Original article (in Croatian) was published on 04/12/2023; Author: Anja Vladisavljević
A video from eight years ago featuring Australian geologist Ian Palmer, who has gained notoriety among local audiences as a climate change skeptic and for making claims that lack scientific basis, is currently circulating on Facebook.
Australian geologist Ian Palmer’s incorrect claims about climate change are now gaining traction on various social media platforms.
“Geologist Professor Ian Palmer: When we look back, there is one thing we see, and that is that carbon dioxide never caused climate change… We are dealing with absolute nonsense, and this nonsense is not based on the foundations of science”, states the post of a Facebook user ( archived here).
The post, published on November 27, 2023, also contains a video clip of Palmer’s speech at the Australian Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) held in November 2015. Palmer’s claims, in which he questions the existence of the climate crisis, as the influence of human activity on the climate, have been discussed for some time by the media in charge of fact-checking, as well as by scientists (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). In a book he published in 2009 called “Heaven and Earth”, he tried to prove that humans had an insignificant effect on the global climate. Since the book was published, it has been criticized for “a series of scholastic errors”, inaccuracies and manipulation of data.
“What would a geologist know about climate? The answer is: probably more than the warmists know. Most geology textbooks in the last 200 years alone have had about half of their textbooks devoted to climate. And we saw throughout history that the planet warmed, that the planet cooled, we had great ice ages. Each ice age began at a time when there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now. So how can carbon dioxide cause warming? We have seen periods when there was a thousand times more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, we had an ice age. We have seen how this carbon dioxide is separated from the atmosphere into rocks, into limestone, into coal, and into oil. When we look back, we see one thing, and that is that carbon dioxide never caused climate change. And so, in today’s world, which is tomorrow’s geology, we have to ask a really fundamental question to our warmist friends: show me that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing global warming. That question cannot be answered. Show me that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing global warming. And, of course, if they try, you can say: Okay, wait a minute, folks, 3 percent of annual emissions come from human activity. The other 97 percent is natural from ocean degassing and from volcanoes and bacteria and all kinds of other sources. I exhale 4 percent of carbon dioxide, I inhale 0.4 percent. So if you can show me that 3 percent is causing global warming, you have to show me something even harder, which is that 97 percent of natural emissions are not causing global warming. So we are dealing with absolute nonsense and this nonsense has been going on for a very long time”, this is a part of Palmer’s speech in English, which appears in a Facebook post.
Claims that human activity does not affect the climate have been refuted in the scientific community. Around the world various institutions, organizations, movements and civil initiatives are warning that it is high time to take this problem seriously. At the same time, Palmer mockingly addresses such people, calling it “nonsense” the claim that humanity is responsible for global warming, and the word warmist (from the English word warm) is used for a person who accepts the fact that global warming is really happening. That word has a very pejorative connotation, and it is used mainly by people who reject the concept of global warming.
Carbon dioxide causes global warming
Faktograf has written several times about how carbon dioxide (CO2) warms the atmosphere (1, 2, 3). As pointed out by Climate Scientists, an initiative of Croatian scientists that advocates for the communication of accurate and scientifically based information on climate change, “it is a very widespread myth that, due to low concentrations in the atmosphere, CO2 as a trace substance is not the main cause of global warming”. “Connected with this”, they continue, “is another myth, which says that the amount of CO2 introduced into the atmosphere by anthropogenic emissions is so small compared to the total amount of atmospheric CO2, that it cannot have a significant impact on global temperature”.
The atmosphere is a mixture of gases that surrounds the Earth and participates in its rotation. Its basic ingredients are nitrogen (78.08 percent), oxygen (20.95 percent), argon (0.93 percent)vapour varying amounts of water vapor (up to 4 percent) and carbon dioxide (0.03 percent), and in insignificant amounts of hydrogen, helium, ozone, methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, krypton and xenon. Carbon dioxide and methane are among the leading greenhouse gases that trap heat on Earth and cause climate change. Many greenhouse gases are naturally present in the atmosphere, but human activity contributes to their accumulation. Burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising global temperatures. They occur, for example, by using oil derivatives to drive cars or coal, gas or biomass to heat buildings. Land clearing and deforestation also increase CO2, because trees absorb carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis.
