The Great Global Warming Swindle
SEARCH BLOG: GLOBAL WARMING
If you believe you have an open mind, take 75 minutes and watch this video... it may open your eyes. Take special note of what Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, has to say.
From Mangan's Blog: (and many other sources)
My reaction: some anger and more convinced than ever that politics and science should never mix... can never mix... without the subversion of the latter.The Great Global Warming Swindle, a superb video, not dumbed-down, on the current faddish nonsense of man-made global warming. Oddly enough, the video pinpoints the political origin of the global warming movement with Margaret Thatcher. She wanted to promote nuclear power, and since nuclear doesn't emit CO2, she pushed science which emphasized the CO2's downside. If not already convinced of the idiocy of global warming, as well as the political agenda of its promoters, this film will do the job.
As previously noted, the global warming fad is finished.
UPDATE:
Professor Wunsch has now come out and said that he was misquoted and his statement is quoted at RealClimate.org.
Interestingly, Dr. Lubos Motl of Harvard predicted this two days ago:
Update 3/10/2007Looks like the good professor from Harvard was correct.
The video is available via:
* Google Video (copy),
* Bit Torrent (high quality, copies: XviD, AVI)
* YouTube (eight 10-minute-long segments)
The documentary is much better than I expected. The director, Martin Durkin, is a "right-wing Marxist" whose main motivation is to allow the third world to get richer. Well, I certainly agree that they have the right. There are some funny moments - for example Margaret Thatcher is painted as the ultimate mother of man-made global warming ;-) because of her complex strategy to promote nuclear energy but there seems to be a lot of good science in the documentary, too.
And there are some minor bugs - e.g. a wrong statement about the amount of CO2 produced by volcanoes. If you want to know which scientist is gonna complain that he has been misrepresented, it is Carl Wunsch. Well, just like in many similar cases, there are two Wunsches. One of them is a rational scientist who has contributed some of his technical knowledge to the documentary. The other Wunsch is controlled by his brainwashing movement and generates scientifically vacuous, alarmist, and unfriendly politicized misinterpretations of the documentary and his role in it on RealClimate.ORG.
If you kindly allow me to add one more minor criticism of Durkin's work, I also think that the self-confidence with which the solar / cosmic ray theory was promoted was a little bit too high. There are several high-profile skeptics I know - including myself - who have certain rather serious doubts about this theory.
The quality of tricks and dramatization is however very good - at least in the same league as Al Gore's movie.
13 comments:
Hi Mangan,
Thanks for your blog and thanks for that great link to the video The Great Global Warming Swindle. It is about time we try to be a bit more discerning. I think you may very much like to read this article: http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/125454-Fire+and+Ice%3A+The+Day+After+Tomorrow.
The keyword is not "Global Warming" but "Sudden Glacial Rebound"!!!! Again; your blog and link was greatly appreciated.
I watched this piece of anti-science propaganda camouflaged as a plea for scientific rigor, all 76 minutes of it. My estimate is that 70 minutes of it is nothing but political whining: some bizarre account of Mrs. Thatcher's suborning of scientists in order to break the coalminer's union and environmentalists' turning it into a political cause to enforce communist doctrines, all owing to a contemptuous hatred of all of mankind in general and of poor people in particular. Still, credit where credit is due: the film is slickly produced, with splendid graphics and music, and warmly confident experts assuring us it's all crap.
I can't say for sure how anyone could take all this seriously, but I'll offer the opinion that people find it much more interesting than global warming, which actually is pretty boring stuff.
The remaining 6 minutes or so that addressed the facts surrounding global warming were filled entirely with misinformation and irrelevancies, which may be summarized as follows:
1) Solar activity explains past changes in Earth's temperature.
No one challenges this notion. It's clear that when the CO2 level was lower and essentially constant, solar activity was the main driving force. That's changed since 1900. CO2 concentration is higher now, and it is changing rapidly. Now CO2 concentration is a bigger driver than solar activity.
