“The Great Global Warming Swindle” (DVD/video/movie) is a pseudo-documentary in which British television producer Martin Durkin has fraudulently misrepresented both the data involved and scientists who have researched global climate. Movie director Durkin has willfully misrepresented the facts about global warming just to advocate his own agenda. The program was originally aired on England’s “Channel 4” (The “Supermarket Tabloid” of the airwaves). In the past, “Channel 4” has had to broadcast a prime-time apology for broadcasting another of Martin Durkin’s “sleazebag” pseudo-documentaries.

   “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is aimed at and appeals to the “Don’t bother me with the facts - I’ve already made up my mind” audience. There may be future media presentations by those who wish to promote ignorant political viewpoints instead of presenting factual knowledge. (Or possibly, the individuals involved have never passed a high school science course and don’t understand that there is a difference.)

   Martin Durkin’s modus operandi for the various versions of the DVD/video/movie appears to be:
1) I want to propagandize my anti-environment, anti-global warming agenda.
2) What kind of wild stories, manufactured “evidence”, etc. can I include this time to provide political fodder for the scientifically illiterate dimwits?


   The one cardinal rule in science is that you do not misrepresent the data. But this is what the producer of this pseudo-documentary has done to try to promote his own opinions.

   The picture-pairs that follow are Print Screen images from the video version of the pseudo-documentary vs. the factual data. At one time Google had a copy of the video at link  . All references refer to this Google “Wag TV” video version although it appears that it is no longer available at this link.
There may be another slightly shorter version at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3028847519933351566 Please search the Internet for other versions if this shorter version also disappears.

   Viewers are encouraged to compare each of the picture-pairs below and draw their own conclusions as to whether the pseudo-documentary is based on factual data, or if the pseudo-documentary falsifies the data as part of an anti-environmental campaign. (See the 2nd half of the pseudo-documentary for the anti-environmental campaign.)



   This first pair of pictures compares the partial temperature record as presented in “The Great Global Warming Swindle” vs. the actual observations as shown at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.


   The vertical bars at the right are the pseudo-documentary’s assertion that most of the recent rise in global temperatures occurred before 1940. The exact words from the pseudo-documentary are:
“Most of the rise in temperature occurred before 1940.” (About 14 min. 20 sec. into the presentation.)
Please take a close look at the right-hand portion of the graph.

   The picture below shows the actual changes in the world’s temperature as presented by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/


   Again please take a close look at the right-hand portion of the graph. The pseudo-documentary version of the temperature graph omits the last 20 years of data. (And “fluffed” the graph to disguise this omission.) The rapid increase in world temperatures over the last 20 years has paralleled the rapid rise in carbon dioxide concentrations. However, the pseudo-documentary does not include this data. (Note: The slight cooling that took place from 1940 to the 1960’s was caused by increasing sulfates in the atmosphere - see link )

   The director of the pseudo-documentary has willfully omitted this most recent data because it would disprove the personal agenda that he is trying to promote. When anyone misrepresents real data to try to present a personal agenda, what he is doing is flat out


As defined by “Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law” at link



   The GISS climate database is shown in the above chart. GISS is used as it covers the entire earth’s surface. Some of the Global Warming Deniers claim that GISS is not representative. The graph below shows the temperature records from all four of the major climate databases. (NASA/GISS, NOAA/NCDC, HadleyCRU, and JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency)) All four show similar temperature patterns including sharp warming in recent decades.


Note: After the relatively cooler year seen in 2008, temperature anomalies for 2009 are right back up near the record highs seen earlier this decade.




   And what do the purveyors of the “Global Warming Denial Machine” say when you show them that the climate is warming? The following story, posted at DailyTech.com on Feb. 26, 2008, is typical. (Note the date.)



In reality 2008 showed a temperature anomaly of +0.54  degrees C. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt
This makes 2008 the 9th warmest year in history. (2005 is the record warmest year with 2007 the 2nd warmest. - Please refer to the above graph.)



   The “Global Cooling” assertion by the “Global Warming Deniers” even extends to people who should know better. For example, Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi has been claiming for years that the climate is cooling. In 2005 he said:

In practice, Dec. 2005 turned out to be the 2nd warmest December on record (up through 2005).

Bastardi: “CO2 cannot cause global warming. . . So it cannot -- it literally cannot cause global warming.” This and other Bastardi bloopers at: link


   Joe Bastardi also appears to be guilty of unprofessional conduct in that his Global Warming Denial is part of a political agenda. For example, there is a chart that shows “Global Cooling” some 80 to 95 seconds into a Joe Bastardi video that can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Y2iF99kOY .

 ( A close-up of the chart can be seen at link ) Note that the source of the chart (as seen in the close-up) is “www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org”.

The chart itself has several faults:
1) The source of the “data” is left as a mystery.
2) The time period of 1998 to present is much too short to be representative.
3) The starting year of 1998 is about a blatant example of “cherry picking” as you are ever going to get.
Additional info about the chart’s origin and misrepresentations including “Not just wrong, fake.” can be found at: link

and/or

link

   For what it’s worth, Christopher Monckton and everything he asserts is thoroughly debunked at “A Scientist Replies to Christopher Monckton”. The slide show includes a debunking of Monckton’s graph(s). (More below.)

