| Speaker 1: | This is a Malcolm Roberts Show. On Today’s News Talk Radio, TNT. |
| Ian Plimer: | Today’s News Talk Radio, tntradio.live. |
| | This is Senator Malcolm Roberts from down under, fresh from my COVID bed. Yes, I had COVID. Now I have the world’s most powerful immunity, natural immunity. |
| | Thank you very much for having me in your car, your lounge room, your men shed, picnic. I hasten to say that I’m not contagious. I know that some people think that telemarketers and telehealth people have to get injected before they can speak over the phone, but I can assure with 100% confidence that you will not catch anything from me over the phone, other than a dose of the truth and some outspoken speech. |
| | My session on the radio is governed by two things, freedom. Specifically, freedom versus control. That is basic for human progress and livelihoods. And we’re going to have a very special guest today to talk about that. |
| | The second thing that drives me is personal responsibility and the importance of integrity. That’s the basics for personal progress and livelihood. |
| | Before getting to our guests, let’s just cover my show’s aims, themes, and the focus. I’m fiercely pro-human. Yes, you heard that. I am fiercely pro-human. I believe in humanity. I am tired. I’ve had a gutful of the media and politicians ragging on humans and humanity. I am proud to be one of our planet’s only species capable of logic, and capable of love and care, and quite often giving that love and care. |
| | I’m also fundamentally positive. I get excited by good things that are happening, and I want to contribute to that. While we are dealing with issues that people face today, and they’re concerned about, I will encourage guests to provide solutions, lasting meaningful solutions. Instead of what’s wrong with politics, what’s needed in politics? Instead of what’s wrong with politicians, and there’s plenty, what we need in politicians? Instead of what’s wrong with the media, what’s needed in media? And we can start that with the truth. |
| | We will get to the core issues, whats and all to develop solutions, because it’s only by getting into the real issues can we have real faith in the outcomes. |
| | We’ll cover the human aspects, strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, failings, highlights. What makes people real? |
| | The second thing about anything I do, it’s got to be data-driven. It’s got to be factual, truthful, and honest. |
| | And the third thing, be blunt. We will be speaking out, calling it like it is. And I’ll be welcoming talkback callers in the near future. Currently, tntradio.live is betting down many systems. This is a truly global operation. It’s a gift to the world from the world. We’ve got hosts all over the globe, broadcasting from Belfast, London, Los Angeles, New York, Tel Aviv, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, The Bush in Australia. |
| | And I want to express my deep and sincere appreciation to Mike Ryan for restoring integrity to media and to politics. |
| | This radio network, this global radio network will serve the people, not control and con the people. We will serve with truth, and we will be blunt. |
| | Before getting to my first guest, let’s just cover a couple of things that have happened today in the news. First of all, right around Australia, to all the people taking part in freedom marches, whether it be in Newcastle din-making, or people in Brisbane, people in Melbourne, people in Sydney, people all over, country towns, regional towns, thank you very much. And, Robert F. Kennedy, and your supporters in Washington, D.C. tomorrow on their freedom marches. |
| | I have brothers-in-law coming from the Southern United States and the Northern United States meeting in Washington. They’re going to tell Biden what we think about his mandates and his coercion. |
| | I’ll see people in Maryborough tomorrow because we’re having a peaceful protest in Maryborough. |
| | I want to express my condolences to the family of Meat Loaf. Meat Loaf was a big part of my life. He had such a wonderful voice. He could go down so low, and then belt it out so strongly, so powerfully. He brings back many, many fabulous memories of my time listening to his music and with friends. |
| | For those listening outside Australia, you probably don’t know that it’s Australia Day this coming Wednesday. That’s when we celebrate our country, or some people try to. |
| | A friend of mine sent me this. “On the Mornington Peninsula, this year, they have cancelled Australia Day celebrations, yet they have not cancelled the Invasion Day celebrations. Invasion day events …” he goes on to say, ” … are free for the indigenous and $39 for the non-indigenous. They’re setting up two countries, one against the other.” |
| | Another news item. China coal production in the month of December alone, 384 billion tonnes in one month. China is by far the world’s largest producer of coal now, and it’s thriving because of it. Australia producers just under 500 million tonnes in a year. Our production is around 11% of what China’s is, basically, one tenth, yet we’re trying to gut our economy, thanks to the Liberal Labour Nationals and Greens. What the hell is going on? China will produce 10 times as much coal as we will. And our politicians want to gut our country. This is ridiculous. And my first guest will be talking about this and many other things. |
| | Then we’ve got news that the Bureau of Meteorology has, wait for it, remodelled Australia’s official temperature record for the third time in nine years, and found things to be warmer than thermometer readings had measured. |
