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Comments matching the search The Great Global Warming Swindle:

  • Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

    Nick Palmer at 21:06 PM on 24 March, 2024

    Doug Bostrom's post #3 is very well thought out.


    It's worth remembering that the producer of this Gish Gallop is Martin Durkin, who was also responsible for The Great Global Warming Swindle. Now, denialists will whine that the following is 'ad hominem' but it is highly relevant to assessing the motivation behind, and the (lack of) accuracy and credibility of Durkin's output. At the time he did TGGWS, he was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. It's clear that in that film he was trying to suggest that climate science was more or less invented by Maggie Thatcher to sabotage the mineworkers union, deny the poor people's of the world access to fossil fuel energy and also to encourage the nuclear industry.


    He seems to have changed his politics somewhat nowadays and I believe he is now some form of libertarian but he now seems to be pushing the angle that climate science is an attack on industrial capitalism.


    It's becoming increasingly clear that virtually all of the 'engine' behind 'denialim is the Machiavellian manoeuvring of highly motivated political ideologues who believe their cause is so overwhelmingly important that it justifies the use of mass deception and the naked propaganda that is in this film

  • There is no consensus

    Eclectic at 11:52 AM on 27 May, 2019

    JoeZ @801 ,

    Yes, there are "scientists who aren't part of the consensus" ~ but there are hardly any climate scientists who would fit in that category.   That is why the Consensus is only 99+% , not absolutely 100%  .   Far worse for your unstated position, JoeZ, those very few scientists had all produced hypotheses which have been thoroughly disproven (see Svensmark, Lindzen) . . . and worse again, they contain a high percentage of religious crackpots who are not strictly scientific in their mode of thinking.

    Are they "stupid"?   Well, stupid is a rather elastic term.   I myself know a fellow who has a PhD and spent decades in scientific research [but not in climate-related matters] and yet he is a member of the local Flat Earth Society.  Unsurprisingly, he is also in denial about global warming.

    Is he stupid?  He is pleasant, sociable, and intelligent ~ but that doesn't stop him from being quite wrong about important issues.   Just like Lindzen & his comrades who are over-influenced by irrational religious beliefs or extremist political beliefs.   They put their ego ahead of scientific thinking.

    Also rather like your Mr Alex Epstein (who is an author, not a philosopher) who chooses to write a book, not submitting his ideas to the point-by-point criticism which would occur in the process of peer-review in a scientific paper.   JoeZ, it is easy to write a book and have your unbalanced rhetoric sweep your ill-informed readers into a state of intellectual submission & adulation . . . just as it is easy to make a "documentary" film about a subject [ here, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" comes to mind ] where severely-doctored graphs and fallacious logic are employed.  The general reading/viewing public are not to know how fake it all is, unless they take the trouble to apply critical thinking and to educate themselves on the basics of the issue.

    In the end, JoeZ , it all comes down to evidence.   And evidence is the thing lacking in the positions taken by those "non-consensus" scientists.  The climate consensus exists because of the climate evidence.   

  • CO2 lags temperature

    scaddenp at 10:00 AM on 18 February, 2017

    I find it worrying that you would uncritically accept a comment from a TV documentary and assume that it invalidates the science. Misinformation organisations make documentaries to confuse eg "Great global warming swindle", and "climate hustle" which misrepresent science for the gulliable. As has been shown above by Tom and MA Rogers, the sources you have been trusting are not reliable and in fact are doctoring the truth. And you and many others have fallen for it. It is extremely hard to have a discussion when misinformation is uncritically accepted and hard-core, peer-reviewed, widely accepted science papers are treated as unreliable. As Rob says, it implies a strong bias against science. You must have searched some very dubious sources to find these and yet trust them rather than the IPCC expert review of published science.

    When shown that your evidence is invalid, do you change your mind or go frantically searching for confirmation of your bias from yet more dubious sources?

    Is there actually any point in us discussing data with you? In your own mind, what data would cause you to change your position?

