Rebuttal of THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE

March 18, 2007 by jo

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[ COMMENT from jo

Climate Changers,

I have finally found some time to begin my rebuttal of the Martin Durkin film
THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE.

What follows is my transcript of the film, as viewed on
Google Video,
interspersed with comments and links.

I will update this entry, to add more as I get the time.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Audio of 1960s jazz lounge music. Visual of clouds from a banking aeroplane. ]

[ Title superimposed - "THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE". ]

[ Professor Timothy Ball, Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg ] When
people say we don't believe in Global Warming. I say no, I believe in Global Warming.
I don't believe that human CO2 is causing that warming.

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[ COMMENT from jo

This is the same Timothy F. Ball who retired from the University of Winnipeg in 1996,
apparently, and has not published any peer-reviewed original research for over a decade,
according to DeSmogBlog :-

http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1272

This is the same Tim Ball who as recently as 5 February 2007 has claimed that global
temperature trends are towards cooling, in a piece he wrote himself for the
"Canada Free Press" :-

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm

"Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London,
Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles.
Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling
became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact.
By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming
became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring,
as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling."

The claim that temperatures "declined from 1940 to 1980" can be disputed, and
could be considered a "baseless assertion". It really depends on whose graphs
you look at. There is clearly an upwards warming blip around the time of the
Second World War, and a fairly flat-lining warming profile after that. For a clearer
picture, view the following graphs :-

NASA 2005 :-

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif

http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/delaware/biotrends/trends85.JPG

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/arctic_temps2.JPG

IPCC 1995 :-

http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/graphics/large/22.jpg

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Professor Nir Shaviv, Institute of Physics, University of Jerusalem ] A few years ago
if you would ask me I would tell you it's CO2. Why ? Because just like everyone
else in the public I listened to what the media had to say.

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[ COMMENT from jo

Professor Nir Shaviv's work and words has been presented out of context, it seems.

In a statement made on 12 August 2003, the then Dr Nir Shaviv is reported to have
said :-

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-08/huoj-gwn081203.php

"The operative significance of our research is that a significant reduction of the
release of greenhouse gases will not significantly lower the global temperature, since
only about a third of the warming over the past century should be attributed to man."

Thus, Professor Nir Shaviv is not denying humankind's contribution to Global Warming,
and it could therefore be viewed as deceptive for the film maker to include these remarks
without giving the full context of Professor Shaviv's work and conclusions.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Visuals of "Climate Change - Britain under Threat" BBC1, of a tidal wave crashing
into London, and London under significant flood water. ]

[ Narrator ] Each day the news reports grow more fantastically Apocalyptic.

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[ COMMENT from jo

This statement by the Narrator is opinion and not fact.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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Politicians no longer dare to express any doubt about Climate Change.

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[ COMMENT from jo

This statement by the Narrator is opinion and not fact.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Lord Lawson of Blaby ] There is such intolerance of any dissenting voice.

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[ COMMENT from jo

The interviewee is entitled to his opinions, but he does not attempt to quantify what
he claims, and so the film maker is foolish to use this claim as a foundational argument.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Speaker on stage at a public event "...are some of the worst Climate Criminals
on the Planet...". Audio of guitar strumming. ]

[ Lord Lawson of Blaby ] This is the most politically incorrect thing possible - is to
doubt this Climate Change orthodoxy.

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[ COMMENT from jo

The interviewee is entitled to his opinions, but he does not attempt to quantify what
he claims, and so the film maker is foolish to use this claim as a foundational argument.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Narrator ] Global Warming has gone beyond politics. It is a new kind of morality.

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[ COMMENT from jo

Thankfully, Global Warming has gone beyond opinionated, uninformed political partisan
bickering and is now established as a factual, scientific basis for making sound, right
policy decisions.

Yes, this is an issue of right and wrong, of how we treat the environment
and our fellow human beings and future generations of all forms of life. Yes, that's
morality.

Instead of having a vain or vapid conflict about supposed ills and woes, we
are now having real education and decision-making about observed and evidenced
problems. The merely political transforms into the moral. Good thing too.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Visuals of Climate March 4th November 2006 ]

[ Jeremy Paxman, "Newsnight" BBC2 ] Now the Prime Minister's back from his holiday.
He's unrepentant and unembarrassed about yet another long-haul destination.

[ Audio of electronic keyboard "warning" arpeggio. ]

[ Visuals of a plane and contrails, ship on the ocean and beach. ]

Yet as the frenzy over man-made Global Warming grows shriller, many senior
Climate scientists say the actual scientific basis for the theory is crumbling.

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[ COMMENT from jo

"...many senior Climate scientists..."

I would challenge the actual quantity of "many"; I would challenge the actual
quality of "senior"; I would challenge the use of the word "Climate" and I would
challenge the use of the term "scientist".

"...the actual scientific basis for the theory is crumbling..."

This is said just before a clipse of Nir Shaviv, who I have already established is
not denying mankind's warming influence on the world, and in fact effectively says
so "...if CO2 has a large effect on climate..." and therefore this statement from the
Narrator is incorrect.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Professor Nir Shaviv ] There were periods for example in Earth's history when
we had three times as much CO2 as we have today, or periods when we had ten
times as much CO2 as we have today. And if CO2 has a large effect on climate
then you should see it in the temperature reconstruction.

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[ COMMENT from jo

The most obvious time when Carbon Dioxide had an effect on global temperatures
was during the first phase of Earth history. Without the thermal blanket of the atmosphere
the Earth would have become and remained a snowball. Here's one recent piece of
science :-

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/070215/rocks.shtml
"A greenhouse gas that has become the bane of modern society may have saved Earth
from completely freezing over early in the planet’s history, according to the first detailed
laboratory analysis of the world’s oldest sedimentary rocks. The study, led by Dauphas,
helps explain how the Earth may have avoided becoming frozen solid early in its history,
when astrophysicists believe the sun was 25 percent fainter than today. Previous studies
have shown that liquid water existed at the Earth’s surface, even though the weak sun
should have been unable to warm the Earth above freezing conditions. But high
concentrations of carbon dioxide or methane could have warmed the planet."

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Visuals of artist's digital impression of rotating Earth and audio of the "Star Trek"
big planet hypothetical sound of a large body moving through space. ]

[ Professor Ian Clark, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa ] If we look
at climate through the geological timeframe, we would never suspect CO2 as a major
climate driver.

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[ COMMENT from jo

There is ongoing scientific research about how Carbon Dioxide came to be added to
the atmosphere in Earth's long history, and how it was then removed again from the air.

There are several things that are emerging as accepted fact :-

* That the levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, or air blanket, were
very high when the Earth was young.

* That the Greenhouse Effect due to these early high levels of Carbon Dioxide
kept the Earth warm and stopped it freezing over completely.

* That the development of simple life forms that breathed Carbon Dioxide and gave
out Oxygen as a waste gas, locked up vast quantities of Carbon Dioxide, in the
colonies of life forms themselves, and in sediments of land and seas when they died.

* The development of life forms that breathed Oxygen and gave out Carbon Dioxide
as a waste gas made use of this change.

* There have been cycles of general heat and cold in Earth history, caused by a
variety of factors all interacting to contribute to trends. During warm periods,
Carbon Dioxide is released by the sum total of all life forms, soils and seas
into the atmosphere.

* One of the results of the sequestration of Carbon Dioxide in sediments was the
formation of Fossil Fuels, under conditions of great pressure and low oxygen,
as they were underground.

* Burning Fossil Fuels is effectively releasing Carbon Dioxide that was stored
underground in life forms that died a long time ago.

* The Burning of Fossil Fuels and the logging and burning of vast areas of old
growth forests and rainforests is causing Carbon Dioxide to be released into
the atmosphere at very high rates.

* The living organisms in the oceans and on the land are not absorbing all of
the current high levels of Carbon Dioxide being emitted, partly because they
are being released at such a high rate.

* It has been shown that the high rate of Carbon Dioxide emissions is a factor
in Global Warming, possibly a large factor.

So, in summary, Carbon Dioxide is both a cause of Global Warming and a product of
Global Warming. It is both, and not just one or the other.

Professor Ian Clark is entitled to his opinion that Carbon Dioxide is "not a major
climate driver". He is not denying that Carbon Dioxide has an impact on Global Warming.

Studies suggest strongly that Carbon Dioxide is a significant driver of climate,
contrary to Ian Clark's opinion expressed in this film :-

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/globalchange/global_warming/03.html

"The result is the graph below, showing that CO2 forcing can explain the temperature
rise. That said, there may also be a role for the Sun in modifying the temperature rise
driven by greenhouse gases. The minor drops in temperature right after 1900 and after
1960 coincide with reduced solar activity. To be sure, while this simple calculation may
be enough to explain the observations, it is not a mathematical proof that the warming
that has occurred since the days of James Watt is entirely due to human activity. It
merely represents the simplest possible explanation. Another way of stating the situation
is this : there is no compelling evidence that the observed overall warming in the 20th
Century is anything but man-made. The burden of proof is on those who would have us
think that natural causes are solely or mainly responsible for this trend. Of course,
showing that the observed warming entirely agrees with reasonable expectations for
the rise in carbon dioxide does not exclude the possibility that some of this warming
would have occurred anyway, without human help. But the warming of the past 30 years,
from 1970 to the present, is unexplainable by any known natural cause. In any case,
considerable further warming is very likely if emissions continue as in the past."

The graph has been uploaded here :-

http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1846

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Dr Piers Corbyn, Climate Forecaster, Weather Action ] None of the major climate
changes in the last thousand years can be explained by CO2.

[ Professor Ian Clark ] You can't say that CO2 will drive climate. It certainly never
did in the past.

