- Hi I'm Senator Malcolm Roberts
and I'm in Brisbane Australia.
And I'm interviewing Professor Ian Pilmer,
one of the world's most famous geologists
and most competent geologists
and climate scientists.
I'll just go through his qualifications.
He's an Australian geologist,
Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences
at the University of Melbourne.
Previously a Professor of Mining Geology
at the University of Adelaide.
Actually also Professor Pilmer
you're also at the University
of Newcastle, weren't you?
- I was at University
Newcastle's professor there,
Professor at University of Melbourne
and Professor at the Ludwig
Maximilian's University
in München, Germany.
- What about a few specifics?
Ocean alkalinity, as I understand it.
And notice that they
call it you know this,
they call it ocean acidification,
making the acid oceans acid.
They're not actually
acid, they're alkaline,
that's for a start.
And as I understand it,
the oceans bob around
about 8.3 on the pH scale.
They're alkaline clearly
and they're just varying
naturally that alkalinity
just like everything else
in nature varying naturally.
- Well pH is a log scale.
So if you want to change pH by one unit,
you need a lot of acid.
The second thing is, you're quite right,
there is huge variation in oceanic pH.
Humans have controlled
oceanic pH in very small areas
for example at offshore sewage outlets
and places like this
you do get a pH change.
You get a slight pH change
where you're getting
exhalation of carbon dioxide
and acids from submarine
volcanoes into oceanic waters.
But the ocean is a dynamic system
and the oceans have been alkaline
since the beginning of time
because we have a buffer in the oceans.
And as we have rain water hit the land,
dissolve materials and
wash those materials
into slightly saline
waters into the oceans.
Calcium is a buffer
and the more calcium
we have in the oceans,
then the more carbon dioxide
dissolved in the water
as carbon dioxide,
bicarbonate or carbonate.
It will then precipitate as limestone.
So we can actually control
the ocean pH by calcium.
We can also control it by boron
and the third buffer
we have controlling it
is that sea water circulates.
And it circulates through
ocean floor sediments
and it circulates
through ocean floor rocks
and they have minerals in them which react
and those reactions keep
the oceans alkaline.
We can duplicate those
reactions in the laboratory,
we can see the end
product of those reactions
when we've pushed a bit of the ocean floor
up onto the land as we
see in Papua, New Guinea
or Cyprus or many parts of the world.
And we can measure it by deep
ocean drilling programmes.
So we're pretty confident,
from many lines of evidence
that you cannot have an alkaline ocean.
And the only way you can
have an alkaline ocean.
- So you can't have an acidic.
- We you cannot have an acid ocean
and the only way we can have an acid ocean
if we stop the planet
doing what the planet does
and that is be dynamic.
And as soon as we stop volcanicity,
as soon as we stop sediments
coming into the ocean,
then it will take a long, long time
before we change the pH of the oceans
and will be a brown dwarf
before that happens.
- Okay what about sea levels?
- Well sea level has been
up and down like a yo-yo
and sea level rises and falls.
It has in measurable historical times.
I've been to the ancient
roman city of Ephesus.
It was a port city, it's
15 kilometres inland
and I think about 12
metres above sea level.
Mentioned in the Bible.
Why is that?
Well it's because the
land level has risen.
I've been to the ancient city of Lydia,
I've been down the main street, in a yacht
because Lydia has sunk,
and that they're both in Western Anatolia.
So just in one small part of the world,
the land's gone up and down.
In Australia and New Zealand,
we've had a rifting to
give us the Tasman sea.
And Western New Zealand's gone up,
Eastern Australia has gone
up in the great divide.
So we are having regular earthquakes
as a result of the land still rising.
We can see in Eastern Australia,
we can see all these rock platforms.
And those rock platforms
are from where the sea
was a couple of metres higher
in the Holocene maximum
about 5,000 years ago,
sea level since dropped.
We can go to Scandinavia and see that
because Scandinavia had five
kilometres of ice on it,
the ice is now gone, Scandinavia's risen.
And we can see all the old beach lines
going to 340 metres above sea level.
We can see old lines of
shells where these shells
were at sea level and now
they're a couple of metres
above sea level.
Bob Carter did some
wonderful work on these up
in North Queensland.
And we can see that either
the sea levels fallen
or the land levels risen.