   The actual label on the graph is “www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org”. “Science and Public Policy” is basically a one-man operation run by a long-time Republican staffer named Robert Ferguson. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/contact.html

The following information about Robert Ferguson and the Science and Public Policy Global Cooling graph can be seen at: link



As for Joe Bastardi’s (not factual) “knowledge” of past climates, on multiple occasions he has stated:

“The Vikings were raising grapes on the north coast in Newfoundland.”

and

link

   In reality, the only known Viking settlement in North American was at “L'Anse aux Meadows”, and this was used as a staging ground for expeditions that extended as far south as Nova Scotia.
“The L'Anse aux Meadows site is not Vínland.”

“Although L'Anse aux Meadows is not Vinland”

Bastardi’s claim that it was warm enough 1,000 years ago to grow grapes in northern Newfoundland is simply an arrogant fantasy.


   Also, please see: “Meteorological Malpractice: Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi pushes the “70s Ice Age Scare” myth again”

“Accuweather’s meteorologist Joe Bastardi likes to push anti-science global cooling conspiracy theories”



   Some of the Global Warming Deniers “cherry pick” a short time period from the HadCRUT 3V database to claim that the world has been cooling since 1998. This is willfully misleading for several reasons.

1) The short time period is not representative.
2) The starting date is obvious “cherry picking”.
3) HadCRUT 3V does not include the Arctic Ocean/North Pole area. GISS does include the Arctic. GISS is a better database as it includes a larger area. Warming has been greatest over the Arctic which is why GISS data shows more warming than HadCRUT 3V. There is more information on this difference at: link




   While Christopher Monckton did not appear in Durkin’s movie, he has promoted it. ( Please see paragraph 5 at: link ) He is also one of the “leading lights” (dimwits) of the Global Warming Denier movement. As is typical of Global Warming Deniers, Christopher Monckton is an expert at making noise and scientifically impaired when it comes to portraying reality. (Great qualifications if you want to be a politician or circus side show barker.)

   The following two pictures illustrate how Christopher Monckton misrepresents reality.


(Also see slide 56 at link )

   The picture above is from John Abraham’s presentation: “A Scientist Replies to Christopher Monckton”. The picture is a copy of a slide used in one of Monckton’s presentations where Monckton states that the “Arctic sea-ice extent is just fine: steady for a decade”. The picture shows the typical SEASONAL (winter to summer) changes in ice coverage. The seasonal pattern is relatively large as compared to the slower changes due to Global Warming/Climate Change, and thus the longer term decrease in the ice pack is not readily apparent.

(As for Monckton’s inclusion of the “crown” icon on his chart, try link and see what happens.)




   The picture above is from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory, and shows yearly Arctic Ice Pack volume anomalies. link  The volume of Arctic sea ice is actually declining rapidly with the trend accelerating. Monckton’s description of this decline is: “Arctic sea-ice extent is just fine: steady for a decade”

   In the world of Global Warming Deniers, it appears that blatant lying and bullyism are considered to be virtues when you are trying to force your political agenda down everyone else’s throat.
Illustration: Glen Le Lievre

For more info on Monckton’s lies, please see:
“Monckton lies again (and again, and again, and again, and again . . .)!”


“Debunking the myths behind the pontificating potty peer”

and
Christopher Monckton - A vociferous Global Warming Denier Liar ( link )







The following is a quote from the American Meteorological Society. (link)




   The graph above was originally posted on the Skeptical Science website. ( link  - and the diagram is a repeat of an earlier post in 2008 ) The graph shows the number of peer reviewed scientific papers that were published in the late 1960s and 1970s that anticipated global warming vs. global cooling. The vast majority of these papers anticipated that atmospheric carbon dioxide would warm the earth.

   As for what scientists were really saying in years ago as reported by reliable news broadcasting, here’s a video of a Walter Cronkite news broadcast from April 1980.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU9s0XyEctI

Here are some other sources/published papers:

   "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change" – originally published by Gilbert Plass in 1956 ( link )

“The extra CO2 released into the atmosphere by industrial processes and other human activities may have caused the temperature rise during the present century. In contrast with other theories of climate, the CO2 theory predicts that this warming trend will continue, at least for several centuries.”

   In 1965, President Johnson's Science Advisory Committee published its “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment”. report. The following quote is from this report:

“The part that remains in the atmosphere may have a significant effect on climate; carbon dioxide is nearly transparent to visible light, but it is a strong absorber and back radiator of infrared radiation, particularly in the wave lengths from 12 to 18 microns; consequently, an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide could act, much like the glass in a greenhouse, to raise the temperature of the lower air.”

( link )

   In 1972, John Sawyer published the study Man-made Carbon Dioxide and the “Greenhouse” Effect. The following quote is from John Sawyer's study:

“The increase of 25% CO2 expected by the end of the century therefore corresponds to an increase of 0.6°C in the world temperature – an amount somewhat greater than the climatic variation of recent centuries.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sawyer_(meteorologist)

Original published paper in:
NATURE VOL. 239 SEPTEMBER 1 1972
https://www.nature.com/articles/239023a0

    In 1975  Wallace Broecker published his research paper: "Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" ( link )

The following quote is from the abstract for this paper:

If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.

The following quotes are from the 1979 Charney Report
“Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment”




   The graph above shows the global temperature record as tabulated by NOA’s National Climate Data Center. The data can be accessed at link

   “Global Warming Deniers” claim that the world has been cooling. The graph shows that “The Deniers” are willfully misrepresenting the actual observations. Misrepresentations and willfully false claims by the “Global Warming Deniers” are their standard mode of operation.

   As shown by the (yellow) moving average, global temperatures continue to rise.

