Monbiot vs Plimer

Have you ever wanted to get a denialist — a real, died-in-the-wool, will-say-anything-however-false denialist — on the witness stand for cross-examination?

I sure have. I’d love to be able to question, say, Martin Durkin or Ian Plimer, in a public forum where they can’t hide from the deceptions they’ve perptrated and their answers will be on the record. Where they’re forced to come face-to-face with their own falsehoods. It’s actually going to happen! We’re about to witness a cross-examination of Ian Plimer, denialist extraordinaire, by George Monbiot.

Ian Plimer is the author of an execrable book about global warming titled Heaven and Earth. Enough people have shown its folly that I hardly need to join their ranks; one of those was George Monbiot. As a result, Plimer challenged Monbiot to a face-to-face debate about global warming. Here’s where things stand according to Monbiot’s blog:

Professor Ian Plimer, author of the book Heaven and Earth, is the new champion of the climate change deniers. After I wrote an article attacking his claims, he challenged me to a public debate. Last week I told him that I would accept his challenge as long as he accepted mine. I would take part in a face-to-face debate with him as long as 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. Plimer rejected my challenge.

I wrote an article accusing him of cowardice. I sent him the URL in the hope that it would provoke him into changing his mind. It worked. He wrote back, suggesting that he would now answer my questions. So here’s the letter I’ve just sent him. If Plimer answers them and accepts my condition that we can cross-examine each other, we will move on to his challenge – a face-to-face debate. Let battle commence!

Stage 1 of the cross-examination requires written answers to written questions. Stage 2 will be during the “debate,” which according to the terms allows the participants to cross-examine each other. Monbiot has already posted his written questions, we eagerly await Plimer’s written response.

The questions are to the point; Monbiot pulls no punches. You should take a good look. Here are my favorites:

Question 2:

2. Figure 3 (page 25) is a graph purporting to show that most of the warming in the 20th Century took place before 1945, and was followed by a period of sharp cooling. You cite no source for it, but it closely resembles the global temperature graph in the first edition of Martin Durkin’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle. Durkin later changed the graph after it was shown to have been distorted by extending the timeline.

In your book it remains unchanged.

Tim Lambert has reproduced the graph here.

a. What is the source for the graph you used?

b. Where was it first published?

c. Whose figures does it use?

d. How do you explain the alteration of both the curves and the timeline?

For those who are interested, this is figure 3 from Plimer’s book:

Tim Lambert at Deltoid has already identified the source of the graph; it’s from the equally execrable “documentary” The Great Global Warming Swindle.

You should definitely visit the Deltoid post, where you can see the graphs superimposed and note their identity. In that post Deltoid notes that Plimer actually lied about where that graph came from, not long after having said that he “couldn’t recall” its source.

And by the way, that’s the graph which appeared only in the very 1st showing of the execrable “documentary” — it was changed for subsequent showings because it was shown to be a fraud.

Question 10:

10. You state that:

“Volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world’s cars and industries combined.” (p413)

This is similar to the claim in The Great Global Warming Swindle, whose narrator maintained that:

“Volcanoes produce more CO2 each year than all the factories and cars and planes and other sources of man-made carbon dioxide put together.”

But you do not provide a source for it.

This is what the US Geological Survey says:

“Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes”.

a. Please provide a reference for your claim.

b. How do you explain the discrepancy between this claim and the published data?

This is an example of a false claim for which there is no evidence. They just made it up.

I can’t wait to see Plimer’s responses.