Sales of Heaven and Earth

I'm going to make a guess that 25000 copies were printed.
If so, there is one heck of a difference between printed and sold.
Which leads to my questions: What happens to unsold copies?
Is the author stuck with them?

Rupert Murdoch has for years used a similar technique to make it appear that many hundreds of thousand and millions of people actually read the drivel pouring forth from his fountain of sludge. (e.g. every hospital room, hotel, judicial officer, government officer, public servant and anybody just hanging around gets a copy of the Spurious-Tale in Brisbane each day - it's almost impossible to avoid the horrid rag!)

The fact is that once they are 'spoken for', they can be counted as 'sold'! Neat trick, no? On the other hand there is plain old fraud, misleading and deceptive conduct, and breaches of each states' fair-trading laws if one is too sloppy about how it is done.

No doubt the experts behind the promulgation of Plimer's work will ensure plausable deniability for those 'sales' figures.

I think the problem is that they are looking for this in the wrong section. This is not a non-fiction book.

And there he is outsold by the likes of Stephanie Meyer, Jodi Piccoult and Cathy Kelly. Perhaps he should have thrown in a vampire or two or at least a bit of URST (un-resolved sexual tension) and aimed at the chick-lit market.

http://www.nielsenbookscan.com.au/topsellers.php?country=aus&chart_name…

I don't think he is lying though. If you apply skeptic logic, then 3700 becomes 25000.

It's a hard thing to understand, this skeptic logic.

I've had a scary thought that I hope is wrong - the 25k may be accurate, only 3700 sold, but the rest distributed in bulk to every library, school, etc as well has dropped about like free copies of Dianetics - funded by some mob.

Like the "CO2 passes infra-red radiation without any impediment whatsoever" crowd, I've got absolutely no evidence of my hypothesis, just a thought :)

Jimmy #3, you stole my thunder, dang you!

In any case, let's remember that if the relevant social attitude surveys are correct, of Australia's roughly 16 million adult citizens about 1 million would be denialists. The fact that they are outnumbered 10 to 1 by those citizens who recognise both the reality *and* the urgency of global warming does not detract from the fact that it would only require 2.5 per cent of Australia's denialists to have more money than sense (or to be recipients of an economic stimulus payment) for Plimer's tract to legitimately notch up 25,000 in sales.

I agree, Plimer's book should be re-classified (in the genre of Michael Crichton). I have no doubt Plimer's opus will provide a good income stream into his retirement.

Has anyone wondered why Plimer has not published his "debunking" in the recognised scientific literature?

I have 2 answers for starters. First; his hypotheses would be torn to shreds by peer review and, Second; there's no money in it.

this is pure guesswork!! you have NO idea of how many sales have been made, nor can you guess. The publisher's website states that the book is in it's 5th printing.

Could you please explain why they should lie?

@5,000 per print run that would make 20,000+

Re #8.

Bookscan only registers "sales", which therefore means that the rest have been given away (or are sitting unsold somewhere). Given the level of unabashed endorsement this work has been given in the Oz, I'm a little surprised that the denialist community hasn't been prepared to stump up the cash for this. Perhaps they aren't as silly as they make out they are.

I don't really care about the number of books that have been sold. 25,000 published doesn't mean 25,000 sold but obviously the publisher wouldn't have published that many if they didn't think they could sell most of them.

What does interest and amuse me though is that in the eyes of the denialists, science now *is* decided by popular vote. When every climatologist on the planet bar a few contrarians, told us that we were in deep shit, the denialists wagged their fingers at us and told us that science is not decided by popularity or consensus. "The consensus once was that the Earth was flat" they said. "Look at Galileo" they said. Now, a few thousand copies of a dodgy freak-show of a book gets sold and that's supposed to be evidence that global warming isn't happening. Hilarious.

Shorter janama:

All statistics which don't agree with my pet sources are filled with liberal bias.

Just out of curiosity (and this is neither an attempt to give the Plimer book sales argument any credibility or to debunk it) does anyone know how many copies of the Weather Makers(both forms) were sold?

DavidK, I think you're wide of the mark in accusing Plimer of in any sense being in it for the money. He lost tens of thousands over his anti-creationism, between futile court cases and libel/slander - there was some talk of having to sell his house, as I recall. I think the man is way way off, but he's not mercenary; and if he was, I doubt whether he'd be any more effective at it than he is at writing.

