the book Rob. Let's discuss by page quotes the areas you disagree with in his contributions to the climate debate. I have my book beside me. That will bring the science into this thread.

You have had ample opportunity to use any science in this thread - if you choose Plimer it will be interesting.
Given I have no idea where Plimer has made a meaningful contribution to climate science, how about you stump up with his brilliance.

 

[Ann]

I did read the book Ann. It was badly written and offered explanations of geological activities that were just probably wrong. In my mind he destroyed his credibility in this field

The fact that he offers a differing view to your belief, will automatically give him no credibility in your eyes. So I guess he will just have to learn to live with it Bas!

I disagree it was badly written, I am Dyslexic and really struggle to read. I need to re-read things many times over. The fact I was able to cope with reading his reasonably technical and long work is testament to his writing abilities. I often have to leave books if their writing is not clear and informative. For you to say " ...offered explanations of geological activities that were just probably wrong". This comment sounds a touch strange, in other words you could say ...but may possibly be right!

I offered the review by Professor Michael Ashley because it incorporated a number of the most egregious examples of Ian Plimers scholarship. If you are interested in more critical analysis of the book check out the ref. But to make the point about the inappropriate way Ian Plimers uses the voluminous references consider this.

I simply heard a lot of denigrating rhetoric with very little substance.

To give his arguments a semblance of respectability the book is replete with references. But the choice is very selective. Plimer will quote, for example, a paper that appears to support his argument, but then he does not mention that the conclusions therein have been completely refuted in subsequent papers. Elsewhere, he refers to a specific question raised in published work but does not mention that this issue has subsequently been resolved, has been incorporated in subsequent analyses, and is no longer relevant. Or he simply misquotes the work or takes it out of context. An example of this is a reference to my own in the Mediterranean where he gives quite a misleading twist to what we actually concluded.

Other examples can be identified in this section, and throughout the book. Together they point to either carelessness, to a lack of understanding of the underlying science, or to an attempt to see the world through tinted spectacles.

In terms of appreciating how misleading Plimer can be consider this

There is geological evidence that suggests that the Earth has gone through extreme glacial episodes in the distant past. Plimer states that change from extreme glacial to extreme warm conditions occurred within a few centuries. Whether this is correct or not is a legitimate point of debate. But further on, he states that to raise sea level by 4 to 6 metres from the melting of West Antarctica, in the near future, is Hollywood fantasy. That may well be true. But there is no consistency in his argument. If at one time the planet can exit from near-global glaciation conditions in a few hundred years, then why can a comparatively minor adjustment of the West Antarctica ice sheet not occur on the same time scale? Is it a case of seeing only what you want to see?

Plimer uses the example of ocean floor doming and sea floor volcanism to illustrate geological processes that have modified sea level. He states that during such events monstrous amounts of heat are released into the oceans and that huge volumes of water are displaced, causing sea level to rise. If I use his example of a 1000km x 1000km plateau raised by 1 kilometre, the volume of displaced water is about one million cubic kilometres, which when distributed over the oceans brings sea level up by about 3 metres. But the formation of these plateaux occur on a time scale of a million years and longer, and the associated rate of change is only of the order say, .03 millimetres per year, and this is about 100 times less than the rates observed today. Likewise, Plimer's monstrous amounts of heat released into the oceans do not produce a measurable global signal on the human time scale.


https://www.abc.net.au/radionationa...d-earth-global-warming-the/3147158#transcript

This is a better example of a peer review, still sounding of an opinion bias but slightly more professional. This is more along the lines of how a real scientist would have behaved, less attack, more critique, although Plimer would probably have noted a couple of things from Ashley as well.
The reason scientists want peer review is to see where they may have made an error or misjudgment. It is a step by step basis. Scientists release papers/books and then there is the peer revue and the adjustment and then further work on the study. These and other critiques of his work would have helped him refine the work to the point where all the areas of contention would have been cleaned out. Once there were no more issues to be identified it would have been at that point where he would have felt comfortable giving the textbook to the legal teams as a basis for their litigation of scientists and groups who are offering up misleading or incorrect information in their climate studies. This was the reason he originally wrote the book.
Mine is a secondhand copy from 2009, if he has publshed more editions there is a high liklihood it will differ slightly from mine.

 

[Ann]

You have had ample opportunity to use any science in this thread - if you choose Plimer it will be interesting.
Given I have no idea where Plimer has made a meaningful contribution to climate science, how about you stump up with his brilliance.

He is is taking on a massive political forum and questioning their pseudo-science with his years of scientific expertise. He is exposing himself to ridicule, denegration, attack, criticism, insults, and a host of other experiences from which a lesser man would re-coil. A brave man in a world held to ransom.

 

[rederob]

He is is taking on a massive political forum and questioning their pseudo-science with his years of scientific expertise. He is exposing himself to ridicule, denegration, attack, criticism, insults, and a host of other experiences from which a lesser man would re-coil. A brave man in a world held to ransom.

Ann, this is a very simple matter of climate science, and bringing in politics is a sideshow.
If Plimer has climate credentials to back his claims then what is the issue?
Are you actually going to present some science, or are you just going to make excuses?

 

[rederob]

The reason scientists want peer review is to see where they may have made an error or misjudgment. It is a step by step basis. Scientists release papers/books and then there is the peer revue and the adjustment and then further work on the study. These and other critiques of his work would have helped him refine the work to the point where all the areas of contention would have been cleaned out. Once there were no more issues to be identified it would have been at that point where he would have felt comfortable giving the textbook to the legal teams as a basis for their litigation of scientists and groups who are offering up misleading or incorrect information in their climate studies. This was the reason he originally wrote the book.

Ann, peer review is the gold standard for advancing scientific knowledge.
If Plimer ever had anything meaningful to contribute in the field of climate science, then surely he would have submitted it before adding anything to his book. He has no climate science papers available in the public or scientific domains that I am aware (and I have looked carefully).
Given Plimer's academic status in geology there is no way he would not have known that his book was was other than a concatenation of private thoughts and footnotes.
Your excuses on his behalf are not compelling.

 

[rederob]

What a coincidence that skepticalscience.com would label every notable climate scientist who happen to not agree with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming as "misinformers".

Did you not notice that skepticalscience.com provides evidence to back their claims?
Or is it that where you read the concept of evidence is novel?