Review of Plimer’s book
“How to Get Expelled from School”
Professor Ian Enting, University of Melbourne
Overview
Ian Plimer’s new book, How to Get Expelled from School is presented as a shorter version of Heaven + Earth, being aimed at the under-20 audience. As such, How to Get Expelled from School claims (p229) that its assertions are “underpinned by the thousands of references cited in Heaven + Earth”. My analysis (referenced hereafter as [Enting, on-line]) shows that in many cases Plimer explicitly misrepresents the content of his cited references in Heaven + Earth, and in many other cases the references that are cited do not in fact support his claims.
On page 35, of How to Get Expelled from School, Plimer admits to just one serious technical error in Heaven + Earth: the chemical formula for plimerite was wrong. Presumably he stands by the weirder claims and his miscitation of his cited references.
The analysis ([Enting, on-line]) is available1 from: www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php The current version is 2.2.2. The intent is that the URL will always address the most recent version. DISCLAIMER: This analysis of the errors in Heaven + Earth is incomplete. In particular, I concentrated on cases where Heaven + Earth misrepresents the content of the references that are cited. Professor Plimer notes that critics from the climate sciences had failed to check whether he had correctly given the formula for the mineral plimerite.
The [Enting, on-line] analysis notes a large number of inconsistencies in Heaven + Earth. Others have extended this by comparing Heaven + Earth with Plimer’s earlier book A Short History of Planet Earth. A summary of various inconsistencies in Plimer’s statements is given on the Plimer vs. Plimer website
Scientific Errors
The main arguments about the science of climate change are in sections 3 (Carbon Dioxide) and 4 (Temperature) pages 123 through to 167. As with Heaven + Earth, these sections have many flaws.
One of the main false lines of argument (as in Heaven + Earth) is that if some climate change is caused by factors other than CO2, then CO2 cannot be causing the climate change observed over recent decades. As an extension of this line of argument is to exaggerate the amount of climate change over past centuries. My analysis in [Enting, on-line] shows that much of the evidence advanced by Plimer in Heaven + Earth does not support his claims of long-term globally-coherent climate shifts over the last 2000 years. In particular, Plimer’s references in Heaven + Earth do not support his claim that “temperatures in Roman times were 2 to 6 degrees warmer than today.” In How to Get Expelled from School, Plimer generally avoids specifics and uses words like “far warmer”.
Some specifics
p113 ‘Why did atmospheric methane start to drop like a bomb on the late 20th century?’ actually methane levels did not drop ‘like a bomb’ – they stayed relatively constant for somewhat over a decade and have now resumed growing.
p131 ‘However, measurements of increasing carbon dioxide from Hawaii (northern hemi- sphere) and the South Pole shows[sic] that there is no time lag difference between the hemispheres in the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.’ This assertion is false. As CO2 has increased, annual mean concentrations in the southern hemisphere have consistently lagged behind those in the north.
Misrepresentation of opponents
As with Heaven + Earth, How to Get Expelled from School is replete with misrepresentation of those who have had a high profile in climate change research and/or communication.
Gore On p77, How to Get Expelled from School, discusses Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth and the UK court case regarding distribution of the film to schools. The judgement can be found at:
www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html
Some important aspects of the judgment are:
I have no doubt that Dr Stott, the Defendent’s expert, is right when he said: ‘Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change was broadly accurate’ and, after summarising the defence case as:
1. global average temperatures have been rising significantly over the past half century and are likely to continue to rise (‘climate change’);
2. climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides (‘greenhouse gases’);
3. climate change will, if unchecked, have significant adverse effects on the world and its populations; and
4. there are measures that individuals and governments can take which will help reduce climate change or mitigate its effects.
he states:
These propositions, Mr Chamberlain submits (and I accept) are supported by a vast quantity of research published on peer-reviewed journals world-wide and by the great majority of the world’s climate scientists.
Plimer’s summary of the film is that it is ‘..scientifically wrong. Not arguably wrong, but hopelessly wrong and fraudulent.’ and that the judgement found that ‘the film contained fundamental scientific errors.’
