Raising the heat

Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist and academic who is deputy chairman of Turkey-focused gold and copper AIM play KEFI Minerals, has never fought shy of controversy and he is now at it again. Professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, he incurred the wrath of Down Under Christian fundamentalists a few years ago by writing against creationism and arguing that Noah’s Ark could not possibly have landed on Mount Ararat.

That brought him abuse and death threats. Now, Plimer has challenged a more contemporary secular fundamentalism in a book debunking the present panic about climate change. Former UK chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson has written a cover note for Plimer’s Heaven and Earth: Climate Change – the Missing Science.

The book challenges the scientific basis for the doomsters’ global warming scenario. Critics might say that a mining company director could hardly be expected to endorse environmental concerns that might inhibit gouging the earth, but Plimer is unabashed. The global warming scare is ‘a substitute for Christianity and socialism’, he declares. ‘We’ve got to feel guilty about something’ – though presumably not about the lowly 1.75p share price of KEFI, which apparently has some interesting Saudi joint ventures in the offing.