It's Channel 4, not BBC 4. That docu. would never be shown on BBC.

Again, this isn't my area, but I'll let others debunk your program, starting with the director, Durkin

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 16th March 2000

In October 1998 a television producer named Martin Durkin took a proposal to the BBC’s science series, Horizon. Silicone breast implants, he claimed, far from harming women, were in fact beneficial, reducing the risk of breast cancer. Horizon commissioned a researcher to find out whether or not his assertion was true. After a thorough review, the researcher reported that Mr Durkin had ignored a powerful body of evidence contradicting his claims. Martin Durkin withdrew his proposal. Instead of dropping it, however, he took it to Channel 4 and, astonishingly, sold it to their science series, Equinox.

To help him make the programme, Durkin hired Najma Kazi, a highly respected TV researcher and producer who was previously a research biochemist. After two weeks she walked out... "I don’t know how that programme got passed. The only consolation for me was that I’m really glad I didn’t put my name to it.”

there's more of that in the first article.

The gaurdian has also written another column on this specific article, here. You can go to the gaurdian website to read more details, but I thought I would give you the first sentence:

The problem with The Great Global Warming Swindle, which caused a sensation when it was broadcast on Channel 4 last week, is that to make its case it relies not on future visionaries, but on people whose findings have already been proved wrong.

This is the problem with documentries, including "an inconvient truth", anybody can make claims, backing them up against opposition is much more difficult. And given durkin's past, I won't give him the benefit of the doubt.

My mistake, that's first scentence, third paragraph.

After decades of waiting, the green movement has found the cause of its dreams: a crisis that gives them carte blanche, they believe, to rule our lives.

I can't believe the Guardian would so nicely sum this whole thing up in one sentence.

It's been a mistake from the beginning to characterize this entire thing as a matter of belief or non-belief, or of "scientific consensus". Science-by-consensus is not just unscientific, it's anti-scientific.

The truth is that the agenda of Global Warming politics (distinct from GW science, at least theoretically) has been unacceptable from the start, and it's absolutely disgusting that some people think they can push an anti-humanist, authoritarian regime by scaring people into it. A regime which would permanently ghettoize the undeveloped world, I might add.

All of the usual baggage is along for the ride - anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-globalism, and idiot-Luddism. All of these stupidities may run and play so long as the discussion remains academic, but once it comes down to real policy not even the Europeans are suicidal enough to go for it. At least, I hope not ...

From CS Lewis (by way of Euphoric Reality):

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

It's funny, my wife, who prefers Perez Hilton to political blogs, came up to me out of the blue, and in reaction to a store condemning Beyoncé for wearing fur or some such modern day celebrity faux pas, told me "it's funny, it's always these self righteous crusaders who think of themselves as do-gooders who are the most fascistic! They want to run everybody's lives for them!"

#2 alchemist

...it relies ... on people whose findings have already been proved wrong.

Not so fast. Watch this space for later postings. I don't care about your branding of the director, but there are some legitimate scientific arguments going on and IMO nobody has a solid proof in any direction. There is even legitame debate about whether CO2 leads/lags/(or both) warming and what the feedback proportion is.

Realclimate.org has an excellent thread debating this documentary. They are AGW proponents, BTW, but they take the time to debate the science, not engage in Shoot-The-Messenger and unsupported declarations.

I thought the film over reached and over simplified to some extent (Inconvenient Truth did also) but made some excellent points. It clearly elucidated several viable counter arguments to AGW theory as I have seen them debated at RC and other science based sites for a while now. The tone is unfortunate, but is apparently called for because AGW proponents have engaged in polemics and scare-mongering of the worst sort.

I would like nothing better than some real debate before we spend a trillion dollars chasing CO2 rollback when they can't properly bound the problem (IPCC's own doc). Further, if the AGW warming is in fact significant, adaptive strategies might be more effective than drastic CO2 reduction measures - especially given CO2 rank as a GHG.

jdwill, sorry, that was a quote of someone else (i probably should have put it italics, but since the preview button is gone, I've gotten lazy). I'm looking for a debate, which is why I posted the link to this article in the guardian on specfic science arguments that I don't have the time to dig through myself.

Thanks for the link, I will try realclimate.

BTW: here is realclimate's response to his appearance in the movie (which is a preety common complaint in Durkin's past films):

Carl Wunsch:
In the part of the "Swindle" film 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 in many different ways, some unexpected.