We can see these
microatolls which are dead,
which are exposed.
So either the sea level has fallen
or the land level's risen.
So you cannot talk about sea level
unless you talk about the
concurrent land level rises.
Now people say oh that's just geology.
Sorry land level rides are very fast.
Go to the port of Ephesus, go to Lydia.
Go and look at any coastal areas.
So we have had sea level changes
since the last glaciation.
Where we've had a rise of 130 metres
but it's been a rise and a
fall and a rise and a fall,
and a rise and a fall all the way up.
We're now getting a slight
decrease in sea level
since the Holocene maximum.
And we've seen in past ice ages
such as the ones I mentioned the Sturdian
at 650 million years ago on the Marinara,
630 million years ago.
This is where we had sea
level changes of 1500 metres.
If you load up the ocean with
another 1500 metres of water
the oceanic crust is flexible,
it actually sinks a little bit.
So you're getting sea
levels rises and falls
for the same reason.
So sea level rise and fall
as near Neil's Axel murder,
the chappie mentioned earlier
has shown very, very complicated.
You can get a land level fall
if you extract oil or water
from the sediments.
You can get a land level
fall by building a city
and having vibration from traffic.
So a sea level rise or fall
is not related to climate
that's one of the processes a
sea level will rise and fall
but it's not the only process.
We get a sea level rise near the Andes
because the gravitational
pull of the Andes
has pulled to sea level.
The sea up towards the Andes,
we get a sea level fall
where you have a high,
a weather high over the oceans.
And the sea level rise
where you get a weather low.
We get huge changes in mean sea level
due to weather.
So to simplify the process
of sea level is to be naive
and again like carbon dioxide.
To claim that sea level
is due just to one factor
or to claim that climate
is due to one factor
is ignorant because people are not aware
of all the other processes that go on.
It is the petroleum geologists
and the cold geologists,
who use sea level changes as
a major exploration technique
and we can see different types of coal,
depending upon whether
you're in the back lagoon
or whether you're in a lagoon area
where you might have
a lot of pollen spore.
Whether you're on the delta plain
or the upper delta plain.
These coals are different coals,
these are coking and steaming coals.
You can actually look at
the ancient environment
from looking at the coals.
The petroleum geologists look at the same,
they look at what sea level does.
To be able to work out
what's happening in a basin,
to be able to work out
where certain sediments
are being deposited.
So we use sea levels in a practical sense
and Exxon had a sea level geologist,
a veil who constructed the veil curves.
They are used by academia
and by petroleum exploration
to look at petroleum basins.
So we've used sea level for 50 years.
We know it's been changing a lot
and we've used it for practical purposes.
It's not been used by real scientists
for political purposes.
- Great Barrier Reef,
we visited the Great Barrier Reef,
Senator Hansen and I in 2016
and we had Alison Jones I think was
the coral scientist there.
And she said that the
Southern Barrier Reef
was formed about 6,000
years ago Professor Pilmer.
And the Northern Barrier Reef was formed
in its current location
about 8,000 years ago.
We know that sea levels
changed around 120 metres
not so long ago.
So the barrier reef moving,
that's correct isn't it?
- Yes the barrier reef,
you used the words not so long ago.
That's absolutely vital to say that
because the barrier reef isn't permanent.
We've lost it, we've gained it,
in cold currents when sea levels dropped
the inner reef has died,
the reefs migrated northwards.
We have some aboriginal legends
and a chap in Cairns has
written a book on this
where you can actually,
he's spoken to aboriginal populations
where they've got myths about
people having to go way out
on the coastal plain to go fishing.
That's telling us that the
sea level was much lower.
So sea levels up and down,
the barrier reef has come
and gone many, many, times.
We've got a three and a
half thousand year record
of reefs on planet earth.
You can go to places in the
Kimberley of Western Australia
a place called fossil downs,
you can stand on a hill
and you look as far as the eye can see
of a great barrier reef with coral in it.
You can go inland from Cairns
and the Great Barrier Reef
to Chilego and surrounding
Chilego are these hills
of limestone.
In the limestone are caves,
where you've got unique flora and fauna.
You've got remnant wet
tropical flora and fauna
they're telling us climate has changed.
The limestones, they're old coral reefs.