[ Visuals and audio of thunder and lightening ]

[ Professor John Christy, Lead Author IPCC ] I've often heard it said that there is
a consensus of thousands of scientists on the Global Warming issue, and that humans
are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system. Well, I am one scientist and
there are many that simply think that is not true.

[ Visual of cloud cover from space. Audio of violins. ]

[ Narrator ] Man-made Global Warming is no ordinary scientific theory.

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[ COMMENT from jo

Actually, the theory of Man-Made Global Warming is a very ordinary scientific theory.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ News reporter, "News at Ten" BBC1 Live, Paris ] This morning, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change..." ]

It is presented in the media as having the stamp of authority, of an impressive
international organisation, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
or IPCC.

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[ COMMENT from jo

I do not agree with the idea that the IPCC is given undue cachet in the media. I regularly
hear the "impressive international organisation" of the United Nations, ridiculed and derided
throughout the media, for different given political and social reasons.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Audio of ethereal singing ]

[ Professor Philip Stott, Department of Biogeography, University of London ] The IPCC,
like any UN body, is political. The final conclusions are politically driven.

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[ COMMENT from jo

I agree that the IPCC conclusions are politically edited, but not that they are politically
driven. They are scientifically driven, and politically tampered with. Here is some evidence
for my claim :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2037619,00.html

"The Bush administration's interference in climate change science has revealed "flaws that
have developed in the functioning of our democracy", according to a leading US climate
scientist. The stinging attack on the power of the White House to distort the issue of
climate change will come today in testimony to the House of Representatives committee
on oversight and government reform. Jim Hansen at Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space
Science (GISS) in New York will say: "The executive branch seems to be exercising greater
control in the functioning of our government, in ways that our forefathers probably did not
imagine and almost certainly would not approve. This includes White House control of
testimony to Congress, White House control of information that scientists provide to the
public ... and most decidedly through control of the purse strings." Although he will say
political interference in science is not exclusive to the current administration, he adds:
"Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the
current administration that at any time in my career.""

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Professor Paul Reiter, IPCC & Pasteur Institute, Paris ] This claim that the IPCC is the
world's top 1,500 or 2,500 scientists. You look at the bibliographies of the people
and it's simply not true. There are quite a number of non-scientists.

[ Professor Richard Lindzen, IPCC and M.I.T. Massachusetts Institute of Technology ]
And to build the number up to 2,500 they have to start taking reviewers and government
people and so on, anyone who ever came close to them. And none of them are asked
to agree. Many of them disagree.

[ Professor Paul Reiter ] Those people who are specialists, but don't agree with the
polemic and resign, and there have been a number that I know of, they are simply
put on the author list and become part of this 2,500 of the world's top scientists.

[ Professor Richard Lindzen ] People have decided you have to convince other people
that since no scientist disagrees, you shouldn't disagree either. But whenever you
hear that in science, that's pure propaganda.

[ Audio of band warming up to play, cheering. Visuals of I-Count Trafalgar Square Rally,
4th November 2006 and the Climate Camp, August 2006 ]

[ Narrator ] This is a story of how a theory about climate turned into a political
ideology.

[ Patrick Moore, Co-founder, Greenpeace ] See, I don't even like to call it the
environmental movement any more, because really it is a political activist movement,
and they have become hugely influential at a global level.

[ Narrator ] It is the story of the distortion of a whole area of science.

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[ COMMENT from jo

The Narrator makes a claim of "distortion of a whole area of science" without evidence.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Dr Roy Spencer, Weather Satellite Team Leader, NASA ] Climate scientists need there
to be a problem, in order to get funding.

[ Professor John Christy ] We have a vested interest in creating panic because then
money will flow to climate science.

[ Professor Richard Lindzen ] There's one thing you shouldn't say and that is - this
might not be a problem.

[ Narrator ] It is the story of about how a political campaign turned into a bureaucratic
bandwagon.

[ Professor Patrick Michaels, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of
Virginia ] The fact of the matter is that tens of thousands of jobs depend upon Global
Warming right now. It's a big business.

[ Professor Philip Stott ] It's become a great industry in itself. And if the whole Global
Warming farrago collapsed there'd be an awful lot of people out of jobs and looking
for work.

[ Audio of what sounds like a metal sword slicing. ]
[ Narrator ] This is a story of censorship and intimidation.

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[ COMMENT from jo

There's no denying that there has been censorship. Scientific results have been
edited, and that has made the IPCC results very conservative. What the film maker
gets upside down is that the censorship has supported his opinion. The censorship
has led people such as himself to doubt mankind's influence on global warming.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Nigel Calder ] I've seen and heard their spitting fury at anybody [ Audio of a cymbal
crash ] who might disagree with them. Which is not [ Audio of a slice sound ] the
scientific way.

[ Audio of grasshoppers or cicadas. ]

[ Narrator ] It is a story about Westerners invoking the threat of climatic disaster
to hinder vital industrial progress in the developing world.

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[ COMMENT from jo

This statement is unsubstantiated accusation in my opinion.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ James Shikwati, Economist and Author ] One clear thing that emerges from the whole
environmental debate is the point that there's somebody keen to kill the African dream.
And the African dream is to develop.

[ Patrick Moore, Co-founder Greenpeace ] The environmental movement has evolved
into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries.

[ Audio of rapidly strumming cellos. ]
[ Narrator ] The Global Warming story is a cautionary tale of how a media scare became
the defining idea of a generation.

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[ COMMENT from jo

Global Warming did not start as a media scare. It started as scientific enquiry.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Nigel Calder ] The whole Global Warming business has become like a religion. And
people who disagree are called heretics. I'm a heretic. The makers of this programme
are all heretics.

[ Audio of a crescendo of violins. Audio of "Inspector Clouseau" "murder mystery" style
chimes. ]

[ Narrator ] In 2005, a House of Lords enquiry was set up to examine the scientific
evidence of Man-Made Global Warming. A leading figure in that enquiry was Lord
Lawson of Blaby, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1980s was the first
politician to commit government money to Global Warming research.

[ Lord Lawson of Blaby ] We had a very, very thorough enquiry and took evidence from
a whole lot of people, expert in this area, and produced a report.

What surprised me was to discover how weak and uncertain the science was.

In fact, there are more and more thoughtful people, some of them a little bit frightened
to come out in the open, but who quietly, privately, and some of them publicly,
are saying, "Hang on, wait a minute. This simply doesn't add up."

[ Visuals of a twister, floods, storm, rain etc. Audio of 1950s movie blockbuster fanfare. ]
[ Narrator ] We are told that Earth's climate is changing.

[ Visual of a warm beach scene. Audio of a gentle violin quartet. ]
But the Earth's climate is always changing. In Earth's long history there have been
countless periods when it was much warmer and much cooler than it is today. When
much of the world was covered by tropical forests or else vast ice sheets. The climate
has always changed, and changed without any help from us humans.

[ Audio of song "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow". ]

[ GRAPH PAINTING LITTLE ICE AGE ]

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[ COMMENT from jo
This graph could be very misleading. It appears to be based on a schematic diagram,
produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC in 1990. It was
apparently produced on the basis of European data only (probably only Central England
Temperature (CET), which is a reliable record made since 1659) and so cannot be said
to be representative of global average temperatures.

This graph is discussed here on page 14 :-

http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/Gulledge%2DEnergyCommerceHearing%5F072706%2Epdf

There is a further discussion here :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MWP_and_LIA_in_IPCC_reports

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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We can trace the present warming trend back at least 200 years to the end of a very
cold period in Earth's history. This cold spell is known to climatologists as the
Little Ice Age.

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[ COMMENT from jo
The period labelled as the "Little Ice Age" was not particularly cold, so the use of the
expression "very cold period" is not really justifiable.
END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Audio of singing "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. It doesn't show signs of stopping..." ]
[ Visuals of old prints, including at least one possibly by the artist Bruegel. ]

[ Professor Philip Stott ] In the 14th Century Europe plunged into the Little Ice Age.
And where we would look for evidence of this are the old illustrations and prints
and pictures of Old Father Thames, because during the hardest and toughest winters
of that Little Ice Age, the Thames would freeze over. And there were wonderful ice fairs
held on the Thames, skating and people actually selling things on the ice.

[ GRAPH PAINTING LITTLE ICE AGE AND MEDIEVAL WARMING PERIOD (IPCC) ]

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[ COMMENT from jo
This is an extension of the previous graph, and this time has been credited as being from
the IPCC. What the programme omits to add is that this graph was only a schematic, from
the 1990 IPCC report, and was for European records only, and that since 1990 there has
been a wealth of new data that has resulted in some much better and more accurate charts
of global temperature :-

http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~jeffery/astro/earth/atmosphere/ipcc_global_temp.jpg

http://www.maine.gov/dep/air/globalwarming/figspm2.jpg

Even for the Northern Hemisphere, there is little sign of a Little Ice Age or a
Medieval Warming Period :-

http://home.iprimus.com.au/nielsens/Images/IPCCNH2.GIF

There is of course, the whole controversy around what is known as the "Hockey Stick"
shape of these updated and more accurate graphs, but the film makers have to know
that that debate has been resolved, otherwise they would have tried to debunk it in
their film. Temperatures are higher than they have ever been in the last 1000 years :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5109188.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=30&articleID=00007F57-9CE1-1213-9BEF83414B7F0000

END OF COMMENT from jo]
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[ Audio of 1920s jazz ]

[ Narrator ] If we look back further in time before the Little Ice Age, we find a balmy
golden era, when temperatures were higher than they are today, a time known to
climatologists as the Medieval Warm Period.

