The Great Global Warming Swindle on C4

[Charlotte]

Stoned on here? Surely not. The concept of climate change resulting from human intervention is about as popular as a broken leg. Besides, Jeremy Clarkson says it isn't true nearly every week.

 

I didn't see the programme, so I can't base my judgement on anything other than the precis on here.

 

Science is almost never a matter of fact, it's a matter of a balance of evidence. Media graduates who report on science rarely understand this and paint every scientist with a dissenting opinion as some sort of visionary who is bravely speaking out against 'scientific dogma'. Honestly, if they found someone who said the earth was flat, he'd be subject of a documentary bemoaning the fact that the establishment just wouldn't listen.

 

Point is that on any scientific matter you can always find a spectrum of opinion, Science exists only as strong or weak consensus. How strong is the consensus on human intervention in climate change? Most reviews agree that it is astonishingly strong. The extraordinarily spirited attempts of the American energy lobby to discredit the idea have all but petered out (how about that list of '10,000 scientists who don't believe in global warming' that turned out to have Mickey Mouse and co. amonst the signatories?). The USA really didn't want to buy the idea, but the Federal Climate Change Program released their assessment about this time last year - they said that change could not be explained by natural processes.

 

I have a science background, but I don't feel qualified to challenge the validity of the complex evidence that supports or undermines these theories. I'll leave that for the climate scientists. However, Ifind the idea that thousands of scientists from many disciplines have somehow been hoodwinked because they have missed some facile point completely risible. Or alternatively, and even more ridiculous, that they have all jumped on some bandwagon because they were too lazy or biased to properly examine the data.

 

Scientific theories, critics point out, sometimes turn out to be incorrect. This is the criticism often levelled by Creationists at another theory that has around the same level of consensus as human intervention in climate change - that of evolution.

 

Not everyone who faces down the establishment is a lone voice of reason. They laughed at daVinci, they laughed at Galileo...but they also laughed at David Icke.

 

Thanks for the interesting read.

 

(oh and I quoted the whole text because I felt I may wish to read it again).

[colsoop]

Firstly i agree that it is open to interpretation, like most of the things in life ( try sitting at a football game as a neutral and listen to both sets of fans viewpoints its quite amusing)

 

I am far too simple to argue the case for or against properly but this is my personal take on things.

 

Firstly the no of scientists quoted as agreeing to the mankind intervention was touted at 2500 that was simply untrue and alot of the scientists listed actually disagreed with it.

The IPCC is not a scientific institution It has neither neutral scientists or a balanced group of scientists.

 

Other areas of eyebrow raising for me were the 1940's where a large growth in industry and productivity when huge amounts of co2 were spewed out did not actually cause any rise in temperatures why not Co2 is supposedly the main cause of this "warming" ?

 

In my personal uneducated view based on the reading i have done from both sides is that i believe the planet is warming up not on the dramatic world ending scale that the hype machine (media) touts

I think it is part of a cycle of cooling and warming that has been happening since it all began.

 

It may not be the pc view and perhaps if the green phenomena wasn't being linked in to taxes for this and that i might be less inclined to question it, but i am one of those sad conspiracy theroists.

[Soop Dogg]

Apparently this programme is repeated on More4 on Saturday 17th and I've also heard it is available for download on the '4 on demand' site

 

Watch it before you make any judgements - it is a very good program and has some very convincing arguments.

[Tannhauser]

I recommend watching the program at very least

 

Yes, you're quite right. I'll try and catch the repeat.

 

I am guilty of maing hasty judgements. However climatologists have been tearing their hair out in frustration at the way the research has been presented in the American media in particular. For years it was presented as though the scientific community was split down the middle - which is a serious misrepresentation.

 

See here for example, in which the author had reviewed 928 scientific articles on climate change:

 

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

 

Extract: Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. ......... Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

 

A parallel to this media coverage was the MMR controversy, in which the view of a miniscule minority (that supported the link with autism) was given an enormous amount of airtime, making it seem as though medical opinion was divided.

