Channel 4 : Great Global Warming Swindle

From : George Marshall at http://coinet.org.uk
Sent : 09 March 2007 12:51:21
Subject : THE GREAT CHANNEL FOUR SWINDLE

This article has been posted to the blog http://www.climatedenial.org. Please fee free to circulate and add your comments on the site.

THE GREAT CHANNEL FOUR SWINDLE
George Marshall

Last night Channel Four kindly gave an hour and half and a large budget to the international network of professional climate change deniers. ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ was a propaganda gift to the various vested interests who seek to undermine the fragile political and social will to take action on this global action.

And it was sometimes very convincing, as strongly worded opinions often are when they are not subject to any verification or external challenge. For example, there are excellent rebuttals against the contention that global warming is correlated to cosmic rays (for example see... )

There was only one scientific advisor on the programme, Martin Livermore, whose sole scientific qualification is that he is the Director of a web-based think tank, The Scientific Alliance. The Alliance was set up by in 2001 by Robert Durward, the fiercely anti-green director of the British Aggregates Association, and Foresight Communications, a Westminster public relations and lobbying company, to “counter scare-mongering by the so-called green lobby". (For more…)

The Scientific Alliance has no affiliation with any recognised scientific body but, like most of the contributors to the programme, it does have very strong links with the US public relations and lobbying organisations that have been so effective in setting the Bush agenda on climate change.

The writer and presenter of the programme was Martin Durkin. Although it was written in a highly personal and opinionated style- speaking freely of “lies”, and the “shrill frenzy” of “scare stories” – we never saw Durkin or discovered his personal credentials. As George Monbiot has revealed Durkin is closely affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party which has a strong ideological opposition to environmental science (more on Durkin and the RCP.

In 1997 Channel Four was forced to issue a humiliating public apology over a previous series of anti-environment programmes directed by Durkin called “Against Nature”. The Independent Television Commission found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.”

For this programme Durkin drew up a dream team of scientists who have built personal careers as media pundits debunking the peer-reviewed work of their colleagues. There are few of them, but they are well supported by the Washington lobbies and kept very busy with media debates, documentaries and opinion pieces. (I have personally debated with five of them in media debates).

Is it any surprise then, that they were so persuasive. Most of the people on the programme are professional communicators who are more familiar with the chat show than the lab. Of course they give good interviews - it is what they do for a living.

And let us not forget that we all want to believe them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to believe that the science is unsettled, that all that carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere really has no effect, and that we do not have to worry about the future.

It would be entirely possible to put together a similar programme, with a string of credible former academics, to argue that smoking does no cause cancer, that HIV does not cause AIDS, or that black people are less intelligent. However, Channel Four would not dare broadcast the programme and we would not believe them if they did. Is it not a reflection of the deep public ambivalence about climate change that these dissenters are given such a prominent and uncritical showcase and that we are so keen to listen to them?

Make up your own minds from their records. Here is a little more information on some of the people who appeared on the programme:

Fred Singer. Despite the caption on the programme, Singer has retired from the University of Virginia and has not had a single article accepted for any peer-reviewed scientific journal for 20 years. His main work has been as a hired gun for business interests to undermine scientific research on environmental and health matters. Before turning to climate change he has argued that CFCs do not cause ozone depletion and second hand smoke does not cause cancer (more... ). In 1990 he founded "The Science and Environment Policy Project", which aggressively contradicts climate science and has received direct funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal and ARCO. Exxon is also among the funders ($20,000 in 1998 and 2000)

Patrick Michaels is the most prominent US climate change denier. In the programme he claimed “I’ve never been paid a nickel by the old and gas companies” which is a curious claim. According to the US journalist Ross Gebspan Michaels has received direct funding from, among others German Coal Mining Association ($49,000), Edison Electric Institute ($15,000), and the Western Fuels Association ($63,000) an association of US coal producing interests (more...). The WFA is one of the most powerful forces in the US actively denying the basic science of climate change, funding, amongs other things, the Greening Earth Society which is directed by Patrick Michaels. Tom Wigley, one of the leading IPCC scientists, describes Michaels work as "a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation". (More on Michaels…)

Philip Stott was captioned as a Professor at the University of London although he is retired and is therefore free of any academic accountability. Stott is a geographer by training and has no qualifications in climate science. Since retiring Stott has aimed to become Britain’s leading anti-green pundit dedicating himself to wittily criticizing rainforest campaigns (with Patrick Moore), advocating genetic engineering and claiming that “global warming is the new fundamentalist religion.”

