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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] borrrring ... Global warming
  • Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 20:39:16 -0600


It's an endless debate that, frankly, bores me, and unless somebody can
relate this to our list, it's waaay out there, folks. The only fact the
world's scientists are unanimous on is the fact that global warning is
occurring, glaciers are receding, and polar ice is shrinking, and the earth
has gone through long cycles of warning and cooling for reasons we don't
yet understand. Beyond that we don't know how much industrial civilization
is contributing to it. Or what if anything we can do about it. This list
cannot settle those issues.

We do know however, that we're destroying our resource base at breakneck
speed, groundwater, topsoil, aquifers, forests, grasslands. Feeding
ourselves sustainably means replenishing our resource base by intelligent
partnership with the soil and the life of the soil. It's practical
environmentalism. It's the Land Ethic expressed first by Aldo Leopold in
his Sand County Almanac. He worked here in New Mexico and the Leopold
Wilderness is one of his legacies.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 4/3/2007 at 8:59 AM Martin Naylor wrote:

>some might be intrested on these comments regarding the lies and deciet
>on "The Great Gobal Warming Swindle" produced by Britain's Channel 4. It
>has not been shown in the USA but is available at
>www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU
>
>
>
>
>MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
>March 13, 2007 MEDIA ALERT: PURE PROPAGANDA - THE GREAT GLOBAL
>WARMING SWINDLE The Scientists Are The Bad Guys On March 8,
>Channel 4 screened The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary that
>branded as a lie the scientific consensus that man-made greenhouse
>gasses are primarily responsible for climate change. The film was
>advertised extensively on Channel 4 and repeatedly previewed and
>reviewed in newspapers. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Christopher
>Booker declared: “Only very rarely can a TV documentary be seen as a
>pivotal moment in a major political debate, but such was Channel 4's The
>Great Global Warming Swindle last Thursday. Never before has there been
>such a devastatingly authoritative account of how the hysteria over
>global warming has parted company with reality.” (Booker, ‘A turning
>point in climate change,’ Sunday Telegraph, March 11, 2007)
> Peter Hitchens commented in the Daily Mail: “If you were worried
about
>those snaps of polar bears clinging to melting ice-floes, sentenced to a
>slow death by global warming, you may now relax. They'll be fine.
>Channel 4 has paid in full for its recent misdemeanours by screening,
>last Thursday, the brilliant, devastating film The Great Global Warming
>Swindle.” (Hitchens, ‘Drugs?’, Daily Mail, March 11, 2007)
Doubtless
>like many who saw the film, the Financial Times’ reviewer was left
>bewildered: “Not so long ago, the venerable David Attenborough on the
>Beeb was telling us that human-driven global warming was real and was
>coming for us. So that was settled. Now Channel 4, like a dissident
>schoolboy, is scoffing at the old boy's hobbyhorse and I don't know what
>to believe.” (’Slaughterhouse three,’ Financial Times, March 10,
2007)
> The film opened with scenes of wild weather and environmental disaster
>accompanied by dramatic captions:
> "THE ICE IS MELTING. THE SEA IS RISING. HURRICANES ARE BLOWING. AND
>IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT. “SCARED? DON'T BE. IT'S NOT TRUE." This was
>immediately followed by a series of equally forthright talking heads:
> "We can't say that CO2 will drive climate; it certainly never did in
>the past." “We imagine that we live in an age of reason. And the
global
>warming alarm is dressed up as science. But it’s not science; it’s
>propaganda.” And: “We’re just being told lies; that’s what
it comes
>down to.” The commentary added to the sense of outrage: “You are
being
>told lies.” This was indeed superficially impressive - when
several
>experts make bold statements on the same theme we naturally assume they
>must be onto something - but alarm bells should already have been
>ringing. This, after all, was ostensibly a film about science - about
>evidence, arguments, research and debate. Why, then, the language of
>polemic and smear? The remarkable answer is
> provided by the film’s writer and director, Martin Durkin: "I
think
>it [the film] will go down in history as the first chapter in a new era
>of the relationship between scientists and society. Legitimate
>scientists - people with qualifications - are the bad guys. It is a big
>story that is going to cause controversy. “It's very rare that a film
>changes history, but I think this is a turning point and in five years
>the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global
>warming will be seen as total bollocks.” ('“Global Warming Is
Lies”
>Claims Documentary,’ Life Style Extra, March 4, 2007;
>http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=CZ434669U&news_headline=global
_warming_is_lies_claims_documentary) Compare and contrast this with the
aim as described in a letter sent by the makers of the film, Wag TV, to
Professor Carl Wunsch, a leading expert on ocean circulation and climate
who subsequently appeared in the film: “The aim of the
> film is to examine critically the notion that recent global warming is
>primarily caused by industrial emissions of CO2. It explores the
>scientific evidence which jars with this hypothesis and explores
>alternative theories such as solar induced climate change. Given the
>seemingly inconclusive nature of the evidence, it examines the
>background to the apparent consensus on this issue, and highlights the
>dangers involved, especially to developing nations, of policies aimed at
>limiting industrial growth.”
