The Great Global Warming Swindle: Difference between revisions

The Great Global Warming Swindle
File:DVD cover.jpg Credits
Created by	Martin Durkin
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Production
Running time	75 mins
Original release
Network	Channel 4, March 8, 2007

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a controversial documentary film by British television producer Martin Durkin which rails against prominent scientific views on global warming. Publicity for the programme states that the mainstream theory of global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times." Its accuracy has been disputed on several points, and the film has been criticised for being one-sided. Channel 4, who screened the documentary, described the film as "essentially a polemic and we are expecting it to cause trouble, but this is the controversial programming that Channel 4 is renowned for."

The film showcases scientists, economists, politicians, writers, and others who are sceptical of various scientific pronouncements on global warming.

Viewpoints expressed in the film

The film's basic premises are that the current state of knowledge on global warming has numerous flaws, and that vested interests in science and the media discourage the public and the scientific community from acknowledging this. It argues against the predominant scientific opinion on climate change (as recognised by the scientific academies of the major industrialized nations and other professional scientific bodies), explaining the apparent scientific consensus as the product of a "global warming industry" driven by a desire for research funding. Another target is Western environmentalists who, the film claims, promote expensive solar power over cheap fossil fuels in Africa, holding Africa back from industrialising.

Some of the people who are interviewed in the film are environmentalist Patrick Moore, co-founder, but for the past 21 years a critic, of Greenpeace; Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Patrick Michaels, professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia; Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist; John Christy, professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at University of Alabama; and Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute. Carl Wunsch, professor of oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was also interviewed but has since said that he strongly disagrees with the film's conclusions and the way his interview material was used.

Claims made in the film

The film argues against the widely held scientific view that modern global warming is caused mostly by human activity. It claims that the widespread acceptance of this theory is the product of "a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry: created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists; supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding; and propped up by complicit politicians and the media". It uses a series of interviews and graphics to support its arguments that are listed below.

On contradictions in the theory of anthropogenic global warming

• Records of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels since 1940 show a continuing increase, but during this period, global temperature decreased until 1975, and has increased since then. (It emerged subsequent to the programme that the graph used to support this claim was twenty years old, and Durkin admitted that the time axis had been altered to make it appear as though 1988 temperature data was valid for the year 2000 to give the impression that data ending at 1988 were valid through 2000. In later reruns, the graph was corrected by ending the data series at 1988.

• Theories of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas predict that the temperature in the troposphere should increase the fastest, but satellite and weather balloon data do not show this.

• Water vapour makes up 95% of all greenhouse gases and is the component of the atmosphere that has the largest impact on the planet's temperature, through cloud formation and associated reflection of incoming solar heat. Scientists cannot accurately model the effects of clouds when attempting to simulate future weather patterns and their effects on global warming.

• Carbon dioxide is only a very small percentage of the atmosphere (0.038%) and humans only contribute a small part of the total CO₂ emissions in a year (less than 1%). Volcanos, on the other hand, produce more than all the cars and factories in the world. This means that human CO₂ emissions cannot be the main cause of global warming.

• Carbon dioxide levels increase or decrease due to temperatures increasing or decreasing rather than temperatures following carbon dioxide levels, because the Earth's oceans absorb carbon dioxide when they are cooler, and release it when they are warmer. Due to the large oceanic mass it takes a long time ("decades or centuries") for the reaction to temperature changes to occur, which is why analysis of the Vostok Station and other ice cores shows that changes in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide [[Attribution of recent climate change#In ice cores temperature leads CO².3B hence CO² cannot be causing global warming|follow changes in global temperature]], with a lag of 800 years.

• Solar activity is currently at a high level, and likely to be the cause of the current global warming. The mechanism involves cosmic rays aiding cloud formation, and the solar wind deflects cosmic rays away from Earth during periods of high solar activity. Solar activity levels are far more relevant than the small percentage of greenhouse gases being emitted by humans described in other theories.

• According to the work of Eigil Friis-Christensen, changes in solar activity match changes in global temperatures much more accurately than do changes in CO₂ levels.

• The current warming is nothing unusual and was surpassed during the Medieval Warm Period. This was a time of great prosperity in Europe, highlighting the beneficial effects of increased temperatures.

On research findings driven by financial or ideological motives

• The claim that sceptics are funded by the oil industry is false, and in any case the research funds provided by oil companies are dwarfed by those provided by governments to the alleged "global warming industry".

• There has been a large increase in the research funds available for studies relating to global warming. Including a putative link to global warming effects makes it likelier that a research scientist will get a research grant. Furthermore, producing dramatic and pessimistic results has a positive impact on the standing of scientists.

