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NOT for GREENS 2 Not for Greens 3 1 NOT FOR GREENS 2 Not For Greens 3 NOT FOR GREENS He who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon Ian Plimer Foreword by Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace Connor Court Publishing 4 Not For Greens Connor Court Publishing Pty Ltd Copyright © Ian Plimer 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorised reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the publisher. PO Box 224W Ballarat VIC 3350 [email protected] www.connorcourt.com ISBN: 978....... (pbk.) Cover design by ... Printed in Australia 5 CONTENTS 1: INTRODUCTION (This book is deliberately offensive) 1 Carbon dioxide and climate change 10 Earth history 10 • Life 11 • Mass extinctions 12 • Today’s ice age 14 • The future climate 16 Climate change 18 • Climate cycles 18 • Oceans 18 • Galactic cycles 19 • Super volcanoes 19 • The Sun 21 • Deniers 22 Planetary degassing and carbon dioxide 23 • Volcanic venting of carbon dioxide 23 • Carbon dioxide venting from depth 25 • Human emissions of carbon dioxide 26 • Laws of physics 27 • Recent events 28 • Pick your own climate 31 • How were measurements made? 32 • Hiding embarrassing data 33 • Antarctic and Arctic adventures 36 • Wild weather 38 • Ocean acidification 39 • Sea levels 40 • Computer climate models 41 • The primacy of geology 43 6 Not For Greens The corruption of the scientific method 44 • Climategate and corruption 45 • What if I’m wrong? 47 Spoons in antiquity 48 Who really did invent stainless steel? 50 How is stainless steel made? 52 Stainless steel 53 The human chain 56 Our planetary fingerprint 57 We’re all going to die 60 • The future is bright 62 • Merchants of doom 63 2: ENERGY 68 Energy density 70 • Ethanol 72 • Methane 73 • Oil and gas 75 • Hydrogen 77 • Base and peak load electricity 77 • Electricity generation 79 • Alternatives 80 Kicking an own goal 81 • The cost of conscience 82 • Kyoto capers 83 • UN hypocrisy 84 • Own goals 85 • China and India 90 • Coal versus ideology 90 7 Wind power 91 • Energy poverty 94 • What about the Sun? 95 • Blowing in the wind 96 • Wind farms 98 • The environmental cost of wind power 101 • Who pays the piper? 104 • Wild life 105 Solar power 109 • New developments 110 • Logistics 112 • Solar power generates at night 116 • Costs 117 • Storage systems 118 Biomass power 119 • Green madness 121 Frack off 127 • How is fracking done? 127 • Dangers of fracking 131 • Fracking risks in the US 134 • Europe and fracking 134 • Fracking and farming 137 • Free and dodgy markets 139 • Who pays the anti-fracking greens? 141 3: KING COAL 144 No coal, no dole 144 The good old days 145 Better times 150 8 Not For Greens The China and India factors 154 • China 154 • Can the China boom continue? 156 Indian growth 159 Where is the coal? 160 Natural formation of that dirty black sinful substance 163 Coal seam gas 165 Sulphur 165 Oil shale 169 Energy security 170 Save the whale, use coal, oil and gas 173 4: IN IRON WE TRUST 174 Iron, iron everywhere 175 • Earth magnetism 175 • Magnetic reversals 176 • Getting into a lather 178 • Impacts, asteroids and meteorites 180 • Comets 181 • Crustal iron 182 Finding iron ore 182 • Poisonous oxygen 183 • Iron ores and climate change 183 • Real climate scientists 184 • Exploration 185 Mining iron ore 187 • Pre-mining 187 • Blasting 187 • Haulage 188 • Nuts and bolts 189 9 • Processing 190 • Popular myths 191 Small iron ore deposits 192 Major iron ore deposits 194 • Types 194 • Magnetite iron ore 195 • Size 196 • Ore quality 197 Making iron 198 • Ancient smelting 198 • A remarkable textbook 199 • Pre-industrial age iron 201 • Wrought iron 202 • The first use of coal 203 Modern steel making 204 • Rusting of iron 208 • The iron age 208 5: SHINY METALS FOR YOUR SPOON 210 Chromium – the mantle metal 210 • Toxicity of chromium 210 • Why is stainless steel stainless? 212 • Where does chromium come from? 213 • Slices of the old ocean floor 214 • Major chromium deposits 218 • Ferrochrome 219 Nickel – another mantle metal 221 • Nickel sulphides 221 • Exploration for nickel 223 • Mining nickel sulphides 227 10 Not For Greens • Processing nickel ore 231 • Smelting nickel concentrates 231 • Lateritic nickel ores 233 • Abundance and production of nickel 235 • Nickel toxicity 236 Manganese 236 Moly 237 Stannum 239 • Hard rock tin mining and extraction 240 • Alluvial tin mining and extraction 242 • Ancient bronze 244 Your humble stainless steel teaspoon 245 6: GREENS IN PERSPECTIVE 247 Yawn 247 Oxymoronic green morality 251 A lesson from history 257 Follow the money 258 • Economics of climate change 258 • Other people’s money 261 • Who pays the piper? 