Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science

Best Book on Global Warming

The chapters are long, but comprehensive. There are over 3000 footnotes, and this sometimes make the reading slow, but edifying. Skewers the hysteria of the climate control crowd.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

The Lack of Effect of CO2 on Global Warming or Climate Control - Finally Some Genuine Science

In a well organized discussion of global warming and the lack of relationship to CO2, Ian Plimer shows how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control reached incorrect results driven by an agenda that ignored all contrary science, based itself on flawed information, and let politics drive its results. His analysis is very complete. He points out, among other things, that major factors affecting climate do not include CO2. Global climate is affected mainly by sun, cosmic radiation, techtonic movement, volcanic eruptions, earth wobble, and other factors, none of which were considered by the IPCC. Current measurement shows that the climate has been cooling since 1998, not warming. Previous historic interglacial warming periods that long predate modern industrial CO2 contributions, showed much higher CO2 concentrations without harm to the environment. In fact, these warming periods were some of the more productive periods for past civilization, as for example during the medieval warming period. Glacial movements and temperature changes are shown as cyclical with Antarctic ice growing as Arctic ice shrinks,and vice versa, with a clear difference between changes resulting locally and those affected globally. Plimer's credentials are impeccable. Described as Australia's best-known geologist, Professor of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences University of Adelaide, Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, he has twice won the prestigious Australian Eureka award for Science. In this book, he deals with the history of global warming, and the effect of the sun, earth movement including volcanoes and techtonic movements, ice, water, and air on climate. He points out that the IPCC report was based on a flawed and incomplete computer model. His analysis is based on many studies, using many different methods of measurement, many different resources, all thoroughly footnoted. He even points out the flaws and difficulties of measuring such things as global temperature (satellites and balloons are more accurate than ground-based thermometers now based in cities and subject to urban bias), and ocean depths (such measurements don't take into account rise and fall of ocean floor as a consequence of techtonic movements and subsea volcanoes). Man's industrial CO2 production is extremely small as compared to nature's production and cycles of CO2, and the world has in fact thrived in the past during much higher concentrations of CO2 than today. For one who wants a background in the geology, meteorology, and natural patterns affecting climate, and global warming, this book is outstanding.

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Superb Presentation

A real eye-opener. I learned many things about which I had no idea. The history section set the stage for the rest. It is so difficult to get accurate information that has not been compromised by politics. Government sources are in complete lockstep with the political agenda of the time which has basically destroyed the credibility of scientists who must toe the line or risk losing their careers. This book should be read by as many people as possible before we are condemned to economic ruin by a government that seems to no longer have our best interest at heart.
The detail of repeated warming and cooling throughout history is never addressed by those who say the "science is settled". You will never look at climate change the same again.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Well documented refutation of man made CO2 as a significant climate driver

This book can be a dry read, but it thoroughly and scientifically devastates the arguments of those with the man made climate change agenda. I found it to contain an interesting account of Earth's history. People who reject the arguments of this book have to resort to name calling because they don't have facts to support their case.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Well-researched study of global warming

Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide, has a lifetime of academic experience. Using the unfashionable, rigorous sciences of geology, astronomy and solar physics, he has written a superbly well-researched study of global warming, with 2,311 references to the scholarly literature.

He shows how forces other than human production of CO2 drive climate change, like the sun, the earth's orbit and geological processes such as plate tectonics. 186 billion tonnes of CO2 enter the atmosphere every year: just 3.3% comes from human activities, 57% is given off by the oceans and 38% is exhaled by animals (including us). Since natural processes, not manmade CO2 emissions, change the climate, we cannot change it by controlling CO2 emissions.

In previous glaciations - the Ordovician 440 million years ago, the Permo-Carboniferous 260-300 million years ago, and the Jurassic 140 million years ago - atmospheric CO2 was far higher than now. Even as recently as 1935-50, atmospheric CO2 was higher than now.