• It is more likely that vested interests occur among supporters of the theory of anthropogenic global warming, since many jobs in science, the media, and governmental administration have been created as a result of this theory.

• Some supporters of the anthropogenic theory of global warming do so because it is in concordance with their ideological beliefs opposing capitalism, economic development, globalization, industrialisation, and the United States.

• The theory was promoted by Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the interest of promoting nuclear power and reducing the power of the National Union of Mineworkers.

Disputing a scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic global warming

• The "2,500 top scientists" mentioned in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report are not all scientists and do not all agree with the report.

• The IPCC report misrepresented the views of some of the scientists who contributed to it. When Paul Reiter complained and requested that his name be removed, this request was refused until he threatened legal action.

• The concept of anthropogenic global warming has developed into a modern religion, with sceptics treated as heretics and labelled as "global warming deniers", in order to equate genuine scientific scepticism with holocaust denial. Retired university professor Tim Ball says in the programme that he has received death threats because of the sceptical statements he has made about global warming.

Killing the African dream of developmemt

• Author and economist James Shikwati says in the programme that environmentalists campaign against Africa using its fossil fuels: "there's somebody keen to kill the African dream. And the African dream is to develop." He describes renewable power as "luxurious experimentation" that might work for rich countries but will never work for Africa: "I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry...We are being told, 'Don't touch your resources. Don't touch your Oil. Don't touch your Coal. That is suicide.'"
• An example is given in the film of a Kenyan health clinic which is powered by solar panels which do not provide enough electricity for both the medical refrigerator and the lights at the same time. The programme describes the idea of restricting the world's poorest people to alternative energy sources as "the most morally repugnant aspect of the Global Warming campaign."

Miscellaneous

• A similar scare emerged during the 1970s when scientists predicted global cooling and the imminent onset of a new ice age.

• The negative effects of the precautionary principle, which has been used by supporters of the anthropogenic theory of global warming, are discussed. For example, the World Health Organization estimates that every year, four million children die globally from respiratory diseases related to inhaling smoke from cooking fires and the film implies these deaths would be avoided if the parents had access to electrical cooking devices.

Reception and criticism

The show attracted 2.5 million viewers and an audience share of 11.5%. Though there have been 144 complaints to Ofcom, as of March 19, 2007, Channel 4 revealed that it had received 758 calls and emails about the programme, with those in favour outnumbering complaints by six to one. The channel subsequently announced that it would be hosting a debate about the global warming issue to be broadcast in April.

Reactions from scientists

The IPCC was one of the main targets of the documentary. Many of the film's arguments have been disputed by climate scientists who support the consensus view regarding human influence on climate. In response to the programme's broadcast, John T. Houghton (former co-chair IPCC Scientific Assessment working group 1988-2002) assessed some of its main assertions and conclusions. According to Houghton, three of these were true, seven were not true, and one was possibly true. Houghton rejected claims: that observed changes in global average temperature are within the range of natural climate variability or explicable by solar influences; that the troposphere is warming less than the surface; that volcanic eruptions emit more carbon dioxide than fossil fuel burning; that climate models are too complex and uncertain to provide useful projections of climate change; and that IPCC processes were biased. Overall Houghton described the programme as "a mixture of truth, half truths and falsehood".

Climate scientists William Connolley and Gavin Schmidt write in the RealClimate blog that the programme selectively used data that was sometimes decades old in making its arguments, altered graphs to make it appear that older observations had been made more recently, and used older scientific studies when more recent research would have disagreed with the film's conclusions.

The British Antarctic Survey released a "Statement" about the The Great Global Warming Swindle. It is highly critical of the programme, singling out the use of a graph with the incorrect time axis, and also the statements made about solar activity: "A comparison of the distorted and undistorted contemporary data reveal that the plot of solar activity bears no resemblance to the temperature curve, especially in the last 20 years." Comparing scientific methods with Channel 4's editorial standards, the statement says: "Any scientist found to have falsified data in the manner of the Channel 4 programme would be guilty of serious professional misconduct." It uses the [[Attribution of recent climate change#Warming sometimes leads CO² increases|feedback argument]] to explain temperatures rising before CO₂. On the issue of volcanic CO₂ emissions, it says:

A second issue was the claim that human emissions of CO₂ are small compared to natural emissions from volcanoes. This is untrue: current annual emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production are estimated to be around 100 times greater than average annual volcanic emissions of CO₂. That large volcanoes cannot significantly perturb the CO² concentration of the atmosphere is apparent from the ice core and atmospheric record of CO₂ concentrations, which shows a steady rise during the industrial period, with no unusual changes after large eruptions.

