For those of you in the UK watch Channel 4 @9pm

Theres a program on called the "The Great Global Warming Swindle", and will have interviews with scientists who believe we are not to blame for global warming. It's nice to have a change from the media every now and then

Do you know what their viewpoint is (what is causing the obvious changes in our weather?)

They believe it's a cycle, we've already had two ice ages that we had nothing to do with, and they believe we are simply building up to another that we would never be able to prevent.

Damn it, missed it!

I believe it is a natural cycle too, although i also believe this one will be extra special aswell

Was fantastic, kept it simple, stated facts and backed up those facts, with some of the most qualified scientists in business. Explains why its got to the stage it has, why there doing it and Al Gore gets pwned!

Originally posted by estar
Was fantastic, kept it simple, stated facts and backed up those facts, with some of the most qualified scientists in business. Explains why its got to the stage it has, why there doing it and Al Gore gets pwned!

Hmm, guess we were watching different documentaries, thought it was more fiction actually. Loved the cartoon graphics and comedic background track, suited it perfectly.

Hi There,

The program seemed to me to be a caricature of personal opinion by scientists not in the mainstream, but brought into the media to give a voice for the polluting industries...lest their profits drop.

There is plenty of evidence that shows our polluting activities have added heat to the natural range of global warming cycles. The debate is not about man causing global warming, but about 'adding' to it, which he undoubtedly is.

The global warming debate is just one of many affective towards our societal structuring, which is currently based on the 'few' lording it over the 'many'. We need to structure our societies to more healthier, cleaner, and equal distribution and use of natural resources, especially looking at alternatives away from fossil fuels and to adopt such alternatives in equal measure alongside the developing nations. The polluting industries do not want this, as they want to maintain control on fuel-based systems of any kind, in order to maintain their profit. They will deny man's role in global warming even when the oceans rise to the height of their top lips. They care not for consequence! For them, the issue is all about 'now', not later. Like the programme, they are about obsfucation and denial, especially for your children's future.

Here's a link to the torrent incase you missed it. www.torrentspy.com...

Before i saw this i thought anyone who didn't believe humans were hugely responsible for global warming were brainwashed beyond help. Now i'm not too sure myself lol.

I thought it quite amusing that they first showed a graph depicting the Medieval Warm Period as being warmer than today ....... and then claimed that CO2 levels follow temperature rises. Yet when - according to the programme - temperatures were higher than today, CO2 levels were one third lower than current levels. Therefore, current CO2 levels cannot be a result of recent temp rises, as claimed.

An obvious inconsistency in the argument that I'm amazed anyone missed ....

I watched this programme twice now to do some research on what was claimed, which I have not done yet... this weekend,

However I did take note though I am and have been for nearly 15 years now well before it was accepted and when I was vilified by people personally and in the business world for believing in global warming (being influenced by humans).

Some of the contributers on the program are veryu highly qualified in this area... so i am going to do aproperly researched story on thisa when ive had time to confirma nd source a few things....

So I am open minded and I would openly change my stance on this against all of my studies and reading and some research on this area, if they are proved right...

However I have never read anything by these contributers (there are many many proffesors out there as there are many universities, so I am interested in the scientific facts and data rather than models and points of view) in the mainstream scientific journals (I read most every month) and also I have found some inconsistities in what they pointed out and claimed.

For every argument they put forward I know of many saying the oppositie...and to have a contributer to the prgram who actually sold off most of the UK's oil welath under thatcher as her chancellor, who also currently and has in the past sat on the borads of oil companies... well that says a lot eh? In addition this idiot Lord Lawson has aslo until only a few months ago been stating data against gloabl warming as fact
has been shown beyond a shadow of a doubt to be flase information propgated by one of Exxons pressure groups. He was aware of this spin and lies two years ago and admitted it was innacurate after being brought to account on it in an television broadcast interview... and still for two years later he is still quoting it ...recently in the telegraph newspaper.

Too be honest it seems to me that Alastair Cambpell was paid to make the programme in the way it was made and fronted... however as said I will not knock it totally unless I can prove as I suspect from collegues within the industry, my own university studies and wehat ive read and learnt about this over the past 15 years, that thsi is just the same as the scientists in the 50's and 60's in regard to tabacco being safe.


Regards

Elf

Here's a quick link to the show on Video Google.

video.google.com...

It's an excellent show which exposes the politics behind HUMAN-CAUSED global warming. Natural warming/cooling cycles YES, not human caused warming/cooling.

The warming is actually caused by variations in solar output (the sun fluctuates in intensity over time) and it is also caused over a much much longer term, by the Milankovitch Cycles - which is 100,000 year long cycles caused by periodic variaitons in earth's orbit around the sun (hence causing changes in solar exposure). These 100,000 year long cycles are responsble for our major ice ages and interglacial warming.