Channel 4 now says they were making a film in a series of "polemics". There is nothing in the communication we had (much of it on the telephone or with the film crew on the day they were in Boston) that suggested they were making a film that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading. I took them at face value---clearly a great error. I knew I had no control over the actual content, but it never occurred to me that I was dealing with people who already had a reputation for distortion and exaggeration.

Note: his response also entitle some areas where he questions some global warming arguments, for those who want to read the whole thing.

Funny the breast implant fiasco should come up in this conversation. I grant you, claiming silicon improves womens health is pretty out there, but we may recall that the SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS (which is ultimately whatever the media decides to define, there is no such arbiter) was quite positive silicon implants were responsible for widespread systemic illnesses. After years of lawsuits that drove Dow Corning into bankruptcy and scared thousands of women into having unnecessary surgery, the scientific consensus finally reversed itself. Damage done, silicone and breat implants go together like garlic and vampires to most people til this day. Like they say, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has its shoes laced up.

Interesting historical parallel though.

#8 alchemist
Right. The scientists want to do science and not be political footballs. And frankly, forecasting the climate is a wicked problem that requires an integration of many cross-disciplinary theories and uses various proxy measurements that rest on occasionally dicey data manipulations. Not easy to get that across in a made for lay people documentary.

I think there is a strong prima facie argument for AGW, but if you read the chart on page 4 of the IPCC's SPM (the Feb 2007 release that kicked up the volume) you see that they have huge uncertainty on aerosols and clouds as forcing agents for global temperature.

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

The 1950-1980 dip that the Swindle documentary makes a big deal about could have due to aerosols (eg., pollution) or that in some combination with solar. I don't think either 'side' knows enough yet. But consider, such a dip recurring could wipe out a large portion of the AGW threat and we would all have a good laugh and recall the ice age alarm of 70's.

The other thing that they haven't got down is sensitivity - how much temperature increase you get for a delta of PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere. Any geologist will point out that CO2 has been much higher than now (what the AGW people are alarmed about is the rate of increase). Their SPM century projections have ranges like 4 degrees centigrade which is just HUGE. We're talking the difference between losing Florida and just having more productive land for farming - as most land is well north of the equator.

Finally, the computer code/models they use needs to be open-sourced and audited. The IPCC got a black eye with their 98 Hockey Stick graph which was prominently featured on page 3 of their 2001 report. The graph ignored the Medieval Warm Period and their math got a poor grade in congress from some statisticians (See Wegman Report). The graph is no longer in the 2007 report.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf

BTW - If you really, really like math and data nerdery, try this site

http://www.climateaudit.org/

These guys bird dog realclimate and they, IMHO, shot down the 98 Hockey Stick fair and square.

My take for now is that CO2 is a real risk, but not a proven crisis. As the science gets better, I will adjust my belief. I don't, however, think we should ignore the potential impact that our increased CO2 footprint could have, we should study it well.

Well said.

I stand corrected about it being "Channel 4" and not "BBC 4" who produced the documentary. As one unfamiliar with British TV I just made an assumption that the two references were equivalent. I did consider it a bit odd that BBC would do something so contra to the orthodoxy.

Also, it appears that Carl Wunsch, from MIT, regrets his appearance on the program and says he was misled. If he says so, I guess.

FOX News interviewed a Canadian climatologist, who appeared on the film, today. He indicated that there was little correlation between global warming and CO2. How to square this with the claims of environmentalists? I suppose it depends on the time frame of your observations, as well as on how you get data on climate.

If this were a situation analogous to the Saddam Hussein WMD controversy then I'd say the higher the level of uncertainty about catastrophic outcomes the more cautious we should be about assuming the status quo is OK. These are called Type II situations, or a Beta Hypothesis (depending on the discipline). They're far less typical than Alpha or Type I situations, where one can "safely assume innocence" because of the relatively low risk of doing so. I understand that logic, but what bothers me is the way advocates of global warming insist that they have all the uncertainties bracketed and contained. This is precisely how a scientific question becomes a political football...

Somewhat related... I have found an interesting article, but I have no time to discuss it. So I'll just present it here: Pollution From China And India Affecting World’s Weather

jdwill,
Well said. However,

"We're talking the difference between losing Florida and just having more productive land for farming - as most land is well north of the equator. "

Please clarify. If you meant losing Florida to flooding, I'm sure you are aware that IPCC cut their forecast for rising sea levels. Even most of Keys are relatively safe.