Alan Thorpe, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading and Chief Executive of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, commented on the film in New Scientist. He wrote, "First, let's deal with the main thesis: that the presence or absence of cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere is a better explanation for temperature variation than the concentration of CO₂ and other gases. This is not a new assertion and it is patently wrong: there is no credible evidence that cosmic rays play a significant role...Let scepticism reign, but let's not play games with the evidence."

Armand Leroi, while acknowledging that "I am no climate scientist" in an e-mail to Durkin dated March 9, 2007, raised concerns with Durkin about his use of Friis-Christensen's 1991 paper on time-series correlations between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures since 1860. In the years since its publication this work has been criticised, for example in a series of papers by Peter Laut.

Carl Wunsch controversy

Carl Wunsch, one of the scientists featured in the programme, has said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed. He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two." Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action and to have lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator. Filmmaker Durkin responded, "Carl Wunsch was most certainly not 'duped' into appearing in the film, as is perfectly clear from our correspondence with him. Nor are his comments taken out of context. His interview, as used in the programme, perfectly accurately represents what he said."

Wunsch wrote in a letter dated March 15 2007 that he believes climate change is "real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component". He also says he had thought he was contributing to a programme which sought to counterbalance "over-dramatisation and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts". He raised objections as to how his interview material was used:

"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening."

On March 11, 2007, The Independent covered the Carl Wunch controversy, and asked Channel 4 to respond to what it described as "a serious challenge to its own credibility". A Channel 4 spokesman said:

"The film was a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the contributors has concerns about his contribution we will look into that."

Reaction in the British media

The documentary received substantial coverage in the British press, both before and after its broadcast.

George Monbiot writing for The Guardian before the programme was shown, discussed the arguments for and against the "hockey-stick graph" used in An Inconvenient Truth, claiming that the criticism of it has been "debunked". He also highlighted Durkin's previous documentary Against Nature, where the Independent Television Commission found that four complainants had been "misled" and their views were "distorted by selective editing". After the film was shown, Monbiot wrote another article arguing the documentary was based upon already debunked science. He accused Channel 4 of being more interested in generating controversy than in producing credible science programmes. Robin McKie, science editor of The Guardian, attacked the documentary for opting "for dishonest rhetoric when a little effort could have produced an important contribution to a critical social problem".

Dominic Lawson of The Independent was favourable toward the show. He echoed many of the show's claims and recommended that viewers tune in. However Geoffrey Lean, The Independent's environment editor, was critical of the programme. He noted that Dominic Lawson is the son and brother-in-law, respectively, of two prominent global warming sceptics (Nigel Lawson, who is featured in the programme, and Christopher Monckton), implying that Lawson was not a neutral observer. The Independent mostly disagreed with three of the film's major claims, for example stating: "recent solar increases are too small to have produced the present warming, and have been much less important than greenhouse gases since about 1850". In a later Independent article, Steve Connor heavily attacked the programme, saying that the programme makers had selectively used data which was sometimes decades old, and introduced other serious errors of their own:

The original, and corrected versions of Temperature data from TGGWS, along with NASA GISS data

"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 online magazine Spiked published an interview with the film's director, Martin Durkin. In the interview, Durkin complains about how OfCom censures "seriously controversial work", saying that the end result is "phoney controversialism on TV but not much real controversialism". Spiked describes the programme's "all-encompassing cosmic ray theory" as "a little unconvincing", but says that "the film poked some very big holes in the global warming consensus", and argues "we could do with more anti-conformist films from ‘mavericks’ like Durkin".

The Times reported that Durkin had seriously fallen out with a scientist who had been considering working with him. Armand Leroi was concerned that Durkin had used data about a correlation between solar activity and global temperatures which had subsequently been found to be flawed. Leroi sent Durkin an e-mail saying, "To put this bluntly: the data that you showed in your programme were . . . wrong in several different ways". He copied the e-mail to scientific author Simon Singh. Durkin responded to Leroi saying "You’re a big daft cock". Singh sent an email to Durkin urging him to engage in serious debate. Durkin responded stating, "Since 1940 we have had four decades of cooling, three of warming, and the last decade when temperature has been doing nothing", and concluded with, "Go and fuck yourself". Durkin later apologised for his language, saying that he had sent the e-mails when tired and had just finished making the programme, and that (despite his comments) he was "eager to have all the science properly debated with scientists qualified in the right areas".

In the same article The Times science editor Mark Henderson listed a number of points where, he said, "Channel 4 got it wrong over climate change". In this section he highlights the [[Attribution of recent climate change#Warming sometimes leads CO² increases|feedback argument]] for the ice core data, the measurement error explanation for temperatures in the troposphere,^[α] and the sulphate cooling argument for mid 20th century cooling.

