The Great Global Warming Swindle

[hamato_yoshii]

The IPCC was one of the main targets of the documentary. In response to the programme's broadcast, John T. Houghton (former co-chair IPCC Scientific Assessment working group 1988-2002) assessed some of its main assertions and conclusions. According to Houghton, three of these were true, seven were not true, and one was possibly true. Houghton rejected claims that observed changes in global average temperature are within the range of natural climate variability or explicable by solar influences; that the troposphere is warming less than the surface; that volcanic eruptions emit more carbon dioxide than fossil fuel burning; that climate models are too complex and uncertain to provide useful projections of climate change; and that IPCC processes were biased. Overall Houghton described the programme as "a mixture of truth, half truths and falsehood".[9]
Climate scientists William Connolley and Gavin Schmidt write in the RealClimate blog that the programme selectively used data that was sometimes decades old in making its arguments, altered graphs to make it appear that older observations had been made more recently, and used older scientific studies when more recent research would have disagreed with the film's conclusions.[10]
The British Antarctic Survey released a "Statement" about the The Great Global Warming Swindle. It is highly critical of the programme, singling out the use of a graph with the incorrect time axis, and also the statements made about solar activity: "A comparison of the distorted and undistorted contemporary data reveal that the plot of solar activity bears no resemblance to the temperature curve, especially in the last 20 years." Comparing scientific methods with Channel 4's editorial standards, the statement says: "Any scientist found to have falsified data in the manner of the Channel 4 programme would be guilty of serious professional misconduct." It uses the feedback argument to explain temperatures rising before CO2. On the issue of volcanic CO2 emissions, it says:
A second issue was the claim that human emissions of CO2 are small compared to natural emissions from volcanoes. This is untrue: current annual emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production are estimated to be around 100 times greater than average annual volcanic emissions of CO2. That large volcanoes cannot significantly perturb the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is apparent from the ice core and atmospheric record of CO2 concentrations, which shows a steady rise during the industrial period, with no unusual changes after large eruptions.[11]

Alan Thorpe, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading and Chief Executive of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, commented on the film in New Scientist. He wrote, "First, let's deal with the main thesis: that the presence or absence of cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere is a better explanation for temperature variation than the concentration of CO2 and other gases. This is not a new assertion and it is patently wrong: there is no credible evidence that cosmic rays play a significant role...Let scepticism reign, but let's not play games with the evidence."[12]
The Royal Society has issued a press release in reaction to the movie. In it, Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, shortly restates the predominant scientific opinion on climate change and adds:
"Scientists will continue to monitor the global climate and the factors which influence it. It is important that all legitimate potential scientific explanations continue to be considered and investigated. Debate will continue, and the Royal Society has just hosted a two day discussion meeting attended by over 300 scientists, but it must not be at the expense of action. Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future. [13]

Armand Leroi, while acknowledging that "I am no climate scientist" in an e-mail to Durkin dated March 9, 2007, raised concerns with Durkin about his use of Friis-Christensen's 1991 paper on time-series correlations between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures since 1860. In the years since its publication this work has been criticised, for example in a series of papers by Peter Laut.[14]
[edit]Carl Wunsch controversy
Carl Wunsch, one of the scientists featured in the programme, has said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed.[15][4] He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two."[16] Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action[16] and to have lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator.[17] Filmmaker Durkin responded, "Carl Wunsch was most certainly not 'duped' into appearing in the film, as is perfectly clear from our correspondence with him. Nor are his comments taken out of context. His interview, as used in the programme, perfectly accurately represents what he said."[16]
Wunsch wrote in a letter dated March 15, 2007 that he believes climate change is "real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component". He also says he had thought he was contributing to a programme which sought to counterbalance "over-dramatisation and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts". He raised objections as to how his interview material was used:
"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening."[4]

On March 11, 2007, The Independent covered the Carl Wunch controversy, and asked Channel 4 to respond to what it described as "a serious challenge to its own credibility". A Channel 4 spokesman said:
"The film was a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the contributors has concerns about his contribution we will look into that."[15]

Wunsch has said that he has received a legal letter from the production company, Wag TV, threatening to sue him for defamation unless he agrees to make a public statement that he was neither misrepresented nor misled.[18]

What took so long DavidW?

 

[tyl089]

(Response to Yoshi): YOWZA, something hit your cord. not to be difficult, but i think that one flaw of men is that we think and see in short terms. Right now, the earth is warming; but that's not to say it will definitely always be warm we also just went through what the History Channel reported as a "mini-ice age" that saw Green land becoming a vast frozen wasteland from a green and productive land for the Vikings centuries ago yeah, it was a shock to me that "Green" land was actually green and not something the icelanders came up with to control their immigration and Christian priests praying feverently to glaciers coming down the mountains from the Alps and destroying farm land to go back up the slopes. Those same glaciers are now in retreat, and people are lamenting the fact that now, the great skiing business will go under. Look, as i said before, eons ago, some areas were dry and hot but now cold and wet, shoot, Antartica was a tropical paradise for crying out loud. Climate changes and there are multitudes of reasons for it. As for volcanoes, i wasn't even thinking about the CO2 levels but instead about the ash produced that will block out the sun. It's what helped to kill off the dinos when the asteroid hit, because a great blanket of dust was created that blocked out the sun and most of the plants died. We right now need to adapt to the situation, as well as help the other nations that may due to various reasons don't have the capabilities to adapt.

