It’s well written, packed with references, and has an unapologetic, irreverent tone.
If you are a skeptical teacher, this is an essential book; if you are an alarmist teacher, it’s doubly so. This is the ammunition that smart teenagers will use to point score against you. (Be prepared, eh?)
My only grievance with this book is that Plimer got this excellent title before me š
One hundred and OneĀ Questions for your teacher
Plimer has written chapters with graphs and references to back up these questions, and it isn’t going to work well if a student just plucks a couple from this site and thinks they can trump a teacher without learning the background. Q and A’s have a habit of being turned back on the questioner.
1. Is Climate Change Normal?
Yes. If the answer is not a very definite yes and thereĀ is diversion, discussions and exceptions, then your teacher is ignoring the past and is using classes for political purposes. No scientist denies thatĀ climate change is normal. If the answer is no, then your teacher does not know the basics and can not prepare you for life.
7. The temperature increase between breakfast and lunch is far higher than the 0.8 C temperature rise over the last 150 years. Why is such a small change over 150 years dangerous yet larger changes each day are not?
What can your teacher say? Maybe your teacher might argue that a 0.8 C temperature rise is a sign of terrible things to come. Who knows? Email me your teacher’s answer to ian.plimer AT adelaide.edu.au
24. If Carbon dioxide drives global warming, how is it that we have had six major ice ages in the past yet atmospheric carbon dioxide was far higher then than now?
This should make you extremely unpopular with an activist teacher. The aim of the question is to very quickly demonstrate that your teacher is an environmental activist using classes for political advocacy. How dare you ask a logical question based on knowledge that has been validated? Few school teachers have any knowledge of geology so the only way for an activist teacher to handle this question is to question your facts, slam you down, ignore you or throw you out for being disruptive. Don’t think that you will get an answer to this question. The teacher might be silly enough to try to argue that it is just geology and that processes that happened millions of years ago are too slow or do not operate today. Codswallop. The processes that operated in the past still operate today.
25. Will increased atmospheric carbon dioxide increase food production?
Yes. This we know from measurements and experiments in glass houses. This is a great opportunity for your teacher to ramble on about the limits to growth, depletion of resources and how we will all be doomed but none of this answers the question. …
Ā 47. Since thermometer measurements were made, there has been warming from 1860 to 1880, cooling from 1880 to 1910, warming from 1910 to 1940, cooling from 1940 to 1977, warming from 1977 to 1998 and cooling from 1998 until now. Which warmings and coolings were of human origin?
This is guaranteed to get you thrown out of class…. An honest teacher will state that it is not possible to work out which warming was natural…
(Note, if I was Plimer I would have said “warming from 1977 – 2001“, and not bothered to mention the last ten years. I mean, watch the trolls perform, 1998 is a red flag, they can’t help themselves, and when they do, can someone point out that “Whatever” — the choice of years, or even ignoring the last fifteen years completely, does not make any difference to Plimer’s main point?)
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! Thanks to The Galileo Movement there are 300 free copies available for Australian teachers.
(Apologies to non-Australian teachers, our climate-propaganda situation is dire! But for just $29.95 plus post, you too can have a copy.)
Please pass this on to any teacher you know who is associated with an Australian school.
Case Smit from The Galileo Movement writes:
Last year we planned to make a movie, specifically for young people, to provide some factual education about the climate.Ā Unfortunately the money raised fell short of that needed.Ā Rather than accepting a refund, the donors have kindly agreed to allocate their funds to a similar cause, namely to distribute Prof. Ian Plimerās new book to schools.
Check the following website for some more information about this book, or if you want to order a copy for yourself click here:
We will keep the offer open until all 300 books are taken. The PDF asks for a school purchase order form, but some schools are already closed for summer, so teachers just need to state the school that they are teaching at.
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