the great global warming swindle thesis statement

The Great Global Warming Swindle: Different Views on the Issue Essay

Film’s key points.

Global warming is a controversial issue by itself; however, the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle has made it even more debatable. The film was released in March 2004 in the UK and caused different opinions about the issue which is presented. Global warming critics supported the documentary, while different scientific organizations greatly criticized it. The film presents the idea that global warming can hardly be man-made with CO2 emissions having no relation to raising the temperature of the Earth. Instead, as the film posits, global warming “is one of the defining moral and political courses of our age” ( The Great Global Warming Swindle 2007). According to the film, the main aim of the scientific organizations is to get funding for the research of this problem and attract additional attention to global warming, while in reality, the climate is changing regardless of human activities. While the world is greatly preoccupied with the theory of anthropogenic global warming, The Great Global Warming Swindle argues against this theory. Its main arguments are that the climate has always been changing and that some facts within the issue under consideration do not match the theory; on the one hand, the arguments presented in the film are convincing, while on the other hand they are based on the out-of-date research, which makes the problem of the global warming still open to discussion.

First of all, the documentary in question expresses the idea that CO2 emissions have no relation to global warming. Several scientists agree with the view that the greenhouse effect is caused by humans (Newman 2000; Manahan 2007). As stated by them, “the most common cause of … greenhouse effect is the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere” (Manahan 2007, p. 22). In this way, industrious society and the use of technologies are blamed for global warming. However, there exists an opposing view that “long-term global warming is not caused by human beings” (Vilcox and Mohan 2007, p. 87). The documentary supports this idea by stating that “the Earth climate is always changing” (The Great Global Warming Swindle 2007). Expressing this point, the film gives several examples of how the climate of the Earth changed throughout the centuries; at this, carbon dioxide emissions were quite low. Thus, the film mentions the Little Ice Age which took place in the 14 th century, the Medieval Warm Period, Holocene maximum, etc. These events date back to those times when humans hardly knew anything about environment-destructive technologies, which is why climate change is not connected with human influence.

In addition, to prove their right, the contributors to the film state that certain facts in human history do not match the theory of anthropogenic global warming. For instance, when there was an industrious revolution in 1940, the CO2 emissions were higher than ever. According to the theory, the temperature of the Earth should have increased; however, it went down instead. This resulted in the assertion that human CO2 is not what causes global warming. The fact that the film contributors are professors, researchers, and scientists makes their view convincing, which is why the attitude of several people towards the issue of global warming changed after the release of the movie. This, however, made the proponents of the opposite view look for the flaws in the film’s ideas.

The ideas regarding the climate change causes presented in the film documentary are quite convincing. The strongest point of the film is that the arguments are logical. Thus, the film contributors clearly state their point of view (man-made global warming is senseless), support their opinion with evidence (no temperature rise when CO2 emissions were high and no technology use when the global warming took place), and show where exactly the theory of anthropogenic global warming is erroneous (some facts do not match the theory). At the same time, however, their arguments have a weak point. They are based on out-of-date research (the latest are the 1950s), which creates limitations to their findings. It was named after the 1950s that technologies started developing most rapidly, became more numerous, and even more destructive for the environment. This is why the argument presented in the documentary cannot be considered completely reliable.

The documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle altered some people’s ideas about the issue of global warming or, to be more exact, its causes. This film presents the idea that the greenhouse effect is not caused by carbon dioxide emissions and, thus, has no relation to the industrious society and the use of technologies. The logical presentation of the argument and the credentials of the contributors into the film make this view convincing. At the same time, the out-of-date research on which these contributors rely does not allow considering their arguments fully valid. This is why the issue of global warming and its causes remains controversial.

Manahan, SE 2007, Environmental science and technology: a sustainable approach to green science and technology , CRC Press, London.

Newman, EI 2000, Applied ecology and environmental management , Wiley-Blackwell, New York.

The Great Global Warming Swindle , 2007, Documentary film, broadcaster Channel 4, United Kingdom.

Wilcox, MW and Mohan, TO 2007, Contemporary issues in business ethics , Nova Publishers, New York.

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Bibliography

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Investigating “the great global warming swindle”, in 2007, channel4 aired "the great global warming swindle", which claimed that ….