   As to when scientists actually knew that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide would cause global warming, here's a 1912 newspaper report:

Original sources:

link

and

link



   1 min. 15 seconds into the pseudo-documentary the following statement is made: “We can’t say that CO2 will drive climate, it certainly never did in the past.”

   The scientific record shows that the above statement is completely false, and discredits the person making it (Ian Clark).  The record shows there is a strong correlation between past levels of carbon dioxide and methane vs. the earth’s temperature.


   The original version of the above chart can be found at http://www.realclimate.org/epica.jpg. It is derived from multiple ice cores that record atmospheric conditions and climate for the last 650,000 years. (Wikipedia has a similar version plus additional charts at link  )

   The black center line in the chart measures deuterium (hydrogen isotope) ratios found in the old ice. (Deuterium ratios are a stand-in for the historical temperature.) The red line shows methane levels while the blue line shows carbon dioxide ratios.

   For comparative purposes, the current CO2 ratio in the earth's atmosphere is in excess of 380 parts per million and is climbing steeply. If this current ratio were plotted, it would be at the left end of the blue line, and far above anything seen in the previous 650,000 years. We are running an uncontrolled experiment with our atmosphere.




   About 23 minutes into the pseudo-documentary, an assertion is made that carbon dioxide is not responsible for global warming because ice records show there have been several instances where warming has begun some ~800 years before carbon dioxide levels begin to increase. The actual 800-year lead is true, but the conclusion presented in the pseudo-documentary is not true.

   As pointed out by Jeff Severinghaus (Professor of Geosciences, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego link  ), historical warm-up periods begin via some variable event that starts a warming cycle. For example, in the past, these initializing events were usually set off by Milankovitch variations in the earth’s orbit that changed the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the northern hemisphere. This time, the initialization event has been a human induced spike in carbon dioxide concentrations. (Of note, the article at the above URL is dated as of Dec. 3, 2004 which is more than 2 years before Durkin’s pseudo-documentary was released.)

  In turn, the initial warming event triggers a chain reaction/feedback release of carbon dioxide (blue line in the above chart) and methane (red line in the above chart) from the earth’s oceans, which then drives the rest of the warm-up cycle. Please see Jeff Severinghaus’ article

“What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?”
at the above web page for more information.

Alternately please see a longer article:
“The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gore’s got it right.)” by Eric Steig




   The ~100,000 year periodic cycles that can be seen in the above chart appear to be closely correlated with changes in the amount of summertime heat energy (insolation) at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. (This in turn drives ocean currents starting with the North Atlantic Ocean.)

  The most recent Milankovitch analysis indicates this forcing factor would have produced cooling for the last 6,000 years, but changes for the next few thousand years will be relatively minor. If Milankovich cycles were the sole contributor, we would be experiencing a relatively cool climate now instead of the observed rapid warming that has taken place over the last 100 years. For further information, please see: link ; and in particular please see the red line in the chart at:
link

     Finally, it should be noted that changes in the earth’s orbit and rotational wobble have a time factor measured in thousands of years. The rapid warming that has been observed over the last 100 years is well below the threshold that could be produced by Milankovitch cycles.




   Another assertion in the pseudo-documentary is that sunspots are responsible for global warming. The pseudo-documentary can’t make up its mind whether to assert that it’s sunspots, or some indeterminate “Solar Activity” that is causing changes in temperature; but we will present the pseudo-documentary’s “Solar Activity” chart and compare it with the historical sunspot record.


   The Print Screen image above shows the pseudo-documentary’s “Solar Activity” chart. The blue-green line shows the temperature for most of the last 400 years. Again, the film’s producer has omitted the steep warming seen in the last 20 years. If the chart had included this recent warming, the blue-green line would have run off the top of the chart. (See the first pair of pictures.)

   The red line is purported to depict “Solar Activity”. If whatever the pseudo-documentary chose to represent as “Solar Activity” had any correlation to observed temperatures, then the red line should have spiked just as the recent temperature has. Of course the red line is conveniently not plotted for the last few decades.

   The red line may have been based on original work by Nathan Rive and Eigil Friis-Christensen. They have issued a joint statement stating that the “red line” data was made up of fabricated data that was presented as genuine.
http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html


   Ian Clark (The spokesman for the earlier discredited quote:  “We can’t say that CO2 will drive climate, it certainly never did in the past.”) supports this incorrect solar/sunspot conjecture. link



   The chart above is an excerpt from NASA’s “Solar Cycle Update” at link .
It shows the actual number of observed sunspots over the last 400 years. (The number of sunspots has been counted for the last 400 years, and this record is our only direct measurement of “Solar Activity” for this time span.) The actual information as shown above doesn’t resemble the red line in the pseudo-documentary. The source data for the red line in the pseudo-documentary thus remains a mystery.

   If short term temperatures followed a sunspot cycle, we should see similar short term temperature oscillations that correspond to the ~11 year sunspot cycle. No short term correlation exists. The pseudo-documentary tries to correlate the minor 1940 top in temperatures with the number of sunspots. A quick look at the sunspot chart shows no 1940 correlation. Similarly, if sunspots were responsible for the large observed increase in world temperatures over the last few decades, then there should also be some unusual anomaly in the sunspot pattern over the same last few decades. No such anomaly exists.


The above chart is from Stanford University’s Solar Center.

The sharp warming in the earth’s temperature over the last several decades is following the increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content. The warming trend is not following sunspot activity.
“Global warming . . . is now well documented and accepted by scientists as fact.”







