Lucky Last – About a resourceful climate sceptic

Never mind the science, follow the money. So writes Paddy Manning, who is a mine of information, in his column in The Age’s Business Day. Read More

Paddy Manning in The Age Business Day (13 February 2010):

NEVER mind the science, follow the money. It is perhaps not well known that celebrated climate sceptic Ian Plimer is on several mining company boards – which earned him more than $400,000 over the past two years – and has mining shares and options worth hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

Plimer, 63, once described by opposition leader Tony Abbott as a ”highly credible scientist”, is author of the sceptical tome Heaven and Earth.

Now into its ninth reprint, the book has sold 40,000 copies here and more overseas since it was published last year, and catapulted Plimer on to the world stage.

At December’s Copenhagen climate change summit, Plimer was one of the key speakers at a well-publicised fringe event for sceptics, telling his audience: ”They’ve got us outnumbered, but we’ve got them outgunned, and that’s with the truth.”

Plimer’s day job is professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide. His profile page on the university’s staff directory lists his many qualifications, awards and publications … but is blank under the section ”consulting activities”.

Since late 2007, Plimer has been a non-executive director of Ivanhoe Australia, the ASX-listed subsidiary of colourful mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines. Ivanhoe’s major Cloncurry Project in Queensland has prospective copper, gold, lead zinc, silver and uranium deposits.

Ivanhoe Australia raised $125 million to float at $2 a share in 2008 and was trading around $3.12 yesterday. On top of directors’ fees ($50,000 last year, plus super) Plimer received, at the time of the float, 100,000 performance rights, convertible to a free share in the company at the rate of 25,000 a year for four years.

Late last year Plimer converted the first half of those rights into ordinary shares – worth about $156,000 at yesterday’s prices. So his total stake would be worth double that at current prices.

Plimer is also a director of ASX-listed CBH Resources, which has zinc, lead and silver mining interests in WA and NSW. Its last annual report shows CBH paid Plimer more than $125,000 in 2009 and $181,003 in 2008. He also indirectly holds more than 3.7 million CBH Resources shares, which, at yesterday’s price of 13.5¢, would be worth about $502,000.

Plimer is also on the board of tiny British-listed Kefi Minerals, which is exploring for gold and copper in Turkey.

There is nothing unusual about geologists going on to the boards of mining companies. But as several writers have noted, Plimer rails against government action to prevent climate change – for example, telling ABC’s Lateline an emissions trading scheme might destroy the mining industry – but rarely mentions his mining company directorships or the money he earns from them.

In November, Bob Burton, author of Inside Spin, posted an article on Plimer’s mining interests on the Sourcewatch.org website. He noted that Plimer’s climate scepticism sits oddly with Ivanhoe’s promotion of uranium mining as a solution to global warming. ”One of the arguments for nuclear energy is its substantially reduced level of carbon emissions,” the Ivanhoe prospectus states.

Graham Readfearn had a successful green blog for Queensland’s Courier-Mail newspaper when he joined in a debate at the Brisbane Institute with Plimer and Lord Christopher Monckton a fortnight ago.

Before a predominantly business audience of more than 400 people, each paying $130 a head, Monckton won ”in straight sets”, according to the Courier-Mail’s own coverage of the debate.

Plimer bristled when Readfearn broached the subject of his mining interests.

Readfearn, worn down, subsequently resigned from the newspaper. He says the sceptics – and sympathetic media outlets – just kept going and shouting everyone down.

”It’s like they’ve got this machine-gun full of nonsense and they keep firing it,” Readfearn says. ”You can’t catch every bullet, it’s impossible.”

In a quick email to this column fired from overseas, Plimer said: ”My links with the industry are public, I have invested in a number of mining companies and am proud to create jobs in outback areas where there are no other jobs. Presumably you will be balancing my links with those from the alarmist quarter and, as science is married to integrated interdisciplinary evidence, pointing out that my links cannot possibly influence supernoval eruptions, solar activity and the Earth’s orbit.”

Not exactly, but allegations of conflict do fly thick and fast in the climate debate. Plimer has previously complained that Ross Garnaut’s objectivity on climate change is rarely questioned, though he chairs mining company Lihir Gold.

Everyone has a stake in the climate. I suppose some are more conflicted than others. Some are more public, like Plimer, and some less so.

Source: www.businessday.com.au