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[ COMMENT from jo

If you look at accurate graphs, you see that the supposedly much warmer Medieval
Warm Period was not much different than today. A phrase like "balmy golden era"
is not therefore really justifiable.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Visual of Professor Philip Stott walking into a church. ]

[ Professor Philip Stott ] It's important people know that climate enabled a quite different
lifestyle in the Medieval period. We have this view today that Warming is going to
have Apocalyptic outcomes. In fact wherever you describe this Warm Period it appears
to be associated with riches.

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[ COMMENT from jo

Contrary to the opinion of Professor Philip Stott, I would hazard to suggest that the
majority of people alive during the Medieval Period were in fact dirt-poor.
END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Visual of Professor Philip Stott going into a church and genuflecting (Catholic
Christian ritual of holy respect). ]

[ Audio of song "We're having a heatwave". ]

[ Narrator ] In Europe this was the great age of the cathedral builders, a time when,
according to Chaucer, vineyards flourished even in the North of England.

[ Professor Philip Stott ] All over the City of London there are little memories of the
vineyards that grew in the Medieval Warm Period.

So this was a wonderfully rich time. And this little church in a sense symbolises it,
because it comes from a period of great wealth.

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[ COMMENT from jo

Only a very few people in the Medieval period had any wealth. Modern wealth is
based on the energy provided by the burning of Fossil Fuels, which people in
those times did not have access to, and so had to rely on slow human labour :-

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Research.html

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Visual of various street signs "Vine Hill, Holburn, EC1", "Vine Street W1",
"Vineyard Passage", "The Vineyard, Richmond", "Vinery Way". ]

[ Audio of sustained notes. ]

[ GRAPH DRAWING OF LITTLE ICE AGE, MEDIEVAL WARMING PERIOD AND
HOLOCENE MAXIMUM (IPCC) ]

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[ COMMENT from jo

Again, the graph shown for the last 10,000 is based on an early schematic diagram
and is no longer really of any value in scientific research. However, the Holocene
Maximum was a real global phenomenon, unlike the "Little Ice Age" or the
"Medieval Warming Period" which are highly disputed, and localised.

What appears to have happened is that various factors combined to cause the end
of the last Ice Age, and since this destabilised the Carbon Cycle, global temperatures
rose to a peak. After that they declined pretty much uniformly, with local variation,
until around 1850. Since that time, global temperatures have been rising.

Here are some example graphs :-

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/Image3.gif

http://globalicwarming.com/temperature/

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Narrator ] Going back in time further still, before the Medieval Warm Period, we find
more warm spells, including a very prolonged period during the Bronze Age known to
geologists as the Holocene Maximum, when temperatures were significantly higher
than they are now for more than three millennia.

[ Professor Ian Clark, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa ] If we go back
8,000 years in the Holocene period, our current interglacial, it was much warmer than
it is today. Now the polar bears obviously survived that period, they're with us today,
they're very adaptable, and these warm periods in the past, what we call [ “hipsi-thermals” ?],
posed no problem for them.

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[ COMMENT from jo

Ian Clark has made a mistake.

According to scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
of the United States of America on 25 September 2006 "Global temperature change" :-

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/103/39/14288

"Comparison of measured sea surface temperatures in the Western Pacific with
paleoclimate data suggests that this critical ocean region, and probably the planet
as a whole, is approximately as warm now as at the Holocene maximum and within
approximately 1 degree Celsius of the maximum temperature of the past million years."

The Holocene Maximum was not much warmer than today, as Professor Clark claims.

In fact, the last time that temperatures were significantly higher than they are today
was before the last Ice Age. As pointed out in the book "Six Degrees" by Mark Lynas :-

"How did polar bears survive that prehistoric bout of warming [ Eeemian interglacial,
which saw temperatures in the Arctic rise to up to 5 degrees higher than now ] ? The
answer is that they didn't need to because they didn't yet exist. Ursus maritimus
evolved somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago during the last ice age...This
century's rapid rise in temperature will make their world hotter than they have ever
experienced in their lifetime as a species - a change which they won't be able to survive
for long."

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
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[ Narrator ] Climate variation in the past is clearly natural. So why do we think it's
any different today ? In the current alarm about Global Warming the culprit is
industrial society. Thanks to modern industry, luxuries once enjoyed exclusively by
the rich are now available in abundance to ordinary people. Novel technologies have
made life easier and richer. Modern transport and communications have made the
world seem less foreign and distant. Industrial progress has changed our lives. But
has it also changed the climate ? According to the theory of man-made Global Warming,
industrial growth should cause the temperature to rise. But does it ?

[ Professor Patrick Michaels, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of
Virginia ] Anyone who goes around and says that Carbon Dioxide is responsible for
most of the warming of the 20th Century hasn't looked at the basic numbers.

[ Narrator ] Industrial production in the early decades of the 20th Century was still in
its infancy, restricted to only a few countries, handicapped by war and economic
depression. After the Second World War things changed. Consumer goods like
refrigerators and washing machines and TVs and cars began to be mass-produced
for an international market. Historians call this global explosion of industrial activity
the Post-War Economic Boom.

How does the industrial story compare with the temperature record ?

[ Audio of harp-like instrument playing scales. ]
Since the mid-19th Century the Earth's temperature has risen by just over half a degree
Celsius.

But this warming began long before cars and planes were even invented.

What's more, most of the rise in temperature occurred before 1940, during a period
when industrial production was relatively insignificant. After the Second World War,
during the Post-War Economic Boom, temperatures in theory should have shot up.
But they didn't. They fell. Not for one or two years, but for four decades. In fact,
paradoxically, it wasn't until the world economic recession in the 1970s that they
stopped falling.

[ GRAPH WORLD TEMP 120 YEARS END POINT LABLELLED OF COOLING 1975 ]

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

The NASA graph of the last 120 years of world temperature does not look anything
like some of the other graphs that exist, for example :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

It cannot be asserted that temperatures fell in a trend in the period between 1940
and 1975. It looks more like a plateau, or flat line in most graphs.

In contrast to Timothy Ball's opinion, the data from the Hadley Centre of the UK
Meteorological Office shows that temperatures have been rising consistently since
around 1950 :-

http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1847

The Post-War Economic Boom could well have been responsible for an effect known as
"Global Dimming". High levels of particulates from that industrialising period would
have shielded the Earth from the full radiant heat of the Sun.

It also has to be noted that there is a time lag between increases in Carbon Dioxide
and Global Warming. The flat line between 1940 and 1975 could actually be due to
the economic slowdown of the Great Depression.

Plus, the majority of industry in the War period was redirected from making cars to
making weapons. I haven't seen a study that shows that impacts this could have had
on particulate emissions.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Director, International Arctic Research Centre ] CO2
began [to] increase exponentially in about 1940, but the temperature actually began to
decrease 1940, continued till about 1975. So this is the opposite to the ration [reason].
When the CO2 increasing rapidly but yet the temperature decreasing we cannot say that
CO2 and the temperature go together.

[ Professor Timothy Ball, Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg ]
Temperature went up significantly up to 1940 when human production of CO2 was
relatively low. And then in the Post-War years when industry and the whole economies
of the world really got going, and human production of CO2 just soared, the
global temperature was going down. In other words, the facts didn't fit the theory.

[ Nigel Calder ] Just at a time when, after the Second World war, industry was booming,
Carbon Dioxide was increasing, and yet the Earth was getting cooler and starting
off scares of a coming Ice Age, it made absolutely no sense. It still doesn't make
sense.

[ Narrator ] Why do we suppose that Carbon Dioxide is responsible for our changing
climate ? CO2 forms only a very small part of the Earth's atmosphere. In fact we measure
changes in the level of atmospheric CO2 in tens of parts per million.

[ Timothy Ball ] If you take CO2 as a percentage of all the gases in the atmosphere,
the Oxygen, the Nitrogen, and Argon and so on, it's 0.054%. It's an incredibly small
portion. And then of course you've got to take that portion that supposedly humans
are adding, which is the focus of all the concern, and it gets even smaller.

[ Narrator ] Although CO2 is a Greenhouse Gas, Greenhouse Gases themselves only
form a small part of the atmosphere. What's more, CO2 is a relatively minor Greenhouse
Gas.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

Gas chemists and physicists through the recent centuries have shown that Carbon
Dioxide is very effective at absorbing Incident Radiation or IR, the Sun's radiation that
is reflected from the Earth's surface. This is because it is sensitive to that
particular range of light frequencies. It is "tuned" to a key part of the IR spectrum :-

http://www.bom.gov.au/info/climate/change/gallery/images/4.jpg

http://naftali.aos.wisc.edu/wiki/index.php?title=Algorithms

Even though Carbon Dioxide forms only a small part of the atmosphere, it is a
Greenhouse Gas, which Professor Ian Clark does admit in his discussion on
computer models later in this programme.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Professor Timothy Ball ] The atmosphere is made up of a multitude of gases. A small
percentage of them we call Greenhouse Gases. And of that very small percentage of
Greenhouse Gases, 95% of it is water vapour, it's the most important Greenhouse Gas.

[ Professor John Christy ] Water vapour is a Greenhouse Gas, by far the most important
Greenhouse Gas.

[ Narrator ] So is there any way of checking whether the recent warming was due to
an increase in Greenhouse Gas ? There is only one way to tell and that is to look up
in the sky. Or a part of the sky known to scientists as the Troposphere.

[ Professor Richard Lindzen ] If it's Greenhouse Warming, you get more warming in the
middle of the Troposphere, the first 10 [or] 12 kilometres of the atmosphere than you do
at the surface. There are good theoretical reasons for that, having to do with how the
Greenhouse works.