   Solar Irradiance through October 2009, based on concatenation of multiple satellite records by Claus Frohlich and Judith Lean (see Frohlich, 2006). Averaged over day and night, Earth absorbs about 240 W/m² of energy from the sun, so the irradiance variation of about 0.1 percent causes a direct climate forcing of just over 0.2 W/m².
Original graph from: link

   Solar Irradiance (Unobstructed heat energy from the sun) has been measured by satellites for over 30 years. As seen in the above graph, there has been no significant increase in solar radiation that could account for the increase in the earth’s temperature over the last few decades. The cyclical pattern in the above graph closely approximates the sunspot cycle.

A recent study of solar radiation was released July 11, 2007
“Solar variations not behind global warming: study”


“Solar activity cleared of global warming blame”


   The original research report (published in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society” - highly technical) is at: (link )
“Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature”

   This most recent research study indicates that solar irradiance has actually decreased slightly since the mid 1980s. (Which is what can be seen in the NASA solar irradiance measurements.)


   These two chart pairs from pages 5 and 7 of the above report show that solar irradiance is not responsible for the sharp increase in observed world temperatures over the last few decades. (TSI = Total Solar Irradiance, ΔT = observed temperature anomaly) In the first pair of graphs, the ~11 year sunspot cycle overwhelms directly observable longer term changes in irradiance, while random temperature fluctuations add a lot of “jiggles” to the temperature graph.

   In the second pair of graphs, the sunspot cycle has been subtracted out and temperature data has been smoothed. In the smoothed temperature chart, GISS is Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA) data while HadCRUT3 is data from England’s Hadley Center for Research. The red line in the irradiance chart shows the resultant best fit while the other lines reflect various damping factors.

   As shown in the charts, not only have temperatures continued to rise since 1985, the rate of temperature increase is accelerating. Total solar irradiance (total solar radiated energy) has slightly decreased during this period. Thus solar irradiance is clearly not responsible for the recent increase in the earth’s temperature.

   The report also examines sunspot counts, length of the sunspot cycle, solar magnetic flux, and cosmic rays as part of the study. The report’s conclusion is:



Also, “Changes in Solar Brightness Too Weak to Explain Global Warming”



   Yet the only real evidence that the “deniers” (and their well-funded "Denial Industry" / “Denial Machine” ) can demonstrate is that they are not mentally capable of understanding real evidence. Note: “The Denial Machine” video includes Fred Singer’s (see below) assertion that tobacco smoke is not a health hazard.

   Also, as part of their campaign, the deniers continue to churn out fabricated/manufactured “evidence” that has no factual basis. Please see Newsweek’s Aug. 13, 2007 cover story - “The Truth About Denial” - for additional information.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482

(The article is a lengthy documentation of the what/why/when of the “Denial Machine”, who is financing it, and how it is flooding the world with disinformation to obfuscate the real evidence of global warming (climate change).)

(If you don’t understand the above cartoon, you need to see the “Creationism = Willful Ignorance” page.)


   A quote from http://currentera.com/SwindlersList.html
“Ok, so now we know that Durkin admittedly has no problem with fudging charts and graphs to meet his own ends”
There is much more at this web site.


   The low activity in sunspots from 1650 to 1700 is of interest. This dip in sunspot activity is called the Maunder Minimum in honor of astronomer E. W. Maunder. There appears to be some correlation with historical temperatures as this period coincided with the “Little Ice Age”. However, if this correlation were stronger, then temperatures should have maxed out with the late 1950’s peak in sunspots. This is not what we observe in the temperature records. Thus sunspots are not the cause of the sharp global warming we have seen in the last few decades.


    The chart above from ( link ) shows a composite of 10 different temperature reconstructions over the last 1000 years. The Maunder Minimum does coincide with the lowest temperature readings, but it is a loose fit at best, and may be coincidental. Of note, the Medieval Warm Period was not as warm as current temperatures. (This refutes the graphic shown in the pseudo-documentary which claims the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than present temperatures.)

   The medium blue line that starts at the left edge in the above chart is Michael Mann’s original “Hockey Stick”. Michael Mann’s temperature reconstruction has been confirmed by other temperature reconstructions which indicates that he has had it right all along.

  A major research work that was published in 2013 has again reconfirmed the original work by Michael Mann. ( link )
(“All data are freely available” – includes link)


   Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the modern thermometer in the early 1700’s. Thus early temperatures have to be reconstructed by indirect methods as shown in the preceding “Reconstructed Temperature” picture. The graph shown in the pseudo-documentary is not based on accurate data.





   At about 33 minutes into the pseudo-documentary, there is an assertion that cosmic rays generate clouds that in turn cause changes in the earth’s temperature. This assertion is refuted by the following article published by the American Geophysical Union.
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0405.html   (Summary only)

Full text at ( link )



   The authors of the above research conclude that the cosmic ray hypothesis is “incorrect and based on questionable methodology” and is “scientifically ill-founded”.

The assertion in the pseudo-documentary may well be based on this discredited cosmic ray hypothesis.

   If you want to look at cosmic ray measurements for the last 50 years, you can see the actual data at ( link ). The solar wind is stronger during periods of high sunspot activity which in turn reduces the number of cosmic rays that can reach the earth. Thus there is an 11-year inverse correlation with the sunspot cycle.