| | The Bureau did not announce the changes, but details of them were published on the Bureau’s website. So we’ve got to sneak around trying to catch them out, because they won’t talk about it boldly. |
| | Jennifer Marohasy, a noted scientist in this country, a fighter for truth has said this, “The bureau has now remodelled the national temperature data set three times in just nine years.” Do they have no confidence in their own revisions and modelling? They have to keep cooling the past and warming the present? Why aren’t they doing an independent open transparent scrutiny of all of this work that they’re supposedly doing to fabricate global warming? |
| | My first guest, fittingly, is a true scientist and a remarkable human being with a remarkable sense of humour, and engaging lively real personality, and a wicked sense of humour. He’s won many international awards and recognition, but this man is no ivory tower preacher, no ivory tower academic. He’s a real world man, who gets down in the mud, wrestles, argues, debates in the bush, pubs, exploration camps, politicians offices, street corners, corporate headquarters, media, academics, anywhere. He’ll take on anyone anywhere. This man, Professor Ian Plimer has dismantled frauds wherever they appear. Welcome, Ian. |
| | Well, thank you for having me, Malcolm. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | Always a pleasure, mate. I’ve known you for a few years now. I always start with something, and we’ll talk about the reasons for this later, what do you appreciate? |
| Ian Plimer: | Being alive. I’ve had many chances to die, but I think the devil has taken a good look at me and thought, “My God, the competition’s too great, so I’ll leave that one.” |
| Malcolm Roberts: | Right. Now, you are famous as a scientist, and as a speaker, and as a fighter for humanity. What is science? |
| Ian Plimer: | Science is married to evidence, and that evidence comes from experiment, it comes from observation, and it comes from calculation. It comes from, basically, collecting data. Now, that data, if it’s collected in Peru, or Poland, or Chad, or Canada, it makes no difference. It is data. And that data has to be reproducible. It has to be in accord with all other validated data. |
| | And if it’s not in accord, then any conclusions based on the data are rejected. So science has a habit of rejecting old theories and building stronger, more valid theories. It is a way of understanding how the world works. And it is very much different from religion, which is an understanding of the world within, and science is an understanding of the world without. |
| | And scientific ideas are always challenged. There is no such thing as consensus in science. There is no such thing as agreement in science. There are fads, and fashions, and fools, and frauds in science, the same as in any other area. And just because someone arrogantly struts around with a white lab coat, stroking their beard, and trying to look intelligent, doesn’t mean that what they’re promoting is correct. |
| | Now, science is always changing, and so, to have a scientific concept wedded over time is non-scientific. And I argue that there are many things in today’s world that are not scientific. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | Well, Ian, fabulous discussion by the way. But perhaps we can bring it back to every-day lives these days, because a typical person today living on welfare, a welfare recipient … that’s not being denigrating, that’s someone saying is down on his luck at the moment, or her luck … a typical person on welfare today lives better than a king or queen did 200 years ago, longer lives, easier lives, healthier lives, safer lives, more comfortable lives, more entertaining lives, more diverse lives. Science gave us this, didn’t it? |
| Ian Plimer: | Yes. By every measure, we are living better than we did hundreds of years ago. The world’s gross domestic product and per capita GDP has gone up. The global population in absolute poverty’s gone down. The food supply has gone up. The tree cover’s gone up. The global urban population has gone up. Democracies, a number of democracies around the world has gone up. The deaths from natural disasters has gone down. And the list is a very, very long one. |
| | We are living in far better times now than our great-grandparents did. And the reason for this is, that we’ve created potable water, we’ve created good sewage systems, we’ve created employment such that animals and humans don’t do the backbreaking work, that we have machines to do that now. |
| | And so, we are living in an age where we have benefited from science … and you are an engineer, trained as an engineer … and from the application of science, which is engineering. And we are living in a far, far, better world than any generation has. |
| | Now, we’ve had about 20,000 generations of humans on planet earth, and it is only the last four generations, where we’ve had an increase in longevity, and that is due to better science. But, not only medicine, due to the fundamentals by having a sewage system, by having drinking water that doesn’t kill you, these are the fundamentals. |
| | And for people that moan and grown about how terrible the planet is, and how we’ve ruined it, should actually take a look at history. We have never, as humans, lived in better times, we’ve never eaten better, we’ve never had more shelter, we’ve never had more ability to travel. And that doesn’t matter, whether you live in Africa, or India, or the West, we are living in the best times ever to be a human. |