It would have been nice if the poster had noted what the topic is in the title...rather than simply note a time and channel.

And all these wonderfull scientists that helped make this are now at least 10000$ richer.

If you don't know what I'm on about, search around for news articles about the big oil companies putting out the message to any and all scientists that they would be paid 10000$ and up for any counter and refutal they published against man's role in global warming.

[edit on 10/3/07 by thematrix]

If you don't know that CO2 is and has always been a result instead of a cause of rising temperatures one could make the claim that you have been reading choir material. The simple fact that CO2 in the MWP, for the numerically challanged, was 1/3 that of present does not mean increases did not follow the temperature increase. It is rediculous to say the statement isn't true simply because the CO2 was 1/3 of present. But for arguments sake, what if that was true? (Which it is not) That would mean there must have been another reason for the unprecidented warming before the current unprecidented warming. Then there was the Enmian period before the unprecidented warming^2. Still waiting for the scientific proof that AGW (CO2 induced) is real. Also the warming ended in 1998 and there will be a period of cooling by 2030. The debate is over. Even us skeptics can say that unless there is a rational explaination as much as I hate to use the warmer's techniques. There are no peer reviewed papers supporting AGW, the concensus in the scientific community has changed to a natural effect. I think I like the sound of that. Not true but that never stopped the warmers which are driven by an anti-capitalistic, left wing political effort to enslave all of mankind under a UN powered one world government of corruption.

Originally posted by CradleoftheNuclides
Also the warming ended in 1998

Did it?

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'.

environment.guardian.co.uk...

Good on Wunsch.

OK...

Channel 4 have done it again... cutting edge TV to provide us with a balanced view of topics at the forefront of society... hmm... OK maybe not...

I decided to watch the documentary "The great global warming swindle" with an open mind but found myself uncomfortable from the start...

I questioned many of the, so called, facts they bring up from the very start...


The first being the fact that Global temperatures was on the increase up to WW2 and that straight after WW2 global temperatures declined until the mid 70's to early 80s when they started to rise again.

The argument is that the period after WW2 (known as the post war economic boom) was one of the busiest times in history for industry. Mass production went into overdrive producing cars, fridges, and all the other consumer products we now take for granted, to go in all the new homes that where being built in a period of mass development/expansion. This was an extremely high period of man made CO2 production.

Obviously if there is a correlation between man made CO2 and global warming then this period should see the biggest temperature rise when in fact it shows the opposite, proving that there is no connection between CO2 and global temps... right... WRONG

When fossil fuels are burnt they not only release CO2... the release various other gases and also small particulates (mainly consisting of soot, ash and sulphur compounds) These particulates go up into the atmosphere and change the optical properties of clouds, making them more reflective, and this reflects sunlight back into space. This global dimming has a cooling effect that has masked the effects of global warming since the beginning of the industrial revolution. One of the side effects of these particulates is respiratory disorders in human populations... This led to particle filters being introduced to industry in the mid 1970's with the aim to reduce the amount of human health problems associated with this type of pollution. It is also around this time that global temperatures showed a dramatic rise. The program decided to neglect, or maybe omit, this information from its program.



Another of the programs "facts" that amazed me was the claim that "volcano's produce more CO2 in a year than every factory on earth since the beginning of the industrial revolution"

This is also not true... According to Terry Gerlach, US Geological Survey, Cascades Volcano Observatory...

"The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most abundant gas emitted by volcanoes. Volcanologists estimate an annual global output of 200 million tons of volcanic CO2 per year. This natural source is balanced by natural processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

By comparison, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation produce 130 times more CO2 than all the world's volcanoes put together (adding 26,000 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of 8,000 Kilaueas (Hawaii's most active volcano). This comparison suggests humans are producing CO2 at a rate unprecedented in a geological history stretching back many millions of years. Clearly, there is need to think seriously about the implications of human CO2 emissions and to consider how current energy policy and land use practices may impact our collective future"

So basically we pump 130 time more CO2 into the air than all the world volcano's combined!!!




In my humble opinion one of the most controversial and disturbing claims is the statement that Environmentalists are conspiring against the third world to prevent it from developing its technology's. The program even went as far as to say that environmentalists are the cause of problems in Africa and that industry's and corporates hold the key to rescuing Africa...

The irony of this is amazing... Farmers/workers in third world countries are mostly owned by big corporates who are competing with each other to bring us (the consumer in the west) the best and cheapest in their goal of market domination.