Santer Similarly, on P79, How to Get Expelled from School misrepresents Ben Santer’s use of data.
The diagrams
As with Heaven + Earth, many of the figures in How to Get Expelled from School are not referenced in a way that enables the source of the data to be identified. On page 235, references are seemingly given, but checking these reveals that in most cases, either the cited paper does not appear in Plimer’s list of references (pp229?233) or the reference is to a large website, without any further detail as to where the plot and/or data may be found. Since How to Get Expelled from School uses author-year referencing while Heaven + Earth uses numbered referencing (1 to 2311), using Heaven + Earth to fill in the inadequacies of the data citation in How to Get Expelled from School is a hit-and-miss affair.
Details for the 32 figures in How to Get Expelled from School are:
Of course, scientists working in relevant fields may be able to make informed guesses about the sources of particular data sets and search tools such as Google Scholar
3
1. No reference in caption.
2. Reference (Hallam et al, 1983) given on p235 does not appear in reference list. No reference in caption.
3. Reference (Manuel et al, 2005) given on p235 does not appear in reference list6. No reference in caption.
4. No reference in caption.
5. References given on p235 (Schneider et al 2006; Beck 2007) do not appear in reference list. No reference in caption.
6. No reference in caption. 7. No reference in caption. 8. No reference in caption. 9. No reference in caption.
10. No reference in caption.
11. No reference in caption.
12. This is essentially fig 10 of Heaven + Earth but the How to Get Expelled from School version does not indicate which curve is which. No reference in caption.
13. Reference (Petit et al 1999) given on p235 does not appear in reference list. No reference in caption.
14. Reference given on p235 does not appear in reference list. No reference in caption.
15. This is essentially figure 5 for Heaven + Earth with the time axis changed (In Heaven + Earth, ?today? does not occur at zero in the ‘time (years ago)’ scale). In both Heaven + Earth and How to Get Expelled from School, the time scale is misrepresented. The original data appear to have been in terms of depth, not time. No reference in caption.
16. No reference in caption, but attributed to IPCC. Essentially the lower panel of fig 11 of Heaven + Earth. Page 235 of How to Get Expelled from School gives combined references for figs 16 and 17. This appears to be attributed to IPCC (1990) in How to Get Expelled from School. In Heaven + Earth the discussion preceding fig 11 refers to a diagram in the policymakers summary of IPCC (1996), but in reality that policymakers summary has NO diagrams.
6However, Heaven + Earth does cite (and plagiarise) a paper by Manuel et al,, 2005 as the source of the claim that the Sun consists mainly of heavy elements such as iron.
17. No reference in caption. Essentially the upper panel of fig 11 of Heaven + Earth.The reference (no. 372 in Heaven + Earth) that Plimer cites for these data is clearly incor- rect, since it only covers the last 600 years rather than the last 1000 years as plotted.
18. No explicit reference in caption, but the temperature data sets are identified as Had- CRU3v and UAH MSU (the CO2 record is not identified). A number of significant differences from fig 4 of Heaven + Earth, which purports to show the same 3 records.
19. Reference given on p235 (Raymo et al, 1997) does not appear in reference list. No reference in caption.
20. Berner (2001, 2006) references given on p235 do not appear in reference list. No reference in caption. This is essentially fig 24 of Heaven + Earth, for which no reference is provided.
21. Cited references do not appear in the reference list. No reference in caption.
22. No reference in caption.
23. No reference in caption. The reference (Jawowski et al,1992) given on p235 seems implausible as documentation for plots that extend to 2004 and beyond. Credibility is further diminished by finding that Goggle Scholar does not identify any such reference. Possibly Plimer means (Jaworowski et al,1992) which exists (and is notorious for its misrepresentation of ice core data), but which, even apart from the time discrepancy, is of limited relevance to fig 23.
24. This is essentially fig 50 of Heaven + Earth. On p235, this figure is referenced back to fig 21, for which the cited references do not appear in the reference list. No reference in caption.
