That Aching Void

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!

How sweet their memory still!

But they have left an aching void

The world can never fill.

—William Cowper, “Walking with God”

Oh, what peaceful hours we all once enjoyed before we donned those smelly sneakers that now mark our carbon footprint and convulse us into a confection of mass-guilt and semi-mass hysteria.

The speed at which the world has joined the Cult of Climate is amazing. No doubt it owes much of its success to the power of television and the graphic presentations of a doomed planet. It has, after all, all the essential ingredients for a successful, primitive religion—the need to fill that “aching void”.

Unlike venerable world-religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which have had millennia to develop and refine their beliefs and philosophies, the Cult of Climate is so new you can almost smell the paintwork. So it is with some relief that along has come a prophet of enlightenment (some will say Satan) in the form of Professor Ian Plimer, author of Heaven and Earth. Cleverly, his book’s title embodies the notions of irrationality and rationality—the name of today’s game.

Simply stated, the climate change believers, headed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), claim that the world’s climate is no longer controlled by the sun and its moods or the earth and its moods, but by man-made carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is smothering the atmosphere. The climate is changing and the earth is heating up. They say their theory on climate-changing carbon “has been settled”—a statement similar in tone, no doubt, to those directed at Galileo and Copernicus.

Professor Plimer, on the other hand, argues that the history of climate on earth, for billions of years, shows that it is controlled by the moods of the sun, the variation of the mixes of certain atmospheric gases, and the restless behaviour of volcanoes, oceans, land masses, cosmic dust, rock-rot, earth-wobble and all forms of evolving plant-life. Humans don’t come into it.

The pro-carbon theorists rely upon a thesis, taken up seriously only twenty years ago, that is based mainly upon computerised predictions. As with all computers, the latest super-computers used by modellers still rely upon what you put in to get what you get out. Miss a bit and your model is jiggered. The clearest statement I can find about computer modelling says: “No model—whether a wind tunnel for designing aircraft, or climate model for projecting global warming—perfectly reproduces the system being modelled. Such inherently imperfect models may nevertheless produce useful results.” May produce useful results?

Sceptics like Professor Plimer rely upon the basic notions belonging to science, grounded upon the idea that theories need to be proved. He suggests that “possibly” and “probably” don’t come into consideration when dealing with scientific rigour. The IPCC think they are 90 per cent certain that human-produced carbon dioxide will “possibly” or “probably” change Earth’s climate.

So with an estimated 30,000 scientists gnawing away at the problem of “possibly” or “probably”, we of little faith are left with our school lessons in geography and science; our trust in geology and history and the knowledge that the heroes of science have been the sceptics—not the entrepreneurs of dogma or the exponents of fashionable cults.

After a lifetime spent hearing about an imminent cure for cancer, the certainty of a nuclear holocaust, impending world starvation, the wonders of communism, the collapse of capitalism, cure-all diets, the benefits of frontal lobotomy, banks as best friend and the millennium bug, a tad of scepticism seems in order.

In Heaven and Earth, Professor Plimer presents what appears to be a winning hand in what is now the biggest game in town. Aimed at readers ill-equipped to decipher techno-babble, astrophysics or the conjecture-filled reports of the IPCC, this book is both a godsend and a delight to read. He writes in a crisp, simple style:

Clouds reflect 60% of the sun’s radiation. A change of just 1% in cloudiness of planet Earth could account for all of the 20th Century warming. However, IPCC computers don’t do clouds. Fine particles in the atmosphere are the nuclei for condensation of water vapour into water droplets that form low-level clouds. Wind-blown dust (especially if it is rich in clay) from continents, meteoritic and cometary dust and volcanic dust block the input of energy to Earth. This can affect climate.

Heaven and Earth’s basic premise is that geological history, ice-core study, tree-ring interpretation, ancient lake-mud samples, the coming and going of rivers, deserts, forests and ice-frontiers all point to irrefutable evidence that the climate changes constantly. Plimer’s proof is in the physical evidence available, which is presented in six key chapters—“History”, “The Sun”, “Earth”, “Ice”, “Water” and “Air”. In all, the book contains 2311 footnotes quoting scientific research papers and academic reports. You might say that the sources he quotes represent the key body of knowledge we have about the history of Earth’s climate.

Professor Plimer’s arguments are set out in clear, bite-size layers that cover the staggeringly complex interacting elements that influence climate globally, and our weather locally. Take a small extract from the section covering “Galactic Bullets”:

Earth is constantly bombarded with extraterrestrial atomic bullets. Most of these are deflected by the Sun’s magnetic shield, the solar wind and the earth’s magnetic field. However, some atomic bullets penetrate all these defences. If we ignore the role of the sun and the cosmos in our study of the Earth, then we simplify the interrelated dynamic processes on our planet to the point of absurdity.