 

Maverick opinions are sexy and make for good telly. But hey ho, I'll watch the program on Sat 17th.

[Tannhauser]

http://www.badscience.net/?p=381#more-381

 

I really like Ben Goldacre. For example, he has done a much needed hatchet job on that tiny, wizened charlatan, "Dr." Gillian Mc. Keith.

 

Anyway, turns out the documentary maker has not had a good track record. Channel 4 had to issue an apology for the misrepresentation in one of his previous forays into environmentalism. That doesn't mean the current program is invalid, of course, but it's enough to approach it with a little caution.

[Matt H]

my mums head of physics at Lymm High School, shes one of these people that did her o levels and a levels early and she believes that global warming is true, good enough for me!

[Dragonball]

my mums head of physis at Lymm High School, shes one of these people that did her o levels and a levels early and she believes that global warming is true, good enough for me!

 

Wins my vot...

[hogmaw]

my mums head of physics at Lymm High School, shes one of these people that did her o levels and a levels early and she believes that global warming is true, good enough for me!

 

So your mam, who knows a bit of physics (ie maths, mechanics, electronics etc), is better equiped to understand global warming than the professor of meteorolgy (climate, weather and atmosphere etc) at MIT (the US equivalent of Oxbridge)?

[Fifty]

 

Whilst I am open minded; the truth is we need to look after our planet and all the things that live on it its the only one weve got.

Cutting down millions of trees and burying millions of tons of waste sureaint helping whichever the theory.

 

Rich

[imi]

Fantastic program.....

[Matt H]

So your mam, who knows a bit of physics

 

shes my mum, so yeah. Anyway, she knows a whole lot more than you, she chose to be a high school teacher cos thats what she wanted to do. you position in life doesnt dictate your knowledge of your field

[Mike B]

Whilst I am open minded; the truth is we need to look after our planet and all the things that live on it its the only one weve got.

Cutting down millions of trees and burying millions of tons of waste sureaint helping whichever the theory.

 

 

even if co2 emissions and everything else humanity has done to the earth has little effect in the long term, it still bad manners to trash the planet.

[hogmaw]

you position in life doesnt dictate your knowledge of your field

 

Err, your position in life DOES dictate your knowledge of your field

[SimonR]

If politicians really believed that the world was going to boil as a result of emissions they wouldn’t hesitate to immediately implement draconian laws to tackle the cause.

They are quite happy to enact laws curtailing our freedoms on much less serious issues and I don’t think they would hesitate if something were going to happen which would affect them or their children directly.

 

They levy “environmental” taxes instead. For me, any time a government uses a tax to ‘resolve’ a problem it tells me that they aren’t really concerned about the issue but are just using (and fuelling) public hysteria as an excuse to increase their own power and resources.

[mwilkinson]

I also studied climate change as part of my degree. We used the same modeling software that the IPCC use to model climate change to generate hypothetical scenarios. What was very interesting was that by altering very small chemical compositions in the atmosphere we were able to drastically alter the best and worst case scenarios.

 

Again quite interestingly is the fact that the books I used for my course had to be rewritten every year. This was due to the fact that the IPCC's model and scenraios would change so fundementally every single year. The changes were massive, differences would vary between 10 years and 1000 years!!

 

It was from this that I formulated the opinion that we know F all about climate modelling.

 

Finally, we also studied a thing called the particle cooling effect. This basically states that for all the crap we are apparently throwing into the atmosphere there will be a reflection of radiation from the particles which will cool the atmosphere. It was argued at the time (this was in 2000) that global warming and particle cooling would in effect cancel each other out!!

[Matt H]

Err, your position in life DOES dictate your knowledge of your field

 

umm, so if my mum chooses to be a teacher cos thats her dream, and shuns other routes of life.......?!?! simpleton

[Scooter]

umm, so if my mum chooses to be a teacher cos thats her dream, and shuns other routes of life......

