Program: The Great Global Warming Swindle

[billhill]

Just thought i would provide a little background concerning this controversial program.
First its director Martin Durkin's background can be found on the link below. Seems he has a bit of a thing against environmentalist being involved with several anti-environment organisations not to metion that he made a doco in 1998 arguing that silicon breast implants were infact good for women and posed no risk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_(television_director)

And as for the main scientist Ian Clark he works for the fraser institute which is a beneficiary of none other then exxon mobil.
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1280
http://www.desmogblog.com/fraser-institute-readies-attack-on-ipcc

Look at the evidence and make up your own mind.

 

[wayneL]

Just thought i would provide a little background concerning this controversial program.
First its director Martin Durkin's background can be found on the link below. Seems he has a bit of a thing against environmentalist being involved with several anti-environment organisations not to metion that he made a doco in 1998 arguing that silicon breast implants were infact good for women and posed no risk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_(television_director)

And as for the main scientist Ian Clark he works for the fraser institute which is a beneficiary of none other then exxon mobil.
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1280
http://www.desmogblog.com/fraser-institute-readies-attack-on-ipcc

Look at the evidence and make up your own mind.

Yes.

This is why I said above:

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.

The same type of criticisms can be leveled at both sides.

When politicians, organizations, career researchers, money interests become involved, the obfuscations can become impenetrable.

We should not however discard any evidence because it was financed by a particular VI. This IS when it gets tricky though; research from now on, cannot be taken at face value. We must dissect the methodology to look for signs of bias.

As one who navigated through the multiple commercial interests of the field of equine exercise physiology and read hundreds of studies on the topic, I can tell you that 98% of research, and the conclusions thereof, is complete bunkum.

Keep an open mind folks.

 

[Smurf1976]

well said Prospector... as always...
This global warming movement is simply a new age religious institution, filling a spritual void in peoples lives...

Someone is getting very rich from all this. (EDIT... At the moment its the Nuclear lobby... )

I have no doubt that pollution is a problem, some doubt that CO2 is the problems, especially when you consider methane (the stuff emitted by humans and animals and forests) of which there are now record numbers, is a lot lot worse than CO2.

But, if this religious movement helps put the brakes on our unprecedented love affair with continuos growth, etc, etc... it may be a good thing in the long run...

Nuclear - there were quite a few referring to the Kyoto Protocol as the "Nuclear Protocol" for good reason. The nuclear industry is reported to have backed it with lobbying and $ and the timeframes precluded mass adoption of renewables as an alternative.

As for methane, natural gas (as in the stuff you cook with) is almost entirely methane. Indeed that's why it's called "natural" gas even though it isn't really any more natural than the petrol to which it is closely related and is processed in similar fashion. Unburnt natural gas is a potent greenhouse gas so any evaluation of gas as an energy source needs to take this into account.

It's not as "green" as many would have us believe, especially not when transported as LNG which is energy hungry to produce and results in considerable methane leakage.

That said, coal mines also contain a fair bit of methane so that's a problem too. Of course it is possible to extract that methane before (or without ever) mining the coal but in practice it usually ends up in the atmosphere unburnt.

Landfills are another big methane source. In some locations it is extracted and burnt for electricity generation - a double benefit of avoiding methane release and saving some other fuel at the same time. But in many cases it does end up in the atmosphere.

Sewage is another soruce but with proper design it is possible to capture some of this at the sewage works and use it for power. In many cases that isn't done however.

(Note that both landfill gas and sewage gas are relatively minor power sources - a supplement rather than a replacement for coal, nuclear etc).

 

[insider]

It's a fair point... good video... But I personally want to fight global warming because of air quality... So i can breath better...

 

[2020hindsight]

When politicians, organizations, career researchers, money interests become involved, the obfuscations can become impenetrable. ... I can tell you that 98% of research, and the conclusions thereof, is complete bunkum.

wayne, I know what bunkum means , but had to go to google to find obfuscation .

Obfuscation refers to the concept of concealing the meaning of communication by making it more confusing and harder to interpret. Obfuscation may be used for other purposes. Doctors have been accused of using jargon to conceal unpleasant facts from a patient.

Given that we are talking about the health of our planet, why sure the "doctors" will use tricks and half-truths to hide the truth from us .