2) Solar activity matches temperatures in the last 100 years better than CO2 concentrations, especially 1940-1970
This is plainly false. Solar activity clearly increased between 1940 and 1960. To justify this claim, the producer presents a sunspot plot that doesn't even resemble the data. He doesn't give a reference, so one can only speculate, but it appears that someone used a smoothing procedure on the data, and somehow made it appear that sunspots decreased between 1940 and 1960, even though the real data clearly show that they increased.
What happened between 1940 and 1980 is actually well-understood. Pollution during and after the war, when industrial activity was raised to unprecedented levels, caused temperatures to decline. Particulates and aerosols have a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight and by causing clouds to form. About 1970, serious efforts were started to control particulate emissions from fossil-burning power plants, and the temperature data clearly show that global warming accelerated.
Furthermore, and more importantly, solar activity peaked in 1980, but temperatures have continued to rise. The only factor that can explain this is greenhouse-gas concentration.
3) CO2 levels lag behind temperatures by 800 years or so.
First, this reading depends on proxy data, since records don't go back that far. But it could well be true because it's so consistent. If it is true, it's not good news. The proxy records show what you'd expect anyway: global warming causes greenhouse gases. Since greenhouse gases cause global warming (an inescapable fact of physics), we could face a compounding effect, where greenhouse-gas concentration and temperature reinforce each other all the way to the worst case. This is the possibility that causes the most concern.
With respect to global warming, however, all this is irrelevant to the question of whether or not artifical CO2 emissions are causing an increase in global average temperature.
4) Troposphere data don't reflect the same degree of heating as would be expected.
This is outdated, incorrect information. Here's a quotation from the Executive Summary of the Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Analysis Product 1.1:
"Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of humaninduced global warming. Specifically, 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. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies."
5) Artificial emissions aren't sufficient to explain the increase in CO2 concentrations. Natural emissions are greater.
This is plainly false. According to the International Energy Agency's "Key World Energy Statistics", 26,883 million tons of CO2 are emitted from artificial sources per year. That is 0.87% of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the concentration of which is rising roughly 0.5%/year. So, if 60% of the emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere, it explains all of the increase. But it's true that other greenhouse gases are contributing as well.
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I've noticed a willingness of people to accept this argument without any reservation, even people who brag about how naturally skeptical they are. Perhaps the reason is that the subject usually is discussed in bits and pieces, so people don't have a reference point from which to consider misinformation. I've put together a coherent exposition of the facts on a web page called Global Warming: A Guide for the Perplexed.
"RobC"
Interesting blog you have. Obviously, you don't feel either passionately or intellectually honest about what you've written, either here or on your website, to identify yourself or your credentials.
While I agree with you about nuclear energy as the only viable non-fossil fuel source of electricity, the rest of your material is pretty much a rehash of materials Algore likes to reference, but does not really address the information presented by some well-credentialed gentlemen.
Nice effort though.
Suggest you read:
http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2007/02/global-warming-its-what-you-show.html
Just because you don't like the data, doesn't mean it was manipulated to offend you.
Bruce, thanks for taking the time to respond. I actually am trying to get it right and it's a pleasure to interract with someone knowledgeable.
I looked through your blogs for February; you and I are on the same side with regard to single causes of climate change. I'd like to pursue one point with you. You've shown Dr. Patterson's chart correlating land temperatures with sunspot cycle length. That's an interesting point, which I haven't come across before. Now, why would cycle length be more important than sunspot number? Could it be the case that some sunspots are more powerful than others? And could it be that cycle length is a measure of sunspot strength?
Since cycle length was increasing as late as 1990, I need to get more information, to see if it has continued to rise. Any suggestions you can offer will be appreciated.
Who says blogs are a waste of time?
Oops! I mean cycle length has been shortening up to 1990.
"Obviously, you don't feel either passionately or intellectually honest about what you've written, either here or on your website, to identify yourself..."