 

[hamato_yoshii]

(Response to Yoshi): YOWZA, something hit your cord. not to be difficult, but i think that one flaw of men is that we think and see in short terms. Right now, the earth is warming; but that's not to say it will definitely always be warm we also just went through what the History Channel reported as a "mini-ice age" that saw Green land becoming a vast frozen wasteland from a green and productive land for the Vikings centuries ago yeah, it was a shock to me that "Green" land was actually green and not something the icelanders came up with to control their immigration and Christian priests praying feverently to glaciers coming down the mountains from the Alps and destroying farm land to go back up the slopes. Those same glaciers are now in retreat, and people are lamenting the fact that now, the great skiing business will go under. Look, as i said before, eons ago, some areas were dry and hot but now cold and wet, shoot, Antartica was a tropical paradise for crying out loud. Climate changes and there are multitudes of reasons for it. As for volcanoes, i wasn't even thinking about the CO2 levels but instead about the ash produced that will block out the sun. It's what helped to kill off the dinos when the asteroid hit, because a great blanket of dust was created that blocked out the sun and most of the plants died. We right now need to adapt to the situation, as well as help the other nations that may due to various reasons don't have the capabilities to adapt.

I'm kidding with DavidW, he knows what I'm talking about, we see each other frequently, and I was eagerly awaiting his post, cuz I knew it was coming.

 

[vexter]

Death of dinos - debatable and highly volatile with more hersay then Tom-Kat's wedding.
Supposedly according to some of the sources (I would source to make this more definitive but alas I don't keep them handy) That the Antarctic accounts for 96% of the ice on the world. Which is actually not melting. (This was from a referenced scientific journal in State of Fear.) I even have trouble believing that. But what the point is, there's a whole heck of lot more ice in the south pole then Greenland. PETA and Greenpeace are saying we're killing the atmosphere when really. How do we know it wasn't being killed off before? Extinction in animals was actually discovered in the mid 1800's. They used to believe God would not let an entire species perish so they didn't worry about it. So what about the other 4 billion approximate years the planets been around. How many other species have died off because mother nature is just a ******? Heck I'm like 99% sure the dino's did NOT die because they drove a v8 SUV that sucked back more fuel in one drive then my car does in a year. "Time's are a ' changing" - super old guy.

 

[tyl089]

either way, it's cool but i do think if we are so worried about man made climate changes and so on, then we should research more into nuclear power since it's right now the most cost/effiecient low polluting form of power we do have look at France(got i hate to use them for an example) but about half their power comes from nuclear power and as of right now, we have yet to hear about a catastrophic incident about their power plants. Can't toss out the baby with the bathwater, and besides, with more R&D, in that field, who's to say we can't ultimately go into sustainable fusion power that's supposed to be truly non-polluting.

 

[GJC]

How many other species have died off because mother nature is just a ******? Heck I'm like 99% sure the dino's did NOT die because they drove a v8 SUV that sucked back more fuel in one drive then my car does in a year. "Time's are a ' changing" - super old guy.

I just thought this was worth repeating

 

[Big Business]

The IPCC was one of the main targets of the documentary. In response to the programme's broadcast, John T. Houghton (former co-chair IPCC Scientific Assessment working group 1988-2002) assessed some of its main assertions and conclusions. According to Houghton, three of these were true, seven were not true, and one was possibly true. Houghton rejected claims that observed changes in global average temperature are within the range of natural climate variability or explicable by solar influences; that the troposphere is warming less than the surface; that volcanic eruptions emit more carbon dioxide than fossil fuel burning; that climate models are too complex and uncertain to provide useful projections of climate change; and that IPCC processes were biased. Overall Houghton described the programme as "a mixture of truth, half truths and falsehood".[9]
Climate scientists William Connolley and Gavin Schmidt write in the RealClimate blog that the programme selectively used data that was sometimes decades old in making its arguments, altered graphs to make it appear that older observations had been made more recently, and used older scientific studies when more recent research would have disagreed with the film's conclusions.[10]
The British Antarctic Survey released a "Statement" about the The Great Global Warming Swindle. It is highly critical of the programme, singling out the use of a graph with the incorrect time axis, and also the statements made about solar activity: "A comparison of the distorted and undistorted contemporary data reveal that the plot of solar activity bears no resemblance to the temperature curve, especially in the last 20 years." Comparing scientific methods with Channel 4's editorial standards, the statement says: "Any scientist found to have falsified data in the manner of the Channel 4 programme would be guilty of serious professional misconduct." It uses the feedback argument to explain temperatures rising before CO2. On the issue of volcanic CO2 emissions, it says:
A second issue was the claim that human emissions of CO2 are small compared to natural emissions from volcanoes. This is untrue: current annual emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production are estimated to be around 100 times greater than average annual volcanic emissions of CO2. That large volcanoes cannot significantly perturb the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is apparent from the ice core and atmospheric record of CO2 concentrations, which shows a steady rise during the industrial period, with no unusual changes after large eruptions.[11]

