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| ©AP |
| Melting moment ... Ian Plimer says processes which end in ice caps crashing down start as long as 800 years ago |
Mankind is naive to think it can influence climate change, according to a prize-winning Australian geologist.
Solar activity is a greater driver of climate change than man-made carbon dioxide, argues Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and winner of several notable science prizes.
"When meteorologists can change the weather then we can start to think about humans changing climate," Prof Plimer said.
"I think we really are a little bit naive to think we can change astronomical and solar processes."
Speaking last night after presenting his theory for the first time, to the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in Sydney, Prof Plimer said he had researched the history of the sun, solar and supernovae activity and had been able to correlate global climates with solar activity.
"But correlations don't mean anything, you really need a causation," Prof Plimer said.
So he then examined how cosmic radiation builds up clouds.
A very active sun blows away the cosmic radiation, while a less active sun allows radiation to build up, he said.
"So you can very much tie in temperature, cloud formation, cosmic radiation and the sun," he said.
The next part of Prof Plimer's research was to examine the sources of carbon dioxide.
He said he found that about 0.1 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide was due to human activity and much of the rest due to little-understood geological phenomena.
Prof Plimer also argued El Nino and La Nina were caused by major processes of earthquake activity and volcanic activity in the mid-ocean ridges, rather than any increase in greenhouse gases.
Nor does the melting of polar ice have anything to do with man-made carbon dioxide, he said.
"Great icebergs come off, not due to temperature change but due to the physics of ice and the flow of ice," Prof Plimer said.
"There's a lag, so that if temperature rises, carbon dioxide rises 800 years later.
"If ice falls into the ocean in icebergs that's due to processes thousands of years ago."
On the same basis, changes to sea level and temperature are also unrelated to anything happening today, he said.
"It is extraordinarily difficult to argue that human-induced carbon dioxide has any effect at all," he said.
Prof Plimer added that as the planet was already at the maximum absorbance of energy of carbon dioxide, any more would have no greater effect.
There had even been periods in history with hundreds of times more atmospheric carbon dioxide than now with "no problem", he said.
The professor, a member of the Australian Skeptics, an organisation devoted to debunking pseudo-scientific claims, denied his was a minority view.
"You'd be very hard pushed to find a geologist that would differ from my view," he said.
He said bad news was more fashionable now than good and that people had an innate tendency to want to be a little frightened.
But Prof Plimer conceded the politics of greenhouse gas emissions meant that attention was being given to energy efficiency, which he supported.
The professor, who is writing a book on the subject, said he only used validated scientific data, published in reputable peer-reviewed refereed journals, as the basis of his theories.
So we have another scientists not afraid to come out of the woodwork and speak up against political hysteria regarding climate change. I'm currently studying climatology myself, and even in the content of my course, contradictions abound (not in the science itself, but in the little side-comments added here and there to remain "politically correct").
However, it is a little naive of Ian Plimer to say in absolute terms that humans can't influence climate just because we supposedly can't influence weather (which we can). It is common sense, for instance, that by clearing huge tracts of dark-green forest such as in the Amazon, you are going to change the Earth's albedo (ability to reflect solar radiation). This will of course influence climate, in that area at least -- but to what extent, though, we don't know.
As for Dr Plimer being a member of the Australian Skeptics -- well that organisation, like most other organised "Skeptic" groups, is highly suspect. If something doesn't fit in with mainstream orthodox ideas, it is "debunked" in a pseudoscientific, often disingenuous fashion. This is not to say his personal research and arguments relating to climate change aren't valid (they seem to be sound), but that the methods of large skeptic groups are usually contaminated by ponerogenic forces, as is so common nowadays.