    Also, just make sure that you do understand the extent of agriculture in Greenland.

  • New Series: Science Communicators – Why We Love Communicating Science

    billthefrog at 01:05 AM on 5 March, 2015

    Collin,

    Continuing with your wish list, here are some people (again from the UK) who are better known as science communicators rather than as scientists...

    Simon Singh and John & Mary Gribben (and I suppose David Attenborough would fit more comfortably into this category)

    Had he not shuffled off this mortal coil, I would have added Nigel Calder to the list, as it would have been interesting to find out what drove him over to the dark side. I still have many of his books from around the time of my university days, and, leading up to 2005, he also authored Einstein's Universe as part of the annus mirabilis centennary celebrations.

    However, he somewhat blotted the old copybook by participating in the making of the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, and, along with Henrik Svensmark, co-authoring The Chilling Stars. (The latter being a truly hilarious read!)

    cheers     bill f

  • 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #2B

    Jim Eager at 10:02 AM on 12 January, 2015

    Aldo Rebelo, Brazil's new minister of science, technology and innovation, sounds like he's channeling fellow old-school Marxist Martin Durkin, producer of the infamous The Great Global Warming Swindle. Can't have the glorious worker and peasant proletariat..., I mean humanity blamed for global warming, can we.

  • There is no consensus

    kkennett09 at 01:04 AM on 10 August, 2013

    Jg2013

    I am glad you brought up this point.  As a public school teacher I can attest to the notion that the disinformation swirling around global warming and climate change is happening at my high school in Michigan.  A science teacher at my school shows his students “The Great Global Warming Swindle” and not for the purposes of demonstrating the use of propaganda.  Although I do not teach in the science curriculum, I do teach U.S. Government and Politics and I am privy to the forces unleashed upon teachers regarding these issues.  The “teach the controversy” phenomenon, pushed by the Heartland Institute, et al, is alive and well and is straight out of the tobacco industry playbook to “deny the science” and manufacture doubt”.  I am sure you are aware of the book Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes which does a nice job of explaining the tobacco industry's playbook which is currently in use by the fossil fuel industry.

  • 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1

    shoyemore at 09:18 AM on 6 January, 2013

    The UK's Channel 4 showed a documentary tonight asking the question Is Our Weather Getting Worse?"

    The answer was an uncompromising Yes, with AGW as the culprit, and not a Lord Lawson, Viscount Monckton, or a James Delingpole in sight to argue about it. Since the year 2000, the UK has had the warmest, wettest, coldest and driest periods in its history.

    The documentary emphasised weird weather in previous centuries, like an actual Medieval tornado, but showed that frequencies of extreme weather, even of tornados, were rising. And it pointed out this was true not only in the UK.

    Channel 4 "Is Our Weather Getting Worse"

    What is refreshing is that Channel 4 has taken many fringe positions in the past, like screening the downright dishonest The Great Global Warming Swindle
  • Unpicking a Gish-Gallop: former Greenpeace figure Patrick Moore on climate change

    David Lewis at 15:17 PM on 24 August, 2012

    He doesn't know anything about climate change. [-snip-]

    Eg: When he appeared alongside Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Lindzen, Tim Ball, etc., in the movie The Great Global Warming Swindle, Moore explained to the world why climate change became a major issue:

    "The shift to climate being a major focal point came about for two very distinct reasons. The first reason was because by the mid-'80s the majority of people now agreed with all the reasonable things we in the environmental movement were saying they should do. Now, when a majority of people agree with you, it's pretty hard to remain confrontational with them. And so the only way to remain anti-establishment was to adopt ever more extreme positions. When I left Greenpeace, it was in the midst of them adopting a campaign to ban chlorine worldwide. Like I said, 'You guys, this is one of the elements in the periodic table, you know. I mean, I'm not sure that's within our jurisdiction to be banning a whole element. The other reason that environmental extremism emerged was because Communism fell, the wall came down, and a lot of peaceniks and communists moved into the environmental movement, bringing their neo-Marxism with them, and learned to use green language in a very clever way to cloak agendas that actually have more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than anything with ecology or science"
  • Roy Spencer's Bad Economics

    Phil at 01:44 AM on 15 March, 2012

    Re: Far Left

    Wasn't Martin Durkin, director of Great Global Warming Swindle, (self?) cast as a socialist? On SkS there was a long time poster called "HumanityRules" who proclaimed a socialist viewpoint whilst having denier tendancies.