   The chart above illustrates the average hourly cosmic ray count rate (1,000’s per hour) for each year beginning in 1953 as measured at the high altitude observatory in Climax, Colorado. (Data is from the above web link. 2006 data is a preliminary average for the first 11 months.) The pseudo-documentary’s cosmic ray conjecture states that high cosmic ray intensities produce more clouds which would produce cooler earth temperatures. If this conjecture were true, then we should see a corresponding 11-year cycle in the earth’s temperature. If we compare this chart with the actual temperature record (the NASA/GISS temperature record shown earlier), there is no apparent correlation.




   At about 25 minutes 18 seconds into the pseudo-documentary, the video/film shows an animated cartoon of a volcano and asserts that volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than human induced emissions. The exact quote from the pseudo-documentary is:



Once again the pseudo-documentary willfully falsifies the facts. The following quote is from the U. S. Geological Survey. ( link )



Also, from a paper presented at the Geological Society of America’s 2010 meeting:
“This anthropogenic CO2 emission rate is ~100-300 times larger than the estimate ranges for annual global volcanic CO2 release.” ( link )




The graph above was originally posted at ( link )  The graph shows the atmospheric concentration of Carbon Dioxide as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii vs. Stratospheric Aerosol concentrations from volcanic eruptions.

Q. If volcanoes were the primary contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide, why aren’t there spikes in the atmospheric CO2 concentrations that correspond with major volcanic eruptions?
A. As per usual, the Global Warming Deniers lie about reality.

(Note: The 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens caused barely a minor bump in aerosols.)





   The pseudo-documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” also abusively uses “cut and paste”, out-of-context statements by at least one legitimate scientist. The result willfully misconstrues the original meaning to instead promote the producer’s agenda. The following are statements by Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and are posted at: ( link )




The above web site has multiple other links that refute the assertions made in the pseudo-documentary.

A complete listing of MIT’s Professor Carl Wunsch's comments on the pseudo-documentary can be found at:
http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/CHANNEL4.html




   The pseudo-documentary implies that the other people who appeared are knowledgeable experts in their fields. In practice, their best expertise seems to be wrangling payments from large energy companies - especially anti-environmental organizations.  The following list of brief biographies is a long quote from:
http://climatedenial.org   (Original posting will scroll downward)

( link )



   As to the claim that Tim Ball is/was a professor in the Climatology Department at the University of Winnipeg, “the University of Winnipeg has never had a Department of Climatology”.

As quoted by the Defendants (the Defendants eventually prevailed) against Tim Ball (the Plaintiff) in a lawsuit:

( link )
(Page 12, Section 50)

   Tim Ball is also one of the perpetrators of the “Global Cooling” myth with statements such as: “Yes, it warmed from 1680 up to 1940, but since 1940 it’s been cooling down.”  Please refer to the “Global Temperature” chart near the top of this page to see what has really happened. Is Tim Ball willfully lying or is Tim Ball completely out of touch with reality? (Could both be true?)

   Another “Tim Ballism”: “But also, the majority of the scientists who are on the Kyoto and global warming bandwagon know nothing about the science.”
Please refer to the “Recommended links for further research” section below for links/references about scientists who are on the “global warming bandwagon”.

   And yet another Tim Ball delusion: “Pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today.”
Please note that current CO2 levels are above 385 parts per million - and then see where this would be plotted on the graph shown earlier in the “The Historical Temperature Data vs. Carbon Dioxide & Methane” section. (Hint: Nothing even close for over 650,000 years.)





   Similarly, the pseudo-documentary has a caption saying Fred Singer was the “Former Director, US National Weather Service”. In fact, Fred Singer was never a “Former Director, US National Weather Service”. These claims are not true, and are willful misrepresentations of the credentials of the participants in the movie. These are typical of the fraudulent claims that are present in the pseudo-documentary.

   For example, at about 16 min. 24 sec. into the pseudo-documentary, Tim Ball asserts that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is 0.054%. You would think that a real “professor of climatology” would know that the CO2 content of the atmosphere has only climbed above 0.038% in the last few years (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/), and was consistently below 0.030% for at least 650,000 years before 1900.


Additional information at ( link ) describes Piers Corbyn thusly:


Note: A Google search using < “Piers Corbyn” charlatan > returns a significant number of hits.


   The following information on Richard S. Lindzen was not included above but can be found at: http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/50494/

 and
http://dieoff.org/page82.htm#1


And as quoted at: ( link )






   It appears that the pseudo-documentary’s “expert”, “Professor” Fred Singer, has been a co-organizer (with “Organized Crime”) of pseudo-scientific organizations whose members consist of “other scientists” who were willing participants in a “Propaganda for pay” program. The purpose of these pseudo-scientific organizations was to provide “anti-environmental”/“anti-consumerism” reports. These pseudo-scientific organizations are actually fronts for large energy and tobacco companies that wanted reports by “name scientists” that would hide (via “disinformation”) the fact that carbon dioxide emissions are causing “global warming” (climate change). (Participation by tobacco companies was to hide the harmful effects of cigarette smoking.)

   Currently, a Google search using   <   “Fred Singer” “organized crime”   >   returns over 1,000 hits. You will find multiple connections to other people in the above list including Patrick Michaels’ links with the Cato Institute (e. g. http://www.cato.org/people/michaels.html ).

In turn, the Cato Institute is part of David Koch’s “alleged” “organized crime” network. (Picture at right is from http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Koctopus_01.html, and it has a great deal more information.)

