Ian Rutherford Plimer (born February 12, 1946) is an Australiangeologist, academic and businessman. He is a critic of creationismand of the scientific consensusthat global warmingis driven by anthropogenicCO2. He has published approximately 60 academic papers (none on climate change) and six books, including his book on the global warming debate, Heaven and Earth — Global Warming: The Missing Science. He is a director of three mining companies.Plimer is critical of what he sees as an irrational environmental movementand believes that the vast bulk of the scientific community, including most major scientific academies, is prejudiced by the prospect of research funding. He has characterised the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changeso: "The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism" and "the IPCC process is unrelated to science". He is critical of greenhouse gaspolitics and argues that extreme environmental changes are inevitable. These views prompted Phillip Adamsof The Australian to describe him as a "denialist poster-boy".One of Plimer's central hypotheses is that volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans. Climate scientists respond that humans emit 130 times more CO2 than volcanoes. NASA's Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist, dissected the Plimer hypothesis in minute detail and found it to be based on a "basic logical fallacy".In 2009, Plimer released Heaven and Earth, a book in which he claims that climate modelsfocus too strongly on the effects of carbon dioxide, rather than factoring other issues such as solar variation. This is disputed by scientists involved in climate change research. Before writing the book, Plimer stated that El Niñois caused by earthquakesand volcanic activity at the mid-ocean ridgesand that the melting of polar ice has nothing to do with man-made carbon dioxide. Plimer told Radio Australiathat Pacific island nations are seeing changes in relative sea level not because of global warming but quite commonly due to other factors, such as "vibration consolidating the coral island sands", extraction of water, and extraction of sand for road and air strip making. Plimer challenged George Monbiot of The Guardian to a public debate on the issues covered in the book, after Monbiot criticised the book, calling Plimer a climate change denialist. Negotiations for a face-to-face debate eventually broke down over a series of questions the two exchanged beforehand, and no debate was held.