The farmers/workers are often paid extremely low wages and can barely feed their family's... The land is often exploited leading to soil erosion and draught for future generations...

So the claim is that the solution to Africa's problems is the same as the cause?? oh no... they forgot to mentions what caused the problem in the first place...

No environmentalist is trying to stop Africa developing... most are simply trying to promote sustainable development (something the corporate no nothing about)

In fact the program uses an African health center as proof of this... it show an African health worker who says that the 2 small solar panels, that have been provided, do not produce enough electricity to run the lights and the fridge (which contains the drugs) at the same time. The program says that if they had a coal burning power station they would not have to worry about this and that it is the fear of global warming that is holding back this small health center and putting lives at risk...

Now hold on a second... wouldn't it be simpler to just give them more solar panels to power the center (with emergency backup generators)????

Another stupid claim was the bit about "Not having electric in rural Africa causes deaths because people have to burn open log fires in their homes to cook food. The smoke from these fires causes lung disease that kills thousands"

Er... wouldn't it be easier to just build a chimney? When i grew up we had an open fire in our front room and no one died because the smoke went up the chimney (which is hardly a complex thing to build)

Besides... Africa does have electricity... and power stations... It is just very difficult to get the power to the more remote areas and solar panels offer a way around this.




Another section of the program talks about Global warming being based in a political agenda by Margaret Thatcher in 1980's Britain to promote Nuclear power stations... it tries to connect Marxists and anti-capitalist with capitalists and democrats. It contradicts itself many times, first stating the Global Warming theory started in the 70's... later it says the 80's... then it was Thatcher.... later it was Anarchists... maybe Thatcher was an Anarchist democrat space monkey that farted CO2 straight into whales mouths and killed dolphins with laser harpoons in an attempt to promote nuclear power... it gets so confusing my brain switched off...




I found this whole program extremely frustrating with its blatant bias and no real examination of science... It set out from the start to promote one idea without evaluating other ideas therefore committing the crime it claimed it was out to stop?!?!?

The program makes the claim that the Environmentalist, the ICCP and all the other scientists/organisations that support the Man made global warming theory do not believe that the sun effects global temperatures... this is a ridiculous claim... Everybody knows that the planet has gone through regular temp changes (ice ages and warm periods)

In fact the program forget to mention one of the biggest cause of global temp change which is the Milankovitch cycles.

The Milankovitch cycles comprises of three dominant cycles of the planets circumnavigation of the Sun, eccentricity, axis tilt and precession. This produces a 100,000 year cycle of warming and cooling. Now scientist can view the effects this graduale cycle has had, on our planets past, using ice core samples and even tree ring readings. However, not all natural temperature changes have been gradual... there are examples of abrupt climate change in our past, one example being the warming of the middle ages which was followed by an abrupt mini ice age. But it is not these changes alone that are worrying scientist... It is these changes combined with the unprecedented change in the earths atmosphere. The amount of CO2 in our atmosphere has increased to levels last seen 650,000 years ago... and this level is rising fast...

The program neglects so much, and fills the gap with so little, its almost unbelievable... That is until i see who wrote and directed the program...

Martin Durkin...

Now... lets have a bit of history on this guy to put things in perspective...

"In October 1998 a television producer named Martin Durkin took a proposal to the BBC’s science series, Horizon. Silicone breast implants, he claimed, far from harming women, were in fact beneficial, reducing the risk of breast cancer. Horizon commissioned a researcher to find out whether or not his assertion was true. After a thorough review, the researcher reported that Mr Durkin had ignored a powerful body of evidence contradicting his claims. Martin Durkin withdrew his proposal. Instead of dropping it, however, he took it to Channel 4 and, astonishingly, sold it to their science series, Equinox."

"Mr Durkin has often been accused of taking liberties with the facts. In 1997 he made a series for Channel 4 called "Against Nature", which compared environmentalists with Nazis, conspiring against the world’s poor. No one would suggest that green claims should not be subjected to critical examination, but the people he interviewed were lied to about the contents of the programmes and given no chance to respond to the accusations the series made.

The Independent Television Commission handed down one of the most damning verdicts it has ever reached: the programme makers "distorted by selective editing" the views of the interviewees and "misled" them about the "content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part." Channel 4 was forced to make a humiliating prime time apology. After the series was broadcast, I discovered that the assistant producer and several of its interviewees worked for the right-wing libertarian magazine masquerading as "Living Marxism", which has just been successfully sued by ITN. All the arguments Against Nature made had been rehearsed in LM."

"So what do you do with a director with a record like this, who has brought your channel into disrepute, who has misled both his contributors and his audience? If you are Michael Jackson, the head of Channel 4, you commission him to make more programmes."