262 • Who’s who in the zoo? 263 The challenge for the greens 268 Dumbed down education 270 Your stainless steel teaspoon 274 11 About the author PROFESSOR IAN PLIMER is Australia’s best-known geologist. He is Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where he was Professor and Head of Earth Sciences (1991-2005) after serving at the University of Newcastle (1985-1991) as Professor and Head of Geology. He was Professor of Mining Geology at The University of Adelaide (2006-2012) and in 1991 was also German Research Foundation research professor of ore deposits at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München (Germany). He was on the staff of the University of New England, the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University. He has published more than 120 scientific papers on geology and was one of the trinity of editors for the five-volume Encyclopedia of Geology. This is his eighth book written for the general public, the best known of which are Telling Lies for God (Random House), Milos-Geologic History (Koan), A Short History of Planet Earth (ABC Books), Heaven and Earth (Connor Court) and How to Get Expelled from School (Connor Court). He won the Leopold von Buch Plakette (German Geological Society), the Clarke Medal (Royal Society of NSW), the Sir Willis Connolly Medal (Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of London. In 1995, he was Australian Humanist of the Year and later was awarded the Centenary Medal. He was Managing Editor of Mineralium Deposita, president of the SGA, president of IAGOD, president of the Australian Geoscience Council and sat on the Earth Sciences Committee of the Australian Research Council for many years. He won the Eureka Prize for the promotion of science, the Eureka Prize for A Short History of Planet Earth and the Michael Daley Prize (now a Eureka Prize) for science 12 Not For Greens broadcasting. He was an advisor to governments and corporations and was a regular broadcaster. Professor Plimer spent much of his life in the rough and tumble of the zinc-lead-silver mining town of Broken Hill where an interdisciplinary scientific knowledge intertwined with a healthy dose of scepticism and pragmatism are necessary. His time in the outback has introduced him to those who can immediately see the weaknesses of an argument. He is Patron of Lifeline Broken Hill and the Broken Hill Geocentre. He worked for North Broken Hill Ltd and was a director of CBH Resources Ltd. In his post-university career he is proudly a director of a number of listed (Silver City Minerals Ltd, Niuminco Group Ltd, Sun Resources NL, Lakes Oil NL and Kefi Minerals plc) and unlisted companies (Roy Hill Holdings Pty Ltd, Hope Downs Iron Ore Pty Ltd and Queensland Coal Pty Ltd). A new Broken Hill mineral, plimerite ZnFe4(PO4)3(OH)5, was named in recognition of his contribution to Broken Hill geology. Ironically, plimerite is green and soft. It fractures unevenly, is brittle and insoluble in alcohol. A ground-hunting rainforest spider Austrotengella plimeri from the Tweed Range (NSW) has been named in his honour because of his “provocative contributions to issues of climate change”. The author would like to think that Austrotengella plimeri is poisonous. 13 Acknowledgements Various people have been ear-bashed for years on this subject and some concepts in this book I aired at various professional conferences for criticism and specialist feedback. A draft was read a number of times by Andrew Drummond who checked calculations and put a huge amount of effort into structure and context. Sir Jim R. Wallaby (aka Barry Williams) twice used his experienced editorial eye to suggest changes, additions and corrections. Mining engineer Richard Fitzpatrick, metallurgist Bob Greenelsh, geologists Peter Kitto, Fiona McKenzie and John Nethery all made useful comments in their areas of expertise. Viv Forbes and Misha Popoff made constructive comments on cropping and farming. Michael Darby, Phil Sawyer and my pedant colleague Kyle Wightman all had a number of comments and suggestions on an early draft. Alexandra Nicol provided additional information for Chapter 2 and made constructive comments. My normal critics Bob Besley and my wife Maja added their two bob’s worth of constructive comments on an early draft. My former student Rhonda O’Sullivan gleefully settled scores by finding errors, correcting English kinda like and providing constructive comments on two versions. I am grateful to these folk for being critics, editors and readers under time pressures and I have no idea whether they agree or not with the ideas expressed in this book.
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