A couple of good starter links for further research would include:
http://h2-pv.us/adti/AdTI_Contents/AdTI_Contents.html


http://www.ecosyn.us/adti/Singer-Nightline.html

For other links, “Google is your friend”.  For example:  <  “Koch Industries” “global warming” >




The following quotes are from page 2 of a July 17, 2006 IREA newsletter.
Signed by Stanley R. Lewandowski, Jr. (General Manager)
http://www.realclimate.org/irea_letterJul06.pdf


There is no confirmation regarding a connection between the above “financing a film” and Durkin’s TGGWS, but - if you could follow the money…?




   The following quotes were originally in the New York Times on April 26, 1998 and are archived at ( link ) It seems that not only is Fred Singer a member of the “Denial Industry”, he helped to organize it. (Note: The reference to “argue against the Administration” was in Clinton’s administration. The Bush administration has tried to reinforce this anti-climate agenda.)





See: ( link )

   This “Industrial Group” financing campaign to manufacture doubt about Global Warming has been continuing ever since. The front groups that receive the corporate money are presented as “think tanks” and “research organizations”, but what is in back of them is strictly paid propaganda financed by large corporations. Jeff Masters has an in depth analysis that provides additional details. Please see “The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy”





   As to whether “global warming” exists, we only have to look at the earth’s canary birds - the glaciers. For example, see ( link ).



   The (historic) Muir Glacier is an extreme example, but there are many other examples. (If you have Google Earth on your computer, go to 59.012N, 136.163W and look slightly west of due north to generate a view similar to the views above.)

   USGS scientist Bruce Molnia: “more than 99 percent of America’s thousands of large glaciers have long documented records of an overall shrinkage as climate warms”




The above is a Print Screen image from: ( link )

Portage Glacier, Alaska
Portage Glacier is one of the standard tourist stops on Alaskan tours. It’s about 49 miles southeast of Anchorage. You can optionally take a boat trip up to the base of the glacier.





   The twin photos above are from: ( link )

   They show what the Athabasca Glacier looked like back in 1917 vs. what was left of it in 2005. The glacier on the right side of the photos is the Dome Glacier. Both glaciers have shrunk noticeably in the time interval.

   The Athabasca Glacier is the most visited glacier in North America. It is just off the Icefields Parkway in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. (link )

    In the past 125 years, the Athabasca Glacier has lost half of its volume and receded more than 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles). The recession rate has accelerated since 1980.



The picture pairs above and below are courtesy of ( link )

Do you recognize the impressive mountain in the background? Hint: It’s near Zermatt. Switzerland.

   The left picture is a copy of an old post card. The Furgg Glacier can be seen snaking around the front of the tall pyramidal mountain. Also, part of the glacier covers the lower slopes of the tall mountain.

   By 2003 there isn’t much left of the glacier. The very dark area below and slightly to the right of the mountain is the shadow from a 500-foot high cliff below a ridge. One hundred years ago, the glacier was thick enough to completely cover the ridge. If you have Google Earth on your computer, you can see trimlines and moraines that mark the former extent of the glacier. To find the area formerly covered by the Furgg Glacier, just look about 4 miles southwest of Zermatt Switzerland - or alternately, about 2 miles ENE of (and a “tad” down from) the summit of the Matterhorn.




   The twin pictures above show two views of the Great Aletsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps. The Aletsch is the longest glacier in the Alps and may have the dubious distinction of being one of the last to disappear completely. There are multiple other “then and now” pictures of glaciers that can be seen at: ( link )



The above picture is a Print Screen Image from ( link )

   The Pasterze Glacier is the longest glacier in Austria. The two pictures above show what it looked like in 1875 vs. the same view in 2004. In 1875 the glacier was over one-half mile wide and over 500 feet thick. (Measured via Google Earth) Guess what Global Warming/Climate Change has done to this glacier?


Source:
Switzerland’s World Glacier Monitoring Service
https://wgms.ch/global-glacier-state/

   The graph above shows what is happening to the world's glaciers. Not only are glaciers melting world-wide, the melting rate is accelerating.

   Wikipedia has an extensive article documenting glacial retreat around the world including several “then and now” photographs. As documented in the article, glacial retreat has accelerated since 1990.

   A Google image search using << glacier “global warming” >> returns hundreds of thousands of photographs/images showing glacial shrinkage due to Global Warming.




   Let’s do a little simple math. The surface area of the Earth is 197,000,000 square miles. http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-199816

The World’s population is 6,602,224,175 (July 2007 est.) ( link )
This yields 33.51+ people per square mile. (Includes oceans) Our surface area allotment per person is a square a little over 912 feet by 912 feet, and our per capita atmospheric allotment is the air above this square.

   If you left your car running in a 25 ft. x 25 ft. closed garage, it would take only a few minutes to get into trouble. It takes longer if your garage is 912 ft. x 912 ft. x 5 miles high, but again, the results are cumulative. (If you represent the earth’s atmosphere by a column of air with uniform density at standard temperature and pressure, the column would be slightly under 5 miles high. In reality, the atmosphere’s average temperature is slightly less than “standard temperature” which would produce a slight further reduction in this height.)





    There are many people in the world whose attitude is: “Don’t bother me with the facts - I’ve already made up my mind.” Typically, these people hold emotion-based opinions, and don’t want to learn that their opinions are no better than “urban legends”.

   Supermarket tabloids appeal to people that fall into the above category. These same people also blindly believe pseudo-documentaries such as “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. These people who have a “need to believe” aren’t interested in the facts. But they are quite willing to believe a fraudulent pseudo-documentary that supports “Don’t bother me with the facts - I’ve already made up my mind.” The “Martin Durkin”s of the world get paid to generate pseudo-documentaries to service this market.