[ Cartoon that looks quite similar to the cartoons from the film "An Inconvenient Truth". ]

[ Narrator ] The Greenhouse Effect works like this - the Sun sends its heat down to
Earth. If it weren't for Greenhouse Gases this solar radiation would bounce back into
space, leaving the planet cold and uninhabitable.

Greenhouse Gas traps the escaping heat in the Earth's Troposphere, a few miles above #
the surface. And it's here, according to the climate models, that the rate of warming
should be highest if it's Greenhouse Gas that causing it.

[ Professor Frederick Singer, Former Director, US National Weather Service ] All the
models, every one of them, calculates that the warming should be faster as you go up
from the surface into the atmosphere.

[ Audio of piano keys that imitates the opening audio of the film "An Inconvenient Truth". ]

And in fact the maximum warming over the Equator should take place at an altitude
of about 10 kilometres.

[ Narrator ] A scientist largely responsible for measuring the temperature in the Earth's
atmosphere is Professor John Christy. In 1991 he was awarded NASA's medal for
exceptional scientific achievement. And in 1996 received a special award from the
American Meteorological Society for fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor
climate. He was a lead author on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
or IPCC.

There are two ways to take the temperature in the Earth's atmosphere, satellites and
weather balloons.

[ Professor John Christy ] What we've found consistently, is that in a great part of the Planet,
that the bulk of the atmosphere is not warming as much as we see at the surface, in
this region. And that's a real head-scratcher for us, because the theory is pretty straight
forward. And the theory says that if the surface warms, the upper atmosphere should
warm rapidly. The rise in temperature of that part of the atmosphere is not very dramatic
at all, and really does not match the theory that climate models are expressing at this point.

[ Professor Patrick Michaels ] One of the problems that is plaguing the models is
that they predict that as you go up through the atmosphere, except in the polar regions,
that the rate of warming increases. And it's quite clear from two data sets,
not just satellite data, which everybody talks about, but from weather balloon data,
that you don't see that effect. In fact it looks like the surface temperatures are
warming slightly more than the upper air temperatures. That's a big difference.

[ Professor Richard Lindzen ] That data gives you a handle on the fact that what you're
seeing is warming that probably is not due to Greenhouse Gas.

[ Professor Frederick Singer ] That is, that the observations do not show an increase
with altitude. In fact, most observations show a slight decrease in the rate of warming
with altitude. So in a sense you can say that the hypothesis of Man-Made Global
Warming is falsified by the evidence.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

Subsequent to the original weather balloon measurements by Professor John Christy,
further measurements and recalibrations have led to the understanding that the
atmosphere is indeed warming. Here are some links :-

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8917093/

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-08-11-global-warming-data_x.htm

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Narrator ] So the recent warming of the Earth happened in the wrong place and
at the wrong time. Most of the warming took place in the early part of the 20th Century
and occurred mostly at the Earth's surface, the very opposite of what should
have happened according to the theory of Man-Made Global Warming.

[ Visuals from "An Inconvenient Truth" film. Al Gore says, "I am Al Gore. I used to
be the next President of the United States of America." Followed by laughs. ]

Former Vice President Al Gore's emotional film "An Inconvenient Truth" is regarded
by many as the definitive popular presentation of the theory of man-made
Global Warming.

His argument rests of one all-important piece of evidence taken from Ice Core
Surveys in which scientists drilled deep into the ice to look back into Earth's
climate history hundreds of thousands of years.

The first Ice Core Survey took place in Vostok in the Antarctic.

What it found, as Al Gore correctly points out, was a clear correlation between
Carbon Dioxide and temperature.

[ Al Gore says, "We're going back in time now, 650,000 years. Here's what the
temperature has been on our Earth. Now one thing that kind of jumps out at you
is - did they ever fit together ? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." Laughs.

Al Gore says, "The relationship is actually very complicated, but there is one
relationship that is far more powerful than all the others and it is this - when there
is more Carbon Dioxide the temperature gets warmer." ]

[ Narrator ] Al Gore says the relationship between temperature and CO2
is complicated, but he doesn't say what those complications are.

In fact there was something very important in the Ice Core data that he failed to
mention.

Professor Ian Clark is a leading Arctic paleoclimatolgist who looks back into the
Earth's temperature record tens of millions of years.

[ Professor Ian Clark ] When we look at climate on long scales we're looking for
geological material that actually records climate.

If we were to take an ice sample for example, we use isotopes to reconstruct
temperature, but the atmosphere that's imprisoned in that ice, we liberate and then
we look at the CO2 content.

[ Narrator ] Professor Clark and others have indeed discovered, as Al Gore says,
a link between Carbon Dioxide and temperature.

But what Al Gore doesn't say is that the link is the wrong way round.

[ GRAPH OF TEMPERATURE AGAINST CARBON DIOXIDE RISE ]

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

The climate system is subject to many factors that influence temperatures.

And when global temperatures change, the Earth's Carbon cycle is unbalanced
and take some time to adjust.

If the temperatures reduce, the Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere go down.
If the temperatures increase, the Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere go up.

And the reason for this is that biomass systems and the oceans are less able to
lock up Carbon when they are warmer.

However, just because in the past there have been periods when temperatures
rose, and this as a driver for increased Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, that does
not conclusively prove that increased atmospheric Carbon Dioxide cannot be a driver
for temperatures.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Professor Ian Clark ] So here we are looking at the Ice Core record from Vostok. And
in the red we see temperature going up from early time to later time at a very key interval
when we came out of a glaciation, and we see the temperature going up, and then we
see the CO2 coming up.

CO2 lags behind that increase. It's got an 800 year lag. So temperature is leading CO2
by 800 years.

[ Narrator ] There have now been several major Ice Core Surveys. Every one of them
shows the same thing. The temperature rises or falls and then after a few hundred years,
CO2 follows.

[ Professor Frederick Singer ] So obviously Carbon Dioxide is not the cause of that
warming. In fact we can say that the warming produced the increase in Carbon Dioxide.

[ Professor Ian Clark ] CO2 clearly cannot be causing temperature changes. It's a product
of temperature - it's following temperature changes.

[ Professor Timothy Ball ] The Ice Core record goes to the very heart of the problem we
have here. They said if the CO2 increases in the atmosphere as a Greenhouse Gas then
the temperature will go up.

But the Ice Core record shows exactly the opposite. So the fundamental assumption,
the most fundamental assumption of the whole theory of Climate Change due to humans,
is shown to be wrong.

[ Narrator ] But how can it be that higher temperatures lead to more CO2 in the
atmosphere ?

To understand this, we must first re-state the obvious point that CO2 is a natural
gas produced by all living things.

[ Nigel Calder ] Few things annoy me more than to hear people talking about
Carbon Dioxide as being a pollutant. You're made of Carbon Dioxide. I'm made
of Carbon Dioxide. Carbon Dioxide is how living things grow.

[ Narrator ] What's more, humans are not the main source of Carbon Dioxide.

[ Professor John Christy ] Humans produce a small fraction, in the single digits,
percentage-wise of the CO2 that is produced in the atmosphere.

[ Cartoon showing sources of CO2 ]

Volcanoes produce more CO2 each year than all the factories and cars and planes
and other sources of Man-Made CO2 put together.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

The claim that "volcanoes produce more CO2 each year that all...other sources of
Man-Made CO2 put together" is false, and it's easy to prove it's false. It's obvious
really :-

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/223957/72

Here are some other useful denial argument refutations :-

http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/climate_change/problems/cause/climate_sceptics/index.cfm

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

More still comes from animals and bacteria which produce about 150 gigatonnes
of Carbon Dioxide each year, compared to a mere 6.5 gigatonnes from humans.

An even larger source of CO2 is dying vegetation, from falling leaves for example
in the Autumn.

But the biggest source of CO2, by far, is the oceans.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

The statements made about the sources of CO2 are incomplete without talking
about the sinks of Carbon Dioxide - those ways in which Carbon Dioxide is
absorbed and sequestered in various parts of the Earth's Biosphere. The important
statistic is NET Carbon Dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere. Here is a simple
diagram explaining the whole of Earth's Carbon cycle :-

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

What is worrying is that Carbon Sinks are being degraded due to Global Warming,
so, since we know that warmer oceans and warmer biomass cannot absorb so much
Carbon Dioxide, and so the Carbon Sinks will start to fail.

We know that accumulation of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere will most likely
accelerate unless we take measures against the unguarded burning of Fossil Fuels,
and get in control of wildfire and intentional firing of forests.

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Narrator ] Carl Wunsch is Professor of Oceanography at MIT [ Massachusetts
Institute of Technology ]. He was also Visiting Professor in Oceanography at
Harvard University and University College London. And a Senior Visiting Fellow in
Mathematics and Physics at the University of Cambridge.

He is the author of four major textbooks on Oceanography.

[ Professor Carl Wunsch, Department of Oceanography, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology ] The ocean is the major reservoir into which Carbon Dioxide
goes when it comes out of the atmosphere or where it is readmitted to the atmosphere.

If you heat the surface of the ocean it tends to emit Carbon Dioxide. Similarly if
you cool the ocean surface, the ocean can dissolve more Carbon Dioxide.

[ Narrator ] So the warmer the oceans the more Carbon Dioxide they produce, and
the cooler they are, the more they suck in. But why is there a time lag of hundreds
of years between a change in temperature and a change in the amount of
Carbon Dioxide going into or out of the sea ?

The reason is that oceans are so big and so deep. They take literally hundreds
of years to warm up and cool down.

This time lag means the oceans have what scientists call a memory of temperature
changes.