Patrick Moore is Stott’s Canadian equivalent. Since a very personal and painful falling out with Greenpeace in 1986 Moore has put his considerable campaigning energies into undermining environmentalists, especially his former friends and colleagues. Typical of his rhetoric was his claim in the programme that environmentalists were “anti-human” and “treat humans as scum”. Throughout the 1990s Moore worked as lead consultant for the British Columbian Timber Products Association undermining Greenpeace’s international campaign to protect old growth forest there. Whenever he has the chance he also makes strong public statements in favour of genetic engineering, nuclear power, logging the Amazon, and industrial fishing- all, strangely, lead campaigns for Greenpeace (more on Moore..)

Piers Corbyn has no academic status and his role in such programmes is to promote his own weather prediction business. He has steadfastly refused to ever subject his climatological theories to any form of external review or scrutiny.

Richard Lindzen. As a Professor of Meteorology at the credible Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lindzen is by far the most reputable academic among the US climate deniers and, for this reason, he is heavily cited by sympathetic journalists such as Melanie Phillips and Michael Crichton. His arguments though are identical to the other deniers – for example an article in the Wall Street Journal (June 11 2001) he claims that "there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends or what causes them".
He is strongly associated with the other people on the programme though co-authored reports, articles, conference appearances and co-signed statements.

Tim Ball was captioned as the University of Winnipeg. In fact he left in 1996 since when he has run political campaigns through two organisations he helped found: the Natural Resources Stewardship Project and the Friends of Science which, according to their websites aim to run "a proactive grassroots campaign to counter the Kyoto Protocol”; and “encourage and assist the Canadian Federal Government to re-evaluate the Kyoto Protocol”. Ian Clark is also on the board of the NRSP.

This article was posted on the 9th March to http://www.climatedenial.org

From : Jim Scott - Save Our World
Sent : 09 March 2007 15:48:14
Subject : Whose Great Warming Swindle ?

From: Save our World
To: Guardian Letters
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 3:33 PM
Subject: Whose Great Warming Swindle?

Sir,

Whose Great Global Warming Swindle?

The disgraceful thing about last night's Channel 4 Programme 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' ('Last Night's TV' 09 March 2007), is not that alternative theories to human causation of global warming were presented, but that they were presented as 'the truth' without any counter-arguments being aired at all. This might be acceptable as satire for a technically well informed audience, but is inexcusable for a general audience that is unable to weigh-up one side of proclaimed evidence without being given the other. It is particularly irresponsible of Channel 4 to show this programme because it inevitably creates confusion and doubt in uninformed viewers' minds as to whether they need to take action themselves, and support action by others (including political), that could well affect the future of their descendants' lives and the future of life on earth.

Unfortunately, the time has passed when disinterested enquiry for its own sake was the guiding light of science, and we have to accept that scientific evidence is increasingly sought and selected in order to support an already decided ideological or theoretical position. This is all the more reason why the producers, in all forms of public media, must be required to present both legitimate arguments and counter-arguments on an issue as vital as climate change. One contributer to the programme last night ridiculed the notion of climate sceptics being regarded like Holocaust deniers. However, the dangers of causing public confusion are such, that a case can indeed be made for inserting a clause in the current Climate Change Bill to make it a punishable offence knowingly to spread misinformation about climate change, on a par with Holocaust denial.

Yours sincerely,

Jim Scott,
chairperson,
SAVE OUR WORLD

14 Richborne Terrace,
London SW8 1AU

020 7640 0492 & 07717 221617

here's the message board from medialens, poking fun at channel 4's egg on the face :-

http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1173429951.html

Well, even though the Telegraph has an article full of disparaging and dismissive words, at least the Independent and the Observer are taking this swindle seriously...and it seems Carl Wunsch might make an official complaint against the film maker...

===============================================

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2347526.ece

Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4
This expert in oceanography quoted in last week's debunking of the Gore green theory says he was 'seriously misrepresented'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 11 March 2007

It was the television programme that set out to show that most of the world's climate scientists are misleading us when they say humanity is heating up the Earth by emitting carbon dioxide. And The Great Global Warming Swindle, screened by Channel 4 on Thursday night, convinced many viewers that it is indeed untrue that the gas is to blame for global warming.

But now the programme - and the channel - is facing a serious challenge to its own credibility after one of the most distinguished scientists that it featured said his views had been "grossly distorted" by the film, and made it clear that he believed human pollution did warm the climate.

Professor Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said he had been "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" on its content. He added that he is considering making a formal complaint.

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."

Any complaint would provoke a crisis at Channel 4, now recovering from the Jade Goody Big Brother storm. It had to make a rare public apology after the Independent Television Commission convicted previous programmes on environmental issues by the same film-maker, Martin Durkin, of similar offences - and is already facing questions on why it accepted another programme from him.

The commission found that the editing of interviews with four contributors to a series called Against Nature had "distorted or misrepresented their known views".

Professor Wunsch said: "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled."