Janama
It could just be Andrew Bolt who is lying. That's par for the course for him.

Nathan - I never mentioned Andrew Bolt - I quoted the publisher!

Here's an interesting read

http://australianclimatemadness.blogspot.com/2009/05/australian-michael…

says it all really.

I'm one of the '25,000' and finished my copy yesterday. It is well written, very interesting and informative. Much of the science he puts forward in disputing AGW theory is well founded earth science from geology and many other disciplines.

The participants of this blog would benefit from buying a copy and reading it!

Shorter Lank: The 25,000 figure doesn't matter! Oh wait, so why did we bring up the 25,000 figure in the first place?

Janama,
wasn't it Bolt who claimed 25000 copies were sold? In any case why would the number of copies sold mean anything?
That blog link is fairly uninspiring. Fact is if Plimer was so solid in this as a science he would be publishing in a Journal. Do you support his use of graphics that have been soundly debunked (like the Central England temp graph use by Durkin)?

Lank
As a geologist myself I know that Ian Plimer's use of geology is actually weak. Geology supports the notion of a greenhouse effect and that increased CO2 leads to a warmer climate. Try reading papers by Scotese or Berner for example.

Sweet baby Jebus! I just followed the link offered by janama @ 15, and I wish I hadn't. It'll take days to wash the stupid off.

There's an (I guess) unconscious irony in his comment that it says it all.

I am currently engaged in a (sort of) debate with a global warming skeptic online. His most recent argument is:

âThe current cooling is occurring despite the absence of any cause included in the current modelling. There have been no large eruptions, (such as Pinatubo, for example) to account for the cooling, nor even for the stability after 2001.

The estimates for the GHG effect, upon which the AGW concerns are based, are so much higher than the reality that the temperatures are now 0.2 degrees cooler than projected, and that represents half the warming that has occurred since 1940.â

I am aware that cooling since 2001 is not indicative of the overall trend of increasing temperature, but how would one reply to this specific argument?

Ahem ...

I haven't got a copy of Plimer's book, but is there by any chance a footnote referencing a paper by E-G. Beck in Energy and Environment at the foot of the page?

Simon says:
The Beck paper is merely one of over 50 citations for the section on measurement of CO2.

Jonno:

>I'm going to make a guess that 25000 copies were printed. If so, there is one heck of a difference between printed and sold. Which leads to my questions: What happens to unsold copies? Is the author stuck with them?

With traditional publishing unsold books are pulped and recycled.

Unless it is a vanity published book, in which case, yes the author is stuck with them.

However there is a new thing called POD (print on demand) which takes advantage of digital technology and is a cross between vanity and traditional publishing. Basically with POD you order small batches and sell them when you can. Useful for struggling artists, societies, groups etc.

>The Beck paper is merely one of over 50 citations for the section on measurement of CO2.

Yes, he also cites Jaworowski [lots of times](http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=7). That's where most of Plimer's arguments against the Keeling curve come from.

I'm one of the '25,000' and finished my copy yesterday.

Amazing, Lank appears to pay good money for a pile of garbage when he can find out some of the garbage it contains for free. As they say, fools like Lank and his money are easily parted.

At least some people get it right. Quartet Books seems to hold the publishing rights for Heaven and Earth in the UK, it's set for publication in June 2009. Right now, they list it as FICTION. :)
http://www.quartetbooks.co.uk/newtitles.html
http://www.webcitation.org/5gglgrlwh

@20 Mike: One good rule of thumb is, when a septic puts forth a number, wonder where that number came from. We're seeing the merit of that in this thread w.r.t. sales figures. The '0.2 degrees' number ... where is that from? What did the original source apply it to? In this case, the 0.2 I know of is the round number figure for temperature rise expected per decade. In the mean, after averaging out weather. 2001-present is not a decade, nor does that represent climate.

The "... any cause included in the modelling." is an artful bit of weaseling. One thing which is included in the models is the solar constant. It's included as a constant. Solar output has been below normal, which gives us an expectation of cooling (or at least less warming).