Ethan Gutmann - Apr 3, 2008 9:15 pm UTC

Climate change is a contentious issue among the public. One of the main arguments made by people who claim that climate change is not caused by humans states that recent global warming is a result of changes in solar activity. Indeed, a 2007 broadcast on Channel4 titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle" tried to make exactly that case.

This case is based on the idea that changes in solar activity influence cloud formation, which influences the climate. The original concept dates back at least as far as a 1975 paper published by the American Meteorological Society, but it's recently been revived as an alternative explanation to the recent rise in global temperatures. This idea has been pushed by papers that Henrick Svensmark has published in the last decade.

The basic sun-climate argument centers on the impact that cosmic rays have on the earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays lead to ionization that, in turn, leads to an increase in highly reflective cloud cover, which lowers the average global temperature. Because increased solar activity causes a decrease in the number of cosmic rays that reach the earth, when solar activity increases, global temperatures increase and vice-versa. Numerous studies have been published on this relationship, some supporting it, others refuting it. The relationship between solar activity and cosmic ray intensity has been clearly documented, but the relationship between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover is widely debated.

To test the hypothesis that changes in cosmic rays due to solar activity are the cause of recent global warming, a paper published in the Institute of Physics' Environmental Research Letters compared cloud cover data with solar activity data for the past 22 years (two 11 year sunspot cycles). They find that fits for the entire 22 years are very poor, but fits for cycle 22 (1985-1996) suggest that solar activity explains greater than 30 percent of the variation in cloud cover. Of course, we all know that correlation does not imply causality, so they dug a little deeper.

To investigate whether the relationship during cycle 22 was causal, they looked at variations in the correlation with latitude. At higher latitudes, the earth's magnetic field deflects fewer cosmic rays than it does at low latitudes. Thus, if the correlation between solar activity and cloud cover is due to cosmic ray caused ionization, this correlation should be greater at higher latitudes.

The researchers found that there was almost no correlation between latitude and the correlation between cloud cover and solar activity. This suggests that, while there may be a relationship between solar activity and cloud cover during cycle 22, it is not due to cosmic rays.

The study also looks at two other tests of the cosmic ray hypothesis and found it lacking. Those that are interested are encouraged to read the entire paper (open access). At the moment the DOI link does not appear to be working, but the article is available .

Environmental Research Letters , 2008. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/3/2/024001

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With all those other endangered species going extinct it's nice to know there's still a handful of global warming skeptics kicking around. ABC Science Online's Bernie Hobbs looks at the facts behind the vitriol in the film that's got everyone looking up the word 'polemic'.

The Swindle is a one-sided anti-global warming argument put together by a film maker with a name for skewing the facts, and featuring greenhouse skeptics with media profiles that far exceed their scientific publishing records.

But worst of all, writer/director Martin Durkin does a great job of making what sounds like a very convincing argument.

If you didn't have access to the net, or a higher degree in climatology, it'd be all too easy to swallow the straight-forward graphs and expert evidence that The Great Global Warming Swindle bases its case on, ie that:

• global temperatures have been higher in the past, so the warming now is part of a natural cycle
• increased carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming, it's the other way around
• the warming we've seen this century has nothing to do with carbon dioxide or any other human activity - it's due to solar activity
• climate models don't match actual measurements,

and my personal favourite

• the whole greenhouse gas/climate change/IPCC shebang is a self-propelling international plot started by Thatcher.

There's just one problem with The Swindle 's argument - it's based on out of date, discredited or misrepresented data. I'm not saying that everything in the film is wrong - it's just that the bits they hang their arguments on are.

Actually Martin, the temperature now is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years.

That 'medieval warm period' and 'little ice age' graphic (below) is pretty convincing all right - anyone can tell that the medieval hump is higher than the temperature marked 'now'.

The only problem is that the "Now" that's shown on the graph isn't now as in 2007, it seems to be pointing at somewhere around the late 80s. Worse still, a thick black line is obscuring whatever happened temperature-wise between then and the mid 70s.

If the last 30 years' data were included in the graph, you'd see that thick blue line shoot abruptly skywards - like it does in the IPCC graph below - because northern hemisphere temperatures in the last two decades were way above those during Europe's Medieval Warm Period. In fact, they're way above anything in the last 650,000 years.

(You can't really blame Durkin for wanting a simpler graphic than this IPCC one - it looks like something from the Richter Office Christmas party. But when you've got data that shows such variability, choosing the bit that fits your argument and omitting everything else is just plain wrong.)