The IPCC’s theory is that human activity has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causing the climate to change, and that change is towards a catastrophic “warming” of the planet. Ian Plimer’s argument is that periods of global warming and cooling in the past are fully recorded in the body of scientific evidence that he presents, and that the data shows that the percentage of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has varied to a much greater extent than it has in recent centuries. None of this historic variation was human-induced.

The Earth has been warming or cooling for the past two millennia:

The Roman Warming (250 BC to 450 AD)

The Dark Ages (cooling) (535 to 900)

The Medieval Warming (900 to 1300)

The Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850)

Modern Warming (1850 to the present)

Plimer states that past events of carbon build-up in the atmosphere have occurred more often after naturally occurring global warming, rather than before. In other words the scientific evidence suggests that neither human-induced carbon, nor naturally occurring carbon-increases, have much to do with forcing climate change—to the contrary, they are a result of it. The IPCC and climate alarmists try to avoid venturing into the past, and when they do, they tend to misrepresent it—but more of the infamous “hockey-stick” graph later.

Simply put, Plimer seems to be suggesting that the DNA of climate is a very complex set of hundreds, if not thousands of casual events. But unlike the DNA of a living creature, climate has no consistent thread. Each event—sunspots, solar winds, cosmic dust, volcanoes, magnetic fields, ocean currents, ice, rock-rot or living things, to name just a few—plays a part in the changing patterns of climate.

Most of these events are random and cannot be forecast. But scientific research can at least tell us what has happened in the past. Considering the complexity of climate and the random events that influence it, it seems highly improbable that “computer modelling” can foretell what this vast array of erratic and random events will serve up in the future.

By contrast, the IPCC’s argument is simple and appealing. Blame it on carbon, blame it on humans. Fill that “aching void”. Thinking that we humans can interfere in and even control cosmic and planetary events verges on the supernatural.

One important ingredient in the mix is the sunspot. Plimer says:

British astronomers some 150 years ago published a well-documented linkage between sunspot activity and famine in India. In Cycles of Drought and Good Seasons in South Africa, published in 1889, D.E. Hutchins showed that in South Africa, there was a synchronous link between sunspot activity, temperature, rainfall and river flow. It was only in 1843 that the cyclical nature of sunspots was first measured by Heinrich Schwabe (1789–1875). There were speculations in the period 1843–1851 by Schwabe and Rudolf Wolf that the 11.1-year cycle of sunspot activity may be related to the orbital period of Jupiter (11.86 years).

Plimer also points out that sunspot activity was first observed in East Asia over 2000 years ago and that once telescopes became useful scientific tools (darn that sceptic, Galileo), sunspots could be studied in detail:

In Danzig (now Gdansk) in 1647, Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687) plotted the movement of sunspots eastwards and towards the Sun’s equator. In 1801, the astronomer William Herschel (1738–1822) correlated the annual number of sunspots with the price of grain in London recorded in the 1776 work by Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. In many ways, this relationship between sunspots and grain yields still drives agriculture.

Plimer cites a river gauge on the Nile, built in 641 AD, which has provided the longest continuous river level measurements in the world. “The analysis of 1080 years of measurements showed a 21-year cycle which correlates with sunspot activity.” He goes on to say:

the past climate of Africa is interrelated to climate variability in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, and the history of African rainfall, rivers and lakes is directly related to solar activity …

The pronounced cooling from 1945 until the mid 1970s was at the time of a weakening of the Sun’s magnetic activity and, after 1975, the upward trend in solar activity resumed. As a result, warming resumed. During the 20th Century, the Sun’s magnetic shield more than doubled in strength. This larger magnetic field reduced the bombardment of the Earth’s cosmic rays, less cloud formed and the earth was warmer.

Plimer adds: “The cooling in the first decade of the 21st Century is almost as much as the warming in the 20th Century. Predictions of global warming driven by human emissions of CO2 in the 21st Century look doomed.”

The basic historical, geological and biological insights sprinkled throughout Heaven and Earth help to punctuate the overwhelming body of Plimer’s climate evidence and argument. Titbits such as “some 40,000 tonnes of extra-terrestrial material falls [to Earth] each year and much contains organic molecules, including amino acids (the building blocks of DNA)”. Or:

The carbon cycle has been operating for at least 4000 million years [on Earth] and has been controlled by chemical reactions between water, air and rocks. It still is. These reactions have stopped a runaway icehouse or a runaway greenhouse. Tipping points are a non-scientific myth.

In a section titled “One Volcano Can Ruin Your Day”, Plimer tells us that there are two main types of volcanoes, those on land and those in the seas:

Those in mid-ocean rifts are unseen and by far the most abundant volcanoes. Some 85% of the world’s volcanoes are unseen, unmeasured, quietly erupting deep in the ocean and ignored in climate models. Most eruptions take place on the deep ocean floor along the global 64,000km of oceanic ridge systems and pose little in the way of volcanic hazards. These mid-ocean active volcanic ridges quietly play their own game while the rest of the world goes by without noticing …

One hot spring can release far more CO2 than a 1000 mW coal-fired power station yet they are neither seen nor measured. Submarine volcanic gas does not even figure in calculations of the sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2 in the IPCC climate models.

