Program: The Great Global Warming Swindle

[wayneL]

75 minutes worth... interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

 

[2020hindsight]

wayne - 1 minute was enough for me -
I preferred the show on abc four corners which showed the corrupt scientists to be what they are ... in the paid service of the Exxons of the world - (the one you kndly found the link for)

 

[2020hindsight]

wayne - 1 minute was enough for me -
I preferred the show on abc four corners which showed the corrupt scientists to be what they are ... in the paid service of the Exxons of the world - (the one you kndly found the link for)

This youtube video reminds me of Ayn Rand (again) - (previous post of mine follows) - the quote in bold is based on data compiled in 1971, probably written 1973 or so I guess. - such ignorance, such incompetence, such mismanagement , such selfishness by the industrialised and developed countries ...., such a terrible legacy for the Y generation

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageSer...and_biograp hy
"Ayn Rand ...Atlas Shrugged was her greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics . " - one tough lady - then again born in Russia , saw the Bolshevik revolution in 1917/18 etcetc.

.....Here's what she said about pollution:- back in the 60's granted - but we are reapingthe rewards today ...

"If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States:
1900 - 47.3 years
1920 - 53 years
1940 - 60 years
1968 - 70.2 years (the latest figures compiled [as of January 1971])
Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent "Thank you" to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.-- Ayn Rand, "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution

[ life expentancy ? - try the miserable expectancies that the third world has inherited from this attitude - but I digress, only wanted to make a point about "blind - no - blinkered eye to suffering and charity"]

Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Ayn_Rand/
Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.

 

[wayneL]

wayne - 1 minute was enough for me -
I preferred the show on abc four corners which showed the corrupt scientists to be what they are ... in the paid service of the Exxons of the world - (the one you kndly found the link for)

This one acknowledges GW but refutes CO2 as the cause and pins it on solar activity. Does a good job of it.

Pollution is still the biggy for me rather than co2.

 

[2020hindsight]

This one acknowledges GW but refutes CO2 as the cause and pins it on solar activity. Does a good job of it. Pollution is still the biggy for me rather than co2.

lol -k m8, I'll try again "later" - maybe I'll get to the second or third minute before I "change the channel".
when they claimed the ice wasn't melting, I thought to myself - so go find a hungry polar bear and tell THAT to his face :

PS polar bears are eating each other - even more frequently than normal
PPS If the problem is pollution , then let's play safe and work on BOTH pollution and CO2
PPS I think i heard last night that last year was the hottest on record since records commenced in 1880? - worldwide? or USA one or other anyway.
PPS The other thing I didnt like about the intro is that Al Gore is ridiculed. As you said somewhere else "don't play the man, play the ball".

 

[wayneL]

This was on prime time TV in the UK. You gotta watch the whole show before canning it.

 

[wayneL]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060926_solar_activity.html

 

[2020hindsight]

well I agree wit the lastcoupla lines anyway.
" During the last few decades, the solar activity is not increasing. It has stabilized at a high level, but the Earth's climate still shows a tendency toward increasing temperatures," Usoskin explained.

He suspects even if there were a link between the Sun's activity and global climate, other factors must have dominated during the last few decades, including the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."

 

[wayneL]

including the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."

You have to say that to get money

 

[2020hindsight]

Wayne, I'm sure you've heard that one ... the Irish scientists at a meeting
Professor Shaun :- "well so wott if the americans have gotten to the moon , we're gonna go to the sun!!!"
"but won't it be too hot?" sez Prof Paddy?
"ahh no , we've thought of that ... and we've worked out how to get around it ...
we've decided to go at night ya see"

lol that avatar of yours (icarus bull) sure tells a story - same story as your previous dive bomber i guess?.

 

[ghotib]

I watched the whole thing. It's nice watching something like this at the computer: you can look things up as questions arise.

The programme lost cred for me early on as it featured Tim Ball and Fred Singer, both of whom featured earlier in their careers as spokesmen for tobacco/cancer skeptics and to my mind are hopelessly tainted witnesses to anything. Incidentally, Singer is one of the guys who claims in the programme never to have seen a cent from oil companies. Here's a counterclaim, with references: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=S._Fred_Singer.