The larger point, though: Nobody said that weather would stop happening. If you look run by run through the IPCC model run scenarios, you'll find many 7 year stretches where the models average temperature shows a cooling, even though the climate trend in all is a warming. You need 20-30 years to decide a climate trend. See that post for more detail on why. With 7 years, about 70% of what you're seeing is weather, not climate. (Post explains that too.)

Mike @20,
You could provide him with this data: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/moncktons-deliber…

Mike writes:

I am aware that cooling since 2001 is not indicative of the overall trend of increasing temperature, but how would one reply to this specific argument?

CO2 and aerosols aren't the only things that affect surface temperature; it is also affected by other greenhouse gases, cloud cover, surface albedo, and temperature interchanges between the atmosphere and ocean. Temperature is a noisy time series and it has jogged down for a few years at a time many times over the past couple of centuries--and jogged up just as often. But ln CO2 still accounts for 76% of the variance of dT over 1880-2008.

Here in the States, Scaife buys books in bulk in certain genres: politics, hit pieces, political polemics, etc written by notliberals. The New York Times caught on a while ago and has a special character that denotes bulk sales.

Not that I think these shameless denialists are telling the truth about sales of their doorstops. But there are ways to show the mendacity.

Best,

D

I ordered my copy last Thursday. I received it today. The inside cover says "2nd Print May 2009". Ergo, my copy from Abbey's book store is from the 2nd print run. Now I also did a scout around the local Dymocks, Borders, A&R, as well as some smaller bookshops, and none of them were stocking it on the shelves (in Adelaide, as of Wednesday last week).

Conclusion: either this is the fastest mail-order sell out in history or someone is telling porkies.

I'm sorry, but this looks to me like the typical marketing spiel of quoting the figure sold-in (ie. the units provided to retailers) rather than the copies sold at retail to actual customers.

Absolutely everybody does this. Books, DVDs, Video Games, you name it... Dishonest as it is, this is hardly unique to this particular title.

Mike #20, this was my take on the "globalcooling" trope last year:

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/05/21/the-stupid-cult-of-cooling-and-the…

And here's another post on the same general theme.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/07/28/rip-van-bolts-missing-months/

I work at the largest dymocks in Brisbane and we have sold about 35 copies and 10 of them went to one person and another 5 went to another so we have really sold 22 individual copies considering the large orders wanted one for themselves.

Mike

Here's a report on what your looking for from Science Daily on a paper published in the peer reviewed Geophys. Res. Lett. just a week or so ago.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090504141047.htm

Titled "Climate Experts Warn That Short-Term Snapshots Of Temperature Data Can Be Misleading: Focus Instead On The Bigger Picture" this story even has a graph with cherry picking exerpts to visually show how climate can be distorted on small time scales.

It also come with the link to the peer reviewed journal allthough I doubt it will matter to a denier

The story talks about "sold or ordered" not just sold. Did I miss something or is the story just about Australian sales? The U.S.A. market is much larger as is the E.U..
The .2 degree C number is one of the anomalies for April the other is .o9 C, about the same as 1988.
Given that Co2 concentrations are about 10 times higher than needed to adsorb all the black body radiation that is within it's absorption windows it cannot be responsible for the 76% of the delta T.

If you can bring yourself to listen to the great communicator, Bob Carter (for it is he!), linked in this post at Hot Topic, you'll find he mentions Plimer's sales figures. He says the first print order of 5,000 sold out in 4 days, the second, another 5,000 in another 4 days, and that the third print was/is 15,000.

Of course, since Bob isn't averse to telling straightfaced lies, we should treat his statement with due caution...

Kent: two problems with your statement. First, not all the windows are saturated. Second, even if they were, adding CO2 would cause an increase in downward longwave radiation.

Regards,
John

kent writes:

Given that Co2 concentrations are about 10 times higher than needed to adsorb all the black body radiation that is within it's absorption windows it cannot be responsible for the 76% of the delta T.

"Absorb." "Adsorption" is when gasses or liquids stick to a particle.

You are quoting Angstrom's (1900) "saturation" argument against CO2 global warming, which was disproved by high-altitude observations taken during World War II. In brief, absorption at every level affects every other level, and absorption is not saturated at higher levels. Here is an analysis in more detail:

http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/Saturation.html

Given that Co2 concentrations are about 10 times higher than needed to adsorb all the black body radiation that is within it's absorption windows it cannot be responsible for the 76% of the delta T.