   The Producer of the Pseudo-Documentary (Martin Durkin) has a past record of turning out other “allegedly” biased pseudo-documentaries that appeal to the “Don’t bother me with the facts - I’ve already made up my mind.” audience. The following is a quote from Wikipedia .






   It appears that this is not the only time that Martin Durkin has used “cut-and-paste”, “out of context” clips from legitimate scientists to misrepresent the original meaning. He has used this same tactic in some of his previous pseudo-documentaries. The following quote is from: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=39 (and there is a lot more at this web page)





   It appears that “Channel 4” is a co-conspirator with Martin Durkin regarding other previous pseudo-documentaries. The following is a quote from: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=39






   The above quote is an excerpt from a long post at ( link ) that in turn quotes from the UK newpaper The Independent. The entire post illustrates the distortions that Mr. Durkin used to try to promote his own agenda. Single indentions sections are quotes from the Reasic article while double indentions are quotes from The Independent. The URL for the original article in The Independent is: (link )

   When Dr Armand Leroi from Imperial College London wrote to Martin Durkin to complain about the distorted science presented in the program, this was Martin Durkin’s “scientific” reply:

Isn’t nice to know that “Channel 4”’s journalism standards include and defend:





( link )







The following organizations provide evidence that:
1) Global Warming / Climate Change is real.
2) Human activities are by far the largest causative agent.
3) Global Warming / Climate Change is a continuing, ongoing phenomenon.

NASA
“Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.”
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus

( link at NASA )  (The graph)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center

World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

American Meteorological Society
“Warming of the climate system now is unequivocal” “The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities.” ( link )

The Weather Channel Position Statement on Global Warming
“These observations, together with computer model simulations and historical climate reconstructions from ice cores, ocean sediments and tree rings all provide strong evidence that the majority of the warming over the past century is a result of human activities.”

National Center for Atmospheric Research
“How do we know Earth is warming now?”

Earth System Research Laboratory - Global Monitoring Division
“Climate Forcing”

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/warming.jsp

Jet Propulsion Laboratory - California Institute of Technology
“Global Climate Change” “How do we know?”
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/evidence/

American Geophysical Union (world's largest scientific society of Earth and space scientists)
“Human Impacts on Climate”

American Association for the Advancement of Science
“The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now”
and
( link )

U. S. National Academy of Sciences
“Climate change is real”

National Science Foundation
“Global Warming Greatest in Past Decade”

U. S. Geological  Survey
“Glacier and Landscape Change in Response to Changing Climate”
also
Time lapse video: “Glacier Erasure: South Cascade Glacier in a Changing Climate”

Geological Society of America
“The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs . . . that global climate has warmed and that human activities (mainly greenhouse gas emissions) account for most of the warming since the middle 1900s.”
http://www.geosociety.org/positions/position10.htm

National Snow and Ice Data Center - Global Glacier Recession
“We live in a time of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations with an attendant warming of the climate.”
http://nsidc.org/glims/glaciermelt/

United Nations Environment Programme/World Glacier Monitoring Service
“Global Glacier Changes: facts and figures”
“There is mounting evidence that climate change is triggering a shrinking and thinning of many glaciers world-wide”
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/  (Introduction and links to a 26 MB WGMS report)

The United States Energy Information Administration
“Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy”

U. S. Department of Defense (  Page 8 )
“As greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels are rising, average global temperatures are increasing, and severe weather patterns are accelerating.” “These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions – conditions that can enable
terrorist activity and other forms of violence.”

Also:
“Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict.” ( link )

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Report: Human activity fuels global warming”
Also: “The new projections are . . . the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.1°C
( link )

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | California Institute of Technology
Climate change: How do we know?
"The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is extremely likely (greater than 95 percent probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia."
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Stanford University
“A large body of scientific information indicates that global climate change is unequivocal, almost certainly is caused mostly by human activities, is already causing significant harm, and as it continues, holds great risks for our future.”

California Institute of Technology
Climate Change Science
“Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.”

Columbia University
“The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming”
“With higher CO2 concentrations come expectations of a stronger greenhouse effect and therefore warmer global temperatures.”

Atmospheric Sciences - University of Illinois - Champaign
“Evidence continues to mount that human activities are altering the Earth’s climate on a global scale.”

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Scripps Institution of Oceanography (University of California - San Diego)

The UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre
“Climate change - the big picture”

and
( link )

The UK’s Royal Society
“Climate change controversies: a simple guide”
http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6229

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Based in Switzerland)
“Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report”

Japan Meteorological Agency
“Global Warming Projection Vol.7”

The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
“Our climate has changed substantially.” “Global climate change and global warming are real and observable.”

Royal Society of New Zealand
“The globe is warming because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.”

National Geographic Magazine

Scientific American Magazine
http://www.sciam.com/topic.cfm?id=global-warming-and-climate-change

Wikipedia
“Scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming and it is more than 90% certain that humans are causing it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere”
(100+ references with links)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas








INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

   The charts to the right show the real forcing effect resulting from Carbon Dioxide and Methane as shown in the above IPCC report. The unit of measure is Watts per Sq. Meter. One watt is about the strength of a small Christmas tree light. It takes decades for ocean water several miles deep to warm up at this rate, but the rate is cumulative, and this same lag means that forcing over the last few decades will be contributing to future warming for decades into the future.