I was more interested in the work of John Christy, the guy who does the temperature measurements with balloons. As best I can find, his current view is that human-generated CO2 emissions are responsible for at least part of a real global temperature rise, but that the effects are not likely to be as catastrophic as some predictions. That strikes me as a reasonable and scientific position, and the guy is doing real research and looking for real data. Which makes this article interesting
http://www.livescience.com/environment/050811_global_warming.html

I don't say that Al Gore presented a flawless case but this programme has its own problems:

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

Wayne, you summarised the programme's case as being that global warming is real but caused by solar activity rather than by (human-caused) CO2. I don't quite agree with that summary; I think the programme sets several arguments running and doesn't actually make any of them. The kicker is the end, where it suggests that economic development in Africa is impossible without increased use of coal and oil. The suggestion doesn't even pretend to be scientific: it's a rhetorical gambit that to my mind discredits everything that preceded it.

That's a pity because there probably is more information to be publicised that would be useful in forming public policy. But this programme certainly won't stop me turning out lights when I leave a room.

Cheers,

Ghoti

 

[wayneL]

Thanks for your assessment ghotib.

The kicker is the end, where it suggests that economic development in Africa is impossible without increased use of coal and oil. The suggestion doesn't even pretend to be scientific: it's a rhetorical gambit that to my mind discredits everything that preceded it.

That's a pity because there probably is more information to be publicised that would be useful in forming public policy. But this programme certainly won't stop me turning out lights when I leave a room.

Agree with you on this.

It's still an interesting topic with loads of rhetoric, misinformation, hidden agendas and hypocrisy on both sides... interspersed with a little bit of real science.

I've learned long ago to be mistrustful of "science" on a lot of different fronts, for a lot of the reasons outlined in the program, and indeed the reasons outlined in your post.

Just trying to generate some discussion sans the foregone conclusions implanted by the thought police. As far as turning out the lights... yeah I'm all for that, for lots of reasons independent of CO2.

Cheers

 

[2020hindsight]

Sorry wayne, I just can't get into this tainted spin-doctored science. (and thanks ghotib). Bit like the proof that USA didnt land on the moon because the flags are flying - or a million theories about USA bringing down WTC themselves - as if.

Global warming is obvious. This isn't one of those cases where you say, ok, we have 3 scientists on the committee saying black (i.e. doomssayers), and three saying white (no need to worry folks, fossil fuel is harmless) - let's go for grey. You end up with a camel, and a camel just won't work for this one. The scientists predicting doomsday have been amazingly reserved imo. The truth could well lie on the black side of black.

At least moths are turning up at the meeting in Europe to give proof of the crazy climate changes going on. - crops being eaten by catepllars that would usually not survive the winter etc. It's dead easy decision for me. Global warming left to continue unchecked is the death knell.

Whatever the cause of Global warming, we have to try to slow it down at least. This thing is like the Queen Mary - It will take a hundred years to get back to where we are now in any case.

Anyone who trusts the word of (cigarette companies or) oil companies needs their heads read. As for coal - I can see that the "fossil fuel lobbyists" will probably get their way in Aus - Even Peter Garrett is saying "coal is ok for the time being" - but at least he's adding the bit about the need for clean coal technology.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1854517.htm

The Denial Machine , Reporter: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcast: 26/02/2007
For years the global warming debate has swirled like a firestorm. Science has been tossed about in a tornado of spin from doomsayers and doubters, deep green activists and fossil fuel lobbyists.

How did the future of the planet become such a political battleground? A few weeks ago the pre-eminent body of climate scientists, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reaffirmed that global warming is real, happening now and very likely caused by human activity.

Late last year a report to the British Government likened the potential economic impact of global warming to the two world wars and the Great Depression. Yet some scientists insist that climate change, if it’s happening at all, could be a good thing.

This report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigates the campaign to deny the science of global warming and slow international action against it. It tracks the activities of a small group of North American scientists, some of whom previously worked for Big Tobacco and who are now receiving donations from large oil and coal interests. It also examines how key planks of the fossil fuel industry’s case were adopted by governments in the US and Canada…

As Australia stews over how far it should go to combat greenhouse emissions, "The Denial Machine" goes behind the debate - on Four Corners 8.30 pm Monday 26 February, ABC TV.

 

[2020hindsight]

Wayne - finally found time to listen to it all. Have to say I owe you a massive apology. Fantastic.

In my defence as to my initial reaction ... it starts with what I consider to be a spindoctored twisted logic:-

"1. ice is melting ,
2. sea is rising ,
3. hurricanes are blowing and
4. its all your fault
5. scared?
6. dont be,
7. its not true."

I think we should all be "scared", but the answer "it's not true" apparently only applies to statement 4, the fact that man is probably not responsible (or at least not as resonsible as we are lead to believe).
The inference is that nothing we do will change anything (very fatalistic - probably over simplistic in itself), and that man is insignificant and not in control as he thinks (very humbling)
"ahh but I may as well try to catch the (solar) wind" - as Dylan would say.