The intertubes are wonderful. Modern physics is thrown on its ass and stomped into oblivion thousands of times a day, so frequently it makes one's head spin!

How will the Nobel prize committee for physics ever choose which blogger to give the award to? There are so many doing such high-quality debunking of science, they should split the prize among a hundred or so denialists, at least ...

Dave55:

Just as one piece of data, Weather Makers is down to #256,822 on Amazon, but Heaven and Earth is already out of print/unavailable.

Not saying either depend on Amazon or that it's indicative.

Do you support his use of graphics that have been soundly debunked (like the Central England temp graph use by Durkin)?

You must be refering to Lamb `77, which was confirmed to be global in nature by no less then Malcolm Hughes (the "H" in Mann's Hockeystick study - MBH 98,99), Henry Diaz (of NOAA) and Keith Briffa (University of East Anglica, has one of those squiggly tree line studies in the AR4 named after him), using tree stumps which were run over by advancing glaciers in Patagonia, then carbon dating when it happened.
Source: The Medieval warm period By Malcolm K. Hughes, Henry F. Diaz.

I wonder if claiming that many sales means he's going to declare that much income from royalties on the sales, anyone know how that works?

Or is there a way of checking whether they're really sold? As opposed to being held subject to return if they don't sell.

It could be that someone has bought up the book by the thousands to give out as party favors at some stockholder's meeting or give free with membership in some organization or something like that.

There's a brand spanking new wikipedia entry for Ian Pilmers Heaven and Earth, all covered in smarmy criticism from David Karoly, Charlie Veron (ever heard of him? me neither), Barry Brook... but most prominently Tim Lambert.

A regular murderers row of the usual suspects, and hatchet men.

Nary a kind word spoken of Ian, when there are so many kind words to choose from, especially when lowly bloggers are included as credible sources?
Has to be willfulness on Connolley's part.

I'm sure Connolley loves you, Tim. You are featured so often as the skeptic scold.
I did a search.
There's you beating up on Tim Ball.
And you again, pointing at an accomplice who managed to sneak onto the Oregon Petition by lying about his identity, as if that one incident discredits the tens of thousands of scientists who signed legitimately.
There's you criticized Ross McKitrick.
And there's you giving history a rewrite regarding Rachel Carson.
There's even an essay by you on a wikipage where you put the club to Benny Peiser, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Tim Ball, Fergus Brown, Roger A. Pielke and James Annan. Sort of your own personal omnibus wikislap.

So how come a fellow like you, who swaps spit in the shower with the wikizealots, how come there isn't a Tim Lambert wikipedia bio?

Shorter Papertiger:

It doesn't matter whether Plimer's publisher is lying, what matters is that you are all being mean to him! Waaaaah!

Given that Co2 [sic] concentrations are about 10 times higher than needed to adsorb [sic] all the black body radiation that is within it's [sic] absorption windows it cannot be responsible for the 76% of the delta T.

Kent, seeing that you made this statement, and that you have confounded folk by doing so, perhaps you could take a minute or two and expand upon it in order to explain exactly what it means.

Or could it be that you have no idea what you are talking about?

Papertiger.

There's you beating up on Tim Ball.

Please detail, assuming that you are able to, exactly where Tim Lambert's comments on Ball are incorrect.

And you again, pointing at an accomplice who managed to sneak onto the Oregon Petition by lying about his identity, as if that one incident discredits the tens of thousands of scientists who signed legitimately.

Please detail, assuming that you are able to, exactly which of the "tens of thousands of scientists... signed [the 'Oregon Petition'] legitimately".

There's you criticized [sic] Ross McKitrick.

Please detail, assuming that you are able to, exactly where Tim Lambert's comments on McKitrick are incorrect.

And there's you giving history a rewrite regarding Rachel Carson.

Please detail, assuming that you are able to, exactly how Tim Lambert has 'rewritten' history with respect to Rachel Carson.

There's even an essay by you on a wikipage where you put the club to Benny Peiser, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Tim Ball, Fergus Brown, Roger A. Pielke and James Annan.

Please detail, assuming that you are able to, exactly where Tim Lambert's comments on Peiser, Lindzen, Spencer, Ball (again), Brown, Pielke and Annan are incorrect.