    Perhaps the hijacking of the AGW denialism by the free marketters was made it less appealing to the far left now ?
  • Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal

    MA Rodger at 20:03 PM on 10 March, 2012

    I would agree with AndyS's poor view of Gore's "Inconvient Truth" which I feel only preaches to the converted & doesn't reach across to the 'disbelievers'.

    Then a film had a similar counter-productive input into my own 'conversion'. In common with those that watched it with me, I found Channel 4's "The Greenhuose Conspiracy," (a 1990 precursor of "The Great Global Warming Swindle") entirely unconvincing. Its message of a mythical AGW that was nothing to worry about was so poor that it converted a roomful of potential skeptics into the exact opposite.
  • 2011 Year in Review (part 1)

    Phila at 07:50 AM on 2 January, 2012

    Pirate:

    The first few paragraphs were plainly written to garner an emotional response.

    So if an article on AGW is disturbing or depressing, it can be discounted. And if it expresses basic human sympathy for victims of tragic events, it can be mocked as "emotional" (subtext: feminine and foolish). A nice way to win every argument before it begins!

    Do you apply the same stringently rational litmus test to articles positing a "Great Global Warming Swindle"? Or the "dangers" of reducing CO2 emissions? Aren't inactivist arguments about some grave existential threat to "liberty" equally emotional? And isn't there an intense emotional gratification in believing oneself to be smarter and better informed than expert climatologists? Or for that matter, in believing on principle that nothing really bad will come of AGW?

    Are you equally wary of these pitfalls? Do you look as consistently and carefully for these appeals to emotion and wishful thinking in your own rhetoric as you do in other peoples'?

    Be honest, now.
  • Peter Sinclair on Climate, Sun, and Cosmic Rays

    Brian Purdue at 09:46 AM on 26 December, 2011

    I remember very well Australian broadcaster Tony Jones’s demolishment of Martin Durkin and his film “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.

    But only last week British denier journalist James Delingpole, who states he is “right about everything”, started one of his tirades with the words:

    “Martin Durkin is a hero of mine, not just for his courage in making the first mainstream British TV programme seriously to challenge the idea of Man Made Global Warming – The Great Global Warming Swindle -----“.

    Not only do you have to be right about everything Mr. Delingpole, but you also require some credibility.

    He typifies the standard of journalism coming from the denier side.
  • Climate Communication: Making Science Heard and Understood

    Clippo UK at 01:53 AM on 17 September, 2011

    As usual, because I read around blogs so much, I tend to come into discussions late. However, the subject of science communication to ‘non-scientists’ has interested me for many years – indeed I was a qualified trainer in industrial science matters for several years.

    I applaud your efforts immensely but I fear they will fail to largely counteract the AGW skeptic spin.

    In my opinion, most ‘ordinary’ people, (now out of Education), learn about diverse subjects from either printed media, (magazines, newspapers etc.) and Television / Film. Of these two main groups I think Television / Film is the more persuasive since the audience is more ‘captive’ than those casually reading – altho’ I accept they can switch the telly off.

    The evidence I claim that supports my view is, for example, Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth on the one hand, and for example, the UK TV program “The Great Global warming Swindle “by (“You’re a big daft c**k”) Martin Durkin which was found by independent enquiry to have been partial.

