Andrew L. Urban
It runs to almost 600 pages and weighs 2kg. There’s no ducking acclaimed geologist Ian Plimer’s latest book of scholarship, Green Murder, ridiculing climate alarmists with scientific facts, calling their alarmism a murder threat. The facts are not new; “read the rocks” he says, the past is the key to the present. It’s a dangerous, heretical book, contradicting the ruling orthodoxy – with scientific evidence.
No question that Ian Plimer is a geologist first and foremost: “The story of the planet earth is a marvellous incomplete chronicle written in stone. We have enough empirical evidence from history, archaeology, glaciology and geology to show that past climate changes have never been driven by trace additions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There is no reason to conclude that present human emissions of carbon dioxide will be any different. The only way to understand climate is to read the rocks because the past is the key to the present.”
Ian Plimer
Plimer does not suffer fools gladly – especially those he regards as climate fools; and their ranks include common or garden activists, highly placed (lowly informed) politicians, unquestioning, activist journalists and commentators who regurgitate alarmist propaganda. As well as the many compromised scientists.
“Because science is a closed shop, it is far easier for fraud to flourish. Most scientific fraud involves omission and ‘homogenisation’ of data, poor statistical treatment of data, claiming credit for the work of others, ignoring contrary findings and producing pre-ordained conclusions. There is certainty in the mob rule of consensus science, and that keeps the gravy train moving.”
The primary message in the 600 page book is that it has never been shown that carbon dioxide drives global warming. He reaffirms that at various opportunities throughout the book, referring to the mass of evidence on which he relies for all his arguments. (The last 52 pages of the book are taken up by notes, sources, references…) He demolishes the basis of the current climate change orthodoxy, takes the reader through the quagmire of renewables and shows in detail why the whole package is causing great harm, built as it is on a combination of ignorance, misrepresentation, fraud and greed – a veritable witch’s brew falsely labelled ‘science’.
“Most public discussions about climate change are underpinned by emotion, and normally the intensity of emotion is inversely proportional to the amount and veracity of evidence,” he scoffs. “The word ‘belief’ is not used in science because belief is untestable…” In his book Climate Change Delusion and the Great Electricity Ripoff (Connor Court, 2017), he said ‘do you believe in climate change’ is the “moron’s question”. (Green Murder might be nicknamed ‘The Book of Moron’…?.)
He has (rhetorical) questions of his own: “Why didn’t humans, polar bears, emperor penguins, and other poster animals of the green activists die in the previous warmings when temperature was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than now?”
As for the Great Barrier Reef, “poster child of the green left environmental activists, [it] disappeared during glacial events more than 60 times over the last three million years. Each time the Great Barrier Reef disappeared, it reappeared a little later. It has survived past massive rain and storm events that deposited sediment on the reef well before humans were around.”
In more recent times, he writes, “The Covid 19 crisis caused the biggest fall in global energy investment in history. Consumption of aviation fuel and petrol plummeted with the consequent drop in human carbon dioxide emissions, but with no drop in global temperature.”
We can understand his disdain and ridicule, given the claims by alarmists can easily be debunked, in a few seconds on your smart phone, he notes a couple of times. (They could also read any of his earlier books on the subject.)
He warns that “We may be the first civilization destroyed not by the power of our enemies, but by the ideology and ignorance of our teachers, and the nonsense that they are teaching our children. Young people no longer want to hear the truth, engage in debate or read because they don’t want their cherished illusions destroyed.
He flays the ‘cherished illusions’ of a ruling orthodoxy.
“Some 500 years ago, the mainstream establishment said the sun rotated around the earth. 150 years ago, the mainstream scientific bodies said that manned flight was impossible, 100 years ago, the mainstream scientific opinion was that flight across the great oceans was impossible, 90 years ago, the mainstream opinion was that space flight was impossible and 80 years ago the mainstream opinion was that the continents did not move. In all cases, the mainstream was wrong.”