TomG (#1):

"What happens to unsold copies? Is the author stuck with them?"

I've got one word for you TomG: Biofuel.

Oregon Petition? Might want to see this first, before claiming "legitimacy":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P8mlF8KT6I
Hat tip to John Mashey.

Oh. You're waiting on me?

Bernie,

I'll answer each of your questions if you answer mine first.
Why is it that there is no Tim Lambert bio page at wikipedia?
He's obviously an accepted contributor there.
He is held up as a source for content, specificly as official critic of global warming skeptics.
We have all seen the legendary obstinance of wiki moderators regarding who or who isn't qualified as a source of content regarding AGW, most famously in the case of Benny Pieser when someone named Kim Dabelstein Petersen refused edits regarding statements attributed to Pieser. When it comes to climate, the only thing constant is the mischaracterization of a skeptic in a wikiquote, no matter even if the person in question sends a correction himself.
Tough room when wiki knows more about what Benny Pieser means then Benny does.
So anyway, there is the standard. For Wikipedia, Benny isn't a credible source for his own statements.

Which makes me wonder why Tim Lambert is?
What is the criteria? What magic does Deltoid possess that he is afforded the lofty status of unimpeachable wikicritic?

I am thinking my question would be easy to answer. There is every reason to suspect that all I need do is look up Tim Lambert's wikipedia page, and shazam. They'll have the list of his qualifications, all the dirt, the goo, imagined and not. They'll give us the breakdown on who funds the scienceblog, who signs the checks, or what not for profit banner they hide the astroturfing behind. Right?
Except there isn't a wikipedia on deltoid.

That doesn't seem like... what's the word,
... fair dickum.

Honey, Where Do You Get Your Money?
How do you get your kicks?

Is it that you haven't done anything worth talking about?
Just not good enough, wikiwise?
If so, how is it that someone who isn't acomplished enough to rate a wiki bio is allowed to be their serial critic of climate skeptics?

Papertiger,

You take the art of the conspiracy theory to a new level! The answer is I am afraid far more boring - that is that in all probability no-one has bothered to write a wikipedia entry for Deltoid or for Tim. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

Bernie,

I'll answer each of your questions if you answer mine first. Why is it that there is no Tim Lambert bio page at wikipedia?

My answer: "erm, perhaps modesty?"

My opinion: your strawman question has nothing to do with the meat of your points - if you are going to put claims forward, can you substantiate them?

It's simple, really.

I think Bellamys occupation of the 'No one will speak to me' chair will soon be replaced by Plimer?

fair dickum

That one's a keeper (and a self-description, too).

Paper Tiger is either deliberately lying about "The Medieval Warm Period" or can't read.

killfile time.

Papertiger, it's considered poor manners for one to write or edit their own wikipage (Moncton has poor manners), so it's perfectly understandable as to why Lambert's written pages on other people, but not himself.

No one is stopping *you* from writing a wikipage on Lambert. Go for it!

Now, you haven't told us where Lambert's incorrect in his characterizations you dislike so strongly.

how is it that someone who isn't acomplished enough to rate a wiki bio

Amazing, once upon a time psuedo-sceptics said wiki cites were worthless. Who says they don't have imagination?

what's the word, ... .. dickum

Yes, that is definitely the word.

Paper Tiger is either deliberately lying about "The Medieval Warm Period" or can't read.

Those choices are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Taken together, the available evidence [in 1994] does not support a global Medieval Warm Period, although more support for such a phenomonen could be drawn from high-elevation records than from low-elevation records.
Source: Hughes and Diaz (1994) (their emphasis).

So that's your answer? Tim is too boring for a wikipage> and yet is a featured scold of people who are judged by wiki to be interesting enough to cut the mustard.

And there was never any medieval warm period - can't forget that little tidbit of scientific melancholy.
Right.
I disagree.
To me an unaccomplished serial snipe, who pushes the biggest fraud in human history, on a blog paid for by another person's dime is very interesting.
I want to know who pays for these services.
I want to know what the moneys interest in it is.
I want to know the other agendas that moneyed interest has been promoting.
Maybe I'll write Tim a wikipage. To save him the "embarassment" of self promotion.

I think we can safely assume, now, that papertiger has found anything incorrect in Tim's writings about various people in the denialsphere.