... and increased carbon dioxide does cause global warming.

Durkin's experts argue that man-made CO2 can't be causing global warming because if it did, we should have seen an increase in temperature throughout the 20th century, but global temperature actually dropped after World War 2. And they've got a graph to prove it.

This is a fair assumption - it's a question that was asked by scientists years ago. And answered by them too.

The reason that temperatures dropped in the northern hemisphere when our post-war uber-industrial era kicked in was because all the pollution we were churning out (sulphates in particular) did a great job of reflecting sunlight back out to space - the 'global dimming' phenomenon. That offset the warming you would have expected if CO2 levels alone caused climate.

When acid rain - caused by sulphur pollution - became an issue in the 70s-80s, and emissions-reducing policies led to cuts in the pollutants that had been masking the warming, the temperature start to climb.

Solar Activity is real, but it's got next to no impact on global temperature

There have been studies claiming a strong link between solar radiation changes and global warming, but they haven't been published in what you'd call reputable climate journals. Articles pointing out methodological flaws in these solar activity studies, however, have been.

The 'Temp & Solar Activity' graphs in The Swindle certainly look like they show a clear connection between the Sun's activity and the Earth's temperature, but they're not without their problems.

Forgetting for a moment that the unit of solar activity used (sunspot cycle length) isn't directly related to the Sun's temperature-causing effect, and that the temperature figures used are 30 years out of date, there's the fact that the graph - and the film - completely ignores the period from 1975 onwards.

And while a lot of what went on in the 80s & 90s doesn't bear remembering, this is the period when the best data on solar activity & changes is available. It's also the period where other studies have shown little or no relationship between solar radiation and global temperature.

In fact, just one day before Durkin's film aired in Australia another report from UK and Swiss researchers says solar variability could not explain recent warming. Nail for a coffin, anyone?

Oh yeah, and climate models do accurately reflect the observed data

The Swindle says climate models' predictions don't match the observed temperatures in the upper atmosphere. Clearly no number of internationally published, peer-reviewed articles contradicting this statement were going to change the minds of the film's experts. Which is funny, because at least one of these studies was written by one of them.

John Christy (the guy with the weather balloons and determined jogging style) was one of the lead authors on the 2006 US Climate Change Science Programme's review of temperature trends in the lower atmosphere - which states that there is no conflict between observed changes and the results of the climate models. He may have mentioned this when being interviewed for the film but, not surprisingly, it didn't make the final cut.

About that Thatcher plot ...

The claim from a number of Durkin's guests that funding dollars have poured into studies on global warming ever since Margaret Thatcher wanted to cut the UK's reliance on coal and the Middle-East is interesting. Their assertion that the funding has affected the outcome of the studies is very serious - but if anyone knows about the impact of funding on the results of studies, it's these guys. A number of the film's experts are well known for being on the receiving end of funds from anti-global warming think tanks and the energy sector.

Out of five I'd give it ...

Balanced? No. Accurate? No. On the right track? Not even close. What this film's really got going for it is an alarming number of variants on the scientist as balding white guy theme, and the fact that it'll make a great teaching tool in documentary-making classes.

But don't take my word for it - watch the film and then, more importantly, watch the panel discussion airing immediately after it. Only then will you be in a position to do what the film's spruikers say - make up your own mind.

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Published July 12, 2007

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What is the thesis statement of the great global warming swindle?  

The thesis statement of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is that recent global warming is neither significant nor due to human activity. The documentary argues against the conventional scientific understanding of climate change and contends that modern climate scientists are either seriously misguided or guilty of lying to the community . The paper by Vincent R. Gray examines the evidence presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and shows that none of it confirms a relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and harmful effects on the climate . The article by Myke Bartlett discusses how the documentary carefully selects evidence and uses powerful imagery to present a contradictory stance on global warming .

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The Royal Society's response to the documentary 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'

In response to the documentary 'The Great Global Warming Swindle', screened on Channel 4 on Thursday 8 March, Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, said: "Global temperature is increasing. This warming threatens the future health and well-being of many millions of people throughout the world."

"This is especially true of those in the developing countries who are the least able to adapt and who are likely to be the worst affected. Many factors play a part in global warming but there is significant scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2, are responsible for most of the temperature rise. If present trends continue the projected climate change will be far greater than that already experienced. Greenhouse gas emissions are something that we can and must take action on.

