Tag Archive for 'ian plimer'

Plimer watch

Published
by
Brian
7 months ago
in Climate change
. 61 Comments

The Spectator has excelled itself in stupidity by putting on it’s front page a puff piece boosting Ian Plimer. This was too tempting a target for George Monbiot at The Guardian, so he obliged with a scathing commentary. This led to an exchange between protagonists, reported by Tim Lambert at Deltoid.

Plimer challenged Monbiot to a face-to-face debate which Monbiot accepted provided that:

he agreed to write precise and specific responses to his critics’ points — in the form of numbered questions that I would send him — for publication on the Guardian’s website. I also proposed that there should be an opportunity at the debate for us to cross-examine each other.

Initially Plimer refused, but then Monbiot accused him of cowardice, which brought an acceptance by Plimer and Monbiot’s publication of his questions.

Unfortunately Plimer, instead of answering Monbiot’s questions, responded with a list of his own.

There are real problems and dangers in engaging people like Plimer as Monbiot knows full well.

Continue reading ‘Plimer watch’

Popular science and Moses down from the mountain

Published
by
Robert Merkel
11 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Climate change and Science
. 99 Comments

Barry Brook does a nice job reviewing Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth, Plimer’s attempt to debunk contemporary climate science. Brook writes:

I’ve been critical of Ian’s views before (see here and here). In short, my view was that Ian’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. Ian and I have regularly ‘debated‘ on this issue, so I’m probably more familiar than most with his lines of argument. (I actually think it’s rather silly to debate the science, because this the role of the scientific community as a whole, and in doing so they’ve reached a view that this is a serious problem — but that is what the media demands.) Anyway, after reading the 500+ page tome that is H+E, I find that nothing has fundamentally changed.

By the sounds of it, Plimer’s latest work might well be another example of the genre of scientific writing which I’ll loosely term “Moses down from the Mountain”.

Continue reading ‘Popular science and Moses down from the mountain’