25. Reference given on p235 (Harl et al, 2006) does not appear in reference list. No reference in caption.
26. Reference in caption (Loehle, 2009) does not appear in reference list.
27. No reference in caption ? data identified as from Vostok
28. No reference in caption ? data identified as from EPICA.
29. Not included in list on page 235. No reference given in caption.7
30. References given on p235 do not appear in reference list.
31.’Eustatic curve’ (on p235) is a description not a reference. No reference in caption.
7A comparable map (with reference) appears as fig 30 of Heaven + Earth, but covers 9000 years rather than 6000, but essentially only for the east side of the Gulf of Bothnia, without the geological information and shows about twice as much uplift.
32. Neither (Berner, 2001) nor (Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009) appears in list of references. No reference in caption.8
The questions
The final section of How to Get Expelled from School consists of 101 questions that are presented as being embarrassing to a hypothetical ‘environmental activist’ teacher.
Particularly important is Q33 ‘Is carbon dioxide poisonous: No’. This is dangerously false. In [Enting, on-line] I summarise the laboratory safety information (ChemWatch) giving the toxicity levels for CO2.
In contrast, for a number of questions, the answers given in How to Get Expelled from School are in largely accord with mainstream science.9 This is the case for questions 1, 17, 19, 20, 21, 28, 32, 40, 42, 74, 75, 78, 79, 84, 94 and 96.
Many of the questions are based on false premises.
Q72 ‘Why are there 60-year cycles of warming and cooling over the last 2000 years?’ How to Get Expelled from School does not provide an answer. More importantly it does not provide any evidence of such 60-year cycles. For comparison, fig 22 of Heaven + Earth is a table of ‘known cycles’ that does not include a 60-year cycle.
Q81 ‘Why did the rate of sea level rise double as soon as satellites started to measure sea- level?’. It didn’t. Fig 30 of How to Get Expelled from School distorts the data. the 1.6 mm/year from tide gauges is an average over the whole of the 20th century; the average for the decades immediately before 1993 (when satellite data began) is higher. See the last plot in:
www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html
Q91’How did aboriginal people get to Australia before boats were invented. They walked from Irian Jaya during the last deglaciation.’ This begs the question of how they got to Irian Jaya, since the lower sea levels still left several large sections of ocean between Australia and the Asian mainland. There were presumably crossed using primitive water craft. Plimer’s ‘before boats were invented’ is implausible at best.
A special case is the creation of a false dichotomy between.
Q34 ‘Is carbon dioxide a pollutant or is it used in photosynthesis?’ Plimer’s answers are ‘no’ and ‘yes’, rather than ‘yes’ and ‘yes’. Just because carbon dioxide is essential for photosynthesis, does not prevent it being a pollutant. For example, for humans vitamin A is an essential nutrient but it can be fatally toxic in large quantities. In particular, no reference for curve attributed to RSNZ. Of course, there may well be teachers who do not know the answers to some of these questions.
Minor points
In addition, the volume reflects poor editing with a number of silly mistakes.
p78 (and index) The Frederick Sutz, refers to Frederick Seitz (1911-2008).
p186: fig 14 The caption shows human emissions as mt C (millitonnes of carbon ?) rather than Mt C (megatonnes of carbon).
p231 The year of publication for Menne et al. is given as 2101. p238 Index entries for ‘earth’, ‘Enting’, ‘Erlich’ and ‘eruption’ are placed between ‘freedom’
and ‘Finland’.
Contact
Prof Ian Enting (03) 8344 1796 [email protected]
EXPERTS RESPOND TO IAN PLIMER’S NEW BOOk (Fri Dec 9, 2011)
John Howard will be launching Ian Plimer’s new ‘anti-Warmist manual for the younger reader’, How to Get Expelled from School, on the evening of Monday 12 December. Scientific experts have read the book and provided their comments below.
Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don?t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.
Professor Chris Turney is geologist in the Climate Change Research Centre and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow in climate change at the University of New South Wales.