    Further support comes from Sir Paul Nurse’s expose of AGW denier James Delingpole and the three part UK TV series by the BBC, The Climate Wars by Dr Ian Stewart. In this latter series of 3 programmes, Spencer, particularly, is exposed as the fraudulent scientist he is – and even Patrick Michaels admitted on camera that GW was real! I find it strange that the BBC hasn’t released this series on DVD.

    I’m sure any of you readers will recall similar ‘visual’ presentations affecting public learning.

    So what has this to do with climate change communication and http://climatecommunication.org/. ?

    Well, I simple believe the only way to convince large masses of ‘ordinary’ people of the gravity and causes of Climate Change is by film or television documentary by recognised non-political scientists.

    That is not to say printed media should be ignored but it is generally recognised that in the USA, much of the media is literally in the pockets of fossil fuel interests and they will never admit to any publishing any real facts that will diminish the profits of those interests, or ‘hurt’ the US economy as they define it. Newspapers also deliberately try to generate debate – to improve sales.

    So I urge http://climatecommunication.org/ to really consider a series of scientifically based TV documentaries, by appropriate independent scientists and/or effective questioning media presenters, to be sold around the world.
  • Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2?

    MikeC at 10:45 AM on 27 December, 2010

    As I have only recently discovered this site and not spent much time searching for the answer to my question, perhaps someone can enlighten me.

    It seems to me that there has been no response on this website to the critical argument put forward in "The Great Global Warming Swindle". This was that the build up of CO2 in the atmosphere is a product of global warming and not the cause. The coincidence of the fluctuations in CO2 and GW was the claim made in "An Inconvenient Truth" and was illustrated by the huge stage-encompassing graph showing their correspondence. What the GGWS documentary pointed out the graph didn't take into acount the 800 year lag, which was swallowed by the huge time scale of the graph.

    To state the obvious, if CO2 is the product of GW then the world is embarking on probably the most expensive mistake in history.
  • Do critics of the hockey stick realise what they're arguing for?

    JMurphy at 03:46 AM on 23 October, 2010

    I agree, doug_bostrom.

    There is more about this (and its appearance in Wegman's dodgy report, and The Great Global Warming Swindle(sic) - which is probably where so-called skeptics get it from) at Stoat, where you will also learn that the graph is for Central England only - not global.

    As it says at Stoat :

    So: just in case it isn't clear from the above: fig 7.1.c isn't useful anymore. It was vaguely useful then because there was nothing better available. It was a hurridly drawn sourceless schematic that no-one uses nowadays; and if anyone *did* use it they would be roundly criticised.

    You can also read about it here at Skeptical Science.

    Try again, please, craig.
  • Climate scientists respond to Monckton's misinformation

    Mikko Virtanen at 02:47 AM on 16 October, 2010

    "Why wasn't this done years ago?"

    I'd like to remind you of the existence of Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle” from 2007, which was "organised by three concerned citizens and was co-authored and peer reviewed by a group of 20 people. Some of the world’s most respected and experienced climate scientists, including former IPCC chairs and co-chairs, were involved, as were distinguished experts in epidemiology, entomology, economics, the media and renewable energy."

    As we know, “The Great Global Warming Swindle” was full of denier arguments, and this response goes through the film line by line, graph by graph, lie by lie. I still consider it a very nice resource.

    It's great that there is this new effort, but the old one is still worth remembering too!
  • Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans

    Riccardo at 02:19 AM on 31 May, 2010

    JSFarmer,
    apart of Ian Plimer, (professor of mining geology and director of a few mining companies in Australia) and Mark Durkin (director of the infamous "The Great Global Warming Swindle") I don't think you can find many others disagreeing with your question #1.
    As for question #2, i've never heard criticism on the numbers.
  • It's the sun

    decliner at 16:00 PM on 20 January, 2010

    Wow, thanks for the fast reply. It has been a while since I've seen the propagandistic "great global warming swindle" but it look like you're quite right about them hiding the decline. even tough it seems to me they at least didn't substitute it with instrumental data (i guess the red curve is the one for solar activity?) - but it's bad enough anyway.
    if the factor which is influencing tree ring growth is profoundly understood then it should be possible to correct for that influence, wouldn't it? Will read your page on that subject now.
  • It's the sun

    Steve Wallis at 01:50 AM on 15 August, 2008

    No-one has yet commented on the massive disparity in temperatures between the two graphs shown at the top of this page during the post-war boom (roughly the first three decades after the Second World War).