   The chart to the right (from the same report) shows the relative magnitude of the components involved in global warming. Carbon dioxide is of course dominant. Sulfur dioxide and condensation nuclei (haze, smoke, etc.) cause increased cloudiness that partially offsets forcing due to greenhouse gases. There has been a minor contribution from increased solar radiation, but this is less than 10% of the man-made components.






For further research about the real data, please see:

NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory - Global Monitoring Division
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/  (Includes up to date Mauna Loa CO2 readings)

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies - Forcings in GISS Model
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/
Illustrates “Changes in climate "forcings" or factors that have contributed to climate change since 1750.”

National Climate Data Center at NOAA.

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research UCAR/NCAR




And what does Martin Durkin have to say about real scientists?
The following quote is from “Life Style Extra, UK News, 'Global Warming Is Lies' Claims Documentary”


   Is Martin Durkin trying to get us to believe that only movie directors understand science, and legitimate scientists don’t? Is Martin Durkin actually telling us that the real reason he made the movie was to promote his personal war against legitimate scientists? (And collect a few bucks from the “Don’t bother me with the facts - I’ve already made up my mind.” audience.)

Note: Run a Google search using the above phrase for other sources to confirm that this is what Martin Durkin actually said.




1) Go to: http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/CHANNEL4.html
2) Click on: “Discussion of some of the science and other distortion in the "Swindle" (Bill Butler)”




1) Go to: ( link )
2) Click on: “Durango Bill's Debunking the Deniers of Global Warming”
(Listed under “Further Information”)


(Just before the Comments section)









The following is a copy of an online complaint that the author has filed with the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/





   A representative of the ABC contacted me (by E-mail) before their July 12, 2007 scheduled broadcast of “The Swindle”. All information/inquiries from them will remain confidential as per their request, but the following is part of my July 7, 2007 reply.





   In any “Ace” detective story, if you want to find “the culprit”, rule Number One is to either 1) “Follow the money” or 2) “Follow the politics”. In this case rule number 2) seems applicable as it seems the United States is not the only country in the world where “high ranking government officials” declare themselves to be disciples whose mission is to redefine science.

   There have been multiple stories in the Australian press that the ABC’s Board of Directors forced the movie to be shown despite the advice of the ABC’s science expert, Robyn Williams. In turn, the ABC’s Board of Directors is appointed by the Governor-General. The information shown below about four (a majority) of the board’s seven directors can be found at ( link ) (unless otherwise indicated), and provides some insight as to the politics involved in the board’s decision to show the film.

Maurice Newman (ABC chairperson): “Maurice Newman is the current Chairperson of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as chair of the board of the Australian Stock Exchange. He is a close personal friend of Australian Prime Minister John Howard.”

Janet Albrechtsen: “Albrechtsen's political views are strongly conservative, and she has supported the Howard government, the foreign policies of the Bush administration, the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.”

Ron Brunton: “Brunton's appointment to the ABC Board by the Australian Government of John Howard created controversy given his ideological partisanship.[1] However, it continues that government's attempt to move the ABC culture to a political position more amenable to its own.”

Keith Windschuttle: (From “Australian Broadcasting Corporation adopts new “bias” rules”  ) “Prominent in the audience was ABC board member Janet Albrechtsen, a right-wing Murdoch columnist who reportedly initiated the policy shift. “An awful lot of work has gone into drawing up these guidelines,” she proudly told reporters. Another extreme right-wing Howard appointee to the board, Keith Windschuttle, also praised the guidelines.”




   As noted earlier, Martin Durkin keeps changing the content of the movie as one after another of his misrepresentations are revealed. The picture below (from ( link )  shows a new graph that was added to the July 12, 2007 Australian version of Martin Durkin’s pseudo-documentary.

   See if you can find any problems with the “quality” and “reliability” of Martin Durkin’s “research”.

Hint 1) The attack on Pearl Harbor was December 7, 1941. (All dates are local time)

Hint 2) Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945.

Hint 3) Japan formally surrendered on September 2, 1945.

Hint 4) The earliest that the “Post War Economic Boom” could begin would have to be sometime after September 2, 1945.

Hint 5) When did the “Post War Economic Boom” begin according to Martin Durkin’s “Research”?

And this is from someone who claims: “Martin Durkin studied ancient and medieval history at University College London” ( link )
Question: Why is there no reference to a degree?

   As for the “ACIA” source cited in the graph, the real “Arctic Climate Impact Assessment” includes a 140-page report titled Impacts of a Warming Arctic and a much larger 1020-page, “Scientific Report” Arctic Climate Impact Assessment book. Both have conclusions that are radically different than Martin Durkin’s assertions. For example, from page 4 of ACIA’s Policy Document:
“1. The Arctic climate is now warming rapidly and much larger changes are projected.”
http://www.acia.uaf.edu


   The picture to the right is from page 35 in ACIA’s “Arctic Climate: Past and Present” report.
It appears to be the source for Durkin’s graph. Once again take a close look at the right hand portion of the graphs where Durkin has omitted the warmest year on record (original source uses data through 2003) as well as the steep rise in the smoothed curve.

(And a “thank you” goes to Wolfgang Wieser for finding this source.)
 



Stay tuned for future misrepresentations by Martin Durkin. . .





Also please see:




Note: The author (Bill Butler) of this web page is a magna cum laude, Computer Science graduate of Brown University. A brief bio can be found at message # 8 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CSAtrium/
(CSAtrium is a Yahoo group for the “alums of Brown University’s Computer Science Department and Computer Engineering graduates”.)


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