PS I did a quick computational prognostication on the back of a postage stamp, and found that 30% of global warming is due to human activity, and 60% is due to sunspots - except on sunny days when 80% is due to sun spots. And 35% is due to human activity. And furthermore 74.75% of all statistics is made up on the spot.

PPS things are changing so fast that the principle of extrapolating the past into the future is surely very inaccurate. 100 years ago the Wright Bros were the main contributors to airplane pollution problems - these days thousands of planes take off every hour, and each is capable of using the entire oxygen put out by Sherwood forest in a day (hour ?) - some damned forest in UK - Sherwood being the only forest name I can remember in UK lol, and Smurf can identify with that great Tasmanian, Robin (Errol Flynn) Hood . - sorry for the unintended obfuscation.

And as Smurf has said many times - just wait till China takes the graph up to new highs never before dreamed of.

 

[BuyandHold]

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".

Polar bears are doing just fine mate.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2969/

 

[2020hindsight]

Polar bears are doing just fine mate.

B&H, Guess I was thinking of a recent photo I saw of the bloodstains in the snow of a female bear recently eaten by a (much larger) male. Must be tough decision around mating time.

 

[wayneL]

Polar bears are doing just fine mate.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2969/

Hah! Good site that one. Lots for me to violently disagree with, but Non-PC and they speak their truth to the world. Good stuff.

 

[2020hindsight]

Here are three graphs ,
a) temp vs time, (remembering that they can explain the dip after 1940 due to sulphates - conveniently omitted from Ch 4's video),
b) sunspot activity, and
c) manmade energy consumption with little regard to atmosphere
(PS where I said before that the temp last winter was max since 1880 in the world - it was only the northern hemisphere !! (where they are currently meeting to discuss this). Phew - and for a while there I thought we in the Southern Hemisphere had to be concerned

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.

 

[56gsa]

Just thought i would provide a little background concerning this controversial program.
First its director Martin Durkin's background can be found on the link below. Seems he has a bit of a thing against environmentalist being involved with several anti-environment organisations not to metion that he made a doco in 1998 arguing that silicon breast implants were infact good for women and posed no risk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_(television_director)

And as for the main scientist Ian Clark he works for the fraser institute which is a beneficiary of none other then exxon mobil.
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1280
http://www.desmogblog.com/fraser-institute-readies-attack-on-ipcc

Look at the evidence and make up your own mind.

what was interesting about this program was the acknowledgement that science ('truth') is biased by people's priorities (eg in this case governments and funds available). thus while the dissenters may have industry connections i don't see this as problem as long as the science stacks up. advocates have similarly dubious links to funding sources (eg govt).

i'm no scientist so i would be interested to know how the al gores, tim flannery's and other advocates for the CO2_climate change link have responded to this - anyone found any scientific response to the ideas in this doco?

thanks

 

[2020hindsight]

i'm no scientist so i would be interested to know how the al gores, tim flannery's and other advocates for the CO2_climate change link have responded to this - anyone found any scientific response to the ideas in this doco?thanks

gsa, there's a top post by ghoti back there
including counterclaims posted 14march07. - all happening as we speak.
I was quoting from this site in my previous post
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

..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
Cheers, Ghoti

 

[billhill]

thus while the dissenters may have industry connections i don't see this as problem as long as the science stacks up. advocates have similarly dubious links to funding sources (eg govt).

Firstly exxon mobil has been running a counter global warming campaign for many years. They are hardly going to fund an institute or scientist whos research hurts their business. It is a clear conflict of interest and although the sceintist may be carrying out legitimate work how can we be sure that their certain results are not tied to funding, its happened before. This ian clark carries less credibility the he would without the exxon links. Secondly our governments (australia, USA) are quite anti global warming themselves so i can't see how their funding of global warming scientists is a dubious link. In fact both governments have attemped to censor top climate scientist so as to play done the global warming risk. If someone can find links between global warming advocates and say the wind power industry then that would be a dubious link but i've not seen or heard this yet although thats not to say its not happening.

How about we all look at the scientific evidence as a whole. We should be making a judgement by weight of evidence. So a couple of scientist think global warming is due to sunspots. How many think its due to humankind, a hell of a lot more.

