....rather, a political one. Interesting read....keeps me skeptical, which I like....healthy skepticism. It's a bit long, but pretty good......
Must-See Global Warming TV
Thursday , March 15, 2007
As Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" becomes mandatory viewing
for many U.S. school children and nears becoming the "official truth"
about global warming, it comes as most welcome news that an absolutely
gripping film rebuttal has made its international debut, much to the
chagrin of true believers in man-made climate change.
Last week, the UK's Channel 4 premiered a 75-minute film entitled, "The
Great Global Warming Swindle." Through interviews with prize-winning
climate experts and others, this masterful documentary explains the
origins of global warming alarmism; debunks claims of man-made global
climate change; exposes the motivations of organizations, scientists and
activists sounding the alarm; and explains why it's been extremely
difficult, if not downright dangerous, for climate scientists to
question global warming orthodoxy publicly.
The entire film, which is creating quite a stir among tens of thousands
of web viewers, can be viewed online at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...65474899458831.
According to the film, the origins of global warming alarmism had its
roots in the 1970s-era fears of global cooling and an impending ice age,
resulting from the 1940-1970 global temperature decline. Swedish
meteorologist Bert Bolin suggested at the time that man-made greenhouse
gas emissions might offset the cooling by warming the atmosphere.
When Margaret Thatcher became UK Prime Minister in 1979, her mandate was
to reduce Britain's economic decline. Thatcher wanted to make the UK
energy-independent through nuclear power - she didn't like her country's
reliance on coal, which politically empowered the coal miner unions, or
oil, which empowered Middle Eastern states.
So Thatcher latched onto Bolin's notion that man-made emissions of
carbon dioxide warmed the planet in a harmful way, thereby providing the
perfect political cover for advancing her nuclear power agenda without
having to fight the miners or Arab oil states.
She empowered the U.K. Meteorological Office to begin global climate
change research, a move that eventually led to the 1988 creation of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations'
group that has come to be the "official" international agency for global
warming alarmism.
At about the same time, as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore explains
on-camera, environmentalism became more extreme. By the mid-1980s,
environmental goals - e.g., clean air and clean water - had become so
mainstream that activists had to adopt more extreme positions to remain
anti-establishment.
Then when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended, many "peace-niks"
and political activists moved over to environmental activism, bringing
their "neo-Marxist" political philosophy with them. As Moore puts it,
environmentalism became the "new guise for anti-capitalism."
Global warming alarmism was thus borne from this combination of official
British policy, environmentalism's rejection of its own success and
political opportunism by "unemployed" left-wing political activists.
With such an inglorious heritage, it's no wonder the scientists in "The
Great Global Warming Swindle" have little trouble dismantling climate
myths.
Perhaps the most important bit of scientific knowledge presented is the
actual relationship between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide.
In "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore disingenuously describes the
relationship as "complex" while implying that higher atmospheric carbon
dioxide levels cause higher global temperatures.
But according to the geological record and data from ice cores, higher
temperatures actually precede higher carbon dioxide levels by about 800
years. Twentieth century data support this idea in at least two ways.
First, most of the 20th century's warming occurred before 1940, while
most of the century's greenhouse gas emissions occurred after 1940.
Next, when manmade greenhouse gas emissions soared in the post World War
II industrial boom, global temperatures declined until the mid-1970s,
leading to the aforementioned global cooling concerns.
The Channel 4 program notes that ongoing temperature measurements
contradict global warming theory. According to the theory, lower
atmosphere temperatures should be warming at a much faster rate than
those at the Earth's surface. In reality, however, just the opposite is
occurring.
Then there's the sun - the gigantic yellow ball in the sky that climate
alarmists want all of us to ignore in favor of minute emissions of an
invisible gas that makes up less than one-half of one percent of the
Earth's atmosphere. As it turns out, solar activity - unlike atmospheric
carbon dioxide levels - correlates quite well with historic temperature
changes, including through its effects on cosmic rays and clouds, as the
film demonstrates quite effectively.
So why does the world seem to be caught up in the vise-like grip of a
controversy that is contradicted by available scientific data and its
own dubious heritage?
According to the scientists in the movie, there is an intolerance of
dissent on global warming. Official government sanction of global
warming opened the floodgates of funding to climate researchers, who
previously worked in obscurity.
NASA scientist Roy Spencer says in the program that climate scientists
need for there to be problems to get more funding. IPCC contributor John
Christy says of climate scientists, "We have a vested interest in
creating panic because money with then flow to climate scientists."
University of London biogeographer Philip Stott says that "If the global
warming virago collapses, there will be an awful lot of people out of
jobs."
The film also debunks the IPCC claim that the 2,500 scientists
contributing to its reports also support its alarmist conclusions. One
key IPCC contributor for example, the Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter,
threatened to sue the IPCC if the group didn't remove his name from a
chapter with which he disagreed.
When I met Al Gore in January 2006 after a presentation of his climate
slideshow, I asked him if he'd be interested in setting up a public
debate between climate scientists. He declined - twice. At this point,
I'd settle for a movie face-off - "An Inconvenient Truth" vs. "The Great
Global Warming Swindle."
Let the public see both sides of the story and then we'll see who's
believable and who's not.