Undersea volcanoes, sunspots, cosmic rays and orbital wobbles were thrown into the climate change mix in Armidale, NSW, last week, where several of Australia's most prominent climate change sceptics met at the invitation of the NSW Nationals.
Professor Ian Plimer, Professor Bob Carter and William Kininmonth joined Dr Alan Moran and Dr Paul Collits at a Nationals 'Roundtable Conference' to discuss, among other things, whether Australia should hold a Royal Commission to verify the fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
According to Prof Plimer, who is Professor of Mining Geology in the University of Adelaide, the IPCC is a club of atmospheric physicists who have failed to consider other evidence that might contradict the theory of human-caused global warming.
"Of the 2500 IPCC authors, 1100 are scientists, and of those, about 40 are leaders who peer-review each others' grants and publications, and who are all in the one discipline—that is atmospheric physics," Prof Plimer said.
"People from other disciplines who can contribute a lot to climate change, such as geologists who look back at previous climates, do not get a look in.
"It is a club of one group of scientists who are enriching that group of scientists."
Prof Plimer led the sessions with a sustained attack on pro-climate change theory, arguing that humans make only a minute contribution to atmospheric carbon levels.
He considers climate change cycles a natural outcome of forces working from beneath the Earth's crust, and from space.
Prof Plimer said, every 400 million years, roughly, the earth has entered a period of greenhouse conditions because as continental plates pull apart and stitch together, the resulting volcanic activity releases huge amounts of CO2 and methane.
Volcanic eruptions are ongoing, particularly on the deep sea floor.
Prof Plimer attributes the El Nino effect to undersea volcanoes in the Pacific, which warm the sea-water at the same time as they release massive quantities of greenhouse gas.
To highlight the potency of subterranean forces, he showed an image of a hot spring on the island of Milos, in the Aegean Sea, which he claims releases 2pc of the CO2 entering the atmosphere.
"That hot spring is emitting more CO2 than all of humanity together," Prof Plimer said.
However, he considers CO2 to have little effect on warming, arguing that 120,000 years ago, sea levels were 6m higher, but atmospheric CO2 levels were only 78pc of today's levels.
More important, Prof Plimer believes, is the sun.
He claims that throughout history, average global temperatures closely track sunspot cycles, the cyclical dusturbances in the sun's corona, which bombard Earth with geomagnetic solar winds.
He says that it is also significant that the slight wobble in Earth's orbit of the sun periodically takes our planet nearer to or further from its source of heat.
And Prof Plimer referred to "cosmic rays", the high-energy particles that pelt the Earth from space and whose energy, he says, converts water vapour into cloud.
Water vapour "provides 96pc of the greenhouse effect", Prof Plimer said, and it's the interaction of vapour with cosmic rays that is the real driver of greenhouse conditions on the planet.
He criticised the IPCC science methodology, arguing that because many weather stations are in metropolitan areas, they are only measuring the effects of urbanisation, which scientists have interpreted as showing global warming.
In fact, Prof Plimer said, the satellite record shows that the planet has cooled over the past six years.
Bryan Pape, chairman of the Nationals Federal New England Electoral Council and convener of the conference, said he was unable to put a motion on whether the IPCC's science should be put to a Royal Commission.
However, NSW Nationals MPs Rick Colless and Trevor Kahn, and Federal Senator Fiona Nash, attended the meeting and were taking what they had learned back to the party room, Mr Pape said.
"This is very serious stuff that I feel has been allowed to come into the community without proper verification," Mr Pape said.
"The consequences are too severe to go ahead without independent assessment."
(Professor Bob Carter is Adjunct Research Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory & School of Earth Sciences, James Cook University; William Kininmonth is a former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre and author of 'Climate Change: A Natural Hazard (2004)'; Dr Alan Moran is director of the Regulation Unit of the Institute of Public Affairs; and Dr Paul Collits is with the Page Research Centre.)
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