>(http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/channel4response) Wunsch
>comments: "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My
>views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was
>misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months
>ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to
>understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the
>programme, I would have
> absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled."
>(Geoffrey Lean, ‘Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4,’
The
>Independent, March 11, 2007;
>http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2347526.ece
) We will hear more from Wunsch in what follows. Deeply Deceptive
The film presented viewers with an apparently devastating refutation of
the "theory of global warming". And these were not picky, esoteric
criticisms. Durkin insisted that the world’s climate scientists are
guilty of the most fundamental error imaginable: increased atmospheric
carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the cause of higher temperature, as the
experts claim. Quite the reverse: increasing atmospheric CO2 is itself
the +result+ of rising temperature. As evidence for this contention,
Durkin argued that global surface temperature dropped dramatically
between 1945-1975, at a time when CO2 emissions were rapidly rising as a
result of the
> postwar economic boom. According to Durkin, if CO2 emissions were
>responsible for increasing temperature, then temperature should not have
>fallen between 1945-1975. Clearly, then, some factor other than CO2
>emissions must have caused the subsequent global temperature rise.
>But Real Climate, an internet site run by climate scientists, such as
>NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt and Dr William Connelley of the British
>Antarctic Survey, describes Durkin’s discussion of the 1945-75 period as

>“deeply deceptive”. (Real Climate, March 9, 2007;
>http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled) In this
>section of the film, Durkin focused heavily on a graph depicting
>temperature changes. The graph, Real Climate comments, “looks rather
odd
>and may have been carefully selected”. It appears to show a dramatic
>cooling between the 1940s and 1970s. But try flipping between the
film’s
>version of the global temperature record:
> http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t63/izzy_bizzy_photo/capture.jpg
>and the temperature plot that normally appears in the scientific
>literature:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
>The supposed cooling looks rather less evident in this second graph.
>Without knowing more details of how Durkin may have manipulated the data
>plotted in his graph, it is difficult to comment on the presentation.
>What we can say is that Durkin’s "four decades of cooling", implying a
>relentless temperature drop over 40 years, is not an accurate
>description of the trend over this period. There was some cooling for
>+part+ of this time but also some plateauing, with fluctuations up and
>down. But why did the temperature not simply rise in line with the
>post-war increase in greenhouse gas emissions? In fact, as is
>well-known, the absence of a global rise in temperature between 1945-75
>is explained by the release of large amounts of
> industrial pollutants, called sulphate aerosols, into the atmosphere.
>These particles have a braking effect on global warming, known as
>“global dimming”. By shielding some of the incoming solar energy,
>sulphate aerosols mask the underlying warming effect generated by rising
>levels of CO2. By the 1980s, however, stronger warming had exceeded this
>masking effect and global temperature has since continued to rise. As
>Real Climate notes, by failing to explain the science behind this
>phenomenon the programme makers were guilty of “lying to us by
>omission.” The Ice Cores The film repeatedly gave the
impression
>that mainstream science argues that CO2 is the +sole+ driver of rising
>temperatures in the Earth's climate system. But this is not the case.