Some people aren't retired and need to watch what ends up on the internet about them, even if it is stuff they are passionate and intellectually honest about.
"...or your credentials."
"...does not really address the information presented by some well-credentialed gentlemen.
And some people say that you should look at arguments and data, not credentials.
"Algore"
Surely a typo. I know you aren't as childish as Rush.
Ah, but if you have a website (linked in the comment) you should be willing to identify yourself... or at least something about yourself.
Algore? I thought that was a title.
Being old and retired gives me some leeway... well somewhat old and somewhat retired.
Oh, no. I would never identify myself on the web. The global-warming skeptics are the creepiest people on the internet. I'd sooner give Timothy McVeigh my home address.
I tracked down where the information on temperature/cycle-length came from. It was discredited years ago because the only way the curves could be made to match was by distorting the data. Even the scientists who orginated the idea have rejected it. That's why I never found it in the scientific literature.
RobC,
Feel free to include a link to exactly where and who discredited the information.
Simply saying someone, somewhere didn't care for the relationship (actually an inverse relationship) doesn't sound too persuasive. It is always good to give specific credit.
Additionally, most serious people who have their own websites are not afraid to identify themselves. I've run into discussions online where both sides of this particular issue have demonstrated great knowledge and courtesy... and occasions where that is definitely not the case.
But name-calling and simply trying to dismiss information is not convincing.
Here's the reference:
"Solar forcing of the Northern hemisphere land air
temperature: New data" by P. Thejll and K. Lassen. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Vol. 62, p. 1207.
RobC
Here is a NASA link:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20011206/
A little more controversy from New Scientist
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn6270
A bit more technical at Climate Science (University of Colorado)
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2006/09/25/overview-of-the-4th-annual-sorce-meeting-earths-radiative-budget/
I know that Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate.org has dismissed any correlation between solar activity and earth's climate, but that is understandable since he is the primary advocate of the anthropogenic CO2 driven global warming modelers and it is certainly in his best interest to discount any other forcings as relevant... given a great deal of political clout and funding has come with the selling of this mono-driver approach to climate.
You are correct that there are those who would dismiss solar activity as relevant... I've just done you a favor by identifying a prominent spokesman for that position. But the issue is far from settled as you would like to presume.
Go to Climate Science and contact Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. for more information if you don't want to use what I have posted along the right side of this site. He can lead to new studies and publications.
Also look at the chart on the right side and use the link to go to a very detailed analysis of the models being used to simulate climate histories.
See, I've named names and sources and even used my name. It's not all that hard.
RobC
Thanks for the citation. Can you provide an actual link to the information? It is one source.
Here is a NASA link:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20011206/
A little more controversy from New Scientist
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn6270
A bit more technical at Climate Science (University of Colorado)
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2006/09/25/overview-of-the-4th-annual-sorce-meeting-earths-radiative-budget/
I know that Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate.org has dismissed any correlation between solar activity and earth's climate, but that is understandable since he is the primary advocate of the anthropogenic CO2 driven global warming modelers and it is certainly in his best interest to discount any other forcings as relevant... given a great deal of political clout and funding has come with the selling of this mono-driver approach to climate.
You are correct that there are those who would dismiss solar activity as relevant... I've just done you a favor by identifying a prominent spokesman for that position. But the issue is far from settled as you would like to presume.
Go to Climate Science and contact Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. for more information if you don't want to use what I have posted along the right side of this site. He can lead to new studies and publications.
Also look at the chart on the right side and use the link to go to a very detailed analysis of the models being used to simulate climate histories. Solar forcing is one of the least understood aspects of climate (strangely).
I am not saying that there is one aspect to climate change. Quite the contrary. I am arguing that the mono-driver theory is the least correct interpretation of the data available... and that is the real climate problem.
RobC:
I'm going to refer you to a refutation of the refutation:
http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=15
Author's credentials:
http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=44
I'm sure, with a little searching, you can find some additional insights.
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