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* The negative effects of the ], which has been used by supporters of the anthropogenic theory of global warming, are discussed. For example, the ] estimates that every year, four million children die globally from respiratory diseases related to inhaling smoke from cooking fires because they do not use electrical cooking methods. * The negative effects of the ], which has been used by supporters of the anthropogenic theory of global warming, are discussed. For example, the ] estimates that every year, four million children die globally from respiratory diseases related to inhaling smoke from cooking fires because they do not use electrical cooking methods.


* It is immoral for industrialised populations to ] that developing African nations ignore their reserves of cheap fossil fuels (] and ]), and instead rely on expensive renewable power generation techniques, such as ]s and wind driven generators. The documentary shows an African doctor who stresses that his abilty to treat the patients under his care is hindered by having to choose between running a lightbulb or a medical refrigerator with unreliable solar panels while western enviromentalists enjoy the benefits of modern energy being supplied to its hospitals via fossil fuel burning power plants. * It is immoral for industrialised populations to ] that developing African nations ignore their reserves of cheap fossil fuels (] and ]), and instead rely on expensive renewable power generation techniques, such as ]s and wind driven generators. The documentary shows an African doctor who demonstrates that with the solar panels he has in his hospital, he cannot run both the medical refrigerator and the electric lights at the same time.


==Reception and criticism== ==Reception and criticism==

Revision as of 00:16, 21 March 2007

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a documentary film by British television producer Martin Durkin. The film premiered on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2007, and showcases scientists who are sceptical of various aspects of the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming. Publicity for the program states that the mainstream theory of global warming is " ... a lie and the biggest scam of modern times." Channel 4 said, "It is essentially a polemic and we are expecting it to cause trouble, but this is the controversial programming that Channel 4 is renowned for."

The film's basic premises are that the current state of knowledge on global warming has numerous flaws and that vested interests in science and the media discourage the public and the scientific community from acknowledging this. The film's main target is the predominant scientific opinion on climate change reflected in the majority of papers published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and as recognised by the scientific academies of the major industrialized nations and other professional scientific bodies. Except when making a counter-argument, the film does not attempt to explain why these scientists think that modern global warming is caused mostly by human activity. Another target is Western environmentalists who promote expensive solar power over cheap fossil fuels in Africa, holding Africa back from industrialising.

Martin Durkin has said that he deliberately chose a provocative title—his original choice of title was Apocalypse My Arse—and describes his work as "seriously controversial".

Some of the people who are interviewed in the film are environmentalist Patrick Moore, co-founder, but for the past 21 years a critic, of Greenpeace; Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist; John Christy, professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at University of Alabama; and Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute. Carl Wunsch, professor of oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was also interviewed but has since said that he strongly disagrees with the film's conclusions and the way his interview material was used.

Claims

The film argues against the most widely held scientific opinion on climate change, that the modern global warming period is caused mostly by human activity. It uses a series of interviews and graphics to support its arguments, which are listed below.

On contradictions in the theory of anthropogenic global warming

  • Records of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels since 1940 show a continuing increase, but during this period, global temperature decreased until 1975, and has increased since then. (It emerged subsequent to the programme that the graph used to support this claim was twenty years old, and Durkin agreed that the time axis had been incorrectly relabelled to give the impression that data ending at 1988 were valid through 2000. In later reruns, the graph was corrected by ending the data series at 1988.)
  • Water vapour makes up 95% of all Greenhouse Gases, it is the component of the atmosphere that has the largest impact on the planet's temperature, through cloud formation and associated reflection of incoming solar heat. Scientists cannot accurately model the effects of clouds when attempting to simulate future weather patterns and their affects on global warming.
  • Carbon dioxide is only a very small percentage of the atmosphere, 0.052% , and humans only contribute a small part of the total CO2 emissions in a year, less than 1%; Volcanos produce more than all the cars and factories in the world. This means that human CO2 emissions cannot be the main cause of global warming.
  • Carbon dioxide levels increase or decrease due to temperatures increasing or decreasing rather than temperatures following carbon dioxide levels, because the Earth's oceans absorb carbon dioxide when they are cooler, and release it when they are warmer. Due to the large oceanic mass it takes a long time ("decades or centuries") for the reaction to temperature changes to occur, which is why analysis of the Vostok Station and other ice cores shows that changes in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide follow changes in global temperature, with a lag of 800 years.
  • Solar activity is currently at a high level, and likely to be the cause of the current global warming. The mechanism involves cosmic rays aiding cloud formation, and the solar wind deflects cosmic rays away from Earth during periods of high solar activity. Solar activity levels are far more relevant than the small percentage of greenhouse gases being emitted by humans described in other theories.
  • The current warming is nothing unusual and was surpassed during the Medieval Warm Period. This was a time of great prosperity in Europe, highlighting the beneficial effects of increased temperatures.