[ Professor Carl Wunsch ] The ocean has a memory of past events, running out as
far as 10,000 years. So for example if somebody says, "Oh, I'm seeing changes in the
North Atlantic - this must mean that the climate system is changing", it may only
mean that something happened in a remote part of the ocean decades or hundreds
of years ago, whose effects are now beginning to show up in the North Atlantic.

[ GRAPH 1940 - 1975 ]

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

The Industrial Revolution began in the 1800s. The Industrial Revolution happened
before any cars of electric lights were manufactured. The Industrial Revolution was
made possible by burning massive quantities of coal. Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
and global temperatures have been rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/temp-anom-larg.jpg

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Narrator ] The current warming began long before people had cars or electric lights.

In the past 150 years the temperature has risen just over half a degree Celsius.

But most of that rise occurred before 1940.

Since that time the temperature has fallen for four decades and risen for three.

There is no evidence at all from Earth's long climate history that Carbon Dioxide has
ever determined global temperature.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

Not so ! There is evidence that high vulcanism (volcanism, volcano eruptions) during
certain periods put a lot of extra Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, along with a lot of
Methane, and this was a driver for increased temperatures, and sometimes even
extinctions :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4184110.stm

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00037A5D-A938-150E-A93883414B7F0000&pageNumber=1&catID=2

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

But if CO2 doesn't drive Earth's climate, what does ?

---

[ Narrator ] The common belief that Carbon Dioxide is driving Climate Change is at
odds with much of the available scientific data. Data from weather balloons and
satellites, from Ice Core Surveys and from the historical temperature records. But
if CO2 isn't driving climate, what is ?

[ Professor Philip Stott ] Isn't it bizarre to think that it's humans, you know, when
we're filling up our car, turning on our lights, that we're the ones controlling climate.
Just look in the sky. Look at that massive thing, the Sun. Even humans at our
present six and a half billion are minute relative to that.

[ Narrator ] In the late 1980s solar physicist Piers Corbyn decided to try a radically
new way of forecasting the weather. Despite the huge resources of the official
Met[eorological] Office, Corbyn's new technique consistently produced more
accurate results.

He was hailed in the national press as a super weather man. The secret of his
success was the Sun.

[ Dr Piers Corbyn, Climate Forecaster, Weather Action ] The origin of our solar
weather technique of long-range forecasting came originally from study of
sunspots and a desire to predict those, and then I realised it was actually much more
interesting to use the Sun to predict the weather.

[ Visual of solar flares in various spectra/colours. ]

[ Narrator ] Sunspots we now know are intense magnetic fields which appear
at times of higher solar activity. But for many hundreds of years long before this
was properly understood, astronomers around the world used to count the number
of sunspots, in the belief that more spots heralded warmer weather.

In 1893 the British astronomer Edward Maunder observed that during the Little Ice Age
there were barely any spots visible on the Sun. A period of solar inactivity which became
known as the Maunder Minimum.

But how reliable are sunspots as an indicator of the weather ?

[ Dr Piers Corbyn ] I decided to test it by gambling on the weather through William Hill
against what the Met Office said was, you know, a normal expectation. And I won money
month after month after month after month. Last Winter the Met Office said it could be or
would be an exceptionally cold winter. We said no, that is nonsense. It's going to be very
close to normal. And we specifically said when it would be cold, i.e. after Christmas and
February. We were right. They were wrong.

[ Narrator ] In 1991, senior scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute decide to
compile a record of sunspots in the 20th Century and compare it with the temperature
record.

[ GRAPH OF SUNSPOTS AND GLOBAL TEMPERATURE ]

What they found was an incredibly close correlation between what the Sun was
doing and changes in temperature on Earth.

Solar activity, they found, rose sharply to 1940, fell back for four decades
until the 1970s, and then rose again after that.

[ Professor Eigil Friis-Christensen, Director, Danish National Space Centre ] When
we saw this correlation between the temperature and solar activity, or sunspot
cycle lengths, then people said to us, "OK, it could be just a coincidence", so [we
thought] how can we prove that it's not just a coincidence ? Well one obvious thing
is to have a longer time series, or a different time series. Then we went back in time.

So Professor Friis-Christensen and his colleagues examined 400 years of
astronomical records, to compare sunspot activity against temperature variation.

[ GRAPH OF SUNSPOTS AND TEMPERATURE 400 YEARS ]

Once again they found that variations in solar activity were intimately linked to
temperature variation on Earth. It was the Sun it seemed, not Carbon Dioxide or
anything else that was driving changes in the climate.

In a way it's not surprising.

The Sun affects us directly of course, when it sends down its heat.

But we now know that Sun also affects us indirectly through clouds.

[ Visual - cartoon of clouds and cosmic rays. ]

Clouds have a powerful cooling effect. But how are they formed ?

In the early 20th Century scientists discovered that the Earth was constantly
being bombarded by sub-atomic particles.

These particles, which they called Cosmic Rays, originated, it was believed
from exploding super-novae far beyond our Solar System.

When the particles coming down meet water vapour rising up from the sea,
they form water droplets and make clouds. But when the sun is more active
and the Solar Wind is strong, fewer particles get through and fewer clouds are formed.

Just how powerful this effect was became clear only recently when an astrophysicist
Professor Nir Shaviv decided to compare his own record of cloud-forming Cosmic
Rays with the temperature record created by a geologist, Professor Jan Veizer,
going back 600 million years.

[ GRAPH OF RISE AND FALL IN COSMIC RAYS AGAINST TEMPERATURE ]

What they found was that when Cosmic Rays went up the temperature went down.
When Cosmic Rays went down the temperature went up.

Clouds and the Earth's climate were very closely linked. To see how close you
just flip the lines.

[ FLIPPED GRAPH ]

[ Professor Nir Shaviv ] We just compared the graphs, just put them one upon
the other. And it was just amazing. Jan Veizer looked at me and said "You know,
we have very explosive data here."

[ Professor Ian Clark ] I've never seen such vastly different records coming together
so beautifully to show really what was happening over that long period of time.

[ Narrator ] The climate was controlled by the clouds. The clouds were controlled by
Cosmic Rays. And the Cosmic Rays were controlled by the Sun. It all came down to the
Sun.

[ Nigel Calder, Co-Author, "The Chilling Stars" ] If you had X-Ray eyes [ Audio sound
effect ], what appears as a nice friendly yellow ball would appear like a raging tiger
[ Audio sound effect ].

The Sun is an incredibly violent beast [ Audio sound effect ] and is throwing out great
explosion [ Audio sound effect ] and puffs of gas. and endless Solar Wind that's forever
rushing past the Earth.

We're in a certain sense inside the atmosphere of the Sun. The intensity of its magnetic
field more that doubled during the 20th Century.

[ Narrator ] In 2005, astrophysicists from Harvard University published the following
graph in the official journal of the American Geophysical Union.

[ GRAPH BLUE LINE AND YELLOW LINE ]

The blue line represents temperature change in the Arctic over the past hundred years.

And here is the rise in Carbon Dioxide over the same period. The two are not
obviously connected.

[ GRAPH BLUE LINE AND RED LINE ]

But now look again at the temperature record, and at this red line which depicts
variations in solar activity over the past century, as recorded independently by
scientists from NASA and America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration [ NOAA ].

[ Professor Ian Clark ] Solar activity over the last hundred years, over the last
several hundred years, correlated very nicely on a decadal basis with sea ice
and Arctic temperatures.

[ Narrator ] To the Harvard astrophysicists and many other scientists the
conclusion is inescapable.

[ Dr Piers Corbyn ] The Sun is drive Climate Change. CO2 is irrelevant.

[ Narrator ] But why, if this is so, are we bombarded day after day with news items
about Man-Made Global Warming ?

Why do so many people in the media and elsewhere regard it as an undisputed fact ?

To understand the power of Global Warming theory we must tell the story of how it
came about.

[ Excerpt from "The Weather Machine" BBC Television "The Weather Satellite depicts
a planet that grieves for its lost harvests. In coming to the parched farms..." ]

Doom-laden predictions about Climate Change are not new. In 1974 the BBC warned us
of impending disasters which might seem strangely familiar.

[ "Again and again the newsreels have been showing us disasters of the weather.
The American Mid-West suffered its worst drought since the 1930s and tornadoes
were on the rampage." ]

And what was going to be the cause of these disasters ? The man behind the series
was former New Scientist editor Nigel Calder.

[ Nigel Calder ] In the Weather Machine we reported the mainstream opinion of the time
which was Global Cooling and the threat of a new Ice Age.

[ "Nature's ice dwarfs us". ]

[ Narrator ] After four decades of falling temperatures experts warned that a cooler
world would have catastrophic consequences.

[ "There's the ever-present threat of a Big Freeze. Will a new Ice Age claim our lands
and bury our Northern cities ?" ]

But amid the doom and gloom there was one voice of hope. A Swedish scientist
called Bert Bolin tentatively suggested that Man-Made Carbon Dioxide might help
to warm the world, although he wasn't sure.

[ "And there is a lot of oil. And there are vast amounts of coal left. And
we seem to be burning it with an ever-increasing rate. And if we go on doing
this, in about 50 years time, the Climate may be a few degrees warmer than today.
We just don't know." ]

[ Nigel Calder ] We were also the first to put Bert Bolin of Sweden on international
television, talking about the dangers of Carbon Dioxide.

[ "Trees grow more quickly "... ]

And I remember being bitterly criticised by top experts for indulging him in his fantasy.

[ "Climate hunters..." ]

At the height of the cooling scare in the 70s, Bert Bolin's eccentric theory of
Man-Made Global Warming seemed absurd.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT by jo

The theory of Man-Made Global Warming was not invented by Bert Bolin.