Sit in the bar at the top
pub not the bottom pub
actually go the top pub
the post office hotel
and before you look at your drink.
Just look at the bar,
it's made out of a coral rich limestone
from the hills just behind the bar.
And this is telling us, we've had reefs.
Reefs come and go,
coral has been with us for
about 500 million years.
Modern corals for less but the
appearance and disappearance
of the Great Barrier Reef is normal.
And we have biological competition
and there is warfare taking
place on the Great Barrier Reef.
And sometimes,
one critter will get the upper hand
in a small part of the reef
like the crown of thorns.
Other times it'll be there
will be genocide going on
and the crown of thorns will die.
This is normal for any ecosystem,
where you've got warfare going on.
The Great Barrier Reef is dynamic.
It's one of the great reefs,
it's a cool water reef.
We have much warmer reefs
up in Thailand and Papua,
New Guinea in the red sea.
It is an absolutely
beautiful natural phenomenon
but it's just part of the rich tapestry
of the history of life.
Reefs come, reef go.
- Yes and the barrier reef
right now is in fine health
but they make out when
we have a bleaching event
which again is entirely natural.
And did you catch the news in 2008
that in Queensland we
had record temperatures,
record cold temperatures
in the winter of 2008,
it was June.
And the southern portions
of the barrier reef bleached
but we didn't hear that from the ABC.
- Why I'm I not surprised,
not surprised to do
things reach the dynamic.
And we know that reefs die due to cooling
and sea level drop.
Rarely reefs will die from predation.
Rarely they'll die from
inundation by sedimentation
but nor and rarely they'll
die from storm activity.
But normally it's from being exposed
and once they're exposed they die
because they're a marine phenomenon.
- Yeah and that's what we've
seen up in northern parts
of the reef where there
has been some bleaching
in recent years.
We've seen the sea level
drop, the reef exposed.
We've seen no wind for
several days so it became hot.
And we've also seen at the
other extreme bleaching
during cooling events.
So we only hear one side of the story,
they don't tell us either Professor Pilmer
that on any one day,
the temperature in the
northern part of the reef
is four to five degrees
warmer than the temperature
in the southern portion of the reef.
And they don't tell us
that the temperatures
in Thailand and their reefs
are two degrees higher
than the barrier reef and
contain some of the same species.
- At sea which is even warmer
and they've got an inner and
outer reef at the red sea.
I've been fishing on the inner reef,
it's at 28 metres depth.
Yeah same sort of species, same species.
- Let's what about dry periods?
We've just been through a
drought and it's still going on,
it's not not over yet for some people.
Dry periods, Professor Tim Flannery,
who's a climate communicator,
wrote he must have a poor memory
because he was talking
about the endless drought,
it'll never rain again and
all this kind of nonsense.
But in an Australian Geographic article
that was released just a few years ago.
While he was in the thick of things,
telling us about the dryness here,
he said in writing I've seen it,
that 20,000 years ago the
climate around Melbourne
was far, far, drier than today.
I mean how do people get
away with this rubbish.
I mean.
- We have had long periods of
drought in historical times.
These have wiped out
some of the great empires
in the middle east.
Where we've had salinity, lack of water
and inundation by sand dunes.
On the geological record we see
that we've had very
long periods of drought.
And they've given us red sandstones
like the old red sandstone of the UK.
And we normally get these
long big periods of drought
with salt deposits when it's cold.
When there's very little water vapour
dissolved in the atmosphere.
So drought is a normal
phenomenon on planet earth,
drought is exacerbated by cold times.
And in droughts in Australia,
we can actually see the last glaciation.
So in Australia,
we had little vegetation
in the last glaciation.
We had massive anti-cyclonic winds,
bringing sand dunes around
and you can see the pattern of
sand dunes around Australia.
And we can see what were salt
lakes that have been dried up.
And then we've seen warmer
times and wetter times
where these lakes have had water in them.
And we've got parts of inland Australia
where we've still got tropical vegetation
which is sitting in the
deserts of Australia.
There's a place called hidden valley
up in the far, far. North Flinders Ranges
up near the slacky track,
where we've got tropical vegetation.
We've got tropical
vegetation in Kings Canyon
in the northern territory.
So we have the vegetation
telling us climate has changed.