| | And, yes, we have plenty of humans that need to be dragged up to the level that those in the West have, but the best way to get out of poverty is to get wealthy. And one of the ways of getting wealthy is to have a very cheap and reliable energy system. The West has done this, the UK, the U.S., and Europe have all gone from miserable poverty to living comfortable lives by having cheap reliable energy. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | So, science to me is something profound, something beautiful. It’s done, not only what you’ve just said in terms of our health and our opportunities, but it’s given us something even more fundamental, and that is freedom through objectivity. It is fundamental for freedom, isn’t it? Science. |
| Ian Plimer: | I think so. It provides you with the absolute tools that you need for freedom, and that is criticism, analysis, argument, and these must be unconstrained. And this doesn’t happen in some areas of science today. And we see that with the science on COVID, the science on climate. There is no freedom there. There is no ability to be able to express different views. That’s what we had in the past. |
| | And we saw that with Lysenko, in Russia. Lysenko was a peasant. He managed to get into the establishment, and he established a concept called vernalization, and this is where seeds of plants must be persuaded to take on the communist characteristics, where they’re all equal. |
| | And Stalin absolutely fell in love with this idea. The end result of that was that tens of millions of people died in famines. Those people who were engaged in genetics, those people who were engaged in trying to create better plant yields by using science were banished to the Gulags, some of them were killed. And this is a very good example of where science has not allowed freedom, where we’ve had one concept rule, and the end result was poverty, and tens of billions of people starving to death quite unnecessarily. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | I think we’re going for an ad break now, Professor Plimer, and we’ll be back in just a minute or so. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | This is Senator Malcolm Roberts, coming to you from Gold Coast in Queensland’s remarkable playground. And I have with me a special guest, Professor Ian Plimer. |
| | Ian, science is more than just a word, it’s a process, a method, and as you’ve said, it never ends. We used to have science-driven policy, we now have, as you alluded to, policy-driven science, can you explain why that’s dangerous? |
| Ian Plimer: | Well, I think it’s extraordinary dangerous, because you do not get an independent conclusion on reality. And a lot of policy is driven by fairly young people in government offices who have gone straight from university into a government office, or into a union, or into a political office, and these people have absolutely no life experience. |
| | And science is a constant questioning. Once you have a policy set in concrete, you are incapable of questioning it. The system doesn’t allow you to do it. And we have that with a couple of aspects in today’s modern world. So I very much reject the idea of policy-driven science. I would rather have facts, and I would rather have facts that are underpinned by the scientific method. |
| | Now, policy-driven science is, in fact, having an opinion. I don’t have an opinion, I don’t have an opinion at all. I have facts. And if you want to challenge me on the facts, then we come to an argument about how we collected those facts, who collected those facts, where they were collected, what instruments were used, what was the order of accuracy? What corrections might have been used in collecting these facts. |
| | So, I think we are facing fairly bad times when we are not looking at facts. When we have one group of people saying, “Oh, well you have your facts, and I have my facts.” I’m sorry, facts. There’s only one thing. It’s a fact. And that fact is reproducible. That fact can be validated. And if it’s not validated, then it gets thrown out. That is the basis of science. |
| | And we have abandoned the scientific method in so many areas of our life. Medicine would be one of them, climate change would be another one of them. And if we had policy-driven engineering, you can imagine how many bridges would fall down, or how many aeroplanes would crash. I mean, this is just absolute nuts. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | So you’re a scientist of the real world. Now, you are one of the most qualified scientists in the world. You’re esteemed. You’ve been given awards. You’ve been showered with praise for, not only your scientific integrity, but your guts, because you are a scientist who gets out in the pubs, and actually talks to people, listens to people. Above all, listens, because that’s another form of observation. You get into debates … you don’t hide from these things … you get into debates, where you flesh ideas out. What are your greatest qualifications, life qualifications, Ian? |
| Ian Plimer: | My greatest life qualifications is that I’ve worked underground. I absolutely love working in underground mines. And, there, you’ve got safety constantly in the forefront of your mind, but you are dealing with real people, and you can’t afford to be dealing with anything else. But, reality, when you are underground, these are real people, these people know how you convert a rock into money. It’s the same as if you’re on a farm, you’re converting soil into food or fibre. These are the real people. And I spent a lot of my time with real people. |