The main development of the theory of Global Warming was done by
Guy Stewart Callendar :-

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

Two things happened to change that. First, temperatures started to rise.
And second, the miners went on strike.

To Margaret Thatcher energy was a political problem.

In the early 70s the oil crisis had plunged the world into recession, and the miners
had brought down Ted Heath's Conservative government. Mrs Thatcher was determined
the same would not happen to her. She set out to break their power.

[ Margaret Thatcher says, "What we have seen in this country is the emergence of
an organised revolutionary minority - who are prepared to exploit industrial disputes -
but whose real aim is the breakdown of law and order and the destruction of democratic
parliamentary government." ]

[ Nigel Calder ] The politicisation of this subject started with Margaret Thatcher.

[ Lord Lawson of Blaby ] She was very concerned always, I remember, (when I was
Secretary of State for Energy), to promote Nuclear Power. Long before the issue of
Climate Change came up, because she was concerned about Energy Security,
and she didn't trust the Middle East, and she didn't trust the National Union
of Mineworkers. So she didn't trust oil. And she didn't trust coal. So therefore she
felt we really had to push ahead with Nuclear Power.

And then, when the Climate Change, Global Warming, thing came up, she felt - well this
is great - this is another argument - because it doesn't have any Carbon Dioxide
Emissions - this is another argument why you should go for Nuclear.

And that is what she was really largely saying. It's been misrepresented since then.

[ Nigel Calder ] And so she said to the scientists - she went to the Royal Society and she
said - there's money on the table for you to prove this stuff. So of course they went
away and did that.

[ Professor Philip Stott ] Inevitably, the moment politicians put their weight behind
something, and attach their name to it in some ways of course, money will flow. That's
the way it goes. And inevitably research, development, institutions started to bubble up,
if you can put it that way, which were going to be researching climate but with a
particular emphasis on the relationship between Carbon Dioxide and temperature.

[ Narrator ] At the request of Mrs Thatcher, the UK Met Office set up a climate modelling
unit which provided the basis for a new international committee, called the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

[ Nigel Calder ] They came out with the first big report which predicted climatic
disaster as a result of Global Warming. I remember going to the scientific press
conference and being amazed by two things. First, the simplicity and eloquence
of the message (and the vigour with which it was delivered). And secondly the total
disregard of all climate science up till that time. Including, incidentally the role
of the Sun, which have been the subject of a major meeting at the Royal Society
just a few months earlier.

[ Narrator ] But the new emphasis on Man-Made Carbon Dioxide as a possible
environmental problem, didn't just appeal to Mrs Thatcher.

[ Nigel Calder ] It was certainly something very favourable to the environmental idea,
what I call the Medieval Environmentalism, of let's get back to the way things were
in Medieval times, and get rid of all these dreadful cars and machines. They loved it,
because Carbon Dioxide was for them an emblem of industrialisation.

[ Professor Frederick Singer, Former Director, US National Weather Service ] Well,
Carbon Dioxide clearly is an industrial gas. So it's tied in with economic growth,
with transportation in cars, with what we call civilisation. And there are forces in the
environmental movement that are simply against economic growth. They think that's bad.

[ Professor Philip Stott ] It could be used to legitimise a whole suite of myths that already
existed, anti-car, anti-growth, anti-development and above all anti- that great Satan - the
US.

[ Narrator ] Patrick Moore is considered one of the foremost environmentalists
of his generation. He is co-founder of Greenpeace.

[ Patrick Moore ] The shift to climate being a major focal point came about for two
very distinct reasons. The first reason was because by the mid 80s the majority of
people now agreed with all of the reasonable things we in the environmental movement
were saying they should do. Now when a majority of people agree with you, it's
pretty hard to remain confrontational with them. And so the only way to remain
anti-establishment was to adopt ever more extreme positions. When I left Greenpeace it
was in the midst of them adopting a campaign to ban Chlorine worldwide. Like, I said,
"You guys, this is one of the elements in the Periodic Table, you know. I mean, I'm not
sure if that's in our jurisdiction to be banning a whole element."

The other reason that environmental extremism emerged, was because world Communism
failed, the Wall came down, and a lot of peaceniks and political activists moved into the
environmental movement bringing their neo-Marxism with them, and learned to use
green language in a very clever way to cloak agendas that actually have more to do with
anti-Capitalism, and anti-globalisation, than they do anything with ecology or science.

[ Lord Lawson ] The Left have been slightly disoriented by the manifest failure of
socialism and indeed even more so of Communism, as it was tried out - and therefore
they still remain as anti-Capitalist as they were, but they had to find a new guise
for their anti-Capitalism.

[ Nigel Calder ] And it was a kind of amazing alliance from Margaret Thatcher
on the Right, through to very Left-Wing anti-Capitalist environmentalists
that created this kind of momentum behind a loony idea.

[ Narrator ] By the early 1990s Man-Made Global Warming was no longer
a slightly eccentric theory about Climate. It was a full-blown political campaign.
It was attracting media attention and as a result, more government funding.

[ Professor Richard Lindzen, Department of Meteorology, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology ] Prior to Bush the Elder, I think the level of funding for
climate and climate-related sciences was somewhere around the order of
170 million dollars a year, which was reasonable for the size of the field.

It jumped to 2 billion a year, more than a factor of 10. And, yeah, that changed
a lot. I mean [ Suggestion by interviewer - "That's a lot of jobs" ] Lot of jobs, it
brought a lot of new people into it who otherwise were not interested. So you
developed whole cadres of people whose only interest in the field was that there
was Global Warming.

[ Nigel Calder ] If I wanted to do research on, shall we say, the squirrels of Sussex,
what I would do, and this is any time from 1990 onwards, I would write my
grant application saying I want to investigate the "nut-gathering behaviour
of squirrels with special reference to the effects of Global Warming", and that way I
get my money. If I forget to mention Global Warming, I might not get my money.

[ Professor Frederick Singer ] There's really no question in my mind that the large
amounts of money that have been fed into this particular rather small area of
science have distorted the overall scientific effort.

[ Richard Lindzen ] We're all competing for funds. And if your field is the focus
of concern, you have that much less work rationalising why your field should
be funded.

----

[ Audio like a 1960s TV detective series theme tune. ]

[ Narrator ] By the 1990s, tens of billions of dollars of government funding in the
US, UK and elsewhere were being diverted into research relating to Global Warming.

A large portion of those funds went into building computer models to forecast what
the climate will be in the future. [ Audio - background muttering... ]

But how accurate are those models ?

Dr Roy Spencer, the senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Centre. He has been awarded medals for exceptional scientific achievement
from both NASA and the American Meteorological Society.

[ Dr Roy Spencer ] Climate models are only as good as the assumptions that go into
them and they have hundreds of assumptions. All it takes is one assumption to be
wrong for the forecasts to be way off.

[ Narrator ] Climate forecasts are not new. But in the past, scientists were more modest
about their ability to predict the weather.

[ From "The Weather Machine" BBC Television ] "Any attempt at forecasting
changes of climate meet scepticism, from the men who model the weather by
computer. In making decisions which affect people, a bad prediction as to
what the climate of the future will be, can be far worse than none at all. I'm afraid
that our understanding of the complex weather machine is not yet good enough
to make a reliable statement of the future."

[ Narrator ] All models assume that Man-Made CO2 is the main cause of Climate Change
rather than the Sun or the clouds.

[ Professor Tim Ball, Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg ] The analogy
I use is like my car's not running very well, so I'm going to ignore the engine, which is the
Sun, and I'm going to ignore the transmission which is the water vapour, and I'm going
to look at one nut on the right rear wheel which is the human-produced CO2. The science
is that bad.

[ Professor Ian Clark, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa ] If you
haven't understood the climate system, if you haven't understood all the
components, the Cosmic Rays, the solar, the CO2, the water vapour, the clouds,
and put it all together, if you haven't got all that, then your model isn't worth anything.

[ Narrator ] The range of climate forecasts varies greatly. These variations
are produced by subtly altering the assumptions upon which the models are based.

[ Professor Carl Wunsch ] The models are so complicated you can often adjust them
in such a way that they do something very exciting.

[ Professor Ian Clark ] I've worked with modellers, I've done modelling, and with a
mathematical model, and you tweak parameters, you can model anything. You can
make it get warmer, you can make it get colder, by changing things.

[ Narrator ] Since all the models assume that Man-Made CO2 causes Warming, one
obvious way to produce a more impressive forecast is to increase the amount of
imagined Man-Made CO2 going into the atmosphere.

[ Patrick Michaels ] We put an increase in Carbon Dioxide in them that is 1% per year.
It's been 0.49% per year for the last ten years. 0.42 for the ten years before that. And 0.43
for the ten years before that.

So the models have twice as much Greenhouse Warming radiation going in them as is
known to be happening.

It shouldn't shock you that they predict more warming than is occurring.

[ Narrator ] Models predict what the temperature might be in 50 or 100 years time.
It is one of their peculiar features that long-range climate forecasts are only
proved wrong long after people have forgotten about them. As a result there
is a danger, according to Professor Carl Wunsch, that modellers will be less concerned
in producing a forecast that is accurate, than one that is interesting.

[ Professor Carl Wunsch ] Even within the scientific community, you see, it's a problem.
If I run a complicated model, and I do something to it, like, melt a lot of ice into the ocean,
and nothing happens, it's not likely to get printed. But if I run the same model and I
adjust it in such a way that something dramatic happens to the ocean circulation, like
the heat transport turns off [ Audio of music stops ], it will be published. People will say
this is very exciting. It will even get picked up by the media. So there is a bias, there's
a very powerful bias within the media, and within the science community itself,
toward results which are dramatisable.