Other reaction

UK Secretary of State for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, David Miliband presented a rebuttal of the main points of the film on his blog and stated "There will always be people with conspiracy theories trying to do down the scientific consensus, and that is part of scientific and democratic debate, but the science of climate change looks like fact to me."

The documentary has not yet been broadcast in America. On March 9, 2007, Paul Joseph Watson (a British reporter who works for American radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones) argued that criticism of the film by Zoe Williams had relied upon ad hominems instead of disputing the arguments. He wrote, "The establishment left has already attempted to savage the documentary, but The Guardian's Zoe Williams cannot address the evidence, instead attacking the messenger by discrediting one participant from Winnipeg University, and selectively ignoring the roster of other experts which included MIT and Princeton professors".

Steven Milloy, who runs the Web site Junkscience.com, endorsed the documentary on March 18, 2007. He concluded by saying he'd like to see a "movie face-off" between "An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Great Global Warming Swindle", implying that he thought Gore's film would lose. "Let the public see both sides of the story and then we’ll see who’s believable and who’s not".

Durkin's response to his critics

On March 17, 2007, The Daily Telegraph published a response by Durkin to what he calls the "feeble" attacks of his critics. In it, he rejects any criticism of the close correlation between solar variation and temperature change, saying that Friis-Christensen stands by his work. He accepts that the time axis of one graph was incorrectly labelled when the programme was first transmitted, but says that this does not change his conclusions. Regarding the Carl Wunsch controversy (see above) he repeats that Wunsch was not duped into taking part in the programme.

Durkin goes on to reject his opponents' position that the cooling period observed post Second World War was caused by sulphate aerosol cooling: "Thanks to China and the rest, SO₂ levels are far, far higher now than they were back then. Why isn't it perishing cold?" He concludes by saying that the "global warming alarm" is "wrong, wrong, wrong".

Contributors to the programme

The film includes contributions from the following individuals:

• Syun-Ichi Akasofu - Professor and Director, International Arctic Research Center
• Tim Ball - Head of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (misattributed as Professor from the Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg. Ball left his faculty position in the Department of Geography in 1996; the University of Winnipeg has never had a Department of Climatology.)
• Nigel Calder - Former Editor, New Scientist
• John Christy - Professor, Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville and Lead Author, IPCC
• Ian Clark - Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
• Piers Corbyn - Weather Forecaster, Weather Action
• Paul Driessen - Author: Green Power, Black Death
• Eigil Friis-Christensen - Director, Danish National Space Center and Adjunct Professor, University of Copenhagen
• Nigel Lawson - Former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Richard Lindzen - Professor, Department of Meteorology, M.I.T.
• Patrick Michaels - Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
• Patrick Moore - Co-founder, Greenpeace
• Paul Reiter - Professor, Department of Medical Entomology, Pasteur Institute, Paris
• Nir Shaviv - Professor, Institute of Physics, University of Jerusalem
• James Shikwati - Economist and author
• Frederick Singer - Professor Emeritus, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (misattributed in the film as Former Director, U.S. National Weather Service. From 1962-64 he was Director of the National Weather Satellite Service.)
• Roy Spencer - Weather Satellite Team Leader, NASA
• Philip Stott - Professor Emeritus, Department of Biogeography, University of London
• Carl Wunsch - Professor, Department of Oceanography, M.I.T. (who has since repudiated the programme)

Related programmes and films

Against Nature: An earlier controversial Channel 4 programme made by Martin Durkin which was also critical of the environmental movement and was charged by the Independent Television Commission of the UK for misrepresenting and distorting the views of interviewees by selective editing.

An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore's film in which he argues that humans are causing global warming.

The Greenhouse Conspiracy: An earlier Channel 4 documentary broadcast on 12 August 1990, as part of the Equinox series, in which similar claims were made. Three of the people interviewed (Lindzen, Michaels and Spencer) were also interviewed in the The Great Global Warming Swindle.

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
• Attribution of recent climate change
• The role of cosmic rays in cloud formation
• The role of water vapor
• The solar variation theory and global warming

External links

• Presentation at Channel 4
• Review from In the Green, Deconstructing Channel 4's Great Global Warming Swindle, March 09, 2007
• Article showing graphs resembling those shown in the programme
• Scientists threatened for 'climate denial'
• Dangers of crying "wolf" on climate change

Notes

α. ^{^} For more on troposphere temperature measurements, see the 2006 U.S. Climate Change Science Program report "Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere:Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences". The Executive Summary says, "Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected." [2]