#14
Thanks. Talking about losing Florida is partly a play on Inconvenient Truth.

If you compare p14 of SPM2001 and p13 of SPM 2007 (links above) it looks like they scaled their century scenario range from .2m to .9m to a new range of .26m to .59m. Bad for Holland and beachfront property, but within adaptive range, one would hope. Current sea level rise is typically 1.8 mm/yr, but I have read that these numbers can be impacted by oceanic thermal expansion and tectonic plate movement.

However, both SPM reports declare bets off if dramatic shifts occur in the Antartic ice sheet flow.

From:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/

Most of the current global land ice mass is located in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (table 1). Complete melting of these ice sheets could lead to a sea-level rise of about 80 meters, whereas melting of all other glaciers could lead to a sea-level rise of only one-half meter.

That's a lot of potential sea level rise.

Also, it appears that Carl Wunsch, from MIT, regrets his appearance on the program and says he was misled. If he says so, I guess.

I'm less concerned about wether or not he knew the purpose of the film than that his comments were deliberately misquoted to manipulate the film message. Why, that's a michael moore tactic isn't it? It's hard to say that you're supporting a proper scientific argument if you're intentionally misquoting your competition.

I grant you, claiming silicon improves womens health is pretty out there, but we may recall that the SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS (which is ultimately whatever the media decides to define, there is no such arbiter) was quite positive silicon implants were responsible for widespread systemic illnesses.

Again, less concerned about what was actually said than that he intentionally avoided articles that hurt his argument. It would be one thing if he included this articles, and said "Well, this whole study is flawed for this reason", but instead, he simply chose to ignore things he didn't like, to the point where an actual 'expert' stopped working on the problem. That's what I take issue with.

Damn, some real educated responses. Nice job guys.

NRO's site has some pretty good info each day on their special blog about Al Gore if anyone is interested.

#15 jdwill,

I have heard the new estimale is 3.3 mm a year. About a foot per century.

I don't see the rate of rise as critical.

We will essentially be off fossil fuels by 2100 due to technology advances.

Unless (as in reactor control equations) the rate of rise adds to the reactivity. Even if it did the effect would be small and over by 2100.

#18 M Simon

I hadn't seen that number - do you have a link?

Based on your calculation and the IPCC numbers, it seems to me that they are using some form of compounding in their projections.

Alchemist's excerpt in post #08 touches on Carl Wunsch's fear that CO2 warming is self-reinforcing via the oceans. Wunsch was upset becaue the Swindle documentary twisted what he said. Warm the oceans, they release more CO2, more CO2, more warming. There is a lot of CO2 in the oceans, so we should be concerned.

Obviously there has to be some limiting mechanism(s) as we have had relatively high atmospheric CO2 in the geologic past and didn't get a runaway effect.

#20

Were there any die-offs associated with the rise in C02 in the past? And thank you all for a very enlightening discussion.

#21

I don't know. I have, however, seen items that link die-offs to mega volcanos like the Yellowstone Caldera.

Maybe someone can correlate the Fig 4 graph in this paper by Daniel H Rothman to known die-offs.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/99/7/4167

(you have to manually download the pdf, Fig 4 chart is on the 5th page)

The nifty graph correlates inferred levels of CO2 with known 'ice ages'. BTW, I personally, would much rather live in a warm period, even a really warm one.

The gray bars at the top of Fig. 4 correspond to the periods when the global climate was cool; the intervening white space corresponds to the warm modes.

Funny thing is, they don't line up too well. Could be error, could be lack of understanding of the linkage.

I don't pretend at understanding all of the science or math in this paper. I can glean enough to follow along a bit and get the summary. Every time I check out a paper like this, I am in awe of the level of thought that goes into getting from A to Z.

Make what you will of this from the author:

Superficially, this observation would seem to imply that pCO2 does not exert dominant control on Earth’s climate at time scales greater than about 10 My. A wealth of evidence, however, suggests that pCO2 exerts at least some control [see Crowley and Berner (30) for a recent review]. Fig. 4 cannot by itself refute this assumption. Instead, it simply shows that the 'null hypothesis' that pCO2 and climate are unrelated cannot be rejected on the basis of this evidence alone.

