Let it be known that from this day forward (Apr 27 2009) That i am going to be forever disgusted and ashamed that the words ‘Professor Ian Plimer’ and ‘Australian’ or ‘Scientist’ ever again be mentioned in the same sentence, unless and until the word ‘former’ is able to be the adjective immediately prior to either of the last two identifiers!
Any claim the man may once have had to being intelligent and a man of scientific integrity has, for me, been permanently relinquished.
If this is what results from a background in science the world should recant and beg forgiveness from whatever potential God might be responsible for our Creation because science just lost the last shreds of respectability and believability if this man’s stated words are to be in any way claimed to indicate True Science.
If you have any respect for your own intelligence i recommmend NEVER buying a single thing he has been responsible for publishing. I hope for the sake of those who may have already done so, in their misguided innocence, that his current insanity and inability to make lucid thought is a relatively recent development of onset Alzheimers – but frankly i has me doubts about dat! 😉
i would be more inclined to be ‘charitable’ and suspect he has simply become yet another poor scientist who has decided to sell out to Big Bucks and become a ‘hired gun’ to tote the Big Business ‘party’ line.
Sickening and sad – but all too believable, in light of how he now claims to think with the release of his latest book – a deplorable mix of true fact with inaccurate data, both misinterpreted and worked into despicable misinformation and deception. Worse still he blatantly does what he is (mostly falsely) claiming thousands (the vast majority) of his fellow ‘scientists’ are doing and completely ignoring ‘history’ – history that ignores one unignorable fact about this planet and what is happening to it – the sheer size and agression of the destruction of it’s natural systems man has become responsible for due to never-before-in-history achieved levels of human habitation/energy exploitation.
It grieves me that he is allowed to speak publically, receive promotional air time on major news media and walk about freely in what is, in most other respects, a very great Nation.
i thouht i was a believer in the phrase: “I disagree with what you say but i will defend to the death your right to say it” – PASS! ( in this ‘persons’ case).
BLob's Blog 
Hmm, people will do lots for money, even sell their souls and their beliefs to say what those paying want to hear, to create sensation and controversy. Sad…
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wow…I wish I knew how you really felt 🙂
not sure I have read anything about this said person but you have me curious….but in support I am not sure I should read…or should I read about it to support this…
confused..
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I looked up Ian Plimer on Wikidedia. I read a review of his most recent book, just published, “Heaven And Earth”, by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul Sheehan, described as the Heralds “Believer-in-chief”.
The book itself is 500 pages long, so I won’t be getting a copy from my library. 🙂
From what I have read I will agree that Prof. Pilmer appears to have a closed mind. A very intelligent one no doubt, but he seems to be someone who prefers telling everyone else that they are idiots.
The starting point for a scientific idea must be the possibility it could be either correct ,or incorrect. Prof. Pilmer does not appear to be someone who can conceive that he could be wrong.
Your countries Royal Society of New South Wales gave him their Clark Award in 2004. Perhaps you should write them a letter. 🙂
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Rain – if as can happen some people sell out what they believe in for money and or fame/recognition then i consider that a sad thing – but a matter for their own soul to resolve. Where i take GREAT exception to this is when it is done in the form of providing misinformation to large numbers of people and unnecessarily causes confusion and deceit in those who read or listen to such people. This annoys me beyond belief! Particularly when it is done by people who once were respected individuals who have built up a reputation for their intelligence.
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Joseph and Ed 🙂 Thank you for your comments you did manage to return the smile to my face that had been MIA for a while there 🙂
A Little Background:
Prof Plimer is a geologist who has written a few books and gained a notoriety in more recent times as being somewhat of a controversial figure on some issues – Man made climate change being his most recent ‘hobby horse.’
He just released a second book on the subject and was being interviewed on Lateline last night. I have previously looked quite a lot at the scientific data concerning the World Climate from many sources going back over millions of years so i was well prepared to understand his comments and the facts concerning this subject.
What i heard from the horses ‘mouth’ made my skin crawl…
That a person of supposed intelligence making the statements he did with the seemingly absolutely unassailable belief that HE knew everything and the great majority of experts in the field ( not his own branch of ‘expertese’) were wrong or seeking govt funding and so were prepared to jump to false conclusions to support a non-existent in his mind phenomenon (exactly as he has done for ‘the other side’) was revolting to watch and listen to. His books arguments were shown to contain many errors and false claims and in every case he tried to make out that he had done nothing ‘wrong’ and insisted in his own sadly misguided belief was the ‘true’ case and anything that did not support him was fudged science.
His main argument against man-made climate change is one of ‘History’ – he correctly states ( one of the few true claims he was able to make) that history shows there has been changes to climate in the past and there will likely be more such changes in the future and so there is no evidence to say this climate change has any man made components and we are foolish to assume we can make any difference to natural changes.
Sounds reasonable right?
