A FUNDAMENTAL assumption of climate change proponents is wrong, according to University of Western Australia honorary research fellow Professor Cliff Ollier.

Prof Ollier recently addressed a two-day sceptics’ conference, meeting in Copenhagen this week as world leaders discuss grim predictions of global warming.

According to Professor Cliff Ollier, a basic assumption regarding glacier flow should not be used to suggest climate change / Image: Istockphoto

A prolific author, geologist and geomorphologist, Prof Ollier told his audience in Copenhagen that alarmists’ concerns that Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets might collapse are based on a flawed theory of glacier flow.

Those alarmists incorrectly assume glaciers slide downhill on a base lubricated by meltwater, he told ScienceNetwork WA in an exclusive telephone interview after his presentation on Tuesday.

“In fact, for Greenland, and it’s also for Antarctica, the bedrock is a base, and the ice has to flow uphill,” Prof Ollier said.

The concept was of glaciers travelling downhill was first suggested by HB de Saussure in 1779.

However, a lot has been learned since then, Prof Ollier argued in the August issue of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists’ AIG News.

“The mechanism of real glacier flow is by creeping upside.”

“The heat for the flow of the Antarctic ice comes from geothermal sources,” he said from Copenhagen.

Those sources are well below the surface.

“The base is unaware of surface temperatures, especially of carbon dioxide, so these have no effect on the flow of the ice.”

The great ice cores are approximately three kilometres deep and provide a record, of weather, temperature and carbon dioxide, he said.

“In Greenland they go back 105,000 years. In Antarctica they go back, 760,000. So we have this record of atmospheric history.

“The big thing it shows, is that it is not melting and hasn’t in all that time.”

The Copenhagen Climate Challenge Conference was held on Tuesday and Wednesday this week in Denmark’s capital as world leaders met for day one and two of COP15 – the fifteen United Nations Climate Change Conference.

The ‘climate dissent’ conference was organised by sceptic organisation Climate-Sense, which said in a statement that new research was to be published at the conference and described presenters as some of the world’s leading sceptics.

Prof Ollier, was Climate Challenge’s second speaker and a podcast of his talk may be posted to the ‘Mission Copenhagen’ website of conference sponsor, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

University of Adelaide Professor of Mining Geology Ian Plimer also addressed the conference, which was attended by federal Family First leader, Senator Steve Fielding.

Prof Ollier and Prof Plimer are both members of the Australian Climate Science Coalition scientific advisory panel, which works closely with the International Climate Science Coalition.

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written by STS, December 17, 2009

Commendations go to ScienceWA for finally including a global warming skeptics article. It's good to see a science based article in ScienceWA relating to climate rather than the typical politically motivated climate articles.

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