"Scientists will continue to monitor the global climate and the factors which influence it. It is important that all legitimate potential scientific explanations continue to be considered and investigated. Debate will continue, and the Royal Society has just hosted a two day discussion meeting attended by over 300 scientists, but it must not be at the expense of action. Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future."

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About the ABC

The great global warming swindle.

Posted 15th June 2007

Thursday, July 12th at 8.30pm Hosted by Lateline presenter Tony Jones featuring an in-depth interview with writer and director Martin Durkin Followed by an expert panel discussion with a studio audience Also simulcast on ABC 2 and ABC NewsRadio

It’s the most contentious issue of our time – climate change.

Tonight, Lateline presenter Tony Jones, hosts the screening of the controversial documentary – The Great Global Warming Swindle – written and directed by Martin Durkin.

Immediately following the documentary, Jones will conduct an in-depth interview with Durkin on all the contentious issues raised in the program – including its impact when it premiered in the UK in March on Channel 4; the science on which the documentary is based; the credibility of the scientists interviewed for the film; their satisfaction with the way they were portrayed; and the filmmaker’s assertion that capping CO2 emissions would be devastating to developing nations.

The interview will include opinions from eminent scientists from Australia and overseas who oppose and support Durkin’s documentary.

Following Durkin’s interview with Jones, the discussion will be expanded to involve a panel comprising leaders from the business and scientific communities, social commentators, environmentalists and academics. This group will include a number of climate sceptics who support Martin Durkin’s view of global warming.

The ABC?s comprehensive multi-platform coverage of this contentious documentary will involve ABC TV; the ABC’s digital channel ABC 2; ABC NewsRadio; and ABC on-line.

ABC TV and ABC 2 will simulcast The Great Global Warming Swindle and Tony Jones’ in-depth interview with Martin Durkin, as well as the discussion with the expert panel and a studio audience from 8.30pm on Thursday, July 12th.

Tony Jones in-depth interview with Martin Durkin, as well as the discussion with the expert panel and a studio audience, will also be heard on ABC NewsRadio from 9.25pm (Aust. Eastern Standard Time).

The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary, Tony Jones’ in-depth interview with Martin Durkin, and the discussion with the expert panel will be repeated in a two-hour special on ABC 2 on Saturday, July 14th at 8.30pm.

The Great Global Warming Swindle caused controversy in the UK when it premiered in March on Channel 4.

According to Martin Durkin’s documentary, the chief cause of climate change is not human activity but changes in radiation from the sun.

Some have called The Great Global Warming Swindle the definitive retort to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Using a comprehensive range of evidence it’s claimed that warming over the past 300 years represents a natural recovery from a “little ice age”.

According to the program humans do have an effect on climate but it’s infinitesimally small compared with the vast natural forces which are constantly pushing global temperatures this way and that.

From melting glaciers and rising sea levels, The Great Global Warming Swindle debunks the myths, and exposes what may well prove to be the darkest chapter in the history of mankind.

According to a group of leading scientists brought together by documentary maker Martin Durkin everything you’ve ever been told about global warming is probably untrue.

Just as we’ve begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, Durkin’s documentary slays the whole premise of global warming.

“Global warming has become a story of huge political significance; environmental activists using scare tactics to further their cause; scientists adding credence to secure billions of dollars in research money; politicians after headlines and a media happy to play along.

No-one dares speak against it for risk of being unpopular, losing funds and jeopardising careers.”

Martin Durkin’s TV career started in current affairs at LWT. He became a director of RDF Television in 1994. In 1999 he became managing director of Wag TV. His films relating to environmentalism, including The Great Global Warming Swindle, have provoked much debate.

Written and directed by Martin Durkin Produced by Wag TV for Channel 4.

For further information contact:

Tony Brooks ABC TV Publicity (02) 8333 3573 [email protected] 0417 113 997

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America’s First Great Global Warming Debate

Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster argue over conventional wisdom that lasted thousands of years

Joshua Kendall

As the tumultuous century was drawing to a close, the conservative Yale grad challenged the sitting vice president’s ideas about global warming. The vice president, a cerebral Southerner, was planning his own run for the presidency, and the fiery Connecticut native was eager to denounce the opposition party.

The date was 1799, not 1999—and the opposing voices in America’s first great debate about the link between human activity and rising temperature readings were not Al Gore and George W. Bush, but Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster.

