Ian Plimer says science, not religious zeal, should govern the climate change issue

Ian Plimer says science, not religious zeal, should govern the climate change issue

AC | May 7 2009

Professor Ian Plimer speaking at the
Melbourne launch of Heaven and Earth.

ABOUT 300 ATTEND MELBOURNE BOOK LAUNCH

When the long history of planet Earth is considered, “we can see that climate has always changed,” Professor Ian Plimer told about 300 people at the Melbourne launch of Heaven and Earth, his climate change best seller.

“What would be extraordinary is if we had no climate change.”

Professor Plimer said the planet came out of an ice age in 1850 and has been warming since.

“A little bit of cooling in the First World War time, [it] warmed again to 1940, then it cooled to 1976, then it warmed up to the great El Nino of 1998, then it was static for a while and it’s been cooling since 2003.

“Now I find it absolutely extraordinary that that fabulous story of history, archaeology and geology gets denigrated to where we say there’s one parameter, that is, [a] small amount of carbon dioxide … coming from us is changing climate.

“Because we’ve seen so many massive climate changes in the history of time, driven by everything except carbon dioxide, and to denigrate that to just one factor in a very complex, multi-component system, I think is a non-scientific argument.”

Professor Plimer said the collapse of Western socialism and the ineffectiveness of Western Christianity has left a spiritual vacuum which has been filled by the environmental movement.

“People have to believe in something … and I think that what we are seeing is a religious movement that has embraced a number of factors which are common to Christianity. Guilt, for example.”

“I argue very strongly that science is married to evidence.”

He pointed to chapter eight of his book, where he argues:

“Science where a majority of votes by climate scientists determines a scientific truth is politics, not science. And that is exactly what human-induced global warming is: politics. After the consensus method fails one too many times, there will be a quiet advance to real science. In the interim we have to live with the carping of ascientific unelected political pressure groups who behave like scalded cats should anyone have the temerity to argue that global warming is not a man-made phenomenon. Some scientists have placed science on the platform of religious dogma.”

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