We've got the sand dunes telling us this.
We've got the sand dunes telling us
that we've had long, long,
periods when it was dry
and it was windy and the
vegetation just died out.
So drought is normal.
- Right, let's have a look
at some of the substitutes for science,
what is known as pseudoscience.
Politicians and journalists
and sadly many academics
use these alternatives to science
or substitutes of science
instead of science.
First of all claims of
consensus, is that science?
- No consensus in science.
That's not a word of science,
it's a word of politics.
- Right, the use of emotion.
Particularly fear of
catastrophic consequences,
guilt and pity, science.
- Science is lacking any emotion at all.
It's tied into data and
tied into scepticism
and guilt may well be a hangover
from past cultures, emotion.
It probably shows you've
had a very sheltered life.
Science doesn't deal with emotion,
it doesn't deal with
guilt, it deals with data.
- The use of if statements
and it's very cleverly done.
Professor Will Steffen, the chemist,
is remarkable at doing this.
If Antarctica melted,
sea levels would rise 20 metres.
If the temperature went up
20 degrees, we'd all die.
This kind of stuff
The key is in the if
and then what follows complete rubbish.
It would never happen.
So the if statement, is that
a substitute for science?
- No not at all.
But it provides fodder for
the sensationalist media
and media is suffering
badly more and more people
are going away from the print media,
going away from free-to-air television
and so they have to be shriller
and more sensationalist
to be able to get the audience they want.
And so those if just for you the media.
What about the use of,
well you've already told us
how peer review these days
is now buddy review, it's pal review,
it's not really a review at all.
What about the use of celebrities,
actors and socially awkward
16 and 17 year old girls?
- Well these celebrities have
to do three or four takes
of a simple sentence.
And to me that doesn't indicate
that their cranial wiring
is as good as it could be.
So I think for a celebrity
to make some extraordinary
scientific claims,
you can demolish it very easily.
So if you get a celebrity
talking about carbon pollution
just say well you're talking
about carbon dioxide.
What's the molecular
weight of carbon dioxide?
And they won't be able to answer it
and immediately it shows
people what they really are.
They're drongos.
- Yeah but they haven't got a clue
that carbon dioxide is a gas
and a colourless, odourless, tasteless,
gas essential for life.
And carbon can be a black graphite.
It can be um a colourless
diamond, hardest.
- There are eight allotropes of carbon,
only one a very, very
rare one called diamond
can be colourless but not always.
And to use a poor ill 16
year old as your Joan of Arc,
I mean really that's the
ultimate of child exploitation,
that is child abuse.
- What about computer models,
particularly computer
models that are unvalidated
which is what the climate models are?
They're unvalidated, they've already,
they've already been proven wrong.
They're not based on an
understanding of the climate factors
they're supposed to be modelling.
So a computer model science.
- No they're not science.
A computer model is a naive attempt
to try to understand nature.
And you don't promote it as
a prediction of the future
and that's what's happening.
It is not science, it is not data.
It's a process of massaging
data to simplify it,
to try to understand how nature works.
And you know that in
your line of business,
you have to put forward a
result that withstand scrutiny
and you could be locked up
if you make a prospectus
of financial document that misleads.
Yet these people, they
can't call their projections
predictions and forecasts
because they're unvalidated.
And yet they're called projections
and given the sanctity
of as if they're true.
- Yes well if you made a projection
in the mining business on
production metal prices,
share price or whatever,
you'd go to jail for it.
There is a responsibility.
Now that responsibility
seems to have passed
the climate industry by
and it is an industry.
- Yes, what about the
use of smears or ridicule
whether deliberate or direct or indirect.
Things like labels like denier,
sceptic, conspiracy theorist.
- This shows that people
cannot mount an argument
based on knowledge.
And the best way to do
it is to cancel you,
to denigrate you and then
they have won the argument.
I'm sorry, we've had two
and a half thousand years
of dealing with logic
and that shows that these
people are ignorant.
But they are political activists
and that they do not have the knowledge
to sustain their position.
A common one that comes up
when we challenge things
is do you believe in the moon landing?
They ask the question,
so they can't be accused of defaming.
But there's a subtle
implicit you don't believe
in the moon landing.
So they they're just
completely destroying people,
trying to destroy people
and the media fought for it.