What is this rubbish about Tim not having a Wiki-page. Strewth. Who gives a rat's? Talk about attacking the man and not the argument. Honestly, is this all you denialists have got left? Abuse?

I'd be interested to see a link to the page where Bolt claims 25,000 copies have been "sold or ordered". I believe the claim (fact, unless the publisher is outright lying) is that book has been in to multiple reprints totalling 25,000 at last count. And 3,000 copies sold in less than three weeks IS an outstanding result. Probably a lot of the 25,000 printed are for stock in to the large chains which apparently didn't stock it until they saw the sales taking off. None of this says anything about Plimer's credibility, of course. But it does say something about yours, Tim.

Frank, even shorter:

Comment by Papertiger blocked.

from www.Amazon.com
"Heaven And Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science by Ian Plimer (Hardcover - May 1, 2009)
Out of Print--Limited Availability" ..as of today 5/13

Yep. He's stuck with all those books he can't sell all right.
I wonder why as soon as I type the four letters "heav" into amazon's search engine, up pops Plimer's book.

or google "heaven and earth ian plimer" and get 15,800 hits. Unfortunately one of those hits brought me here. Goodbye.

Now there goes someone with an open mind.

I want to know

I want to know

I want to know

What was that cartoon where the character says:

I wanna know, WHO'S RE-SPONSIBLE.

I wonder why as soon I type the four letters "heav" into amazon's search engine, up pops Plimer's book.

You don't think if you obsessively googled pirate movies and romantic novels "heave-ho" and "heaving bosoms" might pop up?

#48 Gaz
Biofuel?
Well, at least it's better usage than just door stops or furniture levelers.

I do hope they used recycled paper.

Thing is, most people buying this book will treat it as a 'bible' and Plimer the high priest (church of denial?). I guess it's a lot easier reading a novel than reading something like AR4, which you won't find at Walmart, Tesco, Big W or Target.

Talking about denial as religion - I wrote this as part of a sequence of posts about NZ's Plimer-lite, Ian Wishart's Air Con, but it equally applies to H+E:

From another angle, you can interpret Air Con as a work designed to confirm a set of beliefs. Look again at the back cover, and the uncritical acceptance of the book by Vincent Grey (or listen to the Bob Carter audio clip Wishart helpfully provides at his blog). To sceptics and people who share Wishartâs rather odd conspiratorial world view, itâs not important that he be right or wrong. To merely have the book is enough. It becomes a catechism for their fringe beliefs, a book above criticism, above minor considerations of accuracy. It becomes the revealed truth of a fringe religion, a thing to cling to in the face of uncomfortable reality. In the real world, however, Air Con is only interesting as an artefact of a lost cause.

Still waiting for a link to Bolt's claim that the 25,000 copies have been "sold or ordered". Absent that, this whole blog entry is premised on a misrepresentation.

#72 Richard

Tim's first URL pointed at Ben McNeil's page, of which the 2nd URL of the first sentence points at Bolt's article, which indeed says 25,000.

It's two clicks away.

Still waiting for a link to Bolt's claim that the 25,000 copies have been "sold or ordered". Absent that, this whole blog entry is premised on a misrepresentation.

I feel almost churlish saying this after Richard was so [polite about me](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/ian_enting_is_checking_plimers…) on another thread, but really...

I googled "Bolt Plimer heaven 25000" and on the first page, amongst links that I didn't bother to check, I found [this](http://www.thecleanrevolution.com.au/?p=111), [this](http://climatechangefraud.com/editorials/3976-the-story-you-want-to-rea…), and [this](http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25444732-5000117,00.html). There ya go - hits that link directly to the comment, and the actual article itself for good measure. And there were more.

UTFSE.

Thank you Bernard, I was wrong. That said, Bolt's defence might be that the word "ordered" includes "orders in to stock by retailers". However I would not accept that because the implication is clearly (to me) "ordered by customers".
That said, Ben McNeil's commentary is equally deceptive in comparing the 25,000 "sold or ordered" to actual sales figures (c. 3,000) and concluding that the 25,000 is a (deliberate) misrepresentation of actual sales.
That, in my view, makes McNeil just as guilty of handwaving as Bolt.
(All of this is assuming, of course, that the 25,000 figure is accurate in the first place. What we don't know is whether it is a figure from the publisher, or a guess by Bolt based on the number of reprints.)