The Cretaceous period, 100 million years ago, was 6-14 degrees Celsius warmer than now. The Holocene maximum, 6,000 years ago, was 6 degrees Celsius warmer than now, yet the Greenland ice sheet did not disappear (nor did polar bears) and the Antarctic ice sheet grew. The Roman Warming of 250 BC to 450 AD was 3 degrees Celsius warmer than now, as was the Medieval Warming of 900-1280.

As Plimer sums up, "If it is acknowledged that there have been rapid climate changes before industrialisation, then the human production of CO2 cannot be the major driver for climate change. . climates far warmer than the Late Twentieth Century Warming existed before industrialisation and human emissions of CO2."

Yet an editor of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s 1996 'Summary for Policy makers' deleted the words: "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases . No study to date has positively attributed all or part (of the climate change observed) to (man-made) causes." He added instead, "the balance of evidence suggests that there is discernible human influence on global climate."

Plimer shows how the sun is the major driver of climate change. Every hour, the sun delivers to the earth as much energy as humans use in a year.

He estimates that the sun accounted for 80% of the 20th century warming. Sunspot activity cut cosmic radiation, reducing cloud and warming the earth. Since 2000 there has been less sunspot activity, which increases cosmic radiation, creating more cloud and cooling the earth.

A study of 246 glaciers from 1946 to 1995 found no sign of a global trend towards more melting. Greenland and the Arctic were warmer in the 1930s than they are now. Arctic sea ice has increased since 2008.

Total sea ice increased by 8% between 1978 and 2005. Plimer concludes that ice melt could cause, at most, a 5-10 centimetres sea-level rise by 2100.

Plimer dissects the Greens and their pin-up boy Al Gore. The Green programme is black-outs, because it would cut the base load energy supplies of electricity that sustain our economy, jobs and living standards.

Plimer reminds us that Gore was a director of the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, who saw carbon emissions trading as their private scam. Plimer writes, "Emissions trading will enrich a few and make most people poorer."

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is the Bible of Climate Change Science

I have not read a better or more comprehensive and well-researched book than Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth". If you want to know about rising sea levels or the health of coral reefs, then this is where you'll find accurate information. If you want to know about past levels of temperature or atmospheric carbon dioxide, then you will find it here. If you want to know about the Sun's activity, the influence of galactic dust or cosmic rays, then look no further than this book. With over forty years of research and experience behind him, and a refusal to be corrupted by the political propaganda that unfortunately surrounds this subject, Ian Plimer has set out the scientific facts for all to see. A brilliant book by a great scientist.

A non-sense, no science-based piece of garbage.

This book uses many graphs which are taken directly from people known to have been swindlers and liars. The temperature graph involving the 20th century economic "boom," as he calls it, is taken directly from a man who later changed his statement, re-wrote the graph, and said all his previous work was entirely inaccurate. There is no mention of this correction in Plimer's nearly 600 page book. There is also no written section dedicated at all to true science of the sun's radiation and its effects on the stratosphere. His conclusion that there is less CO2 in the atmosphere now than there was at ANY time in the past is outrageous, and is based on yet another falsified study, to which there is no corrected reference in this book. Bottom line, this read is a waste of time. SPECULATION: It was probably sponsored into publication by those who would rather you not know the truth about CO2 production.

There, I clearly announce what I feel can not be verified. Plimer does not, Ever.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Comprehensive and Excellently Researched.

Very much appreciated the scientific view point of subject matter. A little dry and so comprehensive it reads like a text book at times. Appreciated the subject was researched based on available information without predetermined beginning and end points. Additionally, it was clear, conclusions were based on the results of research ... all the research ... and not selectively chosen research to support a point of view. When no conclusion could be drawn from research/information presented, Pilmer did not force one.

Once read, (and you will have to force yourself to push through some of the information presented) I learned why climate change is not a linear issue as well as what variables are involved in climate change that seem conveniently omitted by those promoting a point of view vs science.

I am definitely more informed and smarter after reading "Heaven and Earth" as will most who read the book with an open mind. If you are looking for a book to put forth an opinion or particular point of view based on minimal science or selectively chosen facts you will not appreciate Pilmer's scope of work. (Try an "Inconvenient Truth")

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