Taking tea with Professor Plimer and Lord Monckton at the other Copenhagen
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As if the COP15 participants weren’t doing a good enough job already, the climate change sceptics have been out in force at Copenhagen working hard to undermine the climate change summit during its opening days. While the COP15 is taking place in the drab Bella Centre, as big and as aesthetically pleasing as an airport terminal, the sceptics have held their “summit” in a small flat in Christianshavn — a clever choice for a group of unorthodox thinkers given it is home to a self-proclaimed autonomous community of squatters and hippies. Upon arrival, a hand-written sign sticky-taped next to the front door directs you to the event, officially named the “Copenhagen Climate Change Challenge”. A colourful sticker on the ground reads “hurra global warming [sic]” and shows a red-headed Eskimo standing on a melting ice-cap with a seagull in one hand and an ice-cream in the other (don’t ask). The walls of the tiny room where the 50-odd sceptics gather are almost invisible behind the mass of rococo artworks: squint and you could be in the Louvre. “We are certainly small in quantity, but what we lack in numbers we make up for in quality,” boasts Christopher Monckton, chairman of the event and former adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Buoyed by the recent release of the stolen Climate-gate emails, the sceptics are in fine spirits — one of the gatherings says their struggle is the 21st century equivalent of Galileo’s attempts to disprove the Catholic Church’s claim that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Australian Ian Plimer, geologist and author of Heaven and Earth, is one of the stars and despite initial doubts — “What is Crikey doing at an event like this?” — agrees to answer some questions on COP15 and the Senate’s rejection of the Rudd government’s ETS:
Solar radiation and volcanic activity are possible culprits for global warming, Plimer argues. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, is “… not a pollutant, it is plant food”.
Attending the Copenhagen Climate Change Challenge is to enter a parallel universe, a 100% irony-neutral zone. The East Anglia professors — “Let’s sue for fraud!” — are pilloried for manipulating evidence to prove their hypothesis. But no one bats an eyelid when UK lawyer and businessman Stewart Wheeler says: “Maybe what I am about to say is not completely accurate but it’ll make the point I hope.” At the conclusion of Wheeler’s talk, chairman Christopher Monckton lauds him for speaking up for the “common man on the bus”. Then he remarks, no pun intended: “I know where your castle is.” Turns out Wheeler is a multimillionaire who had enough spare change lying around in 2001 to donate £5 million towards the Conservative Party election campaign. The speakers pat themselves on their backs for their “evidence-based” and “apolitical” presentations. Yet politics, of a distinctly right-of-centre variety, dominates the conference. Several of the participants boast of their membership of the anti-European Union UK Independence Party. Professor Plimer says that not only do Al Gore and algae sound alike: “They are both scum.” The suggestion that mankind should be demonising water rather than co2, given that 300 Americans drown in their bathtubs each year, is greeted by the reply: “I’m sure the 300 are all Democrats.” And as scepticism is the flavour of the alternative conference it’s perhaps also worth noting that organiser of the event, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow think-tank, received $582,000 between 1998 and 2007 from ExxonMobil. |
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16 Comments
Surely Crikey can do better than this. It’s typical ad hominem rubbish. We know the sceptics don’t help themselves by their quaint right wing fringe indulgences, but when you take the time and effort to seriously examine what they’re saying they make a great deal of sense.
Peter Donoughe, bullsh*t.
ad hominem rubbish? The fact that these people are (a) bat-shit crazy and (b) sponsored by ExxonMobil is precisely the kind of information we non-experts need to assess the credibility of what they’re saying.
“The East Anglia professors — “Let’s sue for fraud!” — are pilloried for manipulating evidence to prove their hypothesis. But no one bats an eyelid when UK lawyer and businessman Stewart Wheeler says: “Maybe what I am about to say is not completely accurate but it’ll make the point I hope.” - God help us, if you can’t see the difference between Professional climate change experts possibly manipulating the figures to prove their case, and a multimillionaire business expressing views from outside his area of expertise, then you better withdraw from the debate.
I am so sick and tired of hearing the line: CO2 is not pollution it is plant food!
Let’s think about it. Of course it is what plants absorb, (and they in turn make Oxygen - good for us humans).