"Neither Martin Durkin nor, extraordinarily, Charles Furneaux, the commissioning editor of the science series Equinox, has a science background. They don’t need one, for science on Channel 4 has been reduced to a crude manifesto for corporate libertarianism."




The really sad thing is that this program taps into what people want to believe... That all the cosy little comforts of the modern world don't really hurt anyone...

"You see... i knew it was all rubbish... now i can continue driving my Jag and flying abroad 5 times a year"

And Martin Durkin knows this...

I live in Canada and I the last two Christmases we have not had any snow. The weather stays pretty mild and then February get's cold. I think this is a continuing trend, it's been getting like that for the last 5 years, but the last two years were pretty consistant in the city where I am.

Global warming is happening, but what is causing it is not that clear. I don't think it's man. Or least not to the degree we are getting credit. I do think this is a natural cycle that the earth is going to see again. I think it's going to cause a lot of the weird never before seen weather patterns and I do think that we are not being prepared for it, cause there is little that can be done.

What would happen if the Governments of the world came out tomorrow, or next week, and next year and said, based on research we feel this is a natural cycle that the earth is going through. We have absolutly no control over this and nothing that you do, no cans you recycle will stop this.

This natural earth cycle will cause greater and greater earthquakes, tsunami's, tornado's, huricaines, volcano eruptions, illness, famines, floods, etc.

The people of the world would not react well to this, and it would probably cause more problems than it would fix.

Instead we have global warming, something we can pull together to control, something that we can recycle a can over and feel good about. Something that puts us back in the drivers seat.

I am not saying that we should not still try to reduce things that are bad for the earth, ofcourse we should, but let's look for realistic answers for what is happening and the changes that will be coming upon the earth.

Some might even say these changes were predicted years ago.

Originally posted by Essan
I thought it quite amusing that they first showed a graph depicting the Medieval Warm Period as being warmer than today ....... and then claimed that CO2 levels follow temperature rises. Yet when - according to the programme - temperatures were higher than today, CO2 levels were one third lower than current levels. Therefore, current CO2 levels cannot be a result of recent temp rises, as claimed.

An obvious inconsistency in the argument that I'm amazed anyone missed ....

It is not an inconsistency...

During warming cycles CO2 levels slowly rise...keyword slowly...meanwhile temperatures rise... If the warming trend continues before CO2 levels stabilize, then CO2 levels will continue to rise.

Since we have been warming throughout the time period known as the Holocene, CO2 levels have been rising too, and since on the overall the Earth has been warming for the past 12,500 years, the Holocene, for "longer" than at any time in the last 400,000 years, then CO2 levels do not stabilize, but continue rising.

This has happened in the Earth before, before mankind was even around to see it. During a time period known as the Ordovician Period, which occurred 460-488 million years ago, temperatures were as warm as they are today for thousands of years, yet CO2 levels were during that period 4,000 to 4,400 ppm.

During the Early Ordovician period temperatures were much warmer than today for a long time, CO2 levels were around 4,000-4,050 ppm, but in the middle of this time period temperatures dropped and for a while they were as warm as today, then they lowered more and there was a cold event.

When temperatures were dropping, CO2 levels were still increasing for thousands of years up to 4,400 ppm.

If anything time periods like this in the Earth's geological record shows the "mankind is at fault for climate change" are wrong.

There have been other time periods, such as the Middle Carboniferus, when temperatures were also as warm as today, yet CO2 levels were 350ppm, almost comparable to today's levels.

You see, the geological record has proven that there have been times in the past when Earth had higher concentrations of CO2, such as during the late Ordovian period which had CO2 levels at 4,400ppm, yet the Earth did not get warmer. Temperatures were comparable to today, until there was a sudden cooling event, which produced mass extinction of most of the spieces which existed back then, and CO2 levels stayed at 4,400 ppm for quite a while.

Here are two graphs, one showing the temperature trends during the last 400,000 years, the other is showing the CO2 trends during that same time period.

Do notice that the warming during the holocene has been for far longer than at any time during the rest of the 400,000 years.





[edit on 20-3-2007 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib

During warming cycles CO2 levels slowly rise...keyword slowly...meanwhile temperatures rise... If the warming trend continues before CO2 levels stabilize, then CO2 levels will continue to rise.

You mean they rise slowly and then suddenly shoot up, despite the preceding 4,000 years showing a small but noticeable decline in temperatures.

And how come the same never happened 410kya? That Interglacial was the last one to be similar to the current one in terms of milankovitch cycles and it too lasted over 10,000 years - as clearly shown in the graph. Yet nothing like the 20th century has ever occurred before.