Ian Plimer’s new book on global warming, “Heaven and Earth,” comes out tomorrow. Paul Sheehan has read an advance copy and reviewed it in today’s SMH. Apparently, the book argues that global warming is a natural phenomenon, it isn’t caused by humans, and it’s nothing to be alarmed about. Sheehan writes, “The most important point to remember about Plimer is that he is Australia’s most eminent geologist. As such, he thinks about time very differently from most of us. He takes the long, long view.”
Sheehan has believed in the reality of global warming – but Plimer’s book seems to have shaken his belief, if not destroyed it completely.
“To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable – human-induced CO2 – is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.”
Heaven and Earth sounds like a must-read.
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I read a previous book of Plimer’s, his ‘Short history of planet earth’. A great book, and interesting in that it contains some of the seeds of his later climate skepticism. If I can I’ll read this, too.