As a gentleman farmer in Virginia, Jefferson had long been obsessed with the weather; in fact, on July 1, 1776, just as he was finishing his work on the Declaration of Independence, he began keeping a temperature diary. Jefferson would take two readings a day for the next 50 years. He would also crunch the numbers every which way, calculating various averages such as the mean temperature each month and each year.

In his 1787 book, Notes on the State of Virginia , Jefferson launched into a discussion of the climate of both his home state and America as a whole. Near the end of a brief chapter addressing wind currents, rain and temperature, he presented a series of tentative conclusions: “A change in our climate…is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep….The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now.” Concerned about the destructive effects of this warming trend, Jefferson noted how “an unfortunate fluctuation between heat and cold” in the spring has been “very fatal to fruits.”

Jefferson was affirming the long-standing conventional wisdom of the day. For more than two millennia, people had lamented that deforestation had resulted in rising temperatures. A slew of prominent writers, from the great ancient naturalists Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder to such Enlightenment heavyweights as the Comte de Buffon and David Hume, had alluded to Europe’s warming trend.

A contemporary authority, Samuel Williams, the author of a 1794 magnum opus, The Natural and Civil History of Vermont , had studied temperature readings at several points in the 18th century from his home state and half a dozen other locales throughout North America, including South Carolina, Maryland and Quebec. Citing this empirical data, Williams claimed that the leveling of trees and the clearing of lands had caused the earth to become warmer and drier. “[Climate] change…instead of being so slow and gradual, as to be a matter of doubt,” he argued, “is so rapid and constant, that it is the subject of common observation and experience. It has been observed in every part of the United States; but is most of all sensible and apparent in a new country, which is suddenly changing from a state of vast uncultivated wilderness, to that of numerous settlements.”

This opinion had been uttered for so long that it was widely accepted as a given—until Webster. Today Webster is best known as the author of the  American Dictionary of the English Language  (1828), but his “great book” was actually his retirement project. He was a pioneering journalist who edited  American Minerva , New York City’s first daily newspaper in the 1790s, and he weighed in on the major public policy issues of the day, cranking out essays on behalf of the Constitution, a 700-page treatise on epidemics and a condemnation of slavery. He would also serve in the state legislature of both Connecticut and Massachusetts. Webster disputed the “popular opinion that the temperature of the winter season, in northern latitudes, has suffered a material change” in a speech before the newly established Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799. Several years later, Webster delivered a second address on the topic. The two speeches were published together in 1810 under the title “On the Supposed Change of in the Temperature of Winter.”

With the thermometer still a relatively recent invention—the Polish inventor Daniel Fahrenheit didn’t develop his eponymous scale until 1724—conclusions about weather patterns before the mid-18th century were based largely on anecdotes. In the first two-thirds of his 1799 speech, Webster attacked Williams, a pastor who helped found the University of Vermont, for his faulty interpretations of literary texts such as the Bible and Virgil’s  Georgics . Challenging Williams’ assumption—derived from his close examination of the Book of Job—that winters in Palestine were no longer as cold as they used to be, Webster declared, “I am really surprised to observe on what a slight foundation, a divine and philosopher has erected this theory.” But Webster, while acknowledging that the Bible may well not have been “a series of facts,” tried to spin the weather imagery in ancient texts his own way. Citing passages from Horace and Pliny, Webster asserted that “we then have the data to ascertain the ancient climate of Italy with great precision.”

To settle the scientific debate, Webster offered more than just literary exegesis. In examining “the cold of American winters,” Webster focused on the numbers—and his opponents’ lack of hard data (Jeffersons recorded his own temperature readings in a private diary). “Mr. Jefferson,” Webster stated, “seems to have no authority for his opinions but the observations of elderly and middle-aged people.” Webster saved most of his ammunition for Williams, who had written the more extensive brief, replete with an array of temperature readings. Williams’ central contention, that America’s temperature had risen by 10 or 12 degrees in the prior century and a half, Webster asserted, just doesn’t make any sense. “The mean temperature of Vermont,” he writes, “is now 43 degrees…If we suppose the winter only to have changed, and deduct one half the supposed abatement, still the result forbids us to believe the hypothesis. If we suppose the heat of summer to have lessened in the same proportion…the summers formerly must have been intolerable; no animal could have subsisted under ten degrees of heat beyond our present summer temperature. On whichever side we turn our eyes, we meet with insurmountable difficulties.”