When told what the commission had found, he said: "That is what happened to me." He said he believes it is "an almost inescapable conclusion" that "if man adds excess CO2 to the atmosphere, the climate will warm".

He went on: "The movie was terrible propaganda. It is characteristic of propaganda that you take an area where there is legitimate dispute and you claim straight out that people who disagree with you are swindlers. That is what the film does in any area where some things are subject to argument."

Mr Durkin last night said that Professor Wunsch was "most certainly not duped into appearing into the programme" and that it "had not in any way misrepresented what he said".

Before the programme was shown, the IoS asked Channel 4 why it had commissioned another film from Mr Durkin and, further, whether it was making any special checks on its accuracy.

A spokesman said the programme made by Mr Durkin for which it had had to apologise was a decade old, adding: "We treat Martin as any other film-maker."

* David Cameron will tomorrow unveil three schemes to tax air travel in order to combat global warming. He is to consult on whether to impose VAT or fuel duty on domestic flights, institute a flight tax targeted at the most polluting engines, or to set up a "green miles scheme" to tax frequent flyers at a higher rate. The revenue raised would be used for tax cuts to help families.

The cold, hard facts about global warming

What do most scientists believe caused global warming?

The vast majority are convinced it is human emissions of carbon dioxide. It was established scientifically 180 years ago - and has never been seriously disputed - that natural levels of the gas given off by decaying vegetation and the oceans help to keep the Earth warm; without it, and other natural greenhouse gases, the planet would be some 20C colder and we would freeze. Adding even the so far relatively small amounts from human activities makes us warmer.

Has the world warmed before?

Yes, and big warmings over prehistoric times were not started by increasing CO2 levels; changes in solar activity are more likely. Levels of the gas started rising some 800 years into the warming, but then probably reinforced it, making it bigger and longer. Temperature and CO2 are interdependent; when one goes up the other follows. This time it is different because vast amounts of the gas are being artificially put into the atmosphere by humans.

What about more recent history?

There was a warm period in Europe in the Middle Ages, again probably caused by solar activity, but it does not seem to have been a worldwide phenomenon, although records are scanty.

So is the sun responsible now?

Some sceptics say so and probably it played the major role until quite recently. But over the past three decades, solar activity has scarcely risen, while temperatures have shot up - a fact disguised in the film. What has gone up is CO2 and even top sceptic Nigel Lawson admits it is "highly likely" that the gas has "played a significant part" in global warming this century.

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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2031455,00.html

Climate scientist 'duped to deny global warming'

Ben Goldacre and David Adam
Sunday March 11, 2007
The Observer

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.

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.'

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/03/11/dl1101.xml

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 11/03/2007

Green tax won't help the planet or Tories

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published last month, gave the impression that the debate about the reality of global warming and its man-made causes is over: the earth is heating up, and increased CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are to blame.

That impression is false, however, or at least misleading: there are still many uncertainties in climate science and prediction, and there are many reputable scientists who do not accept that the ever-increasing amounts of CO2 human beings are pumping into the atmosphere are responsible for whatever changes in planetary temperature are happening.

Some of those dissenting voices were on display in The Great Global Warming Swindle, a powerful programme broadcast last week. Channel 4 is to be congratulated for not being intimidated or bullied out of transmitting the documentary: it is difficult to imagine today's BBC having the courage to assault a doctrine so entrenched in politically correct opinion.
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While it will not have convinced die-hard advocates of the view that global warming is man-made, the programme certainly demonstrated that the appearance of unanimity among scientists is deceptive. There are scientifically serious voices raising doubts about humanity's contribution to climate change. They have found it hard to get a hearing, not least because the oil companies did immense damage to any form of scepticism about global warming when it became apparent that they had bribed hundreds of scientists to act as PR lobbyists for the claim that "global warming isn't happening and if it is, it isn't caused by CO2 emissions". This immediately made anyone who raised doubts about the relation between CO2 emissions and global warming look like the executives from big tobacco companies who tried to claim that there was no evidence that smoking causes cancer.

David Cameron has embraced the orthodoxy on global warming with a passion. This may be due to his conviction that if he did not do so the Conservative Party would be perceived as the political equivalent of a greedy and selfish cigarette manufacturer. He has already changed the party logo from a blue torch to a green tree. Next week, at Mr Cameron's behest, Al Gore, evangelist-in-chief for the cause of reducing CO2 in order to diminish global warming, will lecture the shadow cabinet on what should be done. And George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, will announce a raft of new "green taxes" as "options to be looked at".

Mr Osborne's potential proposals include VAT on flights, new taxes on jet fuel, and a "green air mile allowance" for each person which, if exceeded, will trigger ever-higher financial penalties. All the proposals involve hitting the ordinary traveller with higher taxes for going on holiday. And yet Al Gore was revealed last week to have a "carbon footprint" 20 times that of the average American: whatever else he has been doing, Al Gore has not diminished his CO2 emitting power.