| | Yes, I spent a lot of my life in the academic world, but that was also pretty uncomfortable because I was a square peg in a round hole. And none of the academics loved me, but the students absolutely loved me because I told it as it is. |
| | So, when you’re underground, you’re in a totally different world. It’s a three-dimensional world. If you want to find some more oil, you have to use basic principle of physics, and chemistry, and geology. You have to understand how the rocks move. When you’re underground there’s always a bit of noise, the rocks are creaky and groaning. The miners say the rocks talk to you. So that was probably the greatest learning experience for me. |
| | The other was working out in the bush and getting my hands dirty out in the deserts. And I have a great affinity for desert. I have a couple of places, houses out in the desert, and I absolutely love the desert. And this is unforgiving, if you make a mistake, you are dead. If you make a mistake underground, you are dead. If you make a mistake as a climate scientist, you get promoted. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | What an absolutely amazing explanation. And I share it with you, because when I graduated as a mining engineer with honours in 1976, I decided I better go and learn something. So I’ve worked as an underground coal miner and one open cut mine, but mainly underground around the country, mixing with people, learning about people, learning about underground. |
| | And it is such a challenging place to be. It is such a wonderful teamwork environment to be. Surface mining, large open cuts, that’s just dirt shifting, Ian. We know that. But underground, that’s real mining. |
| | And where did you learn to have your love of argument, because you just love argument. I’ve seen you run away from nothing. Why do you love an argument? |
| Ian Plimer: | Well, that, of course, goes right back to my childhood. I was always a little bit of a rebel with a number of things. I had relatives, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers who were scientists, but also quite argumentative. |
| | And my life was opened up when I was married, and my wife saw the potential, and gave me the freedom to argue and to fight. And this is how freedom, and argument, and science all come together. |
| | Now, in terms of having debates, the one group of people who will not debate me are climate scientists. They will not debate me because I don’t use political policy, I don’t use opinion, I use facts. And you cannot get a climate scientist to stand up in public, and debate me, and then face questions after the debate. They will not do it. And I know why, because they are being funded to pursue the biggest scientific scam we’ve ever seen in the history of the planets. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | Correct. And I saw you and Viscount Monckton dismantle two members of the media in Brisbane several years ago. I think one of the poor fellows, Graham Readfearn, I think that was his name, just absolutely hopeless, you just tore him to shreds, so much so that his employer, The Courier-Mail, I think sacked him not long afterwards. Absolutely disgraceful presentation from him. |
| Ian Plimer: | But he’s still employed. He’s employed by The Guardian, and still writes the same codswallop that is going on with there. So there is the warning, no matter how hopeless you are, there is always something for you. And if you’re really hopeless, the left will look after you. If you’re absolutely extraordinarily unbelievably hopeless, the extreme left will look after you. And that’s what’s happened to Graham Readfearn. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | That’s absolutely so accurate, what you’ve just said. You have mentioned empirical evidence, the hard data, the observations, because your advice sometimes leads to the expenditure of billions of dollars, and your employers are not happy if it’s wasted. And you are held accountable because you’re working in industry, you’re working in academia, and you’re working in the community at large. You’ve worked in the global community. |
| | What we’ve seen now is that science has been reduced to a label. It’s no longer a process, it’s no longer a methodology. It’s a label to justify policies that contradict hard data. |
| Ian Plimer: | Well, let me give an example. We have had trillions spent globally dealing with human-induced global warming. And what you do in science, is ask really simple questions. You don’t need to use nomenclature, you don’t need to use complex words, you don’t need to hide behind a lab coat and pretending you’re important. Just ask a simple question. And you’ve got to be polite. The simple question is, can you please show me that the human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming? |
| | Now this has never been shown. You have pursued that in senate’s estimates committee meeting with Australia’s premier scientific organisation, the CSIRO. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | Premier? |
| Ian Plimer: | Well, they were ones- |
| Malcolm Roberts: | Bloody hopeless on climate, Professor Plimer. |
| Ian Plimer: | They were once a premier organisation in things like genetics, and wheat, and water, but they have now suffered from being woke, and they have suffered from being dragged into getting extra funding by following the climate line. |
| | Now, that question, can you please show me that the human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming, it has never been answered. I have asked people who claim to be scientists, just give me half a dozen scientific papers showing that? I have asked journalists, can you please show me that? They can’t. |