    In a debate I've been involved in on various newsgroups (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.global-warming/browse_thread/thread/912fb81971711597), a supporter of global warming called Fran mentioned "global dimming" reducing temperatures from 1943-74.

    However, I have discovered that there are two completely different graphs of average northern hemisphere temperatures on the internet! The graph shown in "The Great Global Warming Swindle", displayed at the top of this page, looks to be based on the same data as a March 2003 SPACE.COM article entitled "Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming" (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html). This page came top when I googled "total energy output from the sun TSI" (without quotes). The graph on it uses data from an article by Baliunas and Soon in the Astrophysical Journal. This seems to tally with Fran's dates.

    However, two Wikipedia pages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_temperature_record) look to have similar data to the "Land-Ocean Temperature Anomaly" line in the second graph on this page (except the Wikipedia pages show 5-year rather than 11-year averages). These show falling temperatures in the 1940s but not in the subsequent decades

    It seems utterly ridiculous for predictions to have been made about a new ice age in the 1970s (rather than earlier decades) if temperature had not been falling as the latter graphs suggest. One set of graphs must be based on fake data, and my current opinion that the latter ones are fake appears to be supported by the NASA GISS data from individual measuring statements linked to by Whata Fool on http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.global-warming/browse_thread/thread/912fb81971711597.

    I have heard (I can't remember where) that the southern hemisphere has not been warming in recent decades unlike the north. Does anybody have any data about southern hemisphere temperatures? If not, why not?

    My particular take on the climate/weather, irrespective of whether CO2 is really the main contributor to global warming, is that it is being controlled by conspirators on the side of big business in the big political struggles in the world (to some degree or other, and maybe less so now than in the past). A BBC documentary "The Science of Superstorms" largely about the USSR regime's measures to affect where radioactive rainfall from Chernobyl came down and Chinese measures to stop rainfall at the time of the Olympics opening ceremony indicate that some level of control is possible. As weather forecasting has improved, so has the ability to control it - and having high levels of warming in some parts of the world and low levels in others suits the divide-and-rule agenda of unethical forces in positions of power.
  • It's the sun

    frankbi at 03:24 AM on 19 February, 2008

    Wondering Aloud:

    "With $6 billion/year in the US alone tied to GW orthodoxy, most people who need to keep their jobs are pretty hesitant to be branded a `denier'."

    And somehow Al Gore The Antichrist managed to create a _world-wide_ conspiracy using the US's budget alone? The _entire_ _world's_ climate research -- from China to India, from Hungary to Sweden, from Canada to Brazil -- depend on this $6b/year from the US? Can't you at least cook up a more plausible conspiracy theory?

    Back to the "it's the sun" topic, I find this particularly hilarious... apparently the creators of the film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" decided in their infinite wisdom to fabricate their own data to "prove" that it's the sun's fault:

    http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html

    -- Frank Bi, http://zompower.tk/
  • Human fingerprint on atmospheric CO2

    ScaredAmoeba at 02:32 AM on 11 September, 2007

    The contrarians' dismissal of the tiny percentage of anthropogenic CO2 as therefore automatically insignificant is shown to be completely fallacious by an interesting analogy drawn by Professor Andrew Pitman, Climatologist at UNSW.

    Professor Pitman reminds us that the Ebola virus, whilst undeniably microscopic is hardly insignificant to human health.

    This link is to an interview with Martin Durkin about his mockumentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

    See the upper video at 06.18


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