Mr Cameron deserves more than the benefit of the doubt for his attempts to widen the appeal of his party and change perceptions of its motives. But he is running risks with these proposals: Labour may portray him as wanting to increase taxes on hard-working people by penalising those who spend their money on holidays for their families. Furthermore, there are now signs that the so-called "unanimous consensus" on climate change is disintegrating. Mr Cameron may be about to learn that the danger inherent in following political fashions is that they can change very quickly.

A less alarmist and more thoughtful consideration of the nature of the risks we face and of the most appropriate action to deal with them would be a better way forward.

It is not as if the additional taxes on air travel will actually "save the planet" anyway: the contribution of the UK's air traffic to the total of CO2 emitted globally every year is so small as to be almost insignificant. This is gesture politics - and it is a gesture which will hurt the vast swathe of hard-working lower-income groups who aspire to something more. Those are precisely the groups that the Tories lost to Labour in 1997, and which they have to win back if they are to regain power.

Considering action to reduce dependence on fossil fuels is sensible, and certainly makes good policy sense even if you are not convinced by the case put forward by Al Gore and others. Oil is going to run out at some future date, and most of what is left is in the Middle East, the most unstable region on the planet. If the Conservatives are serious about diminishing our dependence on fossil fuels, they should come up with plans for an increase in the number of nuclear power stations, not an increase in taxes on air travel.

Mr Cameron rightly wants to make Gordon Brown look like yesterday's man. He will do so - but only if he is brave enough to follow logic and evidence rather than fad and fashion.

=========================================================

Sheumais,

The Campaign against Climate Change is a group of Climate Change campaigners. We don't make any claim to be Climatologists, let alone Paleoclimatologists.

This Portal is for Climate Change Activists, those of us in CCC who are actively working on Climate Change issues, to share news and views.

We are not the highest authority on any subject, although we all seem to have very strong and highly correlated opinions. That's not to say that we agree on everything, and so to keep the discussions nice and polite, we do try to keep this weblog (blog) fairly lighthearted and relaxed.

The purpose of this particular thread of the weblog is to collect together all the links to people who are busy debunking and deconstructing and negatively critiquing the Channel 4 film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" .

You will find links to websites and archives where people with much greater claim to the higher echelons of truth are writing - people actively engaged in Climate Change research - people who have degrees and doctorates in various aspects of Climatology.

There are now several places online where far more of the film has been debunked than I will ever have time to. Please read the whole of this blog page and follow the links. It may seem tiresome, but Climate Change is a pretty large and all-encompassing subject, and there is much to read and learn. Myself, I am only in the foothills of understanding.

But, with a high school grasp of physics, chemistry and geography, you can for yourself debunk the swindlous film. So I highly recommend that you refresh your mind if you studied these subjects, or read them up if you didn't.

Many of the assertions and arguments in the film have been used by sceptics (skeptics in the USA) over the last 15 years. They have also regularly been debunked (shown to be false) over the last 15 years. Plus, the whole science of climatology has evolved over the last 15 years, so the truth has gradually been improved and modified.

Yes, the IPCC Report might well seem complex, but by looking up a few key terms and expressions, you will be able to understand its main thrust. It took me quite a while to get into the 2001 IPCC report, and when I did, it took me a while to reflect on how diverse statements in the report linked together to produce a worrying whole.

You have a brain, clearly, so I recommend you use it.

When I get the chance, I'm going to attach a diagram of the global Carbon Cycle, simplified in the extreme, drawn by my colleague Dr Al Rodger, who works for the campaign group "Take Global Warming Seriously" and is a member of Poole Agenda 21. He knows a thing or two about Global Warming. Well, he knows thousands of things about Global Warming, actually, far more than I do.

http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1824

There's a lot of Carbon cycling in and out of the Oceans, Biomass, Soils and Atmosphere, but the key fact to note is that there is rapid destabilising accumulation of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere. This is mostly the fault of human activities such as burning Fossil Fuels, logging rainforest, changing the uses of land, intensive agriculture. But the worst of these is : burning Fossil Fuels.

In the mean time, try to follow George Monbiot's arguments :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2032575,00.html

as he is on the ball, on the money, and on the side of right.

If you missed this swindlous film and want to comment here on some of what I believe is its "farcical pseudo-science", come on down ! Here's the full film :-

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831

Watch it in chunks if you find it irritating, and don't let it anger you so much you steam from your ears.

And remember, CHECK THE SCIENCE, cos it seems to me that the film glosses over some things, mixes some things up, and over-simplifies some things - or just plain gets some things wrong.