December 22, 2008

from GreatGlobalWarmingSwindle Website
 

 

 

 

The Great Global Warming Swindle


The film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, will be available from mid July with an expanded and improved version of the film broadcast in the UK on Channel Four.

 

More interview material has been added, covering a broader range of subjects than was possible in the broadcast film.


However, we urge those interested in hearing the case against the theory of man made global warming to dig deeper.

 

The main purpose of this site is to point people towards key scientific papers, books and other relevant material.

We have received literally thousands of emails from scientists and others expressing their support and encouragement. These emails are also often very useful, steering us towards new studies in different areas.


The general reaction to the film has been overwhelming and enormously encouraging. As Channel Four reported in Broadcast magazine, they received a record number of phone calls following the first transmission.

 

They calculated that the calls were 6 to 1 in support of the film.

It would be nice to claim that the explosion of interest was due to the film itself, but the fuss started even before the film was broadcast.

 

The reason, we suspect, is that the coverage of 'global warming', on TV, radio and in the press, has been so one-sided and uncritical.

 

In Britain, hours and hours of programs have been broadcast by the BBC on the subject, much of it scientifically absurd.

 

The very fact that a science documentary dared to challenge the orthodoxy was itself news.

  • Why?

  • Why have journalists been so craven or biased?

  • How has a theory which demonstrably lacks really solid supporting evidence become an indisputable fact?

  • What of the impressive, much talked about scientific 'consensus' which is used to forestall any awkward questions about the evidence?

The film made a humble stab at suggesting some possible answers, but there was limited space for these bigger questions.

 

The whole global warming alarm, we believe, raises serious issues,

  • about the way science functions in the real world

  • about the political bias of scientists

  • about censorship within the scientific community itself

  • about the routine practice of scientists drawing false or inflated conclusions from ambiguous or uncertain data, about the manifest failure of the peer review process

  • about the extraordinary unwillingness of scientists who have invested time and reputation in a particular theory to consider evidence which directly contradicts it

  • about the elevation of speculation (models) to the level of solid data,

...and much else besides.

Science and scientists cannot always rise above the prejudices of their class and of their age. The selection and handling of evidence often reflects these prejudices.

 

The most highly qualified and respected scientists can be blind to obvious deficiencies in a theory, and will be dismissive of evidence when it undermines what they want to believe.

But the scare over man made global warming may prove to be the first great example in the modern Western world, when science was betrayed by scientists themselves

This web-site is still young, and the people running it are doing so in their spare time (when they really should be making television programs). So apologies for its shortcomings.

The makers of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle have made many science documentaries before.

 

The thing they found most shocking when they started to make this one, was the weakness of the case for man made global warming, and the quantity and quality of the evidence which flatly contradicts it.
 




The Sun


One of the most curious aspects of the global warming alarm is the persistent reluctance of some climate scientists to consider the role of the Sun.

 

The idea that variations in solar activity, observable in the form of sun spots, influence the earth's climate has a long, important history, stretching back to the astronomers Maunder, Herschel and beyond.

 

It would be surprising, surely, if the sun did not have a major influence on the earth's climate (why is summer warmer than winter?).

 

Among those scientists who are actively exploring the solar-climate connection there are different views as to how the relationship between sun and earth is mediated.

 

Names to look out for in research papers include:

  • Willie Soon

  • Sallie Balliunas

  • Eigil Friis-Christensen

  • Henrik Svensmark

  • Nir Shaviv

  • Jan Veizer

An excellent introduction to the topic is 'The Manic Sun' by Nigel Calder, who recently also wrote, with Henrik Svensmark, 'The Chilling Stars'. Also worth looking at is Willie Soon's short book on Edward Maunder.

Read

 

 


Temperature Record


One central problem for those who promote the idea of man made global warming is the earth's temperature record - on almost all time scales.

In the last decade, there has been no clear warming trend (as the UK Met Office and IPCC's own figures demonstrate). In the last century, much of the warming occurred prior to 1940, when human emissions of CO2 were relatively small compared to today.

 

During the post-war economic boom (when one would have expected the temperature to rise) the world cooled, from the 1940s till the mid-70s (again, this is evident from accepted data used by the IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

But it's important to look back further in time 1,000 years. The climate record which used to be accepted as the standard account of this period was published in the first IPCC report.

 

But this account posed a problem. A thousand years ago there was time a warm period - apparently warmer than today (known to climatologists as the Medieval Warm Period).

 

This was followed by a relatively cold period (known as the Little Ice Age), from which, over the past two to three hundred years, seem to have made a slow, welcome recovery.

This was all rather undermined the idea that current temperatures were either unusual or alarming.

