The panicky Professor Ian Plimer appears to have run from the field of intelligent debate in his latest duck-and-dodge fest with UK Guardian Columnist George Monbiot.

Plimer is the author of Heaven and Earth, a terrible hash of logical misdirection, plagiarism and mistakes which was shredded into fine bits by people like our favourite Australian, Tim Lambert at Deltoid blog.

After Monbiot joined the public lashing, Plimer protested and demanded that Monbiot engage with him in debate. Monbiot agreed, but only on condition that Plimer first respond in writing to a handful of questions about the accuracy and source of material in his book.

Plimer has been hiding out ever since.

The Center for Media and Democracy PR Watch reports that an Australian corporate funded think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is not renewing the contract for Jennifer Marohasy, one of its Senior Fellows and a global warming skeptic.

The news is actually somewhat surprising. IPA is a right-wing, corporate funded think tank with close ties to the Liberal Party of Australia (which is actually on the political right). Its Executive Director John Roskam is a former Howard government staffer and one of the organization’s key positions is to refute the science on issues such as climate change. A position that Marohasy promoted with vigor during her six-year tenure at IPA, though not all of her attempts to spread global warming denial came to fruition.

"I had great hopes for the planned collaboration between the IPA and University of Queensland on evidence-based environmentalism but the University proved too timid and conservative – at least for me." - JenniferMarohasy.com

Marohasy has also left her position as Executive at the Orwellian named Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), which was established to help protect timber interests in Australia and founded by the IPA. The former Executive Director of the IPA described the AEF as “pro-biotechnology, pro-nuclear power, pro-modern farming, pro-economic growth, pro-business and pro-environment." That last pro might be questionable.

"As Australian companies prepare to trade emissions, climate criminals are cashing in on similar schemes overseas. Interpol has warned companies to beware of bogus 'carbon credits' that fail to lower emissions. One Interpol agent said the carbon market would be irresistible to criminal gangs. 'In future, if you are running a factory and you desperately need credits to offset your emissions, there will be someone who can make that happen,' he said. 'Absolutely, organized crime will be involved.' "  

In the U.S., we have our own little group of global warming deniers.

They include George Will, Rush Limbaugh, Robert Samuelson, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), and the aptly named Marc Morano, all of whom go about hacking schoolbooks, science and the thinking public’s sensibilities to extort the facts and figures they need to support their decidedly uninformed viewpoints.

Down under, in Australia, they have their own little coterie, and their dash to the rear is currently being led by Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, whose newest book - Heaven and Earth: Global Warming the Missing Science – is over 500 pages long and, according to reviewer Paul Sheehan, “a product of 40 years research”. Plimer, a geologist, says that 96 percent of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor.

A recent Forbes’ article on Vestas Wind’s CEO, Ditlev Engel, and his determination to make wind energy succeed in America, brings to mind the real problem behind renewable energy in the U.S; Congress tends to swing whichever way the wind blows (pun intended).

Vestas came to the U.S. in the wake of the OPEC oil crisis/embargo in 1973. Then, when oil prices dropped in the 1980s, Vestas – like many other renewable energy startups – went bust because the government let renewable energy tax incentives lapse for lack of interest. This effectively dried up venture capital.

Scientists have said that a controversial experiment has "dampened hopes" that dumping hundreds of tonnes of dissolved iron in the Southern Ocean can lessen global warming.The experiment involved "fertilising" a 115-sqare-mile area of ocean with six tonnes of dissolved iron. As expected, this stimulated growth of tiny planktonic algae or phytoplankton. However, the scientists did not count on these phytoplankton being eaten by tiny crustacean zooplankton.