Webster concluded by rejecting the crude warming theory of Jefferson and Williams in favor of a more subtle rendering of the data. The conversion of forests to fields, he acknowledged, has led to some microclimatic changes—namely, more windiness and more variation in winter conditions. But while snow doesn’t stay on the ground as long, that doesn’t necessarily mean the country as a whole gets less snowfall each winter: “We have, in the cultivated districts, deep snow today, and none tomorrow; but the same quantity of snow falling in the woods, lies there till spring….This will explain all the appearances of the seasons without resorting to the unphilosophical hypothesis of a general increase in heat.”

Webster’s words essentially ended the controversy. While Jefferson continued to compile and crunch temperature data after his retirement from the presidency, he never again made the case for global warming. Neither did Williams, who died a few years after the publication of Webster’s article. Webster’s position was considered unimpeachable. In 1850, the acclaimed German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt declared that “statements frequently advanced, although unsupported by measurements, that…the destruction of many forests on both sides of the Alleghenys has rendered the climate more equable…are now generally discredited.”

And there the matter rested until the second half of the 20th century, when scientists began to understand the impact of greenhouse gases on the environment. The second great global warming debate poses a different set of scientific questions from those raised in the late 18th century, and this time the science clearly supports the idea that human activity (including clearing and burning forests) can increase temperatures. But it is Webster’s papers, with their careful analysis of the data, that have stood the test of time. Kenneth Thompson, a modern environmental scientist from the University of California at Davis, praises “the force and erudition” of Webster’s arguments and labels his contribution to climatology “a tour de force.”

Joshua Kendall is the author of  The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture  (Putnam, 2011).

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Joshua Kendall is the author of First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama , which is coming out in May.

The great Great Global Warming Swindle swindle

• Brendan Montague

I thought it was outrageous. I thought: how is it possible that this has been allowed to be broadcast, because it’s so blatantly full of demonstrably false information? What I decided to do was to organise a joint letter by a group of climate scientists to complain about it.

Lord Lawson  began his public relations attack on climate science in earnest on 8 March 2007 when he appeared alongside the distinguished cast of oil-funded deniers on the  Channel Four  programme,  The Great Global Warming Swindle .

Lawson used the platform to try and  undermine Margaret Thatcher’s legacy  as the politician who had placed climate change at the centre of global political debate, claiming her support was just a Machiavellian counterattack against coal workers and the National Union of Miners.

The programme was  directed by Martin Durkin ,  a former Marxist  who had become close friends with  Julian Morris and the radical free market Institute of Economic Affairs . Durkin told me that Morris, then at the International Policy Network, was very much the inspiration for the show.

Provocative programme

'Swindle' was a deliberately provocative polemic and Durkin was entirely at ease with editing interviews – on at least one occasion – so that the participants appeared to be saying exactly the opposite of what they had in fact proposed. He claims that  global warming is a hoax  foisted upon an unsuspecting public by conspiratorial environmentalists.

Sir David King, then chief scientific advisor  to the UK Government, complained to  Channel Four  about how his own contribution had been manipulated. After the show aired there were more than 260 further complaints from viewers.  Professor Chris Rapley, then head of the British Antarctic Survey , described the programme as  “a tissue of lies” .

Bob Ward  from the Royal Society, who had  previously taken on ExxonMobil , drafted a 180 page report for the broadcast regulator, accusing the programme of “displaying erroneous or artificially manipulated graphs, and presenting  incorrect, misleading, or incomplete opinions  and facts on the science of global warming and the related economics.”

Ward told me: “I thought it was outrageous. I thought: how is it possible that this has been allowed to be broadcast, because it’s so blatantly full of demonstrably false information? What I decided to do was to organise a joint letter by a group of climate scientists to complain about it.”

Not impartial

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, indeed ruled that  Channel Four  had broken impartiality guidelines and had misrepresented statements by King. They found the programme’s representation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was unfair, as was its treatment of  Professor Carl Wunsch of MIT .

There were several contributors who had no complaints about the programme – indeed, they only had cause of celebration. Many of them had become familiar faces to those scrutinising ExxonMobil's and the Koch brothers' funding of climate denial.