| | Now, of course, the next question is, if they could, you would then have to ask the next question. And 3% of all emissions of carbon dioxide are from humans, the other 90% is natural. And you then have to ask the next question, can you please show me why the 97% of natural emissions do not drive global warming? So it’s checkmate before the game even starts. |
| | Now, these people who call themselves climate scientists, and these can vary from anything, from influencers, to lawyers, to sociologists, to historians, to mathematicians, and on we go, the whole basis of human-induced global warming has never been challenged. And as a result of that, we’ve had this massive waste of trillions of dollars. |
| | Now, what flows on from that are these monstrosities like wind turbines. Now, to make a wind turbine, the amount of energy to make that is more than it will ever deliver in its workable life. |
| | The second thing is, that the amount of carbon dioxide to make it and maintain it, is more than it will ever save. So why bother? And then when you’ve got these wind turbines, which have a fairly short life of about 15 years, they need to be disposed of after their working life. |
| | And when you dispose of turbine blades, you start to contaminate the environment with some dreadful toxins. So you cannot claim that these burden, bat munching, scenery destroying monstrosities have anything to do with the environment. And the way to understand the way that climate industry works is follow the money. Just have a look at who is behind these wind turbines. If one country starts with C and finishes with A. |
| | And then we look at the solar PV systems. Now these destroy huge amounts of [inaudible], and you have to clear a lot of [inaudible], that’s surely not environmental. To make them, again, use far more energy than they will ever release. They also emit, in the making of them, more carbon dioxide than they’ll ever save. |
| | You can’t have solar power 24 hours a day. We can, but I’ll come to that in a second. When you dispose of those, you start to contaminate the environment with all sorts of toxins, of gallium, and germanium, and arsenic, and selenium, and tellurium. All the things that, of course, make your hair curl and kill you. |
| | But just to show you what a scam, the whole business is, we have solar power generation in Spain at night. Now, the Spanish are absolutely wonderful, but to generate solar electricity at night? And you scratch yourself, and you think, well, how the hell do we do that? |
| | The answer’s simple. In Spain, the solar panels are illuminated with floodlights from diesel generators because the subsidies are so great that they can make money out of generating solar power at night. And that demonstrates that we have got a total scam in solar and in wind power generation. Now that scam is coming towards the end of its subsidy life and solar and wind power don’t generate electricity. They generate subsidies. |
| | And towards the end of the life, now the boys have got to think of something else. So they’re thinking of offshore wind, which is wonderful, you reduce the life of the equipment even more with the saline attack. You also now see people saying, “Hmm, I wonder if we can use this gas, hydrogen?” |
| | Now people have tried to use hydrogen 100 years ago and it failed. It failed for three reasons. First, it’s super expensive. Secondly, there’re massive energy losses in making hydrogen, which doesn’t occur in large quantities naturally. And, thirdly, it has to be transported at -253 degrees Celsius and 700 times atmospheric pressure. Now, that is a bomb waiting to happen. |
| | So the same people who are scamming on wind and solar, are the people now who are shifting into hydrogen saying, “Oh, we’ve got to try this wonderful new fuel.” Well, it has been tried and it has failed. |
| | And in my latest book called Green Murder … and check it out on greenmurder.com … in my latest book, I go into all the details on this and other scams. |
| | And this is how we’ve wasted trillions of dollars, and it’s been a slimy approach, every single person who’s paying an electricity bill gets a little slice taken off, and that goes to the scamsters. And this ends up in trillions of dollars in subsidies, trillions of dollars getting paid to people who are only interested in making money rather than providing long-term stable electricity. |
| | And if it’s cheap, then it generates employment. And if you have employment generated, then you have less people on the dole queues. And if you have fewer people on the dole queues, then your economy thrives. It’s pretty simple. And we have been conned because we’re so wealthy, because we’re so comfortable, and people have said, “Oh, I can afford to pay a few more dollars because it makes me morally feel better.” |
| | And in this book, Green Murder, I argue about the morality of The Green position. And I will give you just one or two examples. For example, if you are wanting to put in wind or solar, then the solar panels have a very good chance of being made by slave labour in China. |
| | The wind companies and wind turbines are made by Chinese companies who are destroying the long-term, stable, cheap electricity, be that nuclear, be that coal, be that gas, be that hydro, and replacing it with what they call renewable energy, and I call it unreliable energy, because we once had cheap reliable energy. So there is a scam. And that is weakening the West, and it’s seriously weakening countries like the U.S., and the UK, and Germany. |
