Heaven and Earth (book)

Heaven and Earth: Global Warming — The Missing Science

Author	Ian Plimer
Subject	Climate change
Publication date	May 2009
ISBN	0704371669

Heaven and Earth: Global Warming — The Missing Science is a nonfiction book published in 2009 and written by Ian Plimer as a critique of what he sees as irrational elements within the environmental movement.

Plimer says his book is for the "average punter in the street", who can smell something is wrong in the climate debate but can't put a finger on what. He likens human-induced climate change to creationism, describing it as a fundamentalist religion adopted by urban atheists looking to fill a yawning spiritual gap plaguing the West. He claims that environmental groups have filled this gap by having a romantic view of a less developed past. Plimer is contemptuous of the IPCC, which Plimer says has allowed "little or no geological, archeological or historical input" in its analyses. If it had, it would know cold times lead to dwindling populations, social disruption, extinction, disease and catastrophic droughts, while warm times lead to life blossoming and economic booms — suggesting that global warming, were it happening, should be welcomed.

He is critical of greenhouse gas politics and argues that extreme environmental changes are inevitable and unavoidable. He suggests that meteorologists have a huge amount to gain from climate change research, and that they have narrowed the climate change debate to the atmosphere - Plimer claims that the truth is more complex. He suggests that money would be better directed to dealing with problems as they occur rather than making expensive and futile attempts to prevent climate change.

He differs markedly from the climate change consensus in contending that the Great Barrier Reef will benefit from rising seas, that there is no correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature, that only 0.1 % of carbon dioxide emissions are due to human activities, and that 96% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour.

Plimer claims that the current theory of human-induced global warming is not in accord with history, archaeology, geology or astronomy and must be rejected, that promotion of this theory as science is fraudulent, and that the current alarmism on climate change is not science. In this book, the writer claims that climate models focus too strongly on the effects of carbon dioxide, rather than factoring other issues such as solar variation.

Praise

Pilmer's book drew favorable comments from Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel, who called Heaven and Earth "a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. Strassel quotes Australian columnist Paul Sheehan as saying Pilmer's book is "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence."

Criticisms

• His book was criticised as unscientific and riddled with errors by Melbourne University climate change expert Professor David Karoly, as well as other climatologists and climate change scientists..
• Professor Colin Woodroffe, a coastal geomorphologist at the University of Wollongong, and a lead chapter author for the IPCC AR4, writes that "This is an interesting book, written in a confrontational style, and sure to create a stir... [The book] will be remembered for the confrontation it provokes rather than the science it stimulates." Woodroffe chides Pilmer for his "unbalanced approach to the topic," but hopes that Pilmer's book might spark a "major scientific reconsideration of one or more issues in climate science."

• Professor Charlie Veron, former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said every original statement Plimer makes in the book on coral and coral reefs is incorrect, and that "[Plimer] serve[s] up diagrams from no acknowledged source, diagrams known to be obsolete and diagrams that combine bits of science with bits of fiction."

• Professor Barry Brook, Director of Climate Science at The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, said that Plimer's assertions about man’s role in climate change were "naive, reflected a poor understanding of climate science, and relied on recycled and distorted arguments that had been repeatedly refuted".
• Professor Ian Enting, Professorial Fellow at MASCOS based at The University of Melbourne, claims there are numerous misrepresentations of the sources cited in the book and Plimer "fails to establish his claim that the human influence on climate can be ignored, relative to natural variation".
• Professor Malcolm Walter, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, reviewed the book and found that "There is fallacious reasoning. ... This level of naiveté, if that's what it is, is hard to comprehend. ... I think Plimer is ... misguided, and his interpretation of the literature is confused. Reviewing this book has been an unpleasant experience for me. ... he has done a disservice to science and to the community at large."

Plimer's response to critics

In a response to the books critics, printed in The Australian on May 29, 2009, Plimer stated that:

• "A change of 1 per cent in cloudiness can account for all [temperature] changes measured during the past 150 years, yet cloud measurements are highly inaccurate. Why is the role of clouds ignored?"
• "I would bet the farm that by running these [computer climate] models backwards, El Nino events and volcanoes such as Krakatoa (1883, 535), Rabaul (536) and Tambora (1815) could not be validated."
• Few of his critics had actually read the book
• "Every time there was a savage public personal attack, book sales rose."
• "I have shown that the emperor has no clothes. This is why the attacks are so vitriolic."

External links

• Review of book by Paul Sheehan