The modern heresy of true science

The modern heresy of true science

The Spectator, 1st June 2009

By Melanie Phillips

Every so often, a book is published which, it is instantly clear, is the definitive last word on the subject. Such a book has just appeared on the global lunacy of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In his devastating study Heaven and Earth. Global Warming: The Missing Science (Quartet) Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and previously Professor of Earth Sciences at the Universities of Melbourne and Newcastle systematically shreds the theory and the hallucinatory propaganda industry it has spawned. There is simply nothing left of it when he has finished – and he does so from the perspective of real science which the theory has so shockingly betrayed.

Having painstakingly out the actual scientific facts and evidence involved in the study of climate, he concludes his book with a sustained peroration of fury and contempt at the way such scientific evidence has been dismissed in a breathtaking campaign of ‘cognitive dissonance’. As he says, there is not one shred of actual scientific evidence to sustain the claim of AGW, which rests in its entirety upon charlatanry, fraud, ignorance and ideology. Here are some tasters of this invaluable book.

‘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. The world has been warming, slightly and intermittently, and also cooling, since the Little Ice Age. Nothing new there. Sea level, ice sheets and life on earth have also changed slightly. Nothing new there. The claims that the seas are rising and the ice retreating in any extraordinary fashion are all demonstrably false. The theory rests on the categorical assertion that rising carbon dioxide levels result in a warming of the atmosphere. Yet although carbon dioxide levels have been increasing, there has been no significant warming since 1995 and none at all since 1998.

That is because the claimed cause and effect between carbon dioxide and global warming is simply false. History shows us that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature. Proponents of the theory, he writes, have to explain why the Minoan Warming, Roman Warming and Medieval Warming all produced warmer temperatures than now. Why the temperature rose from 1860 to 1875, decreased from 1875 to 1890, rose until 1903, fell until 1918 and then rose dramatically until 1941. Why the rate and amount of warming at the beginning of the 20^th century was greater than now despite lower carbon dioxide emissions. Why the world cooled from 1941-1976, the year of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Why the temperature rose from 1976 to 1998, then cooled. And so on.

As he says, the whole theory was created not by the scientific methods of observation and gathering actual evidence but by dubious computer modelling. These models suggested constant warming until the end of time but predicted neither post 1998 cooling nor El Nino events.

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