| | And we can see now the disaster that has occurred in Germany. This is one of the G20 countries, yet we have people getting cut off from their power source because they can’t afford to pay the exorbitant prices. They are now going foraging in the forests to get wood, to keep themselves warm, and to cook. That’s in Germany. |
| | In England, you have a choice, do I have a hot shower, or do I heat the house, or do I have a warm meal? I can’t have all three, I can only have one of them. That is a G20 country that’s committed suicide on this green murder path they’ve chosen. |
| | And if you, as a wonderful Green, if you think, oh, I want to save the environment and drive an electric vehicle, well, start to look at the resources you use. We haven’t found them yet. And I’ve spent a lot of my time in exploration in a lot of countries, and we have not found the resources we need to put all of the U.S. hydrocarbon-driven vehicles off the road and have them as EVs. We haven’t found the resources. We haven’t got the copper, we haven’t got the lithium, we haven’t got the nickel, we haven’t got the cobalt. |
| | But assume you are living in Los Angeles, and you want to be a moral virtue signaler, and get yourself an electric vehicle, well, you’re only constrained to the city, you can’t drive any further. You couldn’t drive to Nevada in an EV. You just couldn’t charge it up. And if you did, for a 500 mile trip, you’d have to stop 3 or 4 times to charge up the vehicle. It’s just totally ineffective. |
| | But if you are going to moralise about driving electric vehicle, you have to ask a few questions. Where does the cobalt for your electric vehicle come from? About 80% of the world’s cobalt comes from the Congo, and it’s mined by Black slave children underground, in conditions that are extraordinary dangerous, and where there are toxins everywhere. |
| | And if you want to claim that you are moral in driving electric vehicle, you also have to be aware that you are supporting Black child slave labour in the Congo. You can’t have it both ways. |
| | So I argue that there is no science behind The Greens position on climate, and I argue that there’s no morality behind The Greens position on climate. You can’t have it both ways. And so, we have to, I think, be fairly blunt, and fairly robust when we argue with people who claim that they want to save the planet. What are they saving it from? Who are they saving it from? Follow the money and follow the morality causes. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | Ian, the fundamental thing, as I understand it, for driving human progress, there are eight of them. First of all, is freedom. That is determined by science because science gives us objectivity. The second one is rule of law. Third one is constitutional succession, so that we have a smooth ongoing form of government and elected democracy. The fourth one is secure property rights. The fifth one is cheap, abundant, affordable, electricity, or energy, both forms, hydrocarbon and electricity. The next one is family. A strong family network. The next one is honest money. And the last is, of the eight, that I carry around in my head, is, a fair, efficient, honest taxation system. |
| | This climate scam, as you have talked about it so accurately, is an assault on every one of those eight fundamentals of human progress. In particular, what we’ve seen in the last 200 years, last 170 years, in particular, is a relentless reduction in electricity prices and energy prices, to the point where each reduction in real terms leads to an increase in productivity. |
| | That was until about three decades ago, when the lunatics in the West fared by China, pumping wind and solar generators at us, have destroyed our electricity sector. Australia has gone from being the cheapest electricity in the world, to the most expensive. That means that we export our jobs to China, our future to China, our independence to China. We become dependent on China. Isn’t it a fundamental travesty against generations not yet born, to destroy our country’s manufacturing capability, to destroy our country’s economy, when the Chinese themselves are pumping out almost 10 times as much coal as we produce in total each year? This is insane. |
| Ian Plimer: | Well, there’s a couple of points here. We have a coal-rich country called India. And, yes, they have some rather shabby transport systems, but they have a lot of coal. And there has been a huge amount of pressure on India and on Africa not to have coal-fired power generation. And so, people live in huts, they burn dung, and twigs, and leaves for heating and for cooking. And, as a result, there’re millions of women and children, every year, die because of that form of energy. So the cheap electricity that people in Africa and India deserve is denied by moralising greens, who are actually killing people by their policies. |
| | The second thing is that, I’m very pleased that countries like China have had the industrial revolution. The UK, the Europe, and the U.S. have had their industrial revolutions that brought people out of poverty, that enabled people to live longer, that gave a lot of meaningful work. It actually created all sorts of new jobs. China is undergoing that industrial revolution, and undergoing it very, very quickly. And, in China, we’ve probably had the greatest movement of people, and the greatest economic rise that the world has ever seen. And I think that’s fabulous for the average Chinese person. |