 

............then she knows less about climate change than the climate scientist, who's dream it was to be a climate scientist and shunned other routes in life including teaching.

[Tannhauser]

So your mam, who knows a bit of physics (ie maths, mechanics, electronics etc), is better equiped to understand global warming than the professor of meteorolgy (climate, weather and atmosphere etc) at MIT (the US equivalent of Oxbridge)?

 

Is that the same Professor at MIT as this one? (From Guardian, March 11th)

 

A leading US climate scientist is considering legal action after he says he was duped into appearing in a Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made global warming is a myth. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was 'grossly distorted' and 'as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two'.

He says his comments in the film were taken out of context and that he would not have agreed to take part if he had known it would argue that man-made global warming was not a serious threat. 'I thought they were trying to educate the public about the complexities of climate change,' he said. 'This seems like a deliberate attempt to exploit someone who is on the other side of the issue.' He is considering a complaint to Ofcom, the broadcast regulator.

 

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2031457,00.html

[Big Ads]

my mums head of physics at Lymm High School, shes one of these people that did her o levels and a levels early and she believes that global warming is true, good enough for me!

 

 

No way??!! Was she there when we were there?? Do you mind me asking her name?? Surname that is!

 

EDIT: No need to answer, just worked it out. Small world!!

[mattanna]

There is no money to be made if there is no global warming threat, i mean they can charge £6 for low power light bulbs, solar panels, hybrid cars etc etc, new products equals big business and is a good political card to play(if we are green they will love us), they don't want us to keep buying petrol and old technology, the earth i'm sure goes in cycles co2 may not help or it may not make much difference, and one day the sun will explode, before that there will probably be another ice age, warming age, and before the sun explodes the super volcanoes may erupt:search: it's all sh**e, and one thing for sure is that most living things breathe in oxygen and exhale c02 as well as emit methane so there is no hope unless we all kill ourselves, then the piles of rotting flesh would probably create so much co2 that it would be hopeless

[hogmaw]

Is that the same Professor at MIT as this one? (From Guardian, March 11th)

 

 

 

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2031457,00.html

 

Interesting point that you make there. Also interesting is that you yourself are guilty of 'duping' our readers here, by editing and omitting the following from the Guardian article, which in itself will have been edited, and edited again by further editors, none of which have a science background etc etc etc etc....

 

QUOTE "The film, shown on Thursday, was made by Martin Durkin. In 1997, he produced a similar series for Channel 4 called Against Nature, which attacked many of the claims of the environmental movement.

Durkin said: '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.'"

 

Channel 4 said: 'We feel it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the scientists featured now has concerns about his contribution, we will look into it in the normal way.'

[Gazboy]

I think a few people have missed the most important point of all:

 

Not a single scientist in the programme disputed global warming, the dispute is the cause of global warming.

[Pot]

I blame the Sun...

[Rob]

Me too, media whores that they are.

[Tannhauser]

Interesting point that you make there. Also interesting is that you yourself are guilty of 'duping' our readers here, by editing and omitting the following from the Guardian article, which in itself will have been edited, and edited again by further editors, none of which have a science background etc etc etc etc....

 

QUOTE "The film, shown on Thursday, was made by Martin Durkin. In 1997, he produced a similar series for Channel 4 called Against Nature, which attacked many of the claims of the environmental movement.

Durkin said: '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.'"

 

Channel 4 said: 'We feel it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the scientists featured now has concerns about his contribution, we will look into it in the normal way.'

 

I missed the bit that says 'article continues below', I must admit. However, I don't think it changes anything. For me, the fact that a central player in the documentary feels - apparently strongly - that he was misrepresented is sufficient to cast doubt on the integrity of the programme makers. Especially given that on Durkin's previous environmental film, Channel 4 had to apologise for exactly the same sort of thing.

 

As for the Guardian article being itself edited (to fit a particular argument), it seems unlikely, as you can find the same opinions in the author, Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science' site/blog, which is supported by donations rather than the Guardian.