- Well they've used the word belief
and that's a word of
religion and politics.
It's not a word of science.
So there is I think enough
validated data around
to make me very comfortable
and very comfortable that
we've landed on the moon,
collected moon rocks.
I've seen the data on rocks,
I've handled moon rocks.
I know that they are slightly different
from terrestrial rocks and I'm excited
that we have in our lifetime been able
to sit in our lounge room and
watch exploration of the moon.
And we can do the same with mars
and I think that's fabulous.
But it gets very worrying
when someone like
what's his name Brian Cox,
who's now trying to become a celebrity
like David Attenborough.
Who claims to have a science background
then invokes questions
about the moon landing.
Do you believe Senator
Roberts in the moon landing?
This kind of stuff I
mean when a supposedly
serious scientist uses
that kind of tactic,
he's not a scientist in my book.
When the BBC starts spreading his nonsense
and the ABC spreads his nonsense
that brings into question serious problems
with government and
government broadcasting.
- Well he's using a political word,
he's not using the word of science
and he immediately the
word believe is used,
he's pushed a political barrier
and that's where you nail them.
- So in what what I do increasingly
is as you just suggested
the moment one of these
substitutes for science comes up,
I just say well thank you very
much for accusing me of that
or saying this because
using consensus or a model
because it indicates you
don't understand science
and you haven't got the data and the logic
to counter my argument.
- Yeah exactly right, that's
the only way to do it.
- History shows that science is vital
for understanding the natural world.
It's given us much more
material development,
human progress, safety
against nature's power
and vagaries against
famines, against drought,
flooding, storms, famines,
bacteria, viruses, diseases.
Isn't science absolutely
essential to protecting humans
and human life and
ensuring human happiness?
- Yes of course we don't
go out and do a rain dance,
we try to understand what's happening.
We don't face west and throw a few stones
in the hope that we we
will not have crop failure.
We don't sacrifice people just
before we harvest our maize
and that was long ago when
we didn't understand how
the planet works.
We have a better understanding of it now
and as a result,
we keep having an increase
in productivity of food.
We keep having an increase in the quality
and standard of living.
And this is all due to science,
which is then put into
practise using engineering.
And so science is arguably
even more important to us Professor Pilmer
because science gave us freedom.
Freedom to think, freedom to speak,
freedom to exchange, freedom to travel,
freedom to discover things,
up until the use of science
people were ruled by those who
were the bullies physically,
the bullies financially,
the bullies in terms of religion
and trying to scare people
into believing certain things
would would come to them.
People who intimidated socially,
these were the people that ruled.
Now with science, we've got a much more,
much fairer system, a much freer system.
And we've got that progress
which I think is
science's crown and glory.
- I think science has
released us from many things.
It's released from serfdom,
it's released us in
many ways from despots.
It's given us the ability
to pose the great questions
and explore them a little bit.
And we still have the great questions
but it enables us to
exercise our brain much more
than we could 500 years ago.
- But instead of responding to a threat.
I just turn to someone and say
well where's your argument?
And then I go with the argument.
(indistinct)
- Then you can show me
the evidence please.
- So who pays for the
abandonment of science
and the distortion of science?
- Oh well the community will pay terribly
but they won't know they're paying
until we're well down
that path of destruction.
And well you've only got to reverse
what we've seen in the past
and go back to what it
was like 500 years ago.
It would not have been very pleasant
living in the little
ice age, being ignorant,
being ruled by despots, having
power out of your hands,
having no vote,
and this is why you've
got a name like Johnson,
you know, you were the son of John.
You do exactly what your father did,
he might have been a a carpenter
and his father was a carpenter,
and his father was a carpenter.
We have now the freedoms to be
able to break away from that.
Now we'll go back into that
system in years to come,
if we don't continue to advance knowledge.
- So Maurice Strong who who started
this global warming rubbish with the UN.
And he's the grandfather
of global warming,
the creator of global warming,
the fabricator of global warming.
Maurice Strong was about control,
and he was very effective
in terms of networking
and setting up systems to drive control.
So really what he's done is
he's undermined the freedom,
he's undermined the human progress
and if we and he's now trying to use it,
well he's dead now but
his legacy is trying
to use the UN trying to
use it to control people.
