Channel 4's so called documentary last night "The Great Global Warming Swindle" will hopefully come to be seen as another big mistake by the broadcaster. The programme was big on vox-pops from people with no credibility, short on evidence and big on conspiracy theories.
One of their keystone arguements was to point to the fact that the different levels of the atmosphere are not warming evenly - as the climate models suggest that they should - as an indicator that the current global warming is not due to greenhouse effects.
But spend a few minutes searching on the web and the original scientific data is readily available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The real difficulty apparently was a discrepancy between data gathered by satelites and that gathered by weather balloons. The discrepancy has now been resolved and the layers of the atmosphere have been shown to be warming evenly and consistent with the climate models. This report was published in April 2006 - so exactly how the programme makers missed it when I found it within a few minutes is beyond belief.
Similarly they argued that changes in cloud formation were as a result of changes in cosmic radiation as the cloud droplets in the upper atmosphere are precipitated by cosmic rays. Problem: the cosmic radiation data is also readily available on the internet and it shows no increase during the period in question.
The assertion that Al Gore's data in "An Inconvenient Truth" showing the correlation between CO2 and global temperature was flawed because CO2 levels lag global temperature was also incorrect. This time lag is well known as the Milankovitch cycle and is indicative of a positive feedback effect whereby as the oceans warm they release CO2 thereby accelerating the warming. The reverse also happens as the climate cools.
The most objectionable assertion in the programme was that measures intended to reduce carbon emissions will have a deleterious effect on the world's poor by forcing them to rely on 'flakey' sources of electricity such as solar. Far from it - anybody interested in plans to build massive solar infrastructure in Northern Africa should check out www.trec-uk.org.uk/index.htm. There is every reason to hope that the tropical deserts of North Africa will become one of the world's powerhouses - with the capacity to supply the world with electricity many times over.
Of course - most people won't bother checking the scientific data - or even know where to look. Channel 4 certainly didn't.
I'm not against people having different views and having intelligent debate. But there are are a dangerous number of people out there happy to sieze on programmes like the Channel 4 offering as an excuse for inaction and ammunition for creating doubt. What I am against is people blatently lying and producing false evidence - and a broadcaster who gives air time to such rubbish in the pursuit of ratings and dramatic programme billing.
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For those who didn't see it, here are its main points:
1) That, contra Al Gore, the ice records show that increases in carbon dioxide lag behind temperatures by an average of 800 years, so although high carbon dioxide levels and high temperatures are related – a key piece of evidence in An Inconvenient Truth – the former cannot have caused the latter.
2) That the sun is the primary cause of all climate change and none of it is our fault.
3) That there has been no correlation between the rate of industrialisation and the rate of global warming.
4) That volcanoes alone produce much more carbon dioxide than all human industry, planes, cars etc. And volcanoes produce virtually nothing compared to plants and animals. And plants and animals produce virtually nothing compared to the oceans. And that it doesn't matter anyway because carbon dioxide makes no difference to global temperature.
5) That the arctic glaciers break up dramatically every year and always have done.
6) That environmental scientists and the new breed of ‘environmental journalists’ now have to be sensational to have any chance of being funded and published.
7) That there is a huge constituency of people dependent on the multi-billion industry that is the global warming research/scare lobby. Sceptics are ostracised.
8) That, according to Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, the environmental lobby is founded in the rump of the anti-capitalist, anti-US left that has been left directionless by the collapse of communism and socialism as a viable model
10) That the draconian measures imposed by the Precautionary Principle will have a disastrous effect on the world’s poorest. For example, the environmental lobby is demanding that African nations depend on the hopelessly unreliable and impossibly expensive solar and wind power rather than investing in using the continent’s coal and oil to generate the electricity that could immediately transform millions of blighted lives. This is where the environmental lobby becomes morally repugnant.
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