| | But the greens tell us the downside is the pumping out of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Well, have I got news for you? We have had a slight increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 30 years. And satellite information is showing us that the planet has greened up. Our crops have become more prolific. Now, that’s partly due to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because carbon dioxide is plant food, but it’s partly due to better fertilisers, and better farming techniques. So we have very good evidence that carbon dioxide is good for you. |
| | We have evidence from the Second World War, from the global financial crisis, and from the COVID crisis, when we’ve had a backwardation of economic activity, that we’ve had carbon dioxide continue to increase. So there’s been less carbon dioxide coming out of industry, yet we’ve had a global increase in carbon dioxide. And that’s telling us that the dominant source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is from degassing of the oceans, it’s not from industry, it’s not from human activities. |
| | And, thirdly, in the geological past, we’ve had times when the atmospheric carbon dioxide was up to 100 times higher than now. And what did we have then? We didn’t have runaway global warming, we actually had ice ages. And six of the six ice ages, this planet has enjoyed, was started when we had more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now. So you cannot ignore that huge body of evidence from the past telling us that in geological times, carbon dioxide was much, much higher, and we yet we had ice ages during these periods of high carbon dioxide. |
| | And the fourth point is, ice core drilling, it’s shown on one scale that is a correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature. But when you look on a much closer scale, we see something that we all know from chemistry, but it tends to get ignored, and that is, that, when we have a natural warming event, anything from 650 to 1600 years later, we then have an increase in carbon dioxide. So it’s not that carbon dioxide drives the temperature increase, it’s the exact inverse, the temperature is actually driving a carbon dioxide increase. |
| | And this is why I argue, that those who call themselves climate scientists are milking the taxpayer to keep themselves in a job because they’re in effect unemployable. And we are being frightened as humans to accept this concept that we are going to fry and die, yet we’ve had periods of time when it’s been much warmer, yet we’ve had periods of time we’ve had much higher carbon dioxide. |
| | And just during the time when we humans, Homo sapiens, have been on the planet, we have experienced many periods of cooling in glaciation and warming in interglacial. And in the last 20,000 years, we have gone from the zenith of a glaciation, where most of the U.S., most of all of Canada, most of Northern Europe, and England were covered by ice. A lot of the southern hemisphere was covered by ice. |
| | Those areas that weren’t covered by ice were deserts with howling winds, bring salt-laden air, and shifting sand dunes. And these are the great Loess plains of Asia. There’s a great sand dune country of inland Australia. |
| | And we humans have endured that. And we came out of that great glaciation event about 12,000 years ago. And temperature increased, it then suddenly plummeted, and then went up again by about 15 degrees in about 10 years. Now that’s real global warming. Then it stayed static for a while, then it dropped again, then it went up again. |
| | And then we had, what was called the Holocene optimum, from about 7,000 to 4,000 years ago. And it was a couple of degrees up to 5 degrees warmer then than now. Sea level was higher than now. And over the last 5,000 years, global temperature has been decreasing. We are coming out of the interglacial into the next inevitable glaciation. We’ve actually been cooling. But during that cooling period, we had warm spikes like the Roman Warming in the dark ages when it was cool. Then another warm spike in the mediaeval warming, then a cool period in the little ice age, and then the modern warming. And we’re coming out of that modern warming into another cool period. |
| | So if you ignore the past, and if you ignore all the sciences that deal with the past, you can come up with an unvalidated idea that human emissions drive global warming. I say that is false. I say that the promotion of that is done by people who are modellers, who do not look at the science of the past. And we know, that from 30 years of models, not one of these models is in accord with what we measured over the last 30 years. |
| | And if I have the choice as a scientist, between a model and a measurement, I will take a measurement any day because a model is a garbage in, garbage out process. And a model, basically doesn’t deal with the unknown unknowns, whereas measurement can be replicated measurement. We argue about the order of accuracy, but it’s still measurement. So, that’s the answer to your question. God knows what the question was. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | That was fabulous. I want to remind you of two recent episodes in human history. The first occurred in 2008, the global financial crisis. It led to a downturn around the world. Australia wasn’t hit because we were living off the Chinese minerals boom, but most of the world was hit. And it’s certainly a global recession, very severe recession. |
| | So the actual use of hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil, gas decreased in 2009 compared with 2008 in the recession. That meant there was less carbon dioxide produced in 2009 than in 2008. And yet, Professor Plimer, as you have so accurately stated, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued to increase. |