In subsequent IPCC reports the original graph was replaced by another - the famous 'Hockey Stick' (so-called because it looks like one - click below image).

 

 

 

 

The Hockey Stick was a lot more dramatic, and was featured proudly on the top of the front page of the new IPCC reports. But was it true?

 

The Hockey Stick debate is very telling, and we urge readers to review it.

Further back in time, still within our current 'interglacial period, we find more warm spells - notably what geologists call the 'Holocene Maximum' when, for a few thousand years, the earth was significantly warmer than we find it today.

Over longer time periods of course, the earth has been far, far hotter than it is today (with tropical forests covering much of the earth) and also far, far colder, with much of the earth buried under miles of ice. The Earth's climate has always changed, and changed without any help from us.

But there is another problem, a very major problem, for those who promote the idea of CO2-led global warming.

 

According to global warming theory, if an enhanced greenhouse effect is responsible for warming the earth, then the rate of temperature rise should be greatest in that part of the earth's atmosphere known as the troposphere, specifically in the tropics.

 

And yet the observations, from weather balloons and satellites have consistently shown that not to be the case. I urge readers to look at the Christy et al papers.

 

The latest one was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (2007).


 


CO2 & Temperature


The ice-core data is frequently cited as principal evidence to argue that CO2 is the earth's main climate driver.

 

It is, in a way, the jewel in the crown of the theory of man made global warming. But the ice-core data does not show that CO2 drives climate.

 

It shows, very clearly, that variations in temperature precede rises in atmospheric CO2 - not the other way round. The two phenomena are divided by a time lag of several hundred years.

There is no evidence that CO2 has ever 'driven' the climate in the past, nor is there any compelling evidence that it is doing so now.

According to global warming theory, if an enhanced greenhouse effect (from increased levels of CO2 or indeed any other greenhouse gas) is responsible for warming the earth, then the rate of temperature rise should be greatest in that part of the earth's atmosphere known as the troposphere, specifically in the tropics.

 

And yet the observations, from weather balloons and satellites have consistently shown that not to be the case. I urge readers to look at the Christy et al papers. The latest one was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (2007).

 

This may seem like a rather technical issue, but it strikes at the very heart of the theory of man made global warming.

Read: The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change

 

 


IPCC & Consensus


One of the biggest barriers to a rational discussion about climatology, is the persistent and sinister use of the 'consensus' argument.

 

The idea that there is a consensus between 'the world's top scientists' is used to brow beat politicians, to forestall media criticism of the global warming orthodoxy and to marginalize and ridicule those scientists who dare to speak out against the theory of man made global warming.

Until now, few people have explored the nature of this 'consensus'.

 

Who are these 'top scientists' and who says they all agree?

 

As readers will see, from the few introductory links below, the 'consensus' is not all it seems. We urge readers to look at Professor Reiter's testimony, for example, to the House of Lords.

There are indeed many scientists, journalists and others who have built careers and staked their reputations on man made global warming. We should not accept their protestations that 'the debate is over', and 'there is no more room for doubt'.

The implications on public policy of the global warming alarm (for all of us, in the developed world and even more the developing world) are enormous. We are being asked to turn the world upside down, to stifle industrial progress, in order to address this alleged problem.

 

This is too big an issue for us to rubber-stamp the declarations of a semi-political body such as the IPCC.

Orthodox views have been proved wrong time and again.

 

We were assured, you may remember, by a consensus of scientists in Britain, during the BSE 'Mad Cow Disease' alarm that, by now, as much as a third of the British population would be dead from eating contaminated hamburgers.

 

The mad cow apocalypse singularly failed to materialize.

Sadly, we have no option, but to be grown up, to examine the question ourselves, and make up our own minds.

 

Is this global warming alarm built on solid evidence?

On the wider political and economic implications of the global warming alarm we would recommend two excellent books:


 

 

Extreme Weather Events


So much has been blamed on global warming, from Hurricane Katrina to the Asian tsunami.

 

So many ludicrous claims have been made in this area, it is hard to know where to begin debunking it all. In the global cooling scare of the 1970s, all the same extreme weather events were blamed on the world getting colder.

 

Here we go again.

 

 


Apocalypse Then

The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.

-- Reid Bryson

"Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)
 


The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer
 -- Paul Ehrlich

The Population Bomb (1968)
 


I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000
-- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)
 


In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.
-- Paul Ehrlich

Earth Day (1970)
 


Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion
-- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)
 


This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century
-- Peter Gwynne

Newsweek 1976
 


There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it.
 -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)
 


This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.
-- Lowell Ponte

"The Cooling", 1976
 


If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.
-- Kenneth E.F. Watt

on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

 

 

 

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