The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) has shown a severe lack of quality control in selecting some of the authors for its latest book, Climate Change: The Facts 2025, which challenges the unanimous findings of every major science academy in the world.
Fabrications and dodgy scientific papers by some of its authors mean the book should sit on bookshelves with the likes of Journal of the Flat Earth Society, Fairies Photographed by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, and The Hitler Diaries.
But the project goes downhill from there by selecting Professor Ian Plimer, who has been repeatedly derided and discredited for making unsupported claims about climate change, to launch the book.
Just one paper by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discredits six of Plimer's claims.
Plimer did not mention in his launch speech his directorships of fossil fuel companies.
Pilmer was appointed a director of Queensland Coal Investments by mining billionaire Gina Rinehart who, in one year, funded ‘up to half’ of the income of the IPA, the producer of this book. And he is chairman of Warrego Energy, a Rinehart company that derives its revenue from the exploration and development of oil and gas resources.
What Pilmer did say in his speech was that carbon dioxide couldn’t be driving warming.
Plimer, who is a geologist and not a climate scientist, is one of 17 ‘scientific thought leaders’ chosen to contribute to the book.
In a cringemaking televised debate that you can watch here, Professor Plimer fails to refute accusations by The Guardian journalist George Monbiot of “scientific fraud”, “straightforward fabrication” and having the bad manners to lie on national television about something that you know to be wrong.
An example of the fabrications is contained in Plimer's book Heaven and Earth, that volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined.
Plimer refused to answer if he stood by the claim.
It's arguing that black is white because, as climate.gov explains:
‘Human activities emit 60 or more times the amount of carbon dioxide released by volcanoes each year.’
Peter Jackson of Canada's The Telegram summarised the debate:
‘For Plimer, it was an unmitigated disaster. He fudged and distracted at every turn like a senile old goat. In the end, he refused to answer a single question put to him by Monbiot or the moderator. His credibility – and that of his book – withered away into oblivion.’
And Monbiot reported:
‘As soon as the interview ended, the emails started pouring in. Scores of them. The overwhelming message was that Plimer had been soundly thrashed.’
The book is described by IPA executive director Scott Hargreaves as ‘a very, very excellent work of climate science’ but it speaks volumes that the IPA could not find a climate scientist with an unblemished record to launch it.
It gets worse. Viscount Christopher Monckton, an outrageous climate change liar, was chosen as one of the authors.
Viscount Monckton, who is not a scientist of any kind, claimed in Climate Depot this year:
‘...[the] dustbowl years of the 1920s-1930s, when North America (to name but one region) was warmer than today.’
A fact check reveals the U.S. Government's peer-reviewed temperature records show that:
‘For the contiguous United States, nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1998.’
(With all of them being hotter than the 1920s and '30s.)
And even worse.
Jennifer Marohasy, the IPA senior fellow responsible for selecting the authors, produced a paper with husband and co-editor John Abbot which, she says, demonstrates:
‘Most of the recent warming could be natural.’
One of three scientists who reviewed the study describes the method used as ‘scientific nonsense’.
Marohasy, who wrote a chapter in the book, is also a conspiracy theorist who believes the Bureau of Meteorology ‘just makes stuff up’, alleging in one post it has done this until there is no evidence of a cooling trend.
The Bureau says:
Contrary to assertions in some parts of the media, the Bureau is not altering climate records to exaggerate estimates of global warming.
For several years, all of this data has been made publicly available on the Bureau’s website.
At the Bureau’s request, our climate data management practices were subject to a rigorous independent peer review in 2012. A panel of international experts found the Bureau’s data and methods were amongst the best in the world.
Even Rupert Murdoch's News.com.au has come to the defence of the Bureau.
Another of the contributors to the IPA's ‘truly scientific work’ is Hermann Harde, a retired Laser Engineering and Materials Science professor.
A paper Harde wrote in 2017 for Global and Planetary Change was castigated by eight scientists who found the claim was based on invalid assumptions and does not address many of the key processes involved in the global carbon cycle that are important on the timescale of interest. Harde in 2017 therefore reaches an incorrect conclusion about the role of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Harde had claimed:
‘The anthropogenic contribution to the actual CO2 concentration is found to be 4.3 per cent, its fraction to the CO2 increase over the Industrial Era is 15 per cent and the average residence time four years.’
The findings of the eight scientists were reviewed by three ‘leading experts’ who agreed with the conclusions and ‘pointed to further gross flaws’.
They found the paper was:
...based on invalid assumptions, ignores a whole body of observational evidence and cites selectively literature that has long-time been disproved.
…contains many mistakes, misconceptions and omissions and ignores a vast body of scholarly literature on the subject.
Climate science deniers such as the Heartland Institute believed the so-called hiatus in global warming that occurred around the turn of the century was the result of errors in calculating the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere and that:
“Having just passed 18 years with no warming, the criteria, as set by alarmists themselves, is now satisfied. The global warming scare is over.”
Three of the authors chosen for this book – Petr Chýlek, James Klett and Manvendra Dubey – wrote a paper echoing that sentiment, saying the slowing of temperatures was due to an overestimation of the influence of greenhouse gases and that:
‘...the current warming slowdown should last till about 2045...’
In fact, hardly had the paper been published when, in 2015, it was reported that 2014 had become the hottest year on record. And the world has continued to bake with new record temperatures set.
Antero Ollila was chosen as one of the IPA authors despite him having made a similarly dud forecast in a paper referring to:
‘...an alternative theory called Natural Anthropogenic Global Warming (NAGW), in which natural drivers have a major role in dominating the warming during the current warm period. These results mean that there is no climate crisis and a need for prompt CO2 reduction programs.’
And:
‘Because the Sun’s activity should be decreasing and the AHR effect also declines after a few years, the global temperature according to this alternative warming theory should decline permanently after 2020 even though the warming effect of GH gases increases steadily.’
Unfortunately for Ollila's reputation, temperatures have continued to rise and 2023 was the hottest year recorded.
But in what might come as a shock to the IPA, four climate scientists chosen to write chapters – Chýlek, Klett, Dubey and Glen Lesins – found carbon dioxide played a major role in the Arctic heating more than four times faster than the rest of the globe.
Chýlek said the study attributed a steep increase in temperatures from 1986 to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the atmosphere.
Other scientists warn that this has placed the Arctic in a ‘death spiral’.
Choose your “facts” from IPA authors.
“Fact” from Ollila: temperatures declining from 2020.
“Fact” from fossil fuel company director Ian Plimer: CO2 couldn’t be driving warming.
Fact from four scientists: CO2 is fuelling rapid Actic heating.
Steve Bishop is a journalist and author. You can read more from Steve at stevebishop.net.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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