Although the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is not high, scientists emphasize that attention should be focused on its quantity, not its share. Before the industrial era, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). By 2021, it has increased to 414 ppm, mainly due to human activity. Also, when talking about the impact of CO2 on the atmosphere, its characteristics should be taken into account.
As Climate Scientists explain, the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth is water vapour, not CO2. “However, the concentration of water vapour is predominantly determined by the natural and relatively fast process of water circulation, with its largest reservoir being the oceans. A slight increase in temperature due to an increase in CO2 concentration causes increased evaporation of water from the ocean, which then further contributes to the increase in temperature. This is just one of the many feedback loops triggered by the anomalous CO2 concentration. Even a small increase in the concentration of CO2 causes a serious disturbance in the system”, they state.
Humans are responsible for climate change
Numerous independent studies over the past 19 years have found that between 90 and 100 percent of scientists agree that humans are responsible for climate change, with most studies finding a consensus of 97 percent, according to the United Nations (UN) website. A study published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters in 2021 showed that in the peer-reviewed scientific literature (published from 2012 onwards), there is a consensus that climate change is caused by humans. This consensus, according to the aforementioned study, exceeds 99 percent.
The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in March of this year, categorically confirmed that human activity is the main cause of climate change. The IPCC’s comprehensive assessments are written by hundreds of leading scientists from around the world, with input from thousands of experts.
Climate change refers to long-term changes in temperatures and weather conditions. It is true that some such changes can be natural, for example, due to changes in solar activity or large volcanic eruptions. However, the IPCC emphasizes, that since the beginning of the 19th century, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
After all, if climate change, as well as mitigating its damage, were not the responsibility of man, there would not be so many initiatives and agreements on the global level to solve this crisis.
Back in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was signed at the COP3 climate summit. It set for industrialized countries the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent in the period from 2008 to 2012, compared to 1990. At the climate summit of the United Nations COP21 in 2015, the Paris Agreement on climate change was signed, the long-term goal of which is to keep the global temperature rise below 2 ℃ by the end of the century.
“A growing coalition of countries, cities, businesses and other institutions is committing to net zero [greenhouse gas] emissions. More than 140 countries, including the biggest polluters – China, the United States, India and the European Union – have set the target, covering about 88 percent of global emissions. More than 9,000 companies, over 1,000 cities, more than 1,000 educational institutions and over 600 financial institutions have joined the Race to Zero campaign, pledging to take rigorous, urgent action to halve global emissions by 2030”, states the UN website.
In December 2019, the leaders of the European Union agreed that the community should achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Based on the European Climate Act, which was adopted in 2021, EU countries must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030. In line with these plans is a plan to provide EU funds for the transition to a climate-friendly economy. EU member states have pledged to allocate 30 percent of the EU’s long-term budget for the period between 2021 and 2027 to climate-related projects.
The impact of climate change is very tangible around the world, which is increasingly affected by droughts, forest fires and extreme rains. It is also present in Europe – in different forms and in different regions. The European Environment Agency reports that land and sea temperatures are rising, precipitation patterns are changing (making wet areas in Europe wetter, especially in winter, and dry areas drier, especially in summer), sea ice extent, glacier volume and snow cover are decreasing, and the seal level is growing. Also, climate-related extremes such as heat waves, heavy precipitation and droughts are becoming more frequent and severe in many European regions.
Although climate change has been a part of our reality for some time and despite the scientific consensus that the warming of the planet is the result of human activity, the voices of climate skeptics still have an audience. That’s how the eight-year-old video of Ian Palmer’s speech – which contains the scientifically unfounded claim that “human emissions of carbon dioxide do not contribute to global warming” – began to circulate among domestic Facebook users.