Can't see how clearing the amazon jungles (the lungs of the planet) is gonna help (?) - and they don't go anywhere near topics like that - Once that is out of the way , it is fantastic (I concede).
Pretty compelling case for "political interference" behind the environmental debate. (starting with Maggie Thatcher etc) and for lop-sided funding of research projects, etc (pro vs anti global warming (?) or "greenhouse" (?) - they use the terms interchangably which gets confusing).

Hard to argue with the likes of Patrick Moore, apparently cofounder of Greenpeace (till he left) who now sees sinister motives in the debate. (as do many).

Temp is leading CO2 by 200 years . Hence CO2 is clearly not the cause. yep, that sure wan't brought out by Al Gore either.

I was particularly "hooked" at about 68th minute , in summary :-
"the precautionary principle has politically suspect motives ( third world suffer)". If we are telling the third world that they are only to use wind and solar - what we are really telling them is "you cannot have electricity!" and you cannot become industrialised !. or a steel industry , or railway networks etc. "might power a transister radio" as they say. ..."morally repugnant". "somebody (the environmental lobby) is keen to kill the African dream - and the African dream is to develop" . "We are still at the level of survival"

PS I have to go away and think long and hard on this. Do some more research lol. thanks again.
PPS I still intend to help my mate down the road with his objective of planting 100 trees lol.
PPS as usual wit these things you have to define your terms - global warming is happening, real, measureable. But the causes ? - that's where these scientists differ yes? Then come the motives - ?

 

[wayneL]

2020,

I hope people don't go and rush out the door to buy that hummer, or by a whopper made with beef raised where the Amazon "used" to be, (and now can hardly support pasture)(as you and ghotib have said); I certainly won't be.

Take away the CO2/climate change arguement and there are still huge challenges. I will still be as annoyingly green as possible.

I just wonder about the agenda and am cynical when an "industry" is built up around something... and I am deeply suspicious when an American politician takes up a cause. (and races around the world in jets, motorcades and probably lives in an energy hungry mansion)

 

[2020hindsight]

I don't say that Al Gore presented a flawless case but this programme has its own problems:
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

thanks Ghotib - sheesh - even Channel 4 is not above bending the truth ( and consistently) throughout that article.
Seems there's lies, damned lies, and then (out on their own by a country mile) lies about the environment. manipulated every which way.
here's the true NASA graph for comparison.
(question arises does Channel 4 have links with Exxon? lol)
But the article of this thread is still worth a watch for sure.

The real global warming swindle
A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors
By Steve Connor
Published: 14 March 2007

One of the principal supports for his thesis came in the form of a graph labelled "World Temp - 120 years", which claimed to show rises and falls in average global temperatures between 1880 and 2000.

Mr Durkin's film argued that most global warming over the past century occurred between 1900 and 1940 and that there was a period of cooling between 1940 and 1975 when the post-war economic boom was under way. This showed, he said, that global warming had little to do with industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.

The programme-makers labelled the source of the world temperature data as "Nasa" but when we inquired about where we could find this information, we received an email through Wag TV's PR consultant saying that the graph was drawn from a 1998 diagram published in an obscure journal called Medical Sentinel. The authors of the paper are well-known climate sceptics who were funded by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and the George C Marshall Institute, a right-wing Washington think-tank.

However, there are no diagrams in the paper that accurately compare with the C4 graph. The nearest comparison is a diagram of "terrestrial northern hemisphere" temperatures - which refers only to data gathered by weather stations in the top one third of the globe.

However, further inquiries revealed that the C4 graph was based on a diagram in another paper produced as part of a "petition project" by the same group of climate sceptics. This diagram was itself based on long out-of-date information on terrestrial temperatures compiled by Nasa scientists.

However, crucially, the axis along the bottom of the graph has been distorted in the C4 version of the graph, which made it look like the information was up-to-date when in fact the data ended in the early 1980s.

Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. "There was a fluff there," he said.

If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the Nasa website he could have got the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and 1940 - although that would have undermined his argument.
"The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find," Mr Durkin said.

The programme failed to point out that scientists had now explained the period of "global cooling" between 1940 and 1970. It was caused by industrial emissions of sulphate pollutants, which tend to reflect sunlight. Subsequent clean-air laws have cleared up some of this pollution, revealing the true scale of global warming - a point that the film failed to mention.