Well here’s the thing he does NOT consider.. rather let me give you a ludicrous example to make my point.
A person has lived in the one street for his entire long life. Never once in that time has an elephant walked down his street.
He therefore makes the assumption that no elephant will ever walk down his street on the basis of known facts and his long history.
What he completely fails to consider is that in his long history man has been quite clever and found ways to invent aircraft that carry large mammals from place to place cheaply and easily. He fails to take account of the fact that where there were once no elephants in his continent there are now hundreds. He fails to consider that a number of these elephants are in traveling circuses that tour all over the country and the next place one of them visits is his town.
He cannot, with the wisdom of History, predict the likelyhood of an accident involving the circus vehicles as they pass his street resulting in the accidental release of a large rogue male elephant escaping his captivity.
He is completely stunned and amazed to wake up one morning to the sound of a trumpeting elephant charging down his street as it flees the crash scene.
In short, History has statistical evidence of the past on it’s side but it is NOT a useful tool for identifying problems caused by an rapidly changing set of data such as in the case of human population that has never before in history had such a massive, multi-faceted effect on our planet.
Mr Plimer seems to completely ignore this factor and wants to believe that because man’s limited numbers in the past could not have modified climate that the far greater numbers and much more destructive practices man engages in now, that was never undertaken in thousands and thousands of years of human history in this planet, that we can apparently not be even partly responsible for a change in the planet in our future – or more worryingly, in our present.
He is quite simply wrong and seems unaware of his own ignorance – very sad for someone who was apparently once quite intelligent but who seems to be getting much worse, not better, with age.
I would normally feel sorry for such people and leave it at that, but the danger this man poses to the greater community by doing what he is doing is really troubling to me – many many lives and much misery may be prolonged and extended if he poisons the minds of those people who do not want to hear bad news with such poorly thought out beliefs.
If he had anything relevant to add to the debate i would consider the pro’s and con’s, but from what i saw of him last night he has an ‘original’ viewpoint but it does not accurately reflect the unique and never before witnessed situation and the available evidence of our current position amassed by thousands of the world’s top scientists on this planet.
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what frustrates me about much of scientific study today is that what is theory or “intelligent speculation” is often presented as fact, rather than possibility.
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J-R In Support of most scientists worthy of the name…i believe they largely understand the difference between facts and theories, but simply are most used to talking in a ‘factual’ rather than emotional ( or ‘sprirtual’) 😉 manner.
Moreso than most of the rest of us.
This can often seem to those who do not live in the same scientific environment, day to day, as being that what they simply propose as possible is being stated as fact when such was not their original intent.
The media is as much to blame for this as Science and loves to ‘stir the pot’ so as to sell more advertising space to it’s readership/viewing public.
One of the things that sticks in my mind concerning Science is that the system of proposing a Hypothesis and then performing subsequent experiment to test the accuracy of the hypothesis is incapable of Proving ANYTHING.
It is only possible to DISPROVE the Hypothesis, or not – if not it is assumed the hypothesis COULD be accurate – until another or better hypothesis that explains it comes along and is then tested so as to disprove it or leave it open to assumption – and so on.
If, because of human ignorance, no-one can provide a better hypothesis of some way of explaining some aspect of reality, the not disproven hypothesis is taken to be the best currently available and some of us can tend to fall into the trap of saying this is then ‘fact’ – which, as you mention, is not the case. 🙂
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“Where i take GREAT exception to this is when it is done in the form of providing misinformation to large numbers of people and unnecessarily causes confusion and deceit in those who read or listen to such people.”
Hmm, I hear you Love. But sadly (again) this happens way too often I think. And you are right, it’s shouldn’t happen. Preachers preach things that’s not in the Bible, scientists say things that people believe because they are after all scientists and mere humans can’t understand a word of it. I guess the bottom line is don’t believe everything you read/hear- least of all in the media. But I understand how this can be immensely annoying to someone who knows the truth.
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Rain – Being human we can all get something ‘wrong’ and generally this causes little disruption to anyone but ourself and perhaps our immediate family (not that that cannot be devastating to some people concerned, maybe effects lasting a lifetime)
I find this hardest to bear though when people with some influence make a show of publicising, supposedly with the aim of ‘informing’ people, information which usually contains some truths so it is not totally rejected but also makes false assumptions and tries hard to pass them off as justifiable or in this case the ONLY ‘correct’ interpretation.
That really rots my socks. 😉
I have heard way too many Christians say that those in Authority in the Church have been the person who was responsible for some of the greatest unjustified pain in their lives. I understand how devastating that can be for a person trying to walk a life of True Faith.
A little humility in our leaders in Faith would not go astray – there are some people who find a little power an intoxicating thing and it can lead to an inflated sense of their own importance and another’s relative unimportance.
That should never happen in a Church – yet it most assuredly does/has. 😦
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