Australia's best-known geologist: no-one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming
The words of Ian Plimer, an Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where he was Professor and Head of Earth Sciences (1992-2005)
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)
Further to these previous articles…
…I thought it worth bringing your attention to Ian Plimer, Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where he was Professor and Head of Earth Sciences (1992-2005):
Emeritus. Essentially meaning retired. Which means he can speak freely without fear or favour.
And he doesn’t mince his words. Here is the blurb for his book Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science (originally first published in 2009, and republished in 2020):
The Earth is an evolving dynamic system. Current changes in climate, sea level and ice are within variability. Atmospheric CO2 is the lowest for 500 million years. Climate has always been driven by the Sun, the Earth’s orbit and plate tectonics and the oceans... Humans have made their mark on the planet, thrived in warm times and struggled in cool times.
The hypothesis that humans can actually change climate is unsupported by evidence from geology, archaeology, history and astronomy. The hypothesis is rejected.
A new ignorance fills the yawning spiritual gap in Western society. Climate change politics is religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. Its triumph is computer models unrelated to observations in nature. There has been no critical due diligence of the science of climate change, dogma dominates, sceptics are pilloried and 17th Century thinking promotes prophets of doom, guilt and penance.
A sequel, somewhat enigmatically titled How to Get Expelled from School, was first published in 2021. There is a sample available to read at the link.
By the way, when I searched Google for “Prof Ian Plimer”, this is what appeared at the top of the page:
Not quite as bad as searching for an article by former Pfizer Chief Scientist Dr Mike Yeadon. But heading that way.
See how it works yet? Why should we trust the mainstream media any more over climate than we can over covid? Particularly when there are so many parallels.
Below are four short clips from Plimer, along with transcripts. Click on the heading or the picture to watch the video:
1. No-one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming
I don’t have opinions. I have demonstrable facts. These facts are validated and these facts are repeatable…
No-one has ever shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. It’s never been shown. And if it could be shown, then you would have to show that the 97% of emissions which are natural do not drive global warming. Game over. We are dealing with a fraud. It’s a scientific fraud from day 1.
We hear the propaganda that increases of the gas of life — a trace gas in the atmosphere — will bring a disaster, and that we will have runaway global warming.
Sorry folks. We’ve known for 200 years, from chemistry, that it’s the exact inverse. Now I’m sure some of you tried this last night at the dinner, with a champagne or a beer, and you forgot to drink it, and it warmed up and it kept bubbling…
That is the inverse solubility of carbon dioxide. We’ve known that for 200 years. We see it from the ice cores. When we drill into ice we have chemical fingerprints that tell us what the temperature was, and we have little bits of trapped air. And we can show that, we when had natural warming, some 650 to 6,000 years later we had an increase in carbon dioxide. It’s not carbon dioxide that drives temperature. It’s the exact inverse. Another fraud.
Here is a chart showing that the global monthly mean CO2 level has been rising consistently in recent years:
Perhaps the most notable thing here is that even in 2020, during the covid hysteria, the CO2 levels kept rising in much the same way as they had been rising for the previous 40 years. Despite relatively few flights, much-reduced travel for work and school, and a substantial slowing of industrial activity.
As noted previously, a similar pattern can be observed in other data. For better or worse, it appears that reducing or restricting travel (and perhaps almost anything else?) will actually make little or no difference to CO2 levels.
2. The planet is warming… but since when?
We have been cooling down for the last 4,000 years... people say… the planet’s warming. Well, it’s all about when you start to measure.
If we look at the last 38 years, there has been no change in temperature. If we look at the last 150 years, we have had three warming periods and three cooling periods, with a total warmth of about 0.6 degrees Celsius.
Now I wonder why it warms… 1850… What happened then? …The end of the Little Ice Age. Do you think it’s going to warm or cool after the Little Ice Age? Of course it’s going to warm.
So if you start taking measurements from 1850 and the Industrial Revolution, we have been warming. If you take measurements from the Medieval Warming, we’ve been cooling...1 If you take measurements from the Roman Warming, we’ve cooled about five degrees.2
So as soon as someone tells you… it’s warming, the reply you give is: Since when?
YouTube link to full video
A brief interlude before the next two clips…
For context, here are several charts (latest data 2022) showing CO2 emissions from Australia, China and the UK:
Per capita CO2 emissions over the 250 years to 2022:
Per capita CO2 emissions over the 25 years to 2022:
Annual CO2 emissions over the 250 years to 2022:
Annual CO2 emissions over the 25 years to 2022:
Plus a bonus meme:
Now back to Prof Plimer…
3. Nothing to do with science... nothing to do with the environment… everything to do with power by unelected people
It has never been shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming.
So this whole business has got nothing to do with science. It’s got nothing to do with the environment. And it’s got everything to do with power by unelected people.
[COP28 President Dr Sultan Al Jaber] Show me the roadmap for the phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development… unless you want to take the world back into caves…
[Plimer again] The Sultan was quite correct to say we would go back to the caves. The modern world needs four major materials to survive.
The first is steel. To make steel we need coal.
The second is concrete. And to make concrete we need a lot of energy to make the cement. And we generally burn limestone and shale to make cement, and normally we heat it up with gas. That releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as does steel-making.
The third major component for modern civilisation is fertilisers. We make fertilisers from a mixture of gas and air. And that puts some carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But that makes the fertilisers that keep us alive.
And the fourth major component of the modern world [is] plastics. And plastics are made from fossil fuels. People don’t seem to realise that fossil fuels give us food. If we don’t have diesel, we can’t plough, we can’t seed, we can’t weed, we can’t harvest, and we can’t transport food to the cities. We would starve without fossil fuels.
We got lifted out of the crippling poverty of pre-industrial times by coal. We got lifted again by oil. If we didn’t have synthetic fertilisers then half the world’s people wouldn’t have food. So if you are arguing that we get rid of fossil fuels, you are aruging that we kill off half the world’s population. And what you are doing is advocating genocide by advocating the lack of use of fossil fuels.
4. We’re being asked to believe that traces of an emission of a trace gas into the atmosphere will change a whole planetary system. And this is contrary to everything we know from the past.
They are arguing that too many emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. There’s just one slight problem with that. No-one has ever proven that human emission of carbon dioxide drive global warming. It’s never been shown. And I have asked many scientists, including a former Chief Scientist [of Australia]… give me half a dozen scientific papers that prove that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. It can’t be done, and hasn’t been done.
Now… assume that I’m wrong, that you can prove that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. Then you also have to prove that the natural emissions, which are 97% of the total emissions… don’t drive global warming. So before the whole game starts, it’s nonsense. The whole science that the human-induced global warming is based on is actually wrong. It’s demonstrably wrong.
My knowledge and experience is of past environments going back to the beginning of time and looking at the past environments on planet earth. In the past we’ve had six great ice ages. Six out of these six ice ages started when we had far more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now. So how can carbon dioxide drive global warming?
Past atmospheres had up to 20% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At present we have 0.04% carbon dioxide… [And] we’re being asked to believe… — and I use the word ‘believe’ advisedly because that’s a word of religion and politics… not of science — that traces of an emission of a trace gas into the atmosphere will change a whole planetary system. And this is contrary to everything we know from the past.
Dear Church Leaders homepage (or via Substack, or e.g. DuckDuckGo, but not Google for some reason)
The Big Reveal — Christianity carefully considered (which can also be found via Substack, or e.g. DuckDuckGo, but not Google)
It appears that he initially mistakenly says five degrees in relation to the Medieval Warming rather than the Roman Warming
Presumably degrees Fahrenheit