2009-04-23

Brook takes down Plimer, as usual

I just read Barry Brook's response to Ian Plimer's new book, Heaven+Earth. Plimer is a notorious climate change denier in Australia, and apparently has enough "cred" to get a book deal. According to Barry, the book is 500 pages of rubbish, rehashing the same old arguments that all the climate change deniers always march out. It sounds like Plimer also takes ALL climate scientists to task for being bad scientists, by committing intellectual fraud and misleading the public about climate change. Brook gives a broad overview, and a list of specific errors and misrepresentations from the book. What will be interesting to see, over the next year or two, is whether this book becomes the standard go-to reference for climate change denial. I hope it does, as I'm sure that there will soon be compilations of fact-checking focused on the book, and having a pre-existing refutation of everything in the book would be disarming for (at least some) people sympathetic to the denier worldview.