PS to my last post: As an example of how McNeil's misrepresentation has worked, consider Nathan's post (#18) above:
"Janama, wasn't it Bolt who claimed 25000 copies were sold?"
No Nathan, no it wasn't. It was McNeil who claimed that Bolt had claimed that.

I wonder why as soon I type the four letters "heav" into amazon's search engine, up pops Plimer's book.

Treasure the little things.

btw fwiw no

if you just type heav (and only if you first pick books) you get heaven - and no pilmer book. You have to type heaven+space to get the common-as-dirt phrase heaven and earth. Then you get a series of books, Pilmer's is #5 or so in the list and listed, as I said, as out of print and unavailable.

This is such epic fail that it's clear pilmer's title was selected to please both market and christian fundies.

This is up there with the Great Troll Fails of the last decade or so.

I think the DT (deluded troll) must have meant the Search Suggestions popup, by the way, vs. an actual book search - so what anthony said applies.

Today (May 26th) I managed to buy a copy of Plimer's book. It is the 5th printing. Do the publishers have a print run of only about 750? Or have a few more than 3243 copies been sold? Or are the publishers just printing and storing to make the sceptics case? Or are the alarmists somewhat discomfited by the success of the book? I suspect the latter may be closest to the mark

Looking around a bit more on Plimer's book on Wednesday May 13th the Australian Spectator stated Plimer's book had sold 30000 copies which is about 8x the number you claim were sold as of May 10th. Either you or the Australian Spectator are wrong or Plimer's book sold ~26000 copies in 3 days. Something doesn't add up and I think it may be your figures that are dodgy

I bought my copy yesterday (May 28 2009) - inside cover says its part of the 4th print run. First run was April 2009, 2nd, 3rd and 4th are all May 2009.
Logged onto the Connore court web site on 29th May - headline says
"HEAVEN AND EARTH NO.1. (Independent)
Neilsen Bookscan May 2, 2009
The book has also gone into its fifth print run".
Seems they are anticipating strong sales.

Doesn't hurt to be optimistic Chris but printing often has a lot more in common with stimulating demand than meeting demand. Pulping is factored in and done if a broader spread of sales points (with overstocking) is believed to yield a better result than a more conservative print-enough-to-sell approach, they'll go with the extras.

Stack 'em high, watch 'em fly as they say.
Or not. I guess we'll just have to check the bargain tables in a few months.

The title's an interesting choice, given the publisher has a nice line in books for the right wingers of the catholic church. Nothing like a bit of cross-marketing to your existing clientele to get a double serving of true believers.

You perhaps should have waited a little while as Plimer's book now is on the best sellers list

Can anyone point me to a paper that proves that CO2 produced by humans is causing global warming?

Re: Robert #84

Can anyone point me to a paper that proves that CO2 produced by humans is causing global warming?

Sorry, can't do it. Such a paper doesn't exist, and never will.

Nor is there a paper that proves that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Nor is there a paper that proves that "1 + 1 = 2". Nor is there a paper that proves that if you hold your breath for 60 minutes you will die. Nor is there a paper that proves that gravity won't turn into a repulsive force in the future. Nor is there a paper that proves that ice always floats in water. Nor is there a paper that proves that smoking causes lung cancer.

Get the picture?

Robert, the best I can do is a synthesis of papers that assess the [likelihood at >90%](http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm).

Neither can I point you to a paper that proves you will die prematurely you decline to have a malignant melanoma excised. Proof is a pretty tough standard. Most of our tough decisions requires choice base of the balance of evidence.

Today (May 26th) I managed to buy a copy of Plimer's book. It is the 5th printing. Do the publishers have a print run of only about 750? Or have a few more than 3243 copies been sold? Or are the publishers just printing and storing to make the sceptics case? Or are the alarmists somewhat discomfited by the success of the book? I suspect the latter may be closest to the mark

Today (May 26th) I managed to buy a copy of Plimer's book. It is the 5th printing. Do the publishers have a print run of only about 750? Or have a few more than 3243 copies been sold? Or are the publishers just printing and storing to make the sceptics case? Or are the alarmists somewhat discomfited by the success of the book? I suspect the latter may be closest to the mark