Have you seen "The Great Global Warming Swindle"?

Question

I'm doing a project on The Great Global Warming Swindle vs. An Inconvient Truth.

I own An Inconvient Truth. And i'll be wactchin the Swindle tomorrow. As fourth year university student, I recognize that neither of these movies are going to be compleatly perfect.

Without praising one or the other as The Holy Grail, and without compleatly discrediting the other, i'd like to hear everyones insights into these movies.

Thanks!

Answer 1

After seeing both, heres my take on it.. I think The Great Global Warming Swindle had the most truth to it, but I think they seemed to support the pollution generated by the factories, sure the gases aren't heating the Earth, I buy that, but I'd still like to be able to breath, and I'm sure the fish would like to have clean water.

Answer 2

well i dont think either one is completely correct, yes the world is heating up BUT so is the whole universe. scientists just figured that out a few days ago actually, all of the planets in our solar systtem are heating up! go check it out.

so yeah, that means were prolly arent doing much to heat us up.

Answer 3

the inconvenient truth is about 90% accurate but it makes a few errors. the Global Warming Swindle on the other hand is nothing more then propaganda of the worst kind. a few of the scientists actually sued to get there interviews removed from it because there views were misrepresented. [123]

BTW you probably already know this but just for the record the judge actuly stated that "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate" but there were 9 statements that were "alarmist". [4]

edit sloegin fizz. its UV light not lightning and it dose not combine the chlorine is released and this causes most of the damage.

Answer 4

You all better pay attention to what Dana master of science is saying.  The stuff being thrown around here by doubters is like National Enquirer version of global warming.  It's all the same nonsense being repeated over and over again.

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

They are the myths and they've been proven wrong.

Answer 5

Inconvenient Truth was a decent film.  It had a few minor errors, but the basic science was correct.

"The nation's top climate scientists are giving An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/200...

The Swindle was, to be blunt, little better than a propaganda piece.  It made virtually every mistake possible.

In the first 30 seconds of the film, it tried to make the argument that CO2 can't cause global warming because it hasn't in the past.  This is a completely ridiculous argument, because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so we know it can cause global warming.  If it couldn't, the planet would be completely frozen.

The film doesn't get any better after that.  The scientist making this argument is Tim Ball, who claims to be a climatologist but in reality is a geographer.  A geographer!  No wonder he doesn't understand the basic physics of the greenhouse effect.  Nice letter here about Tim Ball lying about his credentials.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/06/...

The film also used a solar output graph which ended in 1980, and claimed that 1980 is "present" or "now" (I forget which).  The reason is stopped in 1980 is that over the past 30 years solar output has decreased slightly as global warming has accelerated rapidly.  So if they showed the entire graph (linked below), it would disprove their argument that the Sun is responsible for the current warming.  But by using out-of-date data, the argument almost seems convincing.

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-...

The film also interviews Dr. Christy, who claims that the troposphere is cooling, which disproves the man-made global warming theory.  It turns out Christy  had made an error, and has since corrected this statement.

"The climate trend shown by the UAH satellite data has changed through time, due to corrections in the processing and as the climate has varied. During the first several years of data collection the global trend was downward. That has since changed and the most recent long-term average global climate trend seen in the satellite data is +0.14 C (about 0.25° Fahrenheit) per decade."

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

But the Swindle still contains this error.

One of the worst deceptions in the film was to take the interview of Dr. Carl Wunsch out of context to make it seem as though he was making the exact opposite point.

"Carl Wunsch, professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT, was originally featured in the programme. Afterwards he said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed.[26][3] He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two."

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

Wunsch threatened legal action, and they eventually took his interview out of the film.  One of many corrections which have been made since it was first released.

Basically there wasn't a single honest and scientifically valid point made in the entire film.  If you have to watch it, take it with a grain of salt.  Sorry, I know you asked for people not to entirely discredit one film or the other, but in all honesty the Swindle isn't even worth watching.

Answer 6

I think it was Thomas Edison who said, "five percent of people think, 10 percent of people think they think, the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."

It's that ignorant eighty-five percent who are in a state of denial about this planet. "If it ain't chokin' me, drownin' me, or killin' me - as I speak, right now - it ain't happenin,' so I don't have to be responsible!  If I'm not responsible I can just go on doin' what I'm doin." If I don't think about it, if I do nothin' about it, if I shout it down, It'll go away. If I can belittle or humiliate someone and call them names, I must be right and I feel better.

Albert Einstein said, "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

This earth is inhabited by approximately seven billion people - six and a half billion of them are as freaking stupid and clueless as a bucket of bottle caps. It's also those six and a half billion people who mindlessly foul this planet day in and day out, and who take no responsibility for doing so.

So who's right? If you have a brain - go figure.

Answer 7

As far as I am concerned it is a myth. In 1974 I worked as a lab assistant for a Chemistry Professor who helped start all this stuff. Three universities MIT, NMSU, and Cal Poly Pomona were involved. They applied for a Grant to study the Ozone layer. The grant was not enough to do more than build the Instrument package but not fly it. So they did environmental chamber simulation experiments, and the results were if you have the exact combination of ozone, Freon(from hair spray and spray underarm deodorant), and lighting causes the Ozone and Freon to chemically combine. They publicized this widely to get a lot more money and started the environmental movement. They lied bald faced because they said this was what happening to the ozone layer. They did nothing with the first grant that was real with ozone. Environmentalist was all a freaking lie. Now it is the second biggest religion in the USA. You can believe what you will but I saw it all start.

  from a previous post

Answer 8

Chompy: the Inconvenient truth did have ice core records as one of it's points this record goes back 640,000 years and if Antarctic scientists are successful may soon go back 1 million years. Given the question above it is a little strange to be commenting if you have seen neither documentary.

My view of them would be Gore's documentary was o.k. some errors but not in the basic premise and could have done without the personal history bit. The Swindle on the other hand just didn't hold water and has been shown to be inaccurate on many levels even criticized by some who were in it, over miss-quotes and a temperature graph that simple had data after 1988 left out, because the obvious temp rise would be seen.

edit: sloegin fizz is this how you got your top contributor rank, by just cut & pasting the same answer over and over

Answer 9

I saw The Great Global Warming Swindle a couple of years ago, it was alright, alot more trustable then gore's piece of propaganda c**p.

Zeitgeist is the one to watch obviousley.

Answer 10

Well, Al Gore's hatchet job has been discredited. There are at least