On research findings driven by financial or ideological motives

  • The claim that sceptics are funded by the oil industry is false, and in any case the research funds provided by oil companies are dwarfed by those provided by governments to the alleged "global warming industry".
  • There has been a large increase in the research funds available for studies relating to global warming. Including a putative link to global warming effects makes it likelier that a research scientist will get a research grant. Furthermore, producing dramatic and pessimistic results has a positive impact on the standing of scientists.
  • It is more likely that vested interests occur among supporters of the theory of anthropogenic global warming, since many jobs in science, the media, and governmental administration have been created as a result of this theory.

Disputing a scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic global warming

  • The "2,500 top scientists" mentioned in the IPCC report are not all scientists and do not all agree with the report.
  • The IPCC report misrepresented the views of some of the scientists who contributed to it. When Paul Reiter complained and requested that his name be removed, this request was refused until he threatened legal action.
  • The concept of anthropogenic global warming has developed into a modern religion, with sceptics treated as heretics and labelled as "global warming deniers", in order to equate genuine scientific scepticism with holocaust denial. Several prominent sceptics have received death threats as a result of their work on climate change.

Miscellaneous

  • A similar scare emerged during the 1970s when scientists predicted global cooling and the imminent onset of a new ice age.
  • The negative effects of the precautionary principle, which has been used by supporters of the anthropogenic theory of global warming, are discussed. For example, the World Health Organization estimates that every year, four million children die globally from respiratory diseases related to inhaling smoke from cooking fires because they do not use electrical cooking methods.
  • It is immoral for industrialised populations to demand that developing African nations ignore their reserves of cheap fossil fuels (coal and oil), and instead rely on expensive renewable power generation techniques, such as solar panels and wind driven generators. The documentary shows an African doctor who demonstrates that with the solar panels he has in his hospital, he cannot run both the medical refrigerator and the electric lights at the same time.

Reception and criticism

The show attracted 2.5 million viewers and an audience share of 11.5%. Channel 4 revealed that it had received 758 calls and emails about the programme, with those in favour outnumbering complaints by six to one. As of 19th March, there had also been 144 complaints to Ofcom. . The channel subsequently announced that it would be hosting a debate about the global warming issue to be broadcast in April.

Reactions from scientists

Many of the film's arguments have been strongly disputed by climate scientists who support the consensus view regarding human influence on climate. 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. He flatly contradicted two of the programme's statements, that "The troposphere is warming less than the surface" and that "Volcanic eruptions emit more carbon dioxide than fossil fuel burning". Overall Houghton described the programme as "a mixture of truth, half truths and falsehood".

Armand Leroi, in email correspondence with Durkin dated 9 March 2007, while acknowledging that "I am no climate scientist", 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, which had been extensively criticised since 1991 in a series of papers by Peter Laut.

Doubts have similarly been raised about the way the programme selectively used data which 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..

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. He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two." Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action, and to have lodged a complaint with OFCOM, the UK broadcast regulator. 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."

In a letter written by Wunsch on March 15 2007, he said that he believed in climate change and thought it "almost certainly has a major human-induced component". He goes on to say that 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."

Reaction in the British media

The documentary received substantial coverage in the British press, both before and after its broadcast.

On January 30 2007 George Monbiot in a Guardian article about George Bush and climate change, refers to the forthcoming release of the documentary. He describes the programme's thesis as "the same old conspiracy theory that we’ve been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years", and discusses the arguments for and against the "hockey-stick graph" used in An Inconvenient Truth, claiming that the criticism of it has been "debunked". He also highlights Durkin's previous documentary Against Nature, where the Independent Television Commission found that four complainants had been "misled" and their views "distorted by selective editing".

Dominic Lawson of The Independent, in a pre-broadcast report, was favourable toward the show. Lawson echoed many of the show's claims in his article and recommended that viewers tune in.

