By Jane Kennedy, ABC Australia

The palaeontologist sat back and watched as climate change and rising sea levels rapidly became a part of the public psyche, but he remains adamant that the rising sea is not a result of man-made global warming.

“In the aspect of anthropogenic global warming I’m a sceptic and proud...I would argue that every scientist is actually a sceptic,” Dr Deacon says.

Dr Deacon says that by determining the temperature and carbon dioxide levels at which fossils first formed, “we see that actually the patterns that have occurred in the distant past are not really any different from what’s happening now.”

Unlike many environmental scientists who look back hundreds of years, Dr Deacon’s research goes back hundreds of millions of years.

“Our earliest atmosphere had no oxygen in it and actually had carbon dioxide levels of about 10%,” he says of Cambrian times some 600 million years ago.

Today’s current carbon dioxide levels are at 0.038 %, “in geological terms the lowest level that we’ve actually had of carbon dioxide in earth’s history.”

Dr Deacon contends that humans increased production of carbon dioxide is making the world warmer, in fact scientific research shows that “as the earth warms, usually through natural causes, the carbon dioxide levels follow.”

Referring to the renowned Vostok ice core graph Dr Deacon explains how “about 800 years ago the sea levels were rising at about 14 millimetres per year.”

“Well currently the sea level is rising arguably between one and three millimetres per year, so its rising very very much slower than it was at that time… carbon dioxide wasn’t driving the changes in any of those plots and is probably not driving it now.”

“So really if you’re going to say that we actually have man-made global warming that has a runaway greenhouse where sea levels are rising faster than ever, absolutely not.”

Dr Geoff Deacon will be presenting his lecture ‘What fossils tell us about sea-levels and climate change’ at the WA Museum in Geraldton on Thursday June 9 at 7.00pm and Friday June 10 at 10.00 am.

Listen here as Dr Geoff Deacon speaks with Glenn Barndon on ABC Midwest and Wheatbelt Mornings.