 

[Dukey]

what was interesting about this program was the acknowledgement that science ('truth') is biased by people's priorities (eg in this case governments and funds available). thus while the dissenters may have industry connections i don't see this as problem as long as the science stacks up. advocates have similarly dubious links to funding sources (eg govt).

i'm no scientist so i would be interested to know how the al gores, tim flannery's and other advocates for the CO2_climate change link have responded to this - anyone found any scientific response to the ideas in this doco?

thanks

Warning long, convoluted post follows!!!!!!

I saw Al Gores movie last week & I thought I should watch the 'Opposing view' movie carefully - just to make sure I had a handle on both sides of the argument.
I can say that I have a great respect for Al and his views - but the 'swindle' movie brought up some good points - and the one about 'scientific bias' driven by the continual (usually yearly) need for scientists to submit funding applications / proposals is a biggie. I have worked (in the past) for both CSIRO and Qld State scientific bodies - and this problem is VERY real. In my arena - soil & land management/conservation - the buzz words a few years back were ' SUSTAINABILITY'; 'Land Degradation' and the like. It was understood by all that any funding proposal would be greatly enhanced by the liberal insertion of these buzz words throughout the proposal and particularly in the title. Thats how fickle the many funding bodies were/are.
Now this isn't to denigrate the scientists involved but the facts were - and probably still are - that if you want to do a comprehensive study of 'X' - then you will need many more then 1 years funding - and you'd better be prepared to make your yearly funding applications relevent to the political climate - or you will find yourself and your project canned in no time - so what would you do??? ... You tell the funding bodies what they want to hear, get your funding, and continue your important work.

Another aspect about 'Modelling' is also very true - by changing a few perameters or constants, modellers can make their models say almost anything. Within scientific circles - this statement (more or less) is often spat out of the sides of the mouths of 'grass roots' scientists, when asked to consider the new & wonderful model of 'AAA Natural System ' which miraculously deals with hundreds of parameters.
Now I'm sure the vast majority (of modellers) are trying to get to 'the scientific truth of whatever they are studying' - BUT there is no doubt in my mind that many are unconsciously biased towards creating the result that they believe in or have a vested interest in. ie. If the model says something that you don't like or is unexpected - then you tend to go back and check data and find a 'reason' - then maybe you 'fix' the model to account fo this 'discrepancy'. But as soon as the model says exactly what you wanted or expected - then the checking is moderated to make sure there are no glaring omissions. etc. The model is wheeled out as largely 'complete'.
All this doesn't mean models have no value - we just need to be very careful about how we use them - especially for very complex systems like global weather. Models that can be checked against 'reality' have greatly increases validity - but this is difficult for something as huge and complex as 'global weather'.

I would really like to look at the hard data about sunspots and which comes first - the CO2 rise or the Temp rise. That, I think is the crux of the matter.
... But maybe I won't use 2020's data set below!!!. (which looks suspiciously like three charts of the same data! . nice try 20's!!)

Either way - even if CO2 isn't the problem we think it is - there are myriad other reasons why we 'human animals' should try to minimize our impact on the planets surface; minimize energy consumption and pollution and try to find ways to 'work with nature' rather then 'work against it'.

Anyway... my !!!!!

Certainly won't hurt to change a few light bulbs and fix other energy 'bad habits'...

 

[insider]

The most important point was that green peace are full of crap and a pack of anti capitalist and anti corporate pigs and even the Founder of green peace who ditched them because of it said so.... lol

 

[Dukey]

Greenpeace... yeah - we need them I think in some ways -eg... to 'keep the bastards honest' - but they attract too many militant crazies for my liking.

Gotta love this - a quote from the director of the 'swindle' movie - referring to the historical temp. chart they used in the film. Taken from http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece
website posted earlier.

"The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find," Mr Durkin said."

Just goes to prove how people (both sides probably) choose the 'hard data' that suits their agenda - scientist or not (definitely NOT in Durkins case).

What or Who are us regular plebs supposed to believe??????????????????

-E

 

[2020hindsight]

I would really like to look at the hard data about sunspots and which comes first - the CO2 rise or the Temp rise. That, I think is the crux of the matter.
... But maybe I won't use 2020's data set below!!!. (which looks suspiciously like three charts of the same data! . nice try 20's!!)...