The Earth freezes over. That's a much more interesting story than saying, well, you know,
it fluctuates around. Sometimes the mass flux goes up by 10%, sometimes it goes down
by 20%, but eventually it comes back. Well you know, which would you do a [ stiffer
rate ? ] on ? I mean that's what its about.

[ Narrator ] To the untrained eye, computer models look impressive, and they
give often wild speculation about the climate the appearance of rigorous science.
They also provide an endless source of spectacular stories for the media.

[ Nigel ] The thing that has amazed me as a life-long journalist, is how the most
elementary principles of journalism seem to have been abandoned on this subject.

In fact the theory of Global Warming has spawned an entirely new branch of journalism.

You've got a whole new generation of reporters - environmental journalists.

Now, if you're an environmental journalist - and if the Global Warming story goes in the
trash can, so does your job. It really is that crude.

And the reporting has to get more and more hysterical because there are still,
fortunately, a few hardened news editors around who will say - "You know, this is
what you were saying five years ago". "Ah, but now it's much, much worse, you know.
There's going to be ten feet of sea level rise by next Tuesday" or something.

They have to keep on getting shriller and shriller and shriller.

[ Narrator ] It is now common in the media to lay the blame for every storm or
hurricane on Global Warming. But is there any scientific basic for this ?

[ Richard Lindzen ] This is purely propaganda. Every textbook on Meteorology is
telling you the main source of weather disturbances is the temperature
difference between the Tropics and the Pole[s]. And we're told in a warmer world
this difference will get less. Now that would tell you you'll have less storminess,
you'll have less variability. But for some reason that isn't considered catastrophic.
So you're told the opposite.

[ Narrator ] News reports frequently argue that even a mild increase in global
temperature could lead to a catastrophic melting of the Polar Ice Caps. But what
does Earth's climate history tell us ?

[ Professor John Christy ] We happen to have temperature records of Greenland that
go back thousands of years. Greenland has been much warmer. Just a thousand years
ago, Greenland was warmer than it is today. Yet it didn't have a dramatic melting event.

[ Professor Philip Stott ] Even if we talk about something like permafrost. A great deal
of the permafrost, that icy layer under the forests of Russia for example, 7,000 or 8,000
years ago melted far more than we're having any evidence about it melting now.
So in other words, this is a historical pattern again. But the world didn't come to a
a crunching halt because of it.

[ Narrator ] Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu is head of the International Arctic Research
Centre in Alaska. The IARC is the world's leading Arctic research institute.

Professor Akasofu insists that over time, the Ice Caps are always naturally
expanding and contracting.

[ Professor Akasofu ] There're reports from time to time, [of] a big chunk of ice
break[ing] away from the Antarctic continent. Those must have been happening
all the time, but because now we have a satellite that can detect those, that's why
they become news.

[ Narrator ] This data from NASA's meteorological satellites shows the huge
natural expansion and contraction of the Polar Sea Ice taking place in the 1990's.

[ Professor Akasofu] I'd see all the TV programmes that relate to Global Warming
show big chunk of ice falling from the edge of the glaciers. But people forget that ice is
always moving.

[ Narrator ] News reports frequently show images of ice breaking from the edge
of the Arctic. What they don't say is that this is as ordinary an event in the Arctic
as falling leaves on an English Autumn day.

[ Professor Akasofu ] They ask me, did you see ice falling from the edge of the glaciers ?
Yes, that's the Spring break-up. That happens every year. The Press comes to us
over the time, you know, "I want to see something that [shows] the Greenhouse disaster".
I say there is none.

[ Narrator ] Alarming television programmes raise the fearful prospect of vast
tidal waves flooding Britain. But what causes the sea level to change ? And
how fast does it happen ?

[ Philip Stott ] Sea level changes over the world in general are governed
fundamentally by two factors. What we would call local factors, the relationship
of the sea to the land, which often, by the way, is to do with the land rising
or falling, than anything to do with the sea. But if you're talking about what we call
eustatic changes of sea level - worldwide changes of sea level - that's through
the thermal expansion of the oceans - nothing to do with melting ice -
and that 's an enormously slow and long process.

[ Carl Wunsch ] People say "Oh I see the ocean doing this, last year. That means that
something changed in the atmosphere last year." And this is not necessarily true at all -
in fact it's actually quite unlikely - because it can take hundreds to thousands of
years for the deep ocean to respond to forces and changes that are taking place
at the surface.

[ Narrator ] It is also suggested that even a mild rise in temperature will lead to the
spread northward of deadly insect-borne tropical diseases like malaria. But is this true ?

Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris is recognised as one of the
world's leading experts on malaria and other insect-borne diseases. He is a member of the
World Health Organisation Expert Advisory Committee, was Chairman of the American
Committee of Medical Entemology of the American Society for Tropical Medicine.
And lead author on the health section of the US national assessment of the potential
consequences of Climate Variability.

[ Visual of Professor Paul Reiter standing in a barn, which imitates a scene in the film
"An Inconvenient Truth" ]

As Professor Reiter is eager to point out, mosquitos thrive in very cold temperatures.

[ Professor Paul Reiter ] Mosquitos are not specifically tropical. Most people will
realise that in temperate regions there are mosquitos. In fact, mosquitos are extremely
abundant in the Arctic. The most devastating epidemic of malaria was in the Soviet Union
in the 1920s. There were something like 13 million cases a year, and something like
600,000 deaths. A tremendous catastrophe that reached up to the Arctic circle.
Archangel had 30,000 cases and about 10,000 deaths. So it's not a tropical disease.
Yet these people in the Global Warming fraternity invent the idea that malaria will move
northwards.

[ Narrator ] Climate scare stories cannot be blamed solely on sloppy or biased
journalism. According to Professor Reiter, hysterical alarms have been encouraged
by the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
or IPCC.

On the spread of malaria, the IPCC warns us that "mosquito species that transmit
malaria do not usually survive where the mean winter temperature drops below
16 - 18 degrees Celsius." According to Professor Reiter this is clearly untrue.

[ Professor Paul Reiter ] I was horrified to read the [IPCC] Second and the
Third Assessment Reports, because there was so much misinformation,
without any kind of recourse, or virtually without mention, of the scientific
literature, the truly scientific literature, the literature by specialists in those fields.

[ Narrator ] In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, Professor Frederick Seitz,
former president of America's National Academy of Sciences revealed that
IPCC officials had censored the comments of scientists. He said that
"This report is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists."

At least 15 key sections of the science chapter had been deleted. These included
statements like, "None of the studies cited has shown clear evidence that we can
attribute climate changes to increases in Greenhouse Gases."

"No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the observed climate changes to
man-made causes".

Professor Seitz concluded "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption
of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."

In its reply the IPCC did not deny making these deletions, but it said that there
was no dishonesty or bias in the report, and that uncertainties about the cause
of Global Warming had been included.

The changes had been made, it said, in response to comments from governments,
individual scientists and Non-Governmental Organisations.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

What the programme omits to explain is that this letter from Professor Frederick Seitz
to the Wall Street Journal was in 1996, and that since then, both Professor Seitz'
position, and the "Oregon Petition" that he launched have been discredited :-

http://science.netscape.com/story/2007/02/07/guv-seeks-to-yank-climatologist-who-disagrees-on-warming/comment/581635

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=4465&Method=Full&PageCall=&Title=NAS%20Discredits%20Marshall%20Institute%20(1998)&Cache=False

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Professor Paul Reiter ] When I resigned from the IPCC, I thought that was the
end of it. But when I saw the final draft, my name was still there. So I asked for
it to be removed. Well, they told me that I had contributed, so it would
remain there. So I said, no, I haven't contributed, because they haven't listened
to anything I've said. So, in the end it was quite a battle. But finally I threatened
legal action against them and they removed my name.

And I think this happens a great deal. Those people who are specialists,
but don't agree with the polemic, and resign, and there have been a number
that I know of, they are simply put on the author list and become part of this
2,500 of the world's top scientists.

[ Narrator ] Research relating to Man-Made Global Warming is now one of the best
funded areas of science.

[ Visuals of NASA rockets. ]

The US Government alone spends more than 4 billion dollars a year.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

Shall we compare that to the budget for NASA ? More than 15 billion dollars in 2005 :-

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/nasa.html

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

According to NASA climatologist Roy Spencer, scientists who speak out against
Man-Made Global Warming have a lot to lose.

[ Dr Roy Spencer, Weather Satellite Team Leader, NASA ] It's generally harder to
get research proposals funded because of the stands that we've taken publicly.
And you'll find very few of us that are willing to take a public stand because it does
cut into their research funding.

[ Narrator ] It is a common prejudice that scientists who do not agree with the
theory of Man-Made Global Warming must be being paid by private industry to tell lies.

[ Philip Stott ] I get it all the time. You must be in the pay of the multinationals.
Sadly, like most of the scientists you'll talk to, I haven't seen a penny from the
multinationals.

[ Timothy Ball ] I'm always accused of being paid by the oil and gas companies.
I've never received a nickel from the oil and gas companies. I joke about it. I wish
they would pay me then I could afford their product.

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

This comment from Tim Ball conflicts with other evidence :-

http://www.desmogblog.com/timothy-f-ball-tim-ball

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Nigel Calder ] Whenever anybody says that I'm in the pay of an oil company, I
say, my bank manager would wish...

[ Narrator ] There is almost no private sector investment in climatology. And yet to be
involved in any research project which involves an industry grant, no matter how small,
can spell ruin to a scientist's reputation.