In response, Lawson's Independent colleague Geoffrey Lean pointed out that Lawson is the son and brother-in-law, respectively, of two of the global warming sceptics featured in the program (Nigel Lawson and Christopher Monckton), implying that Lawson was not a neutral observer. Lean also highlighted that the film's director, Martin Durkin, had been found to have selectively edited footage in order to misrepresent the views of several of his interviewees in his earlier film Against Nature (also broadcast on Channel 4). These interviewees complained to the Independent Television Commission of the UK, which upheld their complaint and ruled, moreover, that the documentary filmmakers had "misled" participants over the "content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part." Lean went on to compare The Great Global Warming Swindle to Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, remarking that "the clash between the Oscar-winning film and the Channel 4 production is likely to spark new public debate." The Independent article concluded by considering three of the film's most important claims, largely disagreeing with them (for example, "recent solar increases are too small to have produced the present warming, and have been much less important than greenhouse gases since about 1850").

On March 11, 2007, The Independent published an article about the Carl Wunch controversy (see above). The Independent asked Channel 4 for a response 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."

On March 14, 2007, The Independent reported that the programme makers had selectively used data which was sometimes decades old, and introduced other serious errors of their own:

The original, and corrected versions of Temperature data from TGGWS, along with NASA GISS data

"Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. 'There was a fluff there,' he said. If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the NASA website he could have got the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and 1940—although that would have undermined his argument. 'The original NASA data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find,' Mr Durkin said."

A pre-broadcast article in the Daily Mail on March 5 2007 reported the various arguments used in the programme. The Daily Mail did not offer a strong opinion for or against the arguments, restricting itself to noting "The documentary is likely to spark fierce criticism from the scientific establishment", and ended by quoting a Royal Society spokesman which acknowledged non carbon dioxide factors in global warming, but said: "based on the situation at the moment, we have to do something about CO2 emissions."

Lean and Robin McKie, science editor of The Guardian, pointed out that The Great Global Warming Swindle did not add any new information to the debate about the cause of global warming, and that the documentary's claims had been aired numerous times and by the same people featured in the film. McKie attacked the documentary for opting "for dishonest rhetoric when a little effort could have produced an important contribution to a critical social problem."

On March 13, 2007, an article by George Monbiot in The Guardian argued the documentary was based upon already debunked science. He also accused Channel 4 of being more interested in generating controversy than in producing credible science programmes.

On March 15, 2007, The Times reported that Durkin had seriously fallen out with a scientist who had been considering working with him. Armand Leroi was concerned that Durkin had used data about a correlation between solar activity and global temperatures which had subsequently been found to be flawed. Leroi sent Durkin an email expressing concern about the programme and saying "To put this bluntly: the data that you showed in your programme were . . . wrong in several different ways." He copied the email to scientific author Simon Singh. Durkin responded to Leroi saying “You’re a big daft cock.” Singh sent an email to Durkin urging him to engage in serious debate. Durkin responded with a mail that stated: "Since 1940 we have had four decades of cooling, three of warming, and the last decade when temperature has been doing nothing", and concluded with "Go and fuck yourself". Leroi subsequently said that he was withdrawing his co-operation with Durkin. Durkin later apologised for his language, saying that he had sent the emails when tired and had just finished making the programme, and that (despite his comments) he was "eager to have all the science properly debated with scientists qualified in the right areas".

In the same Times report of March 15, 2007, Times Science editor Mark Henderson listed a number of points where, he said, "Channel 4 got it wrong over climate change". In this section he highlights the feedback argument for the ice core data, the measurement error explanation for temperatures in the troposphere, and the sulphate cooling argument for mid 20th century cooling.

Other reaction

The documentary has received little attention in America. One exception is a comment made by Paul Joseph Watson, a British reporter who works for American radio host Alex Jones, who observed that the criticisms of the film relied upon ad hominems instead of disputing the arguments put forth by the scientists in the documentary (although it should be noted that the arguments have been extensively criticised since Watson made this comment). Watson wrote, "The establishment left has already attempted to savage the documentary, but The Guardian's Zoe Williams cannot address the evidence, instead attacking the messenger by discrediting one participant from Winnipeg University, and selectively ignroing the roster of other experts which included MIT and Princeton professors."

Steven Milloy, who runs the website Junkscience.com, wrote an article for FoxNews.Com on March 18 2007 which enthusiastically endorsed the documentary. He concludes by saying he'd like to see a "movie face-off" between "An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Great Global Warming Swindle", implying that he thought Gore's film would lose. "Let the public see both sides of the story and then we’ll see who’s believable and who’s not."