Hek - you caught me lol.
That is the true chart of temp versus time mate ( which I found from NASA website - as per that lead on Ghoti's post) - see one of my previous posts)
It is the one that the Channel 4 program "corrupts" and "manipulates" to say that there was cooling between 1940 and 1975/80

PS I think that those who have said that sunspot activity is partly to blame and human activity likewise are on the right track.
The trick then is to quantify the relative contributions now, and into the future.
and even contemplate the possibility / probability that effects of human activity in this regard are growing exponentially, and maybe even about to reach some horribly disastrous "critical tipping point?" ( my words ) Some point of no return.
correction - some point of "seriously delayed" return (like 100 - 200 years whatever)

Did anyone else see "Planet of the Apes"? lol - that sort of thing.

 

[2020hindsight]

http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/9929/a001008_pre.jpg
dukey, see my post #16 , this is the same Nasa graph that you mention is "wiggley lined"
If you correct it for the cooling effect of sulphates in the atmosphere (reflecting heat) it is arguably pretty much a straight line through the 20th century. - that 's the most optimistic view.
Otherwise it could be seen I guess as steeply increasing in recent years. "when the true magnitude of the problem was revealed" as that article said.

 

[56gsa]

thanks 2020

Either way - even if CO2 isn't the problem we think it is - there are myriad other reasons why we 'human animals' should try to minimize our impact on the planets surface; minimize energy consumption and pollution and try to find ways to 'work with nature' rather then 'work against it'.

Agree with you here Dukey - I remember in the late 1990s a group of people in Sth Aust living next door to Pasminco zinc smelter took the company to court under the trade practices act for supplying them with defective goods (eg pollution) - they lost but i thought it was a clever approach. Also a lot of systems that are developed to reduce pollution actually improve the efficiency of the plant overall (I'm thinking here of Portland's aluminium smelter). If you think of pollution as a defective good that is the result of inefficiency then reducing these by-products (or re-using them / clustering synergistic industries etc) actually improves the bottom-line in the long run, as well as adhering to a precautionary approach regarding great unknowns such as climate change.

I might have missed it in this doco - but I was waiting for them to show current sun spot activity that explains the present increase in temps - did they do this - did the weather predictor guru provide any predictions.

There were also a number of 'non-scientific' arguments in the doco. Eg showing the decrease in temps post WWII when CO2 was rising and saying this proves theres no link - all it proves is there is no immediate causal effect. Also the claim CO2 is minute in the atmosphere (so were CFCs!!). And the comment that earth has always had change temps - yes but as i understand it CO2 has never been higher than it is now as far as we know.

Billhill - science isn't democracy - doesn't matter if only one person thinks sunspots is the reason, they can still be right although its a tough road to hoe (Galileo, Darwin etc etc)

 

[2020hindsight]

sorry to labour this one, but I think that the Nasa graph would qualify EEK for inclusion in the "Breakout Alert" thread!! (Earth's Environmental Kalamity, - from whatever cause.)

-and makes Channel 4's article's intro a real "con" imo.
"Scared? Don't Be?" !! Perhaps Mr Durkins wouldn't object if we expressed "extreme concern!" lol.
It's an old pun, but "better to light a candle than curse the darkness" - as long as the candle doesnt give off CO2 .

PS One thing I will accept (after watching that show) is the third world's right to use dirty coal for as long as it takes for them to crawl out of their survival mode. Might encourage the developed world to help them a bit more. And the likes of AUS and USA - (neither of whom were prepared to sign Kyoto P) MUST try to crank back.

I remember once hearing an American mother interviewed on TV complaining that "noone was going to dictate to her that she couldn't run her climatically controlled house through winter - and who cares what effect it had on the atmosphere / third world / future generations". It was her right!! - she paid her taxes !! etc etc . I just find it all a bit selfish.

Question then arises, what about China? (call em the second world I guess). Then we hit that scary prospect of the graph going off the scale.

 

[billhill]

Billhill - science isn't democracy - doesn't matter if only one person thinks sunspots is the reason, they can still be right although its a tough road to hoe (Galileo, Darwin etc etc)

True it is not a democracy but it does work on a weight of evidence. the weight is currently with the global warming advocates. Sunspots may also be involved but for this doco to discount human causes is irresponsible IMO.