[ "Modern technology, fuelled by Greenhouse Gases" ]

[ Visuals of Professor Patrick Michaels walking to his office with a cup of beverage,
clearly showing his odd blue sneakers or training shoes / pumps. ]

Patrick Michaels is Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia.
He was Chair of the Committee on Applied Climatology at the American Meteorology
Society, President of the American Association of State Climatologists, the author of
three books on meteorology, and an author and reviewer on the UN's Intergovernmental
Panel of Climate Change.

But when he conducted research part-funded by the coal industry, he found himself
among those under attack from climate campaigners.

[ 4th November 2006 I Count, Trafalgar Square. A sign reads "Boycott Esso".
Audio - "British-based corporations are some of the worst climate criminals on the
planet. Shell is based in the UK, right here in London, and we have the right and the
duty to take it back into public ownership, dismantle it, break it up and send its
managers to rehabilitation training". Cheering. ]

[ Narrator ] But reasoned debate is not the only casualty in the global warming
alarm. As international public policy bears down on industrial emissions of Carbon
Dioxide, the Developing World is coming under intense pressure, not to develop.

---

[ 4th November 2006 I Count Rally, Trafalgar, "I'm no expert on Climate Change
and I'm no scientist. But what I'm going to say is a great big turn off. It's just that.
Turn it off ! Anything you don't need, you're not using. It's easier than you think to
make a difference." ]

[ Narrator ] Delegates from around the world are flying into Nairobi for a conference
sponsored by the UN to talk about Global Warming. Civil servants, professional NGO
campaigners, Carbon Offset fund managers, environmental journalists, and others,
will discuss every aspect of Man-Made Climate Change.

From how to promote solar panels in Africa, to the relationship between Global Warming
and sexism.

The conference lasts 10 days. The number of delegates exceeds 6,000.

[ Professor John Christy, Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama
in Huntsville ] The billions of dollars invested in climate science means there is a
huge constituency of people dependent upon those dollars. And they will want to
see that carry forward. Happens in any bureaucracy.

[ Nigel Calder ] Where I live we have a Local Council Global Warming Officer. There's a
huge tail out there, of people who have in one way or another been recruited to join this
particular bandwagon.

[ Lord Lawson of Blaby ] Anybody who stands up and says, "Hey, wait a minute.
Let's look at this coolly and rationally and carefully and see actually how much merit,
how much this stands up", they will be ostracised.

[ Narrator ] Scientists accustomed to the relative civility and obscurity of academic life,
suddenly find themselves publicly attacked if they dare to challenge the theory of
Man-Made Global Warming. Vilified by campaign groups and even within their own
universities.

[ Professor Tim Ball ] The old English saying, if you stand up in the coconut shy
they're going to throw at you. So I understand that there's going to be some of that,
but it gets pretty difficult, and pretty nasty, and very personal. And there've been,
you know, death threats, and all sorts of things. So I'm not doing it for my health.

[ Patrick Moore ] These days if you are sceptical about the litany around Climate Change,
you are suddenly like as if you're a Holocaust denier. The environmental movement,
really it is a political activist movement, and they have become hugely influential at a
global level.

[ Audio of chanting from the Climate March 4th November 2006 - "Where the people got
the power..." ]

And every politician is aware of that today. Whether you're on the Left, in the middle or
the Right you have to pay homage to the environment.

[ Narrator ] In the past month the Global Warming campaign has won a great victory.
The United States government, once a bastion of resistance has succumbed.
George Bush is now an ally.

Western Governments have now embraced the need for international agreements
to restrain industrial production in the Developed and Developing World. But
at what cost ? Paul Driessen is a former environmental campaigner.

[ Paul Driessen, Author "Green Power, Black Death" ] My big concern with
Global Warming, is that the policies being pushed to supposedly prevent
Global Warming, are having a disastrous effect on the world's poorest people.

[ Narrator ] Global Warming campaigners say it does no harm to be on the
safe side. Even if the theory of Man-Made Climate Change is wrong we should
impose draconian measures to cut carbon emissions, just in case. They call this
the Precautionary Principle.

[ Paul Driessen ] The Precautionary Principle is a very interesting beast. It's
basically used to promote a particular agenda and ideology. It's always used
in one direction only. It talks about the risks of using a particular technology,
Fossil Fuels for example, but never about the risks of not using it. It never talks
about the benefits of having that technology.

Ann [ Mugella ? ] is about to cook a meal for her children. She is one of the two billion
people, a third of the world's population, who have no access to electricity. Instead
they must burn wood or dried animal dung in their homes. The indoor smoke this
creates is the deadliest form of pollution in the world.

According to the World Health Organisation 4 million children under the age of 5 die
each year from respiratory diseases caused by indoor smoke. And many millions of
women die early from cancer and lung disease for the same reason.

[ James Shikwati, Economist & Author ] If you were to ask a rural person to define
Development, they'll tell you, yes, I'll know I've moved to the next level, when I have
electricity.

Actually not having electricity creates such a long chain of problems, because the
first thing you miss is the light. So you get that they have to go to sleep earlier,
because there's no light. There's no reason to stay awake. I mean, you can't talk to
each other in darkness.

[ Narrator ] No refrigeration or modern packaging means that food cannot be kept.
The fire in the hut is too smoky and consumes too much wood to be used as heating.
There is no hot water.

We in the West cannot begin to imagine how hard life is without electricity.

The life expectancy of people who live like this is terrifyingly short, their existence
impoverished in every way.

A few miles away, the UN is hosting its conference on Global Warming in its plush
gated headquarters. Gift shop is selling souvenirs of peasant tribal life, while
delegates discuss how to promote what are described as sustainable forms of
electrical generation.

Africa has coal, and Africa has oil. But environmental groups are campaigning
against the use of these cheap sources of energy. Instead they say Africa and
the rest of the Developing World should use Solar and Wind Power.

A short drive out of Nairobi we find our first solar panel. A Kenyan public health
official has brought us to a clinic which serves several villages.

The only electrical implements in the clinic are the electric lights and a refrigerator,
in which to keep vaccines, medicine and blood samples. Electricity is provided by
two solar panels.

[ Audio - "So what can it do successfully ?" "Lighting." "Lighting only ?" "Yes".
"What happens when you put lighting plus a refrigerator and others.
What happens ?" "It sounds an alarm." "It sounds an alarm ?" "Yes".
"Can we maybe see that ?" Audio of alarm... ]

The solar panels allow Dr Samuel [ Mewange ? ] to use either the lights or the
refrigerator, but not both at the same time. If he does the electricity shuts down.

Wind and Solar Power are notoriously unreliable as a source of electricity and are
at least three times more expensive than conventional forms of electrical generation.

[ James Shikwati ] The question would be how many people in Europe, how many
people in United States are already using that kind of energy ? And how cheap is it ?
You see, if it's expensive for the Europeans, if it's expensive for the Americans, and
we are talking about poor Africans, you know, it doesn't make sense.

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.

[ Narrator ] To former environmentalist Paul Driessen, the idea that the world's poorest
people should be restricted to using the world's most expensive and inefficient
forms of electrical generation is the most morally repugnant aspect of the
Global Warming campaign.

[ Paul Driessen ] Let me make one thing perfectly clear. If we're telling the
Third World that they can only have Wind and Solar Power, what we are really
telling them is, "You cannot have electricity".

[ James Shikwati ] The challenge we have when we meet Western environmentalists
who say we must engage in the use of solar panels and Wind Energy, is how we can
have Africa industrialised. Because I don't see how a solar panel is going to power
a steel industry. How a solar panel, you know, is going to power some railway train
network. It might work maybe to power a small transistor radio.

[ Patrick Moore ] I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern
environmental movement is this romanticisation of peasant life. And the
idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world.

[ James Shikwati ] One clear thing that emerges from the whole environmental debate
is the point that there's somebody keen to kill the African dream. And the African dream
is to develop.

[ Patrick Moore ] The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force
there is for preventing Development in the Developing Countries.

[ James Shikwati ] We are being told, "Don't touch your resources. Don't touch your oil
Don't touch your coal." That is suicide.

[ Patrick Moore ] I think it's legitimate for me to call them anti-human. Like, OK, you
don't have to think humans are better than whales or better than owls or
whatever, if you don't want to, right. But surely it is not a good idea to think
of humans as sort of being scum you know. That it's OK to have hundreds of
millions of them go blind or die or whatever. I just can't relate to that.

[ Narrator ] The theory of Man-Made Global Warming is now so firmly entrenched,
the voices of opposition so effectively silenced, it seems invincible, untroubled by
any contrary evidence, no matter how strong.

The Global Warming alarm is now beyond reason.

[ Dr Frederick Singer ] There will still be people who believe that this is the end of the
world, particularly when you have for example the Chief Scientist of the UK telling
people that by the end of the Century the only habitable place on the Earth will be the
Antarctic. And Humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who move
to the Antarctic. I mean, this is hilarious.

It would be hilarious, actually, if it weren't so sad.

[ Credits roll :
"With thanks
PROF TIM PATTERSON
PROF EDWARD J WEGMAN
PROF BOB CARTER
DR WILLIE SOON
DR MADHAV KHANDEKAR
PROF WIBJORN KARLEN
DR HENRIK SVENSMARK
DR DICK MORGAN
DR FRED GOLDBERG
HANS HJ LABOHM
STEVE McINTYRE
DR ROSS McKITRICK
DR CHRIS LANDSEA". ]

=====================================================================================
[ COMMENT from jo

A number of the people mentioned in the rolling credits are known Climate Change
deniers or contrarians, and their work has often been debunked. How reliable are
they ? Would you take opinions from work known to be debunked ?

END OF COMMENT from jo ]
=====================================================================================

[ Credits - "A WAG TV Production for Channel 4 - WAG TV MMVII". ]

[ Audio of song "Mr Blue Sky". ]
=====================================================================================