Durkin's response to his critics

On March 17, 2007, The Sunday Telegraph published a response by Durkin to what he calls the "feeble" attacks of his critics. In it, he rejects any criticism of the close correlation between solar variation and temperature change, saying that Friis-Christensen stands by his work. He accepts that the time axis of one graph was incorrectly labelled when the programme was first transmitted, but says that this does not change his conclusions. Regarding the Carl Wunsch controversy (see above) he repeats that Wunsch was not duped into taking part in the programme.

Durkin goes on to reject his opponents' position that the cooling period observed post Second World War was caused by sulphate aerosol cooling: "Thanks to China and the rest, SO2 levels are far, far higher now than they were back then. Why isn't it perishing cold?" He concludes by saying that the "global warming alarm" is "wrong, wrong, wrong".

Contributors to the programme

The film includes contributions from the following individuals:

See also

External links


Notes

α. For more on troposphere temperature measurements, see the 2006 U.S. Climate Change Science Program report "Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere:Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences". The Executive Summary says, "Surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected." For more on volcanic carbon dioxide emissions, see: , where the U.S. Geological Service estimates "Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes".

β. Also see exchange of letters to Science.

References

  1. ""Global warming labeled a 'scam'"". Washington Times.
  2. ""Global Warming Is Lies" Claims Documentary". Life Style Extra. 2007-03-04. Retrieved 2007-03-12.
  3. Naomi Oreskes (December 3, 2004). "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change". Science. 306 (5702): 1686. doi:10.1126/science.1103618.
  4. O'Neill, Brendan (09 March 2007). "'Apocalypse my arse'". Retrieved 2007-03-16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Wunsch, Carl (11 March 2007). "Partial Response to the London Channel 4 Film "The Great Global Warming Swindle"". Retrieved 2007-03-13.
  6. "The Great Global Warming Swindle from Channel4.com". Channel 4.com. Retrieved 2007-03-12.
  7. ^ Connor, Steve (14 March 2007). "The real global warming swindle". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-03-14. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  8. Houghton, John. "The Great Global Warming Swindle". The John Ray Initiative. Retrieved 2007-03-12. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  9. ^ Email correspondence between Armand Leroi, Simon Singh and Martin Durkin
  10. Connolley, William M. (9 Mar 2007). "Swindled!". Real Climate. Retrieved 2007-03-17. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ Lean, Geoffrey (12 March 2007). "Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-03-12.
  12. ^ Goldacre, Ben (11 March 2007). "Climate scientist 'duped to deny global warming'". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2007-03-12. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  13. Lean, Geoffrey (18 March 2007). "Global warming is a 'weapon of mass destruction'". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-03-18.
  14. Monbiot, George (30 January 2007). "Don't be fooled by Bush's defection: his cures are another form of denial". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  15. Lawson, Dominic (02 March 2007). "Dominic Lawson: Here is another inconvenient truth (but this one will infuriate the Green lobby)". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-03-04. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  16. ^ Lean, Geoffrey (04 March 2007). "Global warming: An inconvenient truth or hot air?". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-03-12. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  17. Willmore, Ian (02 April 1998). "Channel 4 Savaged by Television Watchdog Over Green Stitch-up". Friends of the Earth. Retrieved 2007-03-12. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. Wheldon, Julie (05 March 2007). "Greenhouse effect is a myth, say scientists". Daily Mail. Retrieved 2007-03-16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  19. McKie, Robin (04 March 2007). "Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2007-03-04. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  20. Monbiot, George (2007-03-13). "Don't let truth stand in the way of a red-hot debunking of climate change". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-03-15. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  21. ^ Henderson, Mark (2007-03-15). "C4's debate on global warming boils over". The Times. Retrieved 2007-03-20. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  22. Watson, Paul Joseph (09 March 2007). "Powerful Documentary Trounces Man-Made Warming Hoax". Prison Planet. Retrieved 2007-03-04. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  23. Milloy, Steven (18 March 2007). "Must-See Global Warming TV". Prison Planet. Retrieved 2007-03-18. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  24. Durkin, Martin (17 March 2007). "'The global-warmers were bound to attack, but why are they so feeble?'". The Sunday Tele. Retrieved 2007-03-19. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
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