The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | A Letter To The Editor

A Letter To The Editor

Posted by Big Gav on October 25, 2009 - 2:23am in The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: australia, global warming, ian pilmer [list all tags]

Here's a guest post from kiashu, in the form of a "Letter to the Editor" (or in this case, a journalist at The Age) about a review of Ian Plimer's pseudo-academic novel, "Heaven and Earth".

Gidday James Kirby,

You write in today's Age,

"Heaven and Earth is absurdly long - 500 pages, 2000 footnotes - with enough factual inconsistencies and ill-advised references to some ''loopy'' thinkers to give his critics plenty of ammunition." [http://www.theage.com.au/business/going-against-the-current-climate-20091024-he2t.html]

You then express surprise that he found it difficult to get his book published. As I understand it, you are primarily a financial journalist. Let's imagine then that someone who was not qualified in economics wrote a book critiquing modern economics, and it was full of "factual inconsistencies and ill-advised references to some "loop" thinkers", do you think that person would have difficulty in getting the book published?

Would that difficulty truly be a result of the author's "radical" views, or a result of their poor writing and research?

From your article, it does not appear that you've actually read his latest book. In your Age article, you are careful to note that you are not a scientist. However, you are a journalist, and a good journalist checks facts and references. That is after all the purpose of footnotes in any work with at least pretensions to academic worth: it lets you check for yourself.

As Deltoid has noted [http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/11/silenced_plimer_somehow_appear.php], for someone who has been "silenced", Plimer appears on radio, tv and in newspapers rather a lot. You seem to be under the misapprehension that Plimer's claims have not been addressed by mainstream science. Again, a bit of research on your part - just a simple google search or two - would quickly show this not to be so.

To take just two examples, he's been refuted in Crikey [http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/05/plimer-wants-to-talk-science-ok-here-goes/], and on the ABC by the President of the Australian Academy of Science [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2009/2589206.htm].

Even the normally pro-denialist Australian published a review by an astronomer rubbishing Plimer's book [http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25433059-5003900,00.html]. As Ashley notes in that review,

"While the text is annotated profusely with footnotes and refers to papers in the top journals, thus giving it the veneer of scholarship, it is often the case that the cited articles do not support the text."

This is why I referred to the duty of a journalist to check facts. Had you read the book and checked some references, you would have seen the same as Ashely. Plimer also claims that volcanoes emit chloroflurocarbons - yep, those CFCs restricted by the Montreal Protocol, which are entirely artificial and man-made.

A further resource, where you can find all the most popular denialist arguments refuted with scientific references (that actually say what the referrer says) is here - http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php Particularly relevant are "Did scientists predict global cooling in the 1970s?" Answer, no, only a few popular media articles [http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm] and "Did global warming stop in 1998?" Answer, no, it didn't.

RealClimate.org is an excellent resource for discussion of climate change, and of course addresses denialist arguments. But even they get tired of saying the same thing again and again [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/groundhog-day-2/].

Lastly, you mention that the CEO of Caltex doesn't believe in global warming. Even if bamboozled by Plimer's pseudoscience, I would have expected a finance journalist to pick this one up. I am sure that the CEO of Bear Sterns does not believe lack of regulation caused the subprime mortgage crisis, the CEO of EA Games does not believe violent video games cause real-world violence, and the CEO of Hustler thinks pornography is good for marriages and sex education. They may be right or wrong, but they have a financial interest in saying what they say, so we can safely ignore it, and listen to disinterested people instead.

Plimer did not have trouble publishing his book because his ideas were too radical for those conservative old fuddy-duddy eggheads. He had trouble publishing his book because it's rubbish. I suggest that in future you read the book you're defending, and do some fact-checking.

The climate change debate is not over anymore than the debate on evolution is over. But let us not misunderstand what the "debate" is: nobody really argues the basic trends, only the details. Asking why nobody listens to Plimer is like asking why astrogeologists don't listen to the guys who say the Moon landings were faked. "Don't bother studying that so-called Moon rock, it's fake, too!"