The past is the key to the present in more ways than one: “There was once a consensus about eugenics…. Eugenics research was funded by the Carnegie Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, both of whom now fund climate activism. With such eminent citizens and respectable foundations supporting eugenics, how could it not be correct consensus science. The same logic is used for climate science. We now know eugenics was a racist, murderous, anti-immigration social programme masquerading as science.”
The above example appears in one of the more entertaining chapters, The End is Nigh, in which Plimer details dozens and dozens of doomsday predictions over many years – all of which now look absurd, often laughably stupid.
In 1970, Peter Gunter from North Texas University proclaimed a timetable in which “by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India. These will spread by 1990…. by the year 2000 or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. By the year 2030 years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia will be in famine.”
It was a bad year for predictions, starting in January 1970 when Life magazine warned that “by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by half.” There are plenty more in a similar vein, not least a bunch of Paul Ehrlich’s various ridiculous catastrophisations, which Plimer describes as a ‘death cult blackness’.
In June 1989 the UN Environment Program was quoted saying: “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”
The End is Nigh chapter runs from page 157 to 232, filled with similar projections and prophesies none of which were fulfilled. Plimer’s point is that today’s climate alarmism – complete with its doomsday clock ticking in the ears of Ponce Charles, Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough – already seems just as absurd. The chapter bolsters Plimer’s argument that consensus is not science and not reliable.
Nor can we rely on the IPCC, “when it admits that it used a Greenpeace campaigner to write an ‘impartial’ report on green energy suggesting that 77% of the world’s energy in 2050 could come from sea breezes and sunbeams.”
The Guardian’s political activist writer George Monbiot (Plimer refers to him as Moonbat) predicted in 2002 that there would be famine in 10 years. “There wasn’t. Moonbat also claimed that ‘Famine can only be avoided if the rich give up meat, fish and dairy…’
There is much, much, much more to this book, confronting with proven science every conceivable aspect of climate change subjects, from renewables, fires, droughts, energy, ‘freakonomics’, and a chapter he calls ‘Fads, Fashions, Fools, Frauds and Finances’.
Plimer closes his book with ‘certa bonum certamen’ a chapter urging us all to ‘fight the good fight’ (St Paul’s College motto).
“My concern,” he writes, “is not what sort of planet we are leaving for our children. My concern is what sort of children we are leaving to care for the planet and how they believe wokeness will solve problems and create prosperity. No country has ever taxed, regulated or woked itself into prosperity.”
And there is the past with its promise to the future: “For hundred of thousands of years, humans and other organisms have adapted and flourished to great and rapid natural climate changes. Surely adaptation by an advanced technological society would be easier.”
Plimer dedicates the book to Dr Gina Rinehart “the most remarkable woman Australia has ever produced and, despite being generous, highly intelligent, astute, charming and caring for her country, she gets constantly pilloried by the envious green left who have yet to make a contribution to the nation.”
GREEN MURDER
A LIFE SENTENCE OF NET ZERO WITH NO PAROLE
Connor Court Publishing
1. Researches seem often to ignore the basic rule which is that ‘the absence of proof is not the same as the proof of absence’. The fact that something, let’s call it God, cannot be proved (by material scientific means anyway) doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, Sadly Plimer makes that same error, which is backed up by the lack of a stipulative meaning of what is meant by God.
2. Plimer is on surer ground when he shows the planet has survivved heat and CO 2 levels much higher than forecast: so why the fuss and fear?
3. I have spent a lot of years on boats and living by the sea. If ocean levels have risen then that’s barely discernible in any harbourage I know of and could be accounted by the way water expands when heated, as by solar activity.
Hello Andrew, Dr. Plimer is a needed voice against the hurricane force winds of the opposition. These foes have our future tightly in their grip unless we can turn the tables on them, please take a look at my research paper (link below),it is very straight forward in explaining where this warming is coming from.
During the last glacial maximum the ocean surface was 122 meters (400 feet) lower than today. And then more sudden than now, temperatures went up a lot, then down again suddenly to glacial again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
“The change to glacial conditions at the onset of the younger Dryas in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere between 12,900–11,500 BP in calendar years has been argued to have been quite abrupt. In sharp contrast to the warming of the preceding Older Dryas interstadial. It has been inferred that its end occurred over a period of a decade or so, but the onset may have been faster.” . . . . . .
