"The Great Global Warming Swindle" (Ch4, 8/3/07)

[Paul Mobbs]

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Hi all,

Get y'er complaints drafted (there's a summary of the programme on the web 
site)! 

Martin Durkin, illuminati of the revolutionary communists who fell off the one 
end of the political spectrum and ended up on the far right, has excelled 
himself yet again!

After distorting science in order to make his series of "Against Nature" 
programmes (I think he had an ITC ruling against him for that, and C4 had to 
apologise on air) and his other "science-fact" factual expose of how silicone 
implants are good for you, he's now returned from the cryogenics lab to bring 
us "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

Is this Channel 4's attempt at a "Big Brother" in the science slot?


P.




http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html

"The Great Global Warming Swindle"

Channel 4 Thursday 8 March at 9pm


In a polemical and thought-provoking documentary, film-maker Martin Durkin 
argues that the theory of man-made global warming has become such a powerful 
political force that other explanations for climate change are not being 
properly aired.

The film brings together the arguments of leading scientists who disagree with 
the prevailing consensus that a 'greenhouse effect' of carbon dioxide 
released by human activity is the cause of rising global temperatures.

Instead the documentary highlights recent research that the effect of the 
sun's radiation on the atmosphere may be a better explanation for the regular 
swings of climate from ice ages to warm interglacial periods and back again.

The film argues that the earth's climate is always changing, and that rapid 
warmings and coolings took place long before the burning of fossil fuels. It 
argues that the present single-minded focus on reducing carbon emissions not 
only may have little impact on climate change, it may also have the 
unintended consequence of stifling development in the third world, prolonging 
endemic poverty and disease.

The film features an impressive roll-call of experts, including nine 
professors – experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, environmental 
science, biogeography and paleoclimatology – from such reputable institutions 
as MIT, NASA, the International Arctic Research Centre, the Institut Pasteur, 
the Danish National Space Center and the Universities of London, Ottawa, 
Jerusalem, Winnipeg, Alabama and Virginia.

The film hears from scientists who dispute the link between carbon dioxide 
levels and global temperatures.

'The ice core record goes to the very heart of the problem we have,' says Tim 
Ball, Climatologist and Prof Emeritus of Geography at the University of 
Winnipeg in the documentary. 'They said if CO2 increases in the atmosphere, 
as a greenhouse gas, then the temperature will go up'.

In fact, the experts in the film argue that increased CO2 levels are actually 
a result of temperature rises, not their cause, and that this alternate view 
is rarely heard. 'So the fundamental assumption, the most fundamental 
assumption of the whole theory of climate change due to humans, is shown to 
be wrong.'

'I've often heard it said that there is a consensus of thousands of scientists 
on the global warming issue, that humans are causing a catastrophic change to 
the climate system,' says John Christy, Professor and Director of the Earth 
System Science Center, NSSTC University of Alabama. 'Well I am one scientist, 
and there are many, that simply think that is not true.'

The film examines an alternative theory that explains global temperatures, 
based on research by Professor Eigil Friis-Christensen of the Danish Space 
Center. The professor and his team found that as solar activity increases, 
and the sun flares, cloud formation on earth is significantly diminished and 
temperature rises.

Ian Clark, Professor of Isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology at the Dept 
of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa explains: 'Solar activity over the 
last hundred years, over the last several hundred years, correlates very 
nicely, on a decadal basis, with temperature.'

Finally, the film argues that restricting CO2 emissions could actually be 
damaging for people in the developing world. James Shikwati, Kenyan director 
of the Inter Region Economic Network, says: 'The rich countries can afford to 
engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy, but for 
us we are still at the stage of survival.

'I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar 
panel is going to power a railway network, it might work, maybe, to power a 
small transistor radio.

'The thing that emerges from the whole environmental debate is the point that 
there is somebody keen to kill the African dream, and the African dream is to 
develop. We are being told don't touch your resources, don't touch your oil, 
don't touch your coal; that is suicide.'



- -- 


"We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government,
nor are we for this party nor against the other but we are
for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom,
that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness,
righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with
God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
(Edward Burroughs, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')

Paul's book, "Energy Beyond Oil", is out now!
For details see http://www.fraw.org.uk/ebo/

Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations
3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England
tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864
email - mobbsey at gn.apc.org
website - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/index.html
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