Alan Thorpe, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading and Chief Executive of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, commented on the film in New Scientist. He wrote, "First, let's deal with the main thesis: that the presence or absence of cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere is a better explanation for temperature variation than the concentration of CO2 and other gases. This is not a new assertion and it is patently wrong: there is no credible evidence that cosmic rays play a significant role...Let scepticism reign, but let's not play games with the evidence."[12]
The Royal Society has issued a press release in reaction to the movie. In it, Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, shortly restates the predominant scientific opinion on climate change and adds:
"Scientists will continue to monitor the global climate and the factors which influence it. It is important that all legitimate potential scientific explanations continue to be considered and investigated. Debate will continue, and the Royal Society has just hosted a two day discussion meeting attended by over 300 scientists, but it must not be at the expense of action. Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future. [13]

Armand Leroi, while acknowledging that "I am no climate scientist" in an e-mail to Durkin dated March 9, 2007, raised concerns with Durkin about his use of Friis-Christensen's 1991 paper on time-series correlations between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures since 1860. In the years since its publication this work has been criticised, for example in a series of papers by Peter Laut.[14]
[edit]Carl Wunsch controversy
Carl Wunsch, one of the scientists featured in the programme, has said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed.[15][4] He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two."[16] Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action[16] and to have lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator.[17] Filmmaker Durkin responded, "Carl Wunsch was most certainly not 'duped' into appearing in the film, as is perfectly clear from our correspondence with him. Nor are his comments taken out of context. His interview, as used in the programme, perfectly accurately represents what he said."[16]
Wunsch wrote in a letter dated March 15, 2007 that he believes climate change is "real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component". He also says he had thought he was contributing to a programme which sought to counterbalance "over-dramatisation and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts". He raised objections as to how his interview material was used:
"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening."[4]

On March 11, 2007, The Independent covered the Carl Wunch controversy, and asked Channel 4 to respond to what it described as "a serious challenge to its own credibility". A Channel 4 spokesman said:
"The film was a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the contributors has concerns about his contribution we will look into that."[15]

Wunsch has said that he has received a legal letter from the production company, Wag TV, threatening to sue him for defamation unless he agrees to make a public statement that he was neither misrepresented nor misled.[18]

The fact that Scientists are arguing over this matter just proves there is controversy. It was pretty much a given that there was going to be opposition to this film.

 

[Derpeder]

The earth is flat. The sun travels around our planet. and suvs and light bulbs are destroying the planet. Geez.............don't you all know your science...or politics....i can't remember.....

 

[tyl089]

lol, lol.

 

[Mourinho18]

It is good to debate , or at least for the scientists to debate...it is not so good when a docu made deliberately to be provocative is 70% untrue ( According to Houghton, three of these (sic. 'facts') were true, seven were not true, and one was possibly true) on its bare facts, or distorted so much that one contributor feels the need to sue the doc maker.
It would also help if you knew a few of the players in the docu, such as " Lord Blaby"...this guy, Nigel Lawson, was a Tory chancellor of the exchequer who helped screw up the UK economy under John Major...google search the others if you have the time, find out how many of them are paid by Exxon etc....

IMO Global warming does have natural cycles...I think we agree on that?.....but there has NEVER been the output that we have now as there has never been anywhere near the global population that we have now.
7 Billion tons of CO2 from human activity each year, predicted ( by Exxon) to grow 50% in the next 15 years....so....the planet is in a natural warming cycle..I have no problem with that...but it seems to me to be simple logic that our massive amounts of waste products MUST have a deleterious effect..how can it not?
The pop' grows, the output grows with it...but the earth is still the same size.....at some point our consumption will exceed the planets abilties to absorb it, should we wait until that is the case or perhaps take a few preventative measures before that?
It has been recently estimated that if the whole world enjoyed the standard of living that we enjoy in the US then we would need 2.5 planet earths just to sustain ourselves......
Unlimited growth is self evidently unsustainable where resources are ultimately limited, so at some point we humans will be forced to make changes, I always thought " a stitch in time saves 9" and " prevention is better than cure"

That sounds suspiciously like something Adolf Hitler would say. :O