>Climate scientists are well aware that solar activity plays a role,
>though a minor one at present, as do long-term periodic changes in the
>Earth's orbit, known as Milankovitch cycles. (See:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) The point is that
>there is a vast body of evidence that very strongly supports the
>hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions, of which CO2 is the most
>important, are +primarily+ responsible for +recent+ global warming. The
>4th and most recent scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel
>on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes: "Most of the observed increase in
>globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely
>[.i.e. probability greater than 90%] due to the observed increase in
>anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." ('Climate Change 2007: The
>Physical Science Basis,' Summary for Policymakers, IPCC, February 2007,
>page 10; http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf) We then come to one of the
>film's most misleading arguments. Antarctic ice cores show that rises in
>levels of CO2 have lagged 800 years behind temperature rises at specific
>times in the geological past. This,
> argued Durkin, +proves+ that CO2 cannot be responsible for global warming
>- instead global warming is responsible for increasing levels of CO2.
>But this was a huge howler. What Durkin's film failed to explain was
>that the 800-year lag happened at the end of ice ages which occur about
>every 100,000 years. (See:
>http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores)
>Scientists believe that the end of an ice age is likely triggered when
>the amount of heat reaching the Earth rises as a result of a periodic
>change in the Earth's orbit around the sun. Jeff Severinghaus, Professor
>of Geosciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, explains why the
>rise in CO2 initially lags behind the temperature rise: "The reason has
>to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be
>complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2
>did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year
>trend."
> (Real Climate, 'What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice
>cores tell us about global warming?’, December 3, 2005;
>http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/)
> The best current explanation for the lag of 800 years is that this is
>how long it takes for CO2, absorbed by the ocean in an earlier warm
>period, to be "flushed out" at the end of an ice age. Once that CO2 has
>been released into the atmosphere its heat-trapping properties as a
>greenhouse gas lead to even stronger warming: an example of positive
>feedback. (See Caillon et al., 'Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic
>Temperature Changes Across Termination III,' Science, 14 March 2003: Vol.
>299. no. 5613, pp. 1728 - 1731) Professor Severinghaus summarises:
>"In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an
>amplifier once they are underway." Durkin’s analysis, then, was way
off
>the mark. The film’s claim that solar activity might
> account for recent warming is also without credibility. In September
>2006, the Times reported the latest findings from researchers writing in
>the top journal, Nature: “Scientists have examined various proxies of
>solar energy output over the past 1,000 years and have found no evidence
>that they are correlated with today's rising temperatures. Satellite
>observations over the past 30 years have also turned up nothing. ‘The
>solar contribution to warming... is negligible,’ the researchers wrote
>in the journal Nature.” (Anjana Ahuja, ‘It's hot, but don't blame
the
>Sun,’ The Times, September 25, 2006) The film's other scientific
>claims can be similarly dismissed. Carl Wunsch - who, as discussed,
>appeared in the film - comments: “What we now have is an out-and-out
>propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or
>explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are
>not widely accepted by the scientific
> community. There are so many examples, it's hard to know where to
>begin, so I will cite only one: a speaker asserts, as is true, that
>carbon dioxide is only a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The
>viewer is left to infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a
>beginning meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of
>gases are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director
>not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate
>that piece of disinformation.”
>(http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/channel4response) For
>further help in understanding the weakness of the film’s claims, see
the
>following resources: Real Climate, 'Swindled',
>http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled
>Campaign Against Climate Change, including a rebuttal to the film by Sir
>John Houghton, who chairs the Scientific Assessment Working Group of the
>Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
> Change: http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820 Royal Society: Facts
>and fictions about climate change:
>http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=4761 “I Was Duped” -
Déjà Vu?
> Many readers will be aware that Durkin has previous ‘form’. In 1997,

>Channel 4 broadcast his three-part series, Against Nature, which
>suggested present-day environmentalists were the true heirs of the Nazis.