Typical scientist. Gotta love 'em.

Any point to all this? One possible is that we could hypothetically be coming up to an ice age (though, thankfully, the bar pattern says we aren't) while myopically reading the CO2 meter. And, frankly, shouldn't we be worried that overall atmospheric CO2 has been dropping dramatically for 175 Milion years? ;-}

Megavolcanos tend to cool the earth due to the amount of dirt they toss up in the air, which reflects energy from the sun. See the Toba Catastrophe, which is thought to have dropped the global temp about 5d C, despite pumping huge (even by our standards!) amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

My contribution:

- The science is really complex and it's difficult to be certain about anything.
- Because it's so complex, scientists shouldn't brush out the uncertainties in their conclusions in the name of political correctness, or to achieve a political outcome.
- For the same reason, ordinary mortals like us shouldn't watch one documentary and conclude that we've figured it all out. In the end, unless you're a scientist, you can only watch from the sidelines as the consensus shifts about, and hope that all viewpoints get a hearing.
- We should be highly suspicious of people with an axe to grind, on all sides. Most of the people gleefully telling us that "global warming has finally been debunked" have political reasons for wanting to believe everything's OK. The environmentalists are in the catastrophe business. They have to believe everything's NOT OK.

Before you think further about this documentary, know this about the director. Martin Durkin was previously in the Revolutionary Communist Party and then its offshoot Living Marxism. They believe in a crazier religion than Scientology, in which we all come from a planet freaking named Zarg and you are either a nob or yob. I had to go look this stuff up, it just got more and more interesting. Heh, it's really strange what cult like groups believe.

He has also made a number of debunked documentaries, purposely misled his interviewees, then edited/distorted their views. In fact, one of the main scientists on this very special has already stated he was grossly misrepresentated among other things. Whether you believe in global warming or not, this source cannot be trusted.

Some of the less than scientific responses found here are the product of the politicization of science. When someone take an execissive amount of energy to debunk a person, rather than the science shown, they reveal themselves. because what they dont understand is that science is NEVER by consensus. Scientists dont sit around and invent theories and say "ok with a show of hands who is with solution x as the cause? solution y? then total the votes and see who has the highest votes. Thats the way politicians work, or scientists being manipulated by politicians (so they can get grant money).
Hard Science on the other hand is accomplished through hard experimentation, data collection, and analysis. We do wait for our desired results, we wait for THE results. Often times we must start over as our test dont yield any conclusive results, because we started with poor assumptions. BUT NEVER do we select a desired outcome and make the data fit. That is exactly the Al Gore approach. But Al Gore is a politician, so I dont hold him to that standard. But I do hold the scientific community to that standard. While I understand how scientists can be bought...I really do, its really quite a human flaw, lets face it scientists who have "sold their souls"...want to feed their families...want to prolong/advance their careers...they will say whatever has the highest prospect of accomplishing just that. In this case, it is the CO2 from humans is the cause.

Now let me just say to the non-scientific you can easily reason this out by observation of a few well -known facts. Humans are NOT even close to being the major producers of CO2 (look it up). Yet this is where the politics leads the political solution to...the human. If CO2 were the real problem wouldnt you concentrate on the largest producers of CO2 first? Of course. So why is the politicians approach to concentrate on lowest contributor of CO2 first?...that makes no sense ...no common sense. Therein lies the clue that this is really all just a fraud. Wake up for crying out loud.

If CO2 IS the problem, and the EARTH was really in imminent danger,believe me, the human production of CO2 is the LAST thing we would worry about. Naturally we would do EVERYTHING we could to reverse or control the LARGEST producers of CO2 (Volcanos, the Ocean, etc.)...please wake up and see how stupid you all are. This is making humans look rather pathetic...its like we DESIRE to be someones sucker. Its like we DESIRE to lose our freedoms. Its like we DESIRE to pay MORE taxes to politicians who cant even agree on who got elected. PITIFUL. JUST WAKE UP.

[Paul, a drive-by ad for your book, however worthy it might be, does not fall into the category of substantive discourse. If you wish to direct emails to Joe Katzman or Armed Liberal or any of the other regular contributors to WoC, they might choose to write about it, and you might get some Amazon traffic out of it.

Ad from an unfamiliar name here == Sp*m; deleted out of hand. Repetitions of this sort of post will be grounds for a ban. Regrets. --NM]