Fred Singer  was asked to give an expert opinion, with no reference to the fact that he had previously worked as a consultant to major oil companies including ExxonMobil.  Tim Ball , also funded by fossil fuels, was interviewed, as were  Richard Lindzen ,  Roy Spencer  and  Patrick Michaels .

Among those supporting the programme was Christopher Booker, the ever-eccentric  Sunday Telegraph  columnist.

He celebrated the broadcast “as  unashamedly one-sided  in putting the sceptical objections to the theory of man-made global warming as innumerable BBC programmes had been in conveying the ‘consensus’ view.”

Political spin

Stewart Dimmock – described as a 45-year-old lorry driver and school governor  from Kent – apparently took it upon himself to take the Labour Government to court to prevent the distribution of Al Gore’s  An Inconvenient Truth  to schools. He claimed the “political spin” should be balanced by the 'Great Global Warming Swindle' being sent out at the same time.

“I care about the environment as much as the next man,” Dimmock was quoted in the  Daily Telegraph  as saying. “However, I am determined to prevent my children from being subjected to  political spin in the classroom ”.

Much of the charm of Dimmock’s David-and-Goliath assault on Al Gore – and support for Martin Durkin – was the fact that he was not a political animal. Yet, it was not long before Viscount Monckton, the Tory peer, revealed himself as among those  bankrolling the legal battle .

Monckton also threatened to send out his own film,  Apocalypse No! , with the  financial support of Fred Singer and his Science and Public Policy Institute , which was once housed with the Atlas Foundation, set up by Antony Fisher and supported with plumes of tobacco funding.

Lawson lent considerable gravitas to 'Swindle', but was shrewd enough to distance himself from Monckton’s headline-grabbing antics. It was also shortly after his appearance on  Channel 4  that he began to unwind his investments in a consultancy company working closely with Polish coal, oil and gas companies.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of  The Ecologist,  founder of Request Initiative and co-author of  Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours:  The web of influence  of addictive industries  (Oxford University Press) .  He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk . 

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The Power of Independent Thinking

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has met its match: a devastating documentary recently shown on British television, which has now been viewed by millions of people on the Internet. Despite its flamboyant title, The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science and interviews with real climate scientists, including me. An Inconvenient Truth , on the other hand, is mostly an emotional presentation from a single politician.

The scientific arguments presented in The Great Global Warming Swindle can be stated quite briefly:

1. There is no proof that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from human activity. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded — not resulted from —increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor is far, far more important than CO2. Dire predictions of future warming are based almost entirely on computer climate models, yet these models do not accurately understand the role or water vapor—and, in any case, water vapor is not within our control. Plus, computer models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the past century (1940–75), nor for the observed patterns of warming—what we call the “fingerprints.” For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite.

The best evidence supporting natural causes of temperature fluctuations are the changes in cloudiness, which correspond strongly with regular variations in solar activity. The current warming is likely part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that’s been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease, and general misery. Attempts have been made to claim that the current warming is “unusual” using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data. Advocates have tried to deny the existence of these historic climate swings and claim that the current warming is "unusual" by using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data, resulting in the famous “hockey–stick” temperature graph. The hockey-stick graph has now been thoroughly discredited.

2. If the cause of warming is mostly natural, then there is little we can do about it. We cannot control the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes for greenhouse gas reduction currently bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless, and wildly expensive:

Ironically, even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend, all these schemes would be ineffective—unless we could persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent!

3. Finally, no one can show that a warmer climate would produce negative impacts overall. The much–feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short–term temperature changes, as the rate of sea–level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely—that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. Why do we assume that the present climate is the optimum? Surely, the chance of this must be vanishingly small, and the economic history of past climate warmings bear this out.

But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. Why should we devote our scarce resources to what is essentially a non–problem, and ignore the real problems the world faces: hunger, disease, denial of human rights—not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? Yet politicians and the elites throughout much of the world prefer to squander our limited resources to fashionable issues, rather than concentrate on real problems. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: the chief scientist of Great Britain tells us that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100, with a few surviving breeding couples propagating the human race. Seriously!

I imagine that in the not–too–distant future all the hype will have died down, particularly if the climate should decide to cool—as it did during much of the past century; we should take note here that it has not warmed since 1998. Future generations will look back on the current madness and wonder what it was all about. They will have movies like An Inconvenient Truth and documentaries like The Great Global Warming Swindle to remind them.