>(See George Monbiot, ‘The Revolution Has Been Televised,’ The
Guardian,
> December 18, 1997;
>http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1997/12/18/the-revolution-has-been-televise
d/) Several interviewees who appeared in the film felt they had been
misled about the programme-maker’s agenda. Responding to complaints,
the Independent Television Commission (ITC) found that the editing of
interviews with four contributors had "distorted or misrepresented their
known views". (Geoffrey Lean, ‘Climate change: An inconvenient truth...
for C4,’ The Independent, March 11, 2007;
>
>http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2347526.ece
) In addition, the ITC found: "The interviewees had also been misled as
to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take
part." (Paul McCann, ‘Channel 4 told to apologise to Greens,’ The
Independent, April 2, 1998) Ten years on, it appears that history may
have repeated itself. In his letter of complaint to the film-makers cited
above, Carl Wunsch writes: “I have some experience in dealing with TV
and print reporters and do understand something of the ways in which one
can be misquoted, quoted out of context, or otherwise misinterpreted.
Some of that is inevitable in the press of time or space or in
discussions of complicated issues. Never before, however, have I had an
experience like this one. My appearance in the ‘Global Warming
Swindle’ is deeply embarrassing, and my professional reputation has
been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable
> position in which to be. “At a minimum, I ask that the film should
>never be seen again publicly with my participation included. Channel 4
>surely owes an apology to its viewers, and perhaps WAGTV owes something
>to Channel 4. I will be taking advice as to whether I should proceed to
>make some more formal protest.”
>(http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/channel4response) Eight of
>the scientists in the film - John Christy, Paul Reiter, Richard Lindzen,
>Paul Driessen, Roy Spencer, Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer and Tim Ball -
>are linked to American neo-conservative and right-wing think-tanks, many
>of which have received tens of millions of dollars from Exxon.
>Greenpeace provides a fascinating online ’map’ detailing how Exxon
funds
>these climate sceptics. Go to:
>http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=831 (click ‘Launch’ then

>click ‘skip intro’) In his book, Green Backlash, environmental
>journalist Andrew Rowell noted that Fred Singer
> has also attacked scientific and environmental stances on other green
>issues such as ozone, acid rain, automobile emissions and even whaling.
>Singer has worked for companies such as Exxon, Shell, Arco, Unocal and
>Sun. According to the Environmental Research Foundation, a
>non-governmental organisation: “For years, Singer was a professor
at
>the University of Virginia where he was funded by energy companies to
>pump out glossy pamphlets pooh-poohing climate change.” (Quoted,
Sharon
>Beder, Global Spin, Green Books, 1997, p.94) Rowell wrote that a
>quarter of Patrick Michaels’ research funding was reportedly received
>from companies such as Edison Electric Institute, the largest utility
>trade association in America. Michaels’ magazine, World Climate
Review,
>was funded by the Western Fuel Association and a video produced by him
>was funded by coal companies and distributed by the Denver Coal Club.