| | Then we marched forward to 2020 when we had a global, almost a depression due to the COVID restrictions, the government imposed COVID restrictions, not due to COVID, due to government-imposed COVID restrictions. We saw, again, a reduction in the use of coal, oil, and gas compared with the previous year 2019, we saw a decrease in the human production of carbon dioxide, and yet the global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continue to increase, which just shows two things. |
| | First of all, we have no say in what is the level of global carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. None at all. We can gut our economy and it will have no effect on it whatsoever. So we can gut the West and let China keep producing carbon dioxide, let India keep producing carbon dioxide because they have a duty to their citizens to lift them out of poverty, and to give them the trappings of modern civilization, there’ll be nothing we can do. And besides that, carbon dioxide, as you’ve said, is a plant fertiliser it’s plant food. It is essential to all life on this planet, is it not? |
| Ian Plimer: | Yeah. Just to add to that, these two examples you gave are examples of the scientific method. We’ve had two great unintentional global experiments, global financial crisis, and COVID, and these were great global experiments. So it’s not that we’ve done the experiment once, we’ve actually replicated it. And in both cases, we have shown that human emissions of carbon dioxide do not drive global temperature. And in fact, global temperature depends upon whether you measure it on the ground, and if it’s measured on the ground, then what a wonderful opportunity you have to cook the books and change results. And that’s what happens almost universally with cooling the past and warmingly the present. |
| | But when you look at the satellite measurements, and there are three basic sets of satellite data, it shows a very different story. So I would much prefer to have a uniform measurement at all altitudes around the whole planet that tell me about the temperature rather than having selected people entrusted with looking after a surface measurement, and then changing it over time. And as you mentioned, the Bureau of Meteorology has done that three times over the last nine years, which creates all sorts of uncertainty about whether they’re worth a million dollars a day. |
| | So we’ve had these two great global experiments, which in my mind prove that human emissions of carbon dioxide did not drive global warming. So, why bother? Why bother? Why don’t we, as Western countries, say, we are very happy to look after our environment. And the only countries with good environmental policies preserving the environment [inaudible] have become wealthy due to the industrial revolution. |
| | And this thing you can do for our environment [inaudible] what you consider is worth preserving. We should be very pleased China [inaudible] ahead and becoming a wealthy country. As a result, they will [inaudible] pollution. And I think China and India should [inaudible] people. |
| Malcolm Roberts: | What you’re saying, Professor Plimer, is that, we need to restore scientific integrity to protect freedom, to protect our natural and environment, because scientific development and understanding has enabled us to protect our natural environment. |
| | Science also then is vital for sound sustainable policy, which impacts people’s economies, and lives, and livelihoods, and security. And it’s also to protect the human spirit by ending the unfounded climate fear and guilt while restoring our connection with nature. |
| | Something I think is really important to human progress is strength of character. You display it in spades. Whenever you speak, you’re fearless, but you’re also passionate. Why are you so proud of being a human, and what traits in humanity, are of concern to you? |
| Ian Plimer: | You’ve asked me 17 questions there, so let me just comment on a couple of things. You spoke about protecting the environment. I’m a great supporter of that, because I’ve bought a considerable acreage of land to protect it. But I’m not conserving it, because how can you conserve the environment on a planet that’s dynamic and it’s always changing? So we can protect what we have and let nature do its bit. |
| | In terms of fear, we, humans, are hardwired to fear that grizzly bear that’s behind you and is going to come and get you. We are hardwired to have an adrenaline rush to save ourselves. This is a fundamental trait of humans and of many, many other animals. So fear is still hardwired into our system. And the fear that has been induced in populations, by governments on matters such as COVID or climate, they have been exploiting that fundamental human characteristic of fear. |
| | And in many cases, you fear because you do not understand. Science gives you a method of being able to understand. And if you can understand, then you are not nearly as fearful. |
| | Now, I am very passionate because my early life I started being interested in the planet and geology, when I was about four. And I had some very good mentors, and I’ve been guided well through life. And I’m mentoring, I think 8 or 10 people now, giving back the same way it was given to me. |
| | But if you can understand how the planet works, if you can understand the past, then this is far more exciting than- |
| Malcolm Roberts: | We’re going to have to call it off, Professor Plimer. This is Professor Ian Plimer, guest of Senator Malcolm Roberts. |
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