Whether it's property
rights, whether it's energy,
whether it's water,
these are fundamental to our way of life.
They're now trying to control us
and how we live our regulations
about what is supposedly sustainable.
So these are all about
control as I see it.
And Maurice Strong made
that point himself.
There's nothing new in what I'm saying,
he made it himself to control people.
- Well I see the the
environmental movement,
the green movement has got nothing
to do with the environment.
It is unelected people
who want to control you.
And want to control your wallet,
the way you think, where you travel,
how you work, how you live.
It's all about power.
It's got nothing to do with
science or the environment.
- And what we see is that
science has been fundamental
to human progress.
I mean who 200 years ago,
could have envisaged what we have today?
Just 200 years ago,
who 200 years ago,
there wouldn't have been a king
who lived as well as people
on welfare lived today.
Lifespan, health,
security, safety, unbelievable.
- We're living in the best times ever
to be a human on planet earth.
We are well fed, we're housed,
we're living in warmer
times than 500 years ago.
We are so fortunate,
something we take for granted.
- And there are still people
who are living in poverty
right around the world.
But their percentage of the human race
that's living in poverty
now is far, far, lower
than it's ever been,
and it continues to
decline thanks to science.
And so people who are destroying science
are now destroying human progress.
They're destroying the elevation
of people out of poverty.
Look at China in terms of
at least that their reliance
on science while their lack of democracy
is a severe impediment.
At least their use of the science
to improve the material welfare
has done enormous benefit
to Chinese peasants.
- Well hence Senator,
the name of my next book which
comes out in November 2020,
and the book is called Green Murder.
Green policies kill people.
They kill wildlife, they kill forests
and it is about time we realise
that this is nothing to do with science,
nothing to do with the environment.
It's about power and that power destroys.
It's about control and
I noticed that you used
the term a little while
ago about orchestra,
the symphony of life on the planet.
Such beautiful evocative terms.
We live in a universe
which as I understand it
is a translation from uni meaning one,
the verse being song.
We live in one song,
that's the whole universe.
There are many things going on,
the trumpets are playing over here,
the violins are playing over there,
the guitars are playing,
it's all going on.
And yet we seem to be falling
out of the capture of science.
We're going back into totalitarianism.
- Well just to use your orchestral analogy
a little bit further.
- Well it was yours actually.
- One of the hallmarks
of western civilization
has been music, which has
come out of the church.
And music is underpinned by counterpoint
and that is all the different instruments.
They might be playing different notes,
they might be in different keys
but he put it together and
it's harmonious, it's harmony.
And that's the way I see
the way the planet works.
It's harmony and we have
to try to understand
how all the different bits work.
- And I take my hat off to you
because you understand and you've dived
into the chaos in certain
areas of the planet
and certain processes.
But you step back and you
look at the harmonious
the way the planet moves.
And when we come and go and
have our lives on the planet,
we know that we are fitting
part into part of this universe.
So I want to thank you.
Is there anything else
you want to talk about?
Do you want to list the
names of your books?
Because I would love to see
your books more widespread.
- There are 11 books,
five or six of them are geological books.
I was once in editor the
encyclo with two others,
the editor the Encyclopaedia of Geology.
Written a book about creationism called
Telling Lies for God.
You mentioned the Short
History of Planet Earth.
Heaven and Earth,
a shorter version of Heaven and Earth
called How to Get Expelled from School.
I took exception to a papal
and cyclical about climate
so I called that one Heaven and Hell
The Climate Delusion and the
Great Electricity Rip-off
was the 2019 book.
And the 2020 book is Green Murder,
you won't hold me down.
- No, no, thankfully for that too.
Anything else you want
to say or comment on.
- Well I'll just say that my computer
is telling me I've got low battery,
but I don't.
(laughing)
- Great and I want to thank you very much
for your time you've given us,
oh gee almost two and a half hours.
It's been really appreciated
but I wanna thank you especially
for the way that you stand up for science.
You have done for many decades.
You're a promoter of science,
yeah you just promote the
science around the world.
You've done it not just in Australia.
And I wanna thank you for your passion
and your clear intellect and
your effective communication.
But above all I wanna thank
you for your love of science
and the passion that comes through
when you're discussing science.
Thank you very much Professor Ian Pilmer.