But think about it. We are cutting down more and more of the earths plants every day. And we are populating faster and faster at the same time. So the plants that can use the extra CO2 are diminishing in number and the people who produce the CO2 are growing in number.
It is not hard to follow: there comes a point when there is more CO2 than the existing plants need. And we will also reach a point when there are not enough plants for the number of people and all other oxygen breathing creatures, on the earth as well. (And if volcanic activity and sun activity are adding even more CO2 into our atmosphere, then we really should be concerned.)
So the simplistic and naive statement about CO2 being plant food is just a red herring. A stupid one-liner from the skeptics and deniers camp.
A bunch of stupid old Tories, too lazy to check their facts and fearful that their mega wealth might be trimmed by the odd percent. They really really really are the people we should be listening to!?!
Sure, and the age of Homo sapiens is just one more great extinction.
When some idiot marvels to you that a famous scientist has doubts about anthropogenic climate change, do remember to ask, “Maybe, but is he a climatologist?”.
@David Coady
The CRU was started with funding from big oil and is funded by them to this day (until they caught fudging the facts).
NZ temperature data faked upward for no good reason.
It turn out most of the global warming is due to the urban heat island effect. It’s not self-reinforcing or a runaway catastrophic thing.
Darwin’s upward temperature trend faked for no good reason.
Real science like Lindzen and Choi’s paper (2009) showing a negative reinforcement with increasing temperature contradicting IPCC models is swept under the rug. Believers don’t care about “the science” they care about “the solutions”. It’s about an agenda.
Humans don’t cause the CO2 increase. Our emissions are 3.7% of nature’s.
We are being held to ransom by a bunch of ideologues now lashing out after their fraud was revealed by Climategate. It’s all unraveling now. Suffer in your jocks.
@ Doilyhead A couple of points -re the link to Darwin temperature, the remark that Daly Waters is only a pub, but that’s Australia for you, is as misleading as any of the data he is criticizing. Daly Waters was at the time a Bureau Of Meteorology station, doing routine observations and also upper air balloon flights. It was also an airport for northern and southern flights in Australia, and an international alternate for overseas and domestic flights.
Stephen Martin,
At no point is the comment that Daly Waters is a pub relevant to the science. It is merely a wry aside.
I thought the sceps had no humour. Sorry it is the alarmists who seem po-faced here.
And the difference between Stuart Wheeler and Prof Jones.
Wheeler made his money.
Jones takes ours.
Wheeler admits a possibility of error
Jones denies such a possibility.
Wheeler has never been caught inventing evidence
Jones…
Same difference really isn’t it? Oh my mistake. You were only joking.
I wish I was doing community media there. It would be exhausting but also very satisfying. It reminds me of the 5-10,000 strong anti GW Bush/Howard rally rally in Sydney during APEC late 2007.
I found when I did my photo collage of fascinating worker, citizen, multinational groups that it was an absolute tapestry. But the big media at least at that event somehow couldn’t get this colour and energy. It was if they had sepia on their cameras and their brains.
Most of these folks in my pictures in 2007 were ‘nobodies’ or didn’t fit some dumb orthodox narrative. But they had a wow of a time. In short the community media for the community was alot more probative of the crowd dynamic. The creativity. The vigour. The raw appeal and idealism. The excellent generational and gender and ethnic spread.
Really the big media with a few honourable exceptions are so jaded and most of them don’t have a clue about environment/science reportage and frankly have no personal interest in either topic, or social change for that matter. They are simply voyeurs on the Titanic. Such a serious communication project deserves better.
For instance not yet anywhere - correct me if I am wrong - has anyone mentioned that Copenhagen is two or more islands with all that implies for rising sea level as a venue on AGW. Pretty basic? I only learned this fact from wikipedia a month back.
And one of the islands is Zealand - which reminds me of New Zealand …. no one mentions it. It’s supposed to be an environment story …
@ Gawain - I am sorry. I don’t get your point, I took it that the reference to Daly Waters being merely a pub was a criticism of the standard of the observations from Daly Waters; I am not sure how else you could have read my post.
As to skepticism or otherwise nothing that I have written is relevant as I did not express any view one way or the other.
I wish there was global warming, they have everything backwards. Heaven is warm and Hell is actually the cold place. Why do you think old people like Florida, its one step closer to heaven. Aside from that, polar bear populations are up 500%.