. . . . . .”Various paleoclimatic records from ice cores, deep sea sediments, speleothems, continental paleobotanical data, and loesses show similar abrupt climate events, which are consistent with Younger Dryas events, during the terminations of the last four glacial periods. They argue that Younger Dryas events might be an intrinsic feature of deglaciations that occur at the end of glacial periods.” . . . . . .
. . . . . . . “Measurements of oxygen isotopes from the GISP2 ice core suggest the ending of the Younger Dryas took place over just 40–50 years in three discrete steps, each lasting five years. Other proxy data, such as dust concentration, and snow accumulation, suggest an even more rapid transition, requiring about a 7 °C (13 °F) warming in just a few years. Total warming in Greenland was 10 ± 4 °C (18 ± 7 °F).”
It is telling that all of the warming events since the Younger Dryas; the two Holocene Climate Optimum periods, Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period and the cold period of the Little Ice Age don’t get much press from the promoters of Anthropologic warming. The same evidence that can explain the Younger Dryas can also explain our more recent warming that has occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age, and even all those inconvenient ups and downs that occurred in between them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
“Of 140 sites across the western Arctic, there is clear evidence for conditions that were warmer than now at 120 sites. At 16 sites for which quantitative estimates have been obtained, local temperatures were on average 1.6±0.8 °C higher during the optimum than now. Northwestern North America reached peak warmth first, from 11,000 to 9,000 years ago, but the Laurentide Ice Sheet still chilled eastern Canada.”
When we finally understand what drives our planet’s tectonic plates, we will then understand what has driven our past climate history.
Plate Tectonics: a history of a changing climate through geologic forcing. https://electroplatetectonics.blogspot.com/
Look, Marc Linquist:
I like your ‘cheeky’ use of the word ‘Summery’ in your history. But perhaps (with your comment above) you could have written a brief ‘Summary’ (abstract). I did what I could to understand your work, but after reading here and there, ‘skimming’ out of necessity (it’s a big work … and I cannot hope to be able to check out each of the references that you have provided…
…I cannot – in retrospect – understand/remember how gravitational fields (ours and the Sun’s) … by their effect on Plate Tectonics / ‘geologic forcing’ … are able to produce a change in our climate.
It might be down to me (my failing to understand your work), but, alas … I do not know.
Something like an Executive Summary to begin with … then the body (accompanied by specific ‘in text referencing’ e.g. Blogs, 2024 p7 with the appropriate system in a bibliography) and the conclusion.
Present it like a Science Reporter would … i.e. in Common English, with the odd scientific term thrown in?:
I’d recommend to readers C.P. Snow’s ‘The Two Cultures’ (1959) for some general reading … it deals with a split between the arts (the humanities) and the sciences. I think that this topic might have previously had a run on Andrew’s blog … maybe not.
So a last query … it seems that global warming is now admitted on this blog, but such admissions are limited to non-human ‘forcings’?
As they say … ‘Cheers’!
In answer, I quote from my book, Climate Alarm Reality Check, from a letter by Fellows of the Geological Society:
“The IPCC position matches observations that almost half of the warming that has occurred over the last 150 or so years since industrialisation, had already happened by 1943, well before the rapid rise of industrial CO2. This difference of opinion is critical, for if CO2 did not cause the pre-1943 warming, the claimed consensus that Catastrophic AGW is caused by human CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution, which is supported by GSL, must be mistaken.”
Thanks, Andrew. Actually, I was responding to Marc Linquist’s comment and was half hoping that he would respond to my own comment. However, without having yet read your ‘Climate Alarm Reality Check’, I’m in the dark as to the ‘pros and cons’ of that Fellows letter to the Society, from which you have quoted.