Apparently the oceans contain twenty-two times more heat than the atmosphere, and ocean heat contributes greatly to driving climate. Unseen submarine volcanic activity can have a profound effect on the surface heat of the Earth. Plimer says that there is a point in the South Pacific that clearly shows heat transfer from submarine volcanoes into the oceans, affecting the surface heat balance of the Earth.

If indeed underwater volcanoes do discharge monstrous volumes of carbon dioxide, then the IPCC’s lack of interest in them is scientifically and ethically unacceptable. Apparently the IPCC also treats land-based volcanoes and earth-core discharges with equal disdain, and according to Plimer, does not factor them into “climate models”.

The geothermal systems on New Zealand’s White Island discharge between 1150 and 4120 tonnes of carbon dioxide each day. The Mammoth Hot Spring geyser at Yellowstone National Park in the USA alone discharges between 160 and 190 tonnes every day. There are between 300 and 500 geysers in the park. The Earth burps up vast quantities of carbon dioxide each day, and the polar regions reflect this and are part of the story.

Under the section headed “Ice, Volcanoes and Earthquakes”, Plimer tells us:

Over the past 650,000 years the polar ice caps have grown to be far bigger than at present on seven different occasions. Each time there is a thaw the ice retreats and sea levels rise. Landmasses loaded with ice sink. The sinking is associated with increased volcanic activity.

These changes of distribution (of water) result in rapid changes of sea level. These have been down to 130 metres below today’s level, and up to seven metres above. The melting of ice sheets, some over five kilometres thick, takes the load (their weight) off areas of former volcanic activity, resulting in a return of that activity. To the known effects of the sun and celestial activity, the author adds the quirky and unconsidered actions of the Earth’s crust and its fiery underbelly. And ice. He says:

Planet Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse volcanic planet for 80% of time. There have been numerous ice ages in which there are fluctuating greenhouse and icehouse conditions. The Earth is currently in an ice age. During the biggest ice age ever, atmospheric CO2 was hundreds of times higher than at present. In Antarctica, Canada and Iceland there are sub-glacial volcanoes which continually provide heat, hot water and hot gases …

Armadas of icebergs from large-scale surging of ice-sheets are a permanent feature of every glaciation and do not reflect global warming.

A short review cannot do justice to Heaven and Earth’s information, science, logic or importance. In his final chapter Professor Plimer says:

We are facing the greatest global threat in my three score years and two. It is the threat from policy responses to perceived global warming and the demonising of dissent. These policies also threaten freedoms and the nature of science and religion …

There are calls for trials and imprisonment of those scientists who, on scientific evidence, do not agree that human emissions have changed climate. Such scientists are called deniers and are compared to Holocaust deniers yet their scientific doubts are not addressed. Some environmental advocates of human-induced global warming are promoting Nuremberg-type trials for those who dissent.

The big question for the IPCC and its unquestioning adherents, is whether they have ever considered that they might be wrong—and at what stage they will admit it. Unfortunately for science and for us inhabitants of planet Earth, this is unlikely to happen in the near future. Having locked into carbon dogma, there is little alternative for them but to push on—recanting is not part of the computer model.

A final thought. What if the world goes into a huge carbon-reduction venture only to find that the world’s climate is being changed by something else? Will we have the inclination, or resources, to go off on a different climate crusade? Oh, that aching void!

I highly recommend this book to both sceptics and advocates in the climate change debate, though if their track record is an indication, few of the warmists will bother to read it.

The most serious incident in the quest for evidence of human-induced climate change involved the “hockey stick” graph prepared by Michael Mann and colleagues in 1998, which purported to show a rapid rise in global warming from 1910 onwards. The “hockey stick” became the logo for the IPCC claim. Viewers of the ABC may recall it in a documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which challenged the accuracy of the “hockey stick” graph. A week after the telecast the ABC, bowing to internal journalist pressure, had Tony Jones of Lateline interrogate the documentary’s producer, Martin Durkin. Much of Tony Jones’s interview challenged Durkin’s criticism of the “hockey stick” graph.

But Mann’s graph was a botched-up piece of questionable science. Investigations by a US Senate committee considered doubts about Mann’s work, and this was followed by an official inquiry and a review which found that the research undertaken by Mann and his team was ly flawed. Research by Canadians Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick into the “hockey stick” claims found “collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, absolute data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects”.

The “hockey stick” failed to show the various warmings and coolings of the past 2000 years. The “hockey stick” graph has quietly disappeared from the IPCC’s latest report.