[12][15][16] Due to his publication of a number of academic papers, he was offered a job as senior lecturer in economic geology at the University of New England in 1982.
[32] According to a columnist in The Age, Plimer earned over $400,000 (AUD) from several of these companies, and he has mining shares and options worth hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars.
[citation needed] Climatologists call his reasoning on climate change flawed, inaccurate and misleading and say he misrepresents their data.
"[47] This was confirmed in a 2011 survey published in the Eos journal of the American Geophysical Union, which found that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are 135 times larger than those from all volcanoes on Earth.
[48] In 2009, Plimer released Heaven and Earth, a book in which he says that climate models focus too strongly on the effects of carbon dioxide, and do not give the weight he thinks is appropriate to other factors such as solar variation.
[49] The aim of the book is to belittle the impact of humans on Earth by clouting all the other science like a blunt instrument, as in Plimer's words "I wanted to kill an ant with a sledgehammer.
"[50] Critics of the book have accused Plimer of misrepresenting sources,[51][irrelevant citation] misusing data,[52][53] and engaging in conspiracy theories.
"[63] Plimer has stated that El Niño is caused by earthquakes and volcanic activity at the mid-ocean ridges and that the melting of polar ice has nothing to do with man-made carbon dioxide.
[67] Plimer told Radio Australia that 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.
[70] In early 2010, Plimer toured Australia with British climate change denier Christopher Monckton, giving lectures on climate change,[71] and Plimer's views came to be associated with Monckton's claim that the international left created the threat of catastrophic global warming.
Not only does this evil axis of scientists tell lies [about the Greenhouse Effect] but they've also doctored the weather to frighten people with huge droughts, cyclones and tsunamis to prove what they now call 'global warming'.
[75] Plimer is an outspoken critic of creationism and is famous for a 1988 debate with creationist Duane Gish in which he asked his opponent to hold live electrical cables to prove that electromagnetism was 'only a theory'.
[79] In the book he also criticised aspects of traditional Christian belief and literal interpretations of the Bible, with chapters titled "Scientific Fraud: The Great Flood of Absurdities" and "Disinformation Doublespeak".