I was in two minds about looking at this book, let alone reviewing it. I had been a real fan of Plimer?s earlier work when he challenged young Earth creationists on their beliefs and showed how they twisted data and used statements out of context to put across a terribly skewed view of our planet. A few years ago I had been sent ‘Heaven and Earth’ to review and had assumed it would do the same with the so-called ‘climate sceptics’. Instead the opposite was the case. ‘How to get expelled from school’ is a follow up, designed to encourage students to question the science of climate change.
Scientists have to explain their work to the public; to inspire, to enthuse; to show the relevance of what they do. In a time of austerity, it is no longer good enough to take the public money, keep busy, out of sight, and hopefully out of mind. Scientists largely communicate with one another through journals few people can afford or understand. As a result, efforts to provide a context for the public and explain the science contained within specialised research articles would normally be applauded. Sadly this is not the case with ‘How to get expelled from school’.
With the declaration on the back of the book that the author is ‘Australia?s best known geologist’, hopes might be considered high that this would be a balanced, well-researched piece of work, showing how the past can inform on how our planet works. Unfortunately, the past is referred to throughout the book but badly. If I were in a less charitable mindset I would suggest the author has learnt lessons from the creationists and applied the same cherry-picking approach to climate change. The best I can write is the author doesn?t seem to understand much of the past at all; it?s almost as if the book has been ghost written. Changes in the past seem to be assumed to have happened globally and that to disprove anthropogenic warming, it is necessary to show how carbon dioxide wasn’t the principle cause.
The number of misleading statements are far too numerous to be listed here but consider just one example, made on page 174: ‘Some 12,700 years ago, temperatures fell quickly by 8C and a 1,300-year cold period, the Younger Dryas began. After this 1,300 year period of intense cold, global temperatures rose very rapidly by about 12C marking the end of the Younger Dryas and the end of the latest glaciation. Did this glaciation end rapidly because we sinful humans suddenly put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Of course not, there was no industry and no agriculture than and again the hypothesis is wrong
.Where to start? The Younger Dryas was a marked climatic downturn but it was centred on the North Atlantic region and perhaps across large parts of the Northern Hemisphere but it was not global. It’s been known since the late-nineties that Antarctica was warming up at exactly the same time it was cold during the Younger Dryas in the north. Research over the last few years has shown that warming in the south extends across most of the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere, and could have been used to illustrate how we can gain tremendous insights into the climate system from investigating past change. Plimer instead seems to be using the climate signal preserved in Greenland as a record of our planet?s climate and then misleadingly argues the temperature increase at the end of the Younger Dryas in the high latitudes was global. The cause wasn?t carbon dioxide, true, it was most probably linked to changes in the ocean circulation system, but this doesn’t mean increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere isn?t a problem for the future.
Research published last year in the prestigious journal Science (and before ‘How to get expelled from school’) has shown that without carbon dioxide, global temperatures would soon fall to an average of -21?C (see reference below). Fortunately the atmosphere does contain carbon dioxide and as a result we enjoy a relatively balmy 15C today. By flooding the atmosphere with carbon you would expect temperatures to increase. After all, science is built on the premise of Ockham’s razor, namely the simplest explanation is invariably the correct one. Ultimately, we?ve been here before with the young Earth brigade. To paraphrase Plimer from earlier work, all the ?sceptical? view of climate change science has to do is prove the fundamental principle that increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will increase temperature is wrong. A Nobel Prize and instant fame would be the reward for the first scientist – or politician – who could not only explain away future climate change but at the same time expound thermodynamics, energy transfer, infrared absorption etc in a totally different way to that understood by science and used by civilization for centuries. I wish them the very best of luck.
Dr Helen McGregor is a research scientist from the University of Wollongong. She has a degree in Earth Sciences, has worked as a geologist in the mining industry, and currently investigates the climate of the past. Her research is funded by the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology and the Australian Research Council
The new book from Ian Plimer: Does it make the grade?