I do see that the Society’s position on Global Warming seems contrary to that of the authors of that letter, from which you have quoted. The Society states:
That document – ‘What the Geological record Tells us…‘ – (referred to above) contains the following in its Executive Statement:
Further to this, a word search of the Society’s document using ‘rate’ as the search term, confirms that in the opinion of the Society, it is the rate of climate warming / change that distinguishes the present warming from those of other eras/epochs.
I have read Marc Lindquist’s ‘Plate Tectonics: a history of a changing climate through geologic forcing. [https://electroplatetectonics.blogspot.com/] As I understand him, he suggests that the movement of the Earth’s plates (‘plate tectonics’) explains (via volcanism et al.) past changes in the Earth’s climate and that solar insolation (aka?: the Sun’s gravitational field) plays a major role in our plates’ tectonics… and thus, on occasion, in the release of CO2 into the atmosphere, creating a warming blanket.
After viewing/reading it, I did also search Marc’s paper using ‘climate’ and ‘rate’ as search terms. I was looking for links between shifting plates and changing climate/rates of warming. My impression is that Marc’s attention (in that paper of his) was on the plate tectonics and did not deal with what the Society identifies as the ‘unprecedented’ rates of present warming.
You’re right, Garry: but the letter is being critical of the Society’s official position. When/if you get round to reading my book Climate Alarm Reality Check, on pages 19 – 20 you’ll find the full quote in context. Here it is:
Back in 2010, 43 Fellows of the Royal Society (The United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences, a Fellowship of some 1,600 of the world’s most eminent scientists) wrote to its then president, Paul Nurse, to complain about the unscientific tone of the society’s messages on climate change. Eight years later, a group of 33 current and former Fellows of the Geological Society wrote an open letter to their president in similar vein.
The letter notes that: “The IPCC position matches observations that almost half of the warming that has occurred over the last 150 or so years since industrialisation, had already happened by 1943, well before the rapid rise of industrial CO2. This difference of opinion is critical, for if CO2 did not cause the pre-1943 warming, the claimed consensus that Catastrophic AGW is caused by human CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution, which is supported by GSL, must be mistaken.
“We also believe the GSL has a responsibility to refute the exaggerated claims that swirl around the fringes of the Climate Change debate, undermining the real science – such as that CO2 and Climate Change cause:
more hurricanes, more rain, more drought, more asthma and now, even more terrorism (through drought in Africa), the exceptional cold and warm recorded over most of the sub-Arctic, Northern Hemisphere during the past winter and spring are what we should ‘expect’ from Global Warming.
“As this letter makes clear, it is not true that 97% of scientists unreservedly accept that AGW theory is fixed, or that carbon and CO2 are ‘pollutants’ and their production should be penalised; how can the primary nutrient in photosynthesis be a pollutant? We also note that 700 scientists have made submissions to the US Senate expressing dissent from the consensus and 166 climate scientists issued a challenge to Ban Ki Moon on the eve of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009 to provide proof of human induced global warming, which he did not do.”
I should add: if such proof were provided there would not be such a long and debilitating debate about the matter.
If George W Bush was asked to name consonants , his answer might be “ Europe , Asia and Antarctica , but I can’t think of any more. Then ..president Bush “ do you like to use synonyms?” Yes I love the flavor on hot cross buns. Then President Bush. “ if Iraq attacks Turkey from behind , would Greece help ? “ his answer would be “ Greece always helps in those circumstances. “ Joe Biden is only one short step from trying to copy Ronald Reagan . Soon he will say to the Chinese .. president Xi “ please tear down that wall. “ like climate change all the above seems ok but if you dig just a little deeper into the comments ,just like climate change , it’s all BS . It would be funny if not so dangerous and downright stupid. Careful what you say , careful what you wish for ! Think think think. !!! A friend of Joe Biden might say “ I went to see Disney on Ice … so I can’t remember a thing “🤣🤣🤣🤣 .If you go out at night and look under a rock you’ll find some answers to climate change and under the same rock you’ll find a Politician with a vested interest in selling us the BS . Regards PV
In my childhood, the following ditty was now and then bandied about:
‘Hungary had a bit of Turkey dipped in Greece.’