http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/sep/14/climate-change-denial
This professor of denial can't even answer his own questions on
climate change
Ian Plimer is a purveyor of 24-carat bafflegab. So why are
publications like the Spectator so keen to champion him?
*
Comments (576)
* Buzz up!
* Digg it
* George Monbiot
*
o George Monbiot
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 September 2009 20.30 BST
o Article history
Creationists and climate change deniers have this in common: they
don't answer their critics. They make what they say are definitive
refutations of the science. When these refutations are shown to be
nonsense, they do not seek to defend them. They simply switch to
another line of attack. They never retract, never apologise, never
explain, just raise the volume, keep moving and hope that people won't
notice the trail of broken claims in their wake.
This means that trying to debate with them is a frustrating and often
futile exercise. It takes 30 seconds to make a misleading scientific
statement and 30 minutes to refute it. By machine-gunning their
opponents with falsehoods, the deniers put scientists in an impossible
position: either you seek to answer their claims, which can't be done
in the time available, or you let them pass, in which case the points
appear to stand. Many an eminent scientist has come unstuck in these
situations. This is why science is conducted in writing, where claims
can be tested and sources checked.
So when the Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer challenged me to
a face-to-face debate in July, I didn't exactly leap at the chance.
His book Heaven and Earth, which purports to destroy the science of
climate change, contains page after page of schoolboy errors and
pseudoscientific gobble-degook. As the professor of astrophysics
Michael Ashley wrote: "It is not 'merely' atmospheric scientists that
would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a
rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and
statistics." But never, as far as I can determine, has Plimer
responded to the devastating points made by his critics. He just keeps
shifting his ground.
None of this stopped the Spectator from publishing a cover story
promoting his claims. Plimer, the magazine suggested, has demonstrated
that global warming theory is "the biggest, most dangerous and
ruinously expensive con trick in history".
I wrote an article summarising what scientists have said about
Plimer's claims and listing some of his obvious errors. In response
Plimer requested a debate. Matthew D'Ancona, the outgoing editor of
the Spectator, took up this cause, with a series of emails pressing me
to accept (all the correspondence is on my website). At first, having
seen something of Plimer's debating tactics, I refused. But then I
realised that there might be a means of pinning him down.
I told Plimer that I would accept his challenge if he accepted mine:
to write precise and specific responses to the questions I would send
him, for publication on the Guardian's website. If he answered them,
the debate would go ahead; if he didn't, it wouldn't happen. The two
exchanges would complement each other: having checked his specifics,
people at the public event could better assess his generalisations.
Plimer refused. After I wrote a blog post accusing him of cowardice,
he accepted. I sent him 11 questions. They were simple and
straightforward: I asked him only to provide sources and explanations
for some of the claims in his book. Any reputable scientist would have
offered them without hesitation.
But instead of answers, Plimer sent me a series of dog-ate-my-homework
excuses and a list of questions of his own (you can read both sets on
my Guardian blog). While mine address only what Plimer purports to
know, his appear designed to be impossible to answer: they are less
questions than riddles. Were you to take them seriously, every answer
would require several years of original research. Gavin Schmidt, a
senior climate scientist at Nasa, examined them and found that most
were 24-carat bafflegab, while the rest had already been answered by
other means. But that wasn't the point. Plimer's purpose appears to
have been to distract attention from the fact that he can't answer my
questions. Last Tuesday I offered Plimer a £10 bet that he could not
answer his own questions. He has not yet accepted.
Having put up with this nonsense for almost a month, I gave him a 10-
day deadline, after which I would assume that he had chickened out of
our exchange and forfeited the debate. The deadline expired on Friday.
Answers came there none.
There is nothing unusual about Professor Plimer. Most of the prominent
climate change deniers who are not employed solely by the fossil fuel
industry have a similar profile: men whose professional careers are
about to end or have ended already. Attacking climate science looks
like a guaranteed formula for achieving the public recognition they
have either lost or never possessed. Such people will keep emerging
for as long as the media are credulous enough to take them seriously.
What's odd is the readiness of publications like the Spectator to
champion them. During my correspondence with Matthew D'Ancona, I asked
what it is about climate change that makes intelligent people like him
abandon all editorial standards. Why is he prepared to endorse Ian
Plimer's claims, but not those made by people who contend that the
entire canon of lunar science is wrong and the moon is in fact made of
green cheese?
He replied as follows: "All you say may well be true, which fortifies
my belief that a debate would be fantastic!" I pressed him again. "I
think the answer," he replied, "may be that what I call mischievous –
and it is part of the Spectator editor's job description to be
mischievous – you would call deeply immoral and grotesquely
irresponsible. The response to Plimer's piece – for and against – was
passionate and cacophonous: exactly what I had hoped. Again, that may
not strike you as an excuse. But perhaps it suffices as an
explanation."
I told him that while the Spectator publishes noisy and provocative
articles all the time, in most cases they are grounded in fact. This
article was grounded in gibberish. So why climate change? Why is this
issue uniquely viewed as fair game by editors who tread carefully
around other scientific issues for fear of making idiots of
themselves? And where is the mischief in doing what hundreds of
publications and broadcasters have already done – claiming that man-
made climate change is a myth? Surely to be mischievous you have to be
original?
D'Ancona replied: "I can only speak for myself and say that, as an
editor, I don't single it out for loony treatment." So I asked him for
examples of loony articles he had published on other scientific
matters. He replied: "Well, MMR for a start where I supported
Wakefield initially!" But when Andrew Wakefield first suggested that
the MMR vaccine is linked to autism, it was an original claim that,
while unsupported, had yet to be debunked. Today we have 20 years of
evidence, across tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers, to show
that people like Ian Plimer are talking out of their hats.
So Plimer won't provide his sources, and D'Ancona won't explain why he
singled out climate change. But at least, after this frustrating
episode, I have an answer to my questions: neither of them has a leg
to stand on.
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