Plimer’s book for students asks the questions but does not necessarily give the full answers.
‘there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns the ones we don?t know we don’t know.’ Former US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
This oft-parodied quote from 2002 about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, could well be applied to the sciences, including climate science. Climate science is full of knowns, unknowns, nuances, complexities, and uncertainties, all of which must be understood through the lens of the scientific process. However, when explaining this to the public through the media filter (which operates in sound bites, demands definitive answers, and portrays the sciences as an adversarial, polarised debate) it is no wonder that misinformation and confusion abound. In this context, a more questioning public, knowledgeable of the scientific process is a good thing.
Ian Plimer includes an explanation of the scientific process as part of his book How to get Expelled From School: A guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters. Plimer also includes his opinion on the scientific process with respect to the climate sciences, his critique of temperature and CO2, and short answers to 101 climate-related questions.
A central tenet of Plimer’s book is the need for valid evidence. He states that if another piece of valid evidence emerges then the theory in question must be discarded. But it is more accurate to describe the process in terms of the weight of evidence. The weight of evidence tells us that the planet has warmed through the twentieth century. The weight of evidence also tells us that the most likely cause is emissions of CO2, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. It is not a single piece of new evidence that should overturn this view but a weight of evidence. This is because in order to properly close the loop, the new counter evidence must also be reproduced and verified. This is just one part of the scientific process that provides a framework for understanding the world around us. The scientific framework is not perfect, but without it, all we are left with is unsubstantiated opinion, whereby the loudest voice wins the day. Those criticising climate sciences must also provide a weight of evidence to support their conclusions.
I had high hopes for a weight of evidence when I turned to the chapter ?One hundred and one simple questions for your teachers?. Plimer could have built on his outline of the scientific process when answering the 101 questions he poses. Many of the answers should be in the realm of Rumsfeld-esque ?known unknowns?, and to be answered properly need a thorough outline of the evidence with a frank discussion of the uncertainty or certainty surrounding a particular topic. For example, question 97 on ocean acidity in the past, is incomplete. It excludes evidence for lower pH (more acidic ocean) and consequent changes in biota and global temperatures during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event ~56 million years ago.
Instead, the book takes sides, and frames the topics as for or against arguments. As it is, it seems to me that the pupils, parents, and punters are generally left to take Plimer’s words as given. It is difficult to get to the sources of information and data contained in an answer. References are given via Plimer?s previous book, with some additional sources listed. Thankfully, the sources for the figures are stated. But pity the pupil, parent or punter with a curiosity to delve into a question to either confirm for themselves what Plimer has written, investigate other information related to a given topic, or to understand further that particular field of science. That it is so difficult to trace the source and evidence for Plimer’s statements is a disappointment and is in contrast to the healthy scepticism Plimer purports to encourage.
And are there ‘known knowns’ in any field of science? No. There are things we know with a higher degree of certainty than others, but again the weight of evidence comes into play. All scientific studies need to be open and honest as to the degree of certainty or otherwise of the ‘knowns’ – the scientific process demands it. ‘Unknown unknowns’, the new ideas and unexpected findings, must be subject to validation – a process that is iterative and takes time. But much of scientific inquiry is in this territory of ‘known unknowns’. These need to be stated and constrained as best as possible. Generally they are. It is a shame that this book is not more representative of this fuller story.
Professor Ian Enting is a Professorial Fellow with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems (MASCOS) based at the University of Melbourne. He worked on global carbon modeling for many years with CSIRO Atmospheric Research and has published numerous scientific papers on carbon cycle modelling.
The following are excerpts from his comments.
Ian Plimer’s new book, How to Get Expelled from School is presented as a shorter version of Heaven + Earth, being aimed at the under-20 audience. As such, How to Get Expelled from School claims (p229) that its assertions are ?underpinned by the thousands of references cited in Heaven + Earth?. My analysis shows that in many cases Plimer explicitly misrepresents the content of his cited references in Heaven + Earth, and in many other cases the references that are cited do not in fact support his claims.?