Even if it was getting warmer, why is it thought that decreasing co2 by 100 PARTS PER MILLION would make any difference? Excuse my math skills but isn’t that like..a decrease of something like one thousand of one percent change in the composition of the air?
Why are they pushing this at the same time in history as world bankruptcy?
Say we do lower co2 by 100 PARTS PER MILLION then… we figure out that climate change (warmer or colder)is actually caused by solar activity. Then we will have to try a new strategy….SUN SPOT BLEACHING
If it wasn’t so sad it would be laughable at Plimer’s blatant lies in his book. This is the skeptic’s trophy boy?
Instead of acting all aghast at the happenings at the CRU regarding the so-called “tricks”, “falsification and hiding of data” why doesn’t he explain his own “tricks” and “false” data not to mention share with us some of his “hidden” data to back up his unsourced picked out of the air because it sounds good claims.
Dear Plimer,
What exactly was the “trick” that you used to produce a graph exactly the same asa Mark Durkin in the great global warming swindle? You know … the one that was ripped to shreds so badly that Durkin later was forced to retract. You know the one that was described as being so bad that “Any scientist found to have falsified data in the manner … would be guilty of serious professional misconduct”. So Mr Plimer …. where did you get the data for the graph and what trick did you use to produce it. Are you guilty of misconduct? Given your continuing ducking and diving of the questions regarding it one can only assume that you have no answer to explain the replication of this already proven to be false and fabricated graph.
I note that you must have enjoyed the great global warming swindle enormously given that you copied and pasted another one of their claims being that volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans. Mr Plimer …. being a geologist, one can only assume that you occasionally have visted the US geological survey website which states that “humans produce x130 more CO2 than volcanoes”. That’s an astounding difference. Do share with us your “trick” and “hidden data” that allowed you to make such a ridiculous claim. I’m sorry to inform you that the great global warming swindle again won’t hold up as a source given that Durkin once again was forced to admit it was an error and has been subsequently removed from latest DVD copies of the film. Maybe you watched an older version of the documentary?
I note and am saddened that you seem to be adapting the very tactic of the creationists that took your house in that as George Monbiot puts it when you refused to debate him (a mere journalist) on the claims in your book:
“Creationists and climate change deniers have this in common: they don’t answer their critics. They make what they say are definitive refutations of the science. When these refutations are shown to be nonsense, they do not seek to defend them. They simply switch to another line of attack. They never retract, never apologise, never explain, just raise the volume, keep moving and hope that people won’t notice the trail of broken claims in their wake.”
Mr Plimer, you appear devastated and concerned about the happenings at CRU. Might I note that they at least have allowed and commenced an independent investigation into the accusations of “tricks” and “hidden and falsification of data”. When can we expect you to at least answer one question on the over 100 errors pointed out in your book or are we destined for a lifetime of CO2 is good for you, grass needs CO2, cows eat grass, I like milk highly scientific statements that argue against the science.
Best Regards,
Plimergate.
ps can you send a signed copy of your book to Peter Donoughoue. He seems to think you make a great deal of sense.
Why are the right so wrong on just about everything? And why are they the only ones that can’t see it. Most have something to do with their blind faith in the supernatural.
I’m not saying these people have anything correct, and I truly doubt they do, but I’m sick of reading about ExxonMobile sponsoring this or that, so the assumption becomes these people must automatically be wrong, and are doing it on purpose.
This is wrong.
This disparagement of Exxon comes from the fact that the Royal Society of Sciences in the UK wrote to them asking them not to fund the Climate deniers.
However, if the Royal Society of Sciences are willing to cherry pick it’s scientific sources by refusing to peer review the work of any organisation with money from Exxon, then they’re doing this whole debate a disservice.
People always scream “look at the science! Scientific consensus!” but most of the time these scientists don’t even get a chance to have their work peer reviewed, so how do we know if it’s sound or not?
Just because there is evidence against their theories in other theories, doesn’t mean their work is not scientifically sound. This is precisely WHY things are peer reviewed.
Science is Science. Many of the biggest breakthroughs in scientific thought throughout history have come from unusual sources.
If a theory can hold it’s own after scientific examination via the peer review process, then it should be considered seriously, no matter where it comes from.