Other graphs used in the film contained known errors, notably the graph of sunspot activity. Mr Durkin used data on solar cycle lengths which were first published in 1991 despite a corrected version being available - but again the corrected version would not have supported his argument. Mr Durkin also used a schematic graph of temperatures over the past 1,000 years that was at least 16 years old, which gave the impression that today's temperatures are cooler than during the medieval warm period. If he had used a more recent, and widely available, composite graph it would have shown average temperatures far exceed the past 1,000 years.

http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/9929/a001008_pre.jpg
the graph on the right is the real graph (NASA website) -
one has increase 1880 - 1940 of 0.5, then decrease 1940-1980 of 0.2, then increase by 0.4 since.
The true graph shows increase of 0.5 then a further INCREASE of 0.2 then increase 0f 0.3, arriving at a point 0.3 higher overall, and blowing the argument that things cooled between 40 and 80. (I'm making assumptions that both are in degC)
But there's no question either way that things are getting hotter.

 

[2020hindsight]

Here are some graphs etc on sun effects.
the Channel 4 program showed correlation between solar activity and temp over 500 million years.
Here's another of those LiveScience.com articles:-

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060913_sun_warming.html
During times of high activity, like in year 2000, the Sun shines about 0.07 percent brighter, researchers report in the September 14 issue of the journal Nature. The researchers used a combination of data on solar brightness obtained by spacecrafts since 1978 and isotope data ””collected from Earth's atmosphere and in ice sheets of Antarctic and Greenland””to recreate the Sun's influence on terrestrial temperatures over the past several centuries.

Although events such as sunspots have increased in the last 400 years, their effect only contributed a small amount to global warming, the results show. “Our results imply that, over the past century, climate change due to human influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the Sun's brightness,” said study co-author Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The first graph is from Channel 4. (temp and solar winds) - good correlation.
The second graph is only over a few 100 years, temp appears to be in phase with "solar cycle" (assuming Ive read it right) - and between 1880 and 1940 there is approx 0.4deg C increase in "Temp Anomaly".
They are not meant to be directly compared and contrasted. different time frames. - both fairly convincing you'd think. Yet the LifeScience website concludes differently (human influences far outweigh .. Sun's brightness" (?) - and they are the sourceof the second graph for instance. - that's it , I'm knocking off for a beer. (rather than get into another sun-heated argument).

 

[Kimosabi]

Alot of the Global Warming stuff is absolute crap...

The REAL problem is we're running out of OIL. Now the governemnts of the world can't readily admit that their running out of BLACK GOLD because of the subsequent social/political upheaval etc.

So in classic Government fashion they create another crisis that achieves their ends without admitting to the real problem.

What better way to get Society/Industry to come up with new renewable fuels and energy, than create an environment condusive to develop renewable fuels/energy than come up with this Global Warming crap which accelerates the development of Renewable Energy etc.

Not that this is a bad problem or strategy, but imagine the reaction if the Wall Street Journal, CNN or Bloomberg ran with the front page headline

"WORLD HAS TWO YEARS OF OIL SUPPLIES LEFT"

 

[rederob]

A lot of the Global Warming stuff is absolute crap...
"WORLD HAS TWO YEARS OF OIL SUPPLIES LEFT"

Not sure which bits you are referring to, but the scientific consensus, which did not exist a few years ago, suggests global warming effects are well and truly to the fore.
Moronic mortals have a conceptual problem with evolutionary time, and therefore find it difficult to conceive that a one degree temperature change to planet earth makes a massive difference to weather - due to many subsidiary influences, particularly related to melting of the ice caps ans incumbent rising sea levels.
It is in fact this latter effect that will prove the greatest catastrophe, but if we are not willing to see the writing on the wall now, I guess worrying about it later is something the next generation will have to learn to die with.

 

[Kimosabi]

Not sure which bits you are referring to, but the scientific consensus, which did not exist a few years ago, suggests global warming effects are well and truly to the fore.
Moronic mortals have a conceptual problem with evolutionary time, and therefore find it difficult to conceive that a one degree temperature change to planet earth makes a massive difference to weather - due to many subsidiary influences, particularly related to melting of the ice caps ans incumbent rising sea levels.
It is in fact this latter effect that will prove the greatest catastrophe, but if we are not willing to see the writing on the wall now, I guess worrying about it later is something the next generation will have to learn to die with.

Planet Earth has been getting hotter and colder all by itself without any help from humans.

If you want to cool the Earth down, blow up a couple of huge volcano's or steer an asteroid into the Planet. It's worked in the past and I'm sure it'll work in again the future.

Planet Earth is a pretty dynamic place, it's always been changing and I suspect it will continue to keep changing regardless of what humans do...