Exposing the ‘modern green religion’
By Catherine Sheehan
Professor Ian Plimer has written his most recent book on what he believes is a worrying trend in the debate over the science of climate change. He argues that the movement claiming human activity is responsible for global warming has been transformed into a “modern green religion” filling the void left by the decline of traditional Christianity in first-world western countries.
Recently in Hobart to talk about his latest book, Green Murder, at the invitation of the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies, Professor Plimer spoke about this phenomenon.
As a respected geologist and professor emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Plimer said his professional interest is in science, not beliefs. In regard to science he made clear that:
“I don’t have opinions. I don’t believe. I have conclusions based on fact. And so, I’m very, very different from the modern green religion.”
For 25 years Professor Plimer has been asking fellow scientists to provide even one study that clearly shows human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing global warming. To date, he maintains no such proof has been offered.
“I have looked and looked and looked. I had Senator Malcolm Roberts in Senate Estimates ask CSIRO this question… with all of their scientists they couldn’t provide any evidence.”
“The only conclusion you can make is, where there’s no evidence, then the phenomenon doesn’t exist.”
But what about the IPCC? Hasn’t it claimed that there is a 95% probability that human activity is causing climate change?
“The IPCC is a UN political organisation with the brief to show that humans drive climate change,” Plimer responded.
“They do not mention the thousands of scientific papers that have evidence to the contrary.”
Plimer recommends studies conducted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the UK as the “best studies” on climate science.
He argues the “modern green religion” is based on several basic fallacies. Firstly, that carbon dioxide is a dangerous chemical fuelling dangerous global warming.
“Carbon dioxide is the gas of life… the air has always had carbon dioxide in it,” he said.
“It’s a trace gas in the atmosphere, and we breathe in 0.04 percent carbon dioxide and we breathe out 4 percent.”
“If we didn’t have carbon dioxide, we’d have no plants. And if we had no plants, we’d have no animals. So, if we didn’t have this gas of life, there would be no life on earth. We cannot have net zero [carbon emissions], that is just scientifically daft.”
Currently, human emissions of carbon dioxide constitute only three percent of total emissions, he said. The other 97 percent are naturally occurring emissions from ocean degassing, which doesn’t drive global warming.
Furthermore, he argues the claim that the planet is warming is highly debatable, and depends on your reference points.
“In the last 38 years the temperature hasn’t changed. In the last 150 years we’ve had three events of warming and three events of very slight cooling. The total warming in that period has been 0.7 degrees Celsius.”
“If we look at the last 1,000 years, we’ve had five degrees of cooling. If we look at the last 2,000 years, we’ve had about five degrees of cooling. If we look at the last 4,000 years, we’ve probably had about seven degrees of cooling.”
The other key plank of the ‘green religion’, he argues, is the belief in so-called ‘green energy’. Contrary to green policies, wind and solar power are not efficient or environmentally friendly, he said.
“Solar destroys good farmlands. When they get rid of the solar panels it adds heavy metal contaminants to soils and water.
“Wind is very similar, it spoils the landscape, you add toxins from the blades to the soils and waterways when they get dumped because there’s no recycling.
“And then, of course, if you want to have an electric car, then you are using child slave labour to produce the cobalt that you need for an electric car.
“Ninety percent of the world’s cobalt is mined from the Congo. Pretty well all of the world’s cobalt goes into electric vehicles. The miners in the Congo are black children who are slaves, who work underground, dealing with toxins and unsafe mines that collapse on them.
“That is, to me, green murder.”
Plimer has also raised concerns about the approach taken in Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si’, with regard to its endorsement of wind and solar energy, which he asserts only further impoverishes people in third-world countries. While he shares the pope’s commitment to care for creation, he maintains that the scientific advice provided to the pope was deficient.
“These people [advising the Holy Father] are well known in the climate industry as being socialists who are pushing a certain agenda… these green activists have got into his ear rather than the pope getting a balanced view on it.”
“Net zero emissions to someone in India or Africa is the difference between eating or starving. It’s the difference between your kids remaining as slave labour or getting an education.”
Plimer considers the new ‘green religion’ as part of a wider socialist agenda, the “new face of socialism” in the West.
“In the last 50 years in the West we’ve been attacking everything that’s been precious. We’ve been attacking the education system, which is grossly dumbed-down. We’ve been attacking religion. And this is the new green religion, where people are wanting to believe in something.”