>(Rowell, Green Backlash, Routledge, 1996, p.143)
> Both Singer and Michaels represented the fossil fuel lobby’s Global
>Climate Coalition and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leader in
>global warming scepticism. Journalist Ross Gelbspan noted that in May
>1995, Richard Lindzen and Patrick Michaels were hired as expert
>witnesses to testify on behalf of Western Fuels Association, a $400
>million consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities. Gelbspan
>said of Lindzen: “I don't know very many supporters of Mr Lindzen who
>are not in the pay of the fossil fuel lobby. Dr Lindzen himself, his
>research is publicly funded, but Dr Lindzen makes, as he told me, $2,500
>a day consulting with fossil fuel interests, and that includes his
>consulting with OPEC, his consulting with the Australian coal industry,
>his consulting with the US coal industry and so forth. That's not to say
>Dr Lindzen doesn't believe what he says, but it is to say that he stands
>in very sharp distinction to really just about
> virtually all of the climate scientists around the world.” (Tony
Jones,
>‘Journalist puts global warming sceptics under the spotlight,’
>Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 7, 2005;
>http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1318067.htm) Journalist
>George Monbiot wrote of Philip Stott: “Professor Stott is a retired
>biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent sceptics he has never
>published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made
>himself available to dismiss climatologists' peer-reviewed work as the
>‘lies’ of ecofundamentalists.” (Monbiot, ‘Beware the fossil
fools,’ The
>Guardian, April 27, 2004;
>http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1829315,00.html)
> Paul Driessen is a fellow at two right-wing think tanks in the US,
>which are part of the Wise Use movement. One of the think tanks is headed
> by Ron Arnold, who has spent the last twenty years attacking the
>environmental movement. His fellow director is a
> fundraiser for America's gun lobby. The list goes on... By contrast,
>Greenpeace spokeswoman Mhairi Dunlop said her organisation had been
>interviewed by Durkin but none of the material had been included in the
>film: "They interviewed us but I guess what we said didn't fit in with
>the [story] they were peddling." (McCandless, op. cit) Following the
>film’s broadcast, Professor Martin Rees, president of the Royal
Society
>- the government-sponsored academy of sciences for the United Kingdom -
>has said that many factors contribute to global warming but it is clear
>that emissions of "greenhouse gases," particularly CO2, are to blame for
>most of the current temperature rise. Rees added: "Those who promote
>fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a
>dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we
>can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future."
>(Ibid) On March 11 the
> Observer published a letter from a group of climate scientists
>responding to Durkin’s film: “This programme misrepresented the
state
>of scientific knowledge on global warming, claiming climate scientists
>are presenting lies. This is an outrageous statement... “We defend
>the right of people to be sceptical, but for C4 to imply that the
>thousands of scientists and published peer-reviewed papers, summarised
>in the recent international science assessment, are misguided or lying
>lacks scientific credibility and simply beggars belief.” (Alan Thorpe,
>Natural Environment Research Council, Brian Hoskins, University of
>Reading, Jo Haigh, Imperial College London, Myles Allen, University of
>Oxford, Peter Cox, University of Exeter, Colin Prentice, QUEST
>Programme, letter to the Observer, Sunday March 11, 2007;
>http://observer.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2031117,00.html) Viewed
>from one perspective, Channel 4 has done a huge public disservice in
> spreading absurd and mendacious arguments guaranteed to generate
>confusion. This at a time when a fragile momentum is building on the
>need to take urgent action on the very real threat of catastrophic climate
> change. But from another perspective it may well be that this film
>does for climate scepticism what Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossiers” did
for
>the pro-war movement ahead of the invasion of Iraq. Wildly distorted
>propaganda often does have a powerful initial impact. But stretched
>beyond a certain point of unreality, it also has a tendency to turn on,
>and bite, the propagandists. Durkin’s grandiose prediction that
his
>film “will go down in history” will surely prove correct, although
>perhaps not for the reasons he imagined. SUGGESTED ACTION The
>goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for
>others. If you decide to write to journalists, we strongly urge you to
>maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive
> tone. Send a complaint to Channel 4:
>http://help.channel4.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=C4_Author,Company
={2EA1BB9C-510E-44A5-A481-01EB1DDA1669},T=CONTACT_VE,VARSET_TITLE=Gene
ral See material on 'Complaining to C4', including a model letter, at
http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820 Send a complaint to Ofcom:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/progs/specific/ Please send a copy of
your emails to: editor@medialens.org Please do NOT reply to the email
address from which this media alert originated. Please instead email us
at: editor@medialens.org This media alert will be archived shortly here:
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Media Lens book 'Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media' by
David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London) was published in
2006. For further details, including reviews, interviews and extracts,
please click here:
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>
>Ken Hargesheimer <minifarms2@yahoo.com> wrote: Some of you might be
>interested in "The Great Gobal Warming Swindle" produced by Britain's
>Channel 4. It has not been shown in the USA but is available at
>www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU
>
> From article by W E Williams, George Mason University
>
> Ken
>
>
>
>---------------------------------
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> If wisdom comes with age how did we get to this situation with Global
>Warming, I can't wait till the wise ones start with Oil Peak
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