Ian Plimer on climate change

As was mentioned last August by commenter Ktisophilos, Ian Plimer has a new book out on climate change, titled Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science, in which he challenges claims of anthropogenic global warming.

Plimer is an Australian professor of geology who I criticized for his methods in debate with creationists, as well as for his reliability and accuracy. He responded by criticizing me with more misrepresentation in his book Telling Lies for God, which contained numerous errors, as well as multiple cases of failure to properly quote and cite sources that he used in writing the book. (The Creation Ministries International documentary for which I was interviewed, Facing the Fire, is about Plimer's 1988 debate with Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research.)

It now appears that Plimer's latest work is also extremely sloppy and contains erroneous source attributions. Tim Lambert at the Deltoid ScienceBlog identifies a long list of problems in the book by page number, points out the facts about Plimer's misleading figure 3, which doesn't originate from the source Plimer has claimed, and about another misrepresented source and graph.

Some Christians who found Plimer to be worthless as a source on creationism as a result of my critique have nonetheless found him to be a worthwhile source on anthropogenic climate change, such as Bill Muehlenberg and some of the commenters at his CultureWatch blog. This strikes me as an inconsistent position--Plimer has demonstrated unreliability in both debates, and shouldn't be relied upon as a source for either. That doesn't mean to ignore what he says, or that everything he says is wrong--it's just that everything he says needs to be thoroughly checked for accuracy. If it checks out, then it's better to cite the original source, not Plimer.

UPDATE (May 26, 2009): Commenter Paul points out a review of Plimer's book by Barry Brook, which also includes a link to a point-by-point critique of the book by Prof. Ian Enting of the University of Melbourne (PDF). (This link has been updated as of June 1, 2009 to point to a location that will continue to maintain the most recent version of the critique, as per a comment below from Prof. Enting.)

UPDATE (May 28, 2009): Bill Muehlenberg still appears to be refusing to publish contrary opinions from me, continuing his past record. I posted the following two comments on his blog, which he has not allowed through moderation:

1. Comment submitted on the evening of May 22, 2009:

I am a critic of creationism and skeptic who challenged Ian Plimer's methods and reliability in his criticisms of creationism (cited by one of your commenters above). I am sorry to say that Plimer's methods and reliability continue to be unsound in his contribution to the climate change debate. For example, see the following two blog posts that document errors and falsehoods in his new book:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_plimer_lies_about_source_o.php

I think that Plimer is mostly correct about creationism (it's nonsense) and mostly incorrect about climate change (there are real trends that correlate with human activity), but given his record he shouldn't be relied upon as a source in either debate without carefully checking up on everything he says.

2. Submitted on the morning of May 23, 2009:

Bill:

I do hope you will let my comments through moderation.

Here is another post from the Deltoid ScienceBlog about Ian Plimer misrepresenting one of his own sources:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/plimer_and_arctic_warming.php

UPDATE (September 2, 2009): Plimer has descended further into irrationality in his exchange with George Monbiot.

UPDATE (December 17, 2009): Plimer engaged in a debate, of sorts, with George Monbiot, on Australia's "Lateline" program. Monbiot offers his overview of how it went.