Update: Ian Plimer's "Heaven+Earth" has been dissected by various members of the climate change science community, but few were as thorough as Professor Ian Enting of the University of Melbourne, author of "Twisted, The Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial". Prof. Enting's 22-page analysis of "Heaven+Earth" can be found
here.
A first impression on opening Ian Plimer's book,
Heaven+Earth - Global Warming: The Missing Science, is that this a serious effort.
Like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Professor Plimer set out to review the evidence for rapid human-induced climate change through the emitting of "greenhouse gases".
The thousands of footnotes listed throughout the book suggest that the Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide was more than thorough in his scientific review; in fact, on a per capita basis, Prof. Plimer may have out-reviewed the IPCC.
But 'Heaven+Earth' is a markedly different document from the IPCC reports, and not just because it is a more lively and entertaining read.
Prof. Plimer's perspective on climate change is neatly summed up in a sentence late in the book: "The global warming observed during the last 150 years is just one frame in the movie about the history of the Earth."
It's this long view—a geologist's view—that the Professor claims is one of many significant omissions from the climate change debate.
He considers those omissions from just about every conceivable angle, in chapters titled History, The Sun, Earth, Ice, Water and Air, in detail impossible to convey in a few sentences.
Climatic warming has happened before, he contends, as quickly as it occurred during the late 20th century, and the temperature variability that has caused so much alarm is nothing unusual either in geological history or the more recent history of human civilisation.
He takes particular exception to the famous "hockey stick" graph, which shows a long period of relatively minor temperature variation from 1000 AD until the 20th Century, when temperature variation climbs abruptly into the positive.
Prof. Plimer counters with a graph suggesting that the temperature fluctuations of the 20th century are minor squiggles against the great curves of the "Medieval Warming" from 900-1500 AD, and the "Little Ice Age" from about 1550-1720 AD.
Then there's the issue of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Asking himself the hypothetical question of whether humans are increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, Prof. Plimer notes: "Possibly".
But he's unequivocal on whether that atmospheric CO2 is pushing humanity into a climate disaster.
In his estimation, CO2 contributes about 0.1 per cent to any warming effect: the rest is up to nature.
"The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology," he writes.
He closes with a long rumination, in tones ranging from regretful to angry, about the nature of a debate that favours climate change "alarmism" and an associated "gravy train", and sidelines the arguments put forward by himself and others, sceptical of the science and its motivations.
For anyone vaguely interested in the Earth, 'Heaven+Earth' is a wonderful read, with a fascinating fact on every page.
But do these facts add up to a refutation of the prevailing climate change theory?
To believe Professor Plimer, the reader has to disbelieve thousands of intelligent scientists, many of them leaders in their respective fields.
That requires either a very poor view of human nature and the science community in particular, or a belief in a giant conspiracy involving most of the world's major science agencies.
Some of those scientists have debunked the Professor's judgement as vigorously as he debunks theirs.
The Australian Science Media Centre collected some comments on the book, and got responses ranging from "an unbalanced approach to the topic" (Prof. Colin Woodruffe, Uni. of Wollongong) to "patently untrue or horribly misleading" (Prof. Matthew England, Uni. NSW, on Prof. Plimer's theories) and "a case study in how not to be objective" (Prof. Barry Brook, with Prof. Plimer at the Uni. of Adelaide).
Most significantly, the book is unlikely to cause anything more than a small and temporary ripple in climate change science (although its effect on politics may be much larger).
Prof. Plimer is the author of dozens of peer-reviewed papers in his field, and cites hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in 'Heaven+Earth', but his book has not been peer-reviewed.
For all its heft, 'Heaven+Earth' is a work of opinion, and thus won't be factored into the IPCC's considerations for its next report.
If Prof. Plimer feels as strongly about climate change science as he conveys in his book, and is as sure of his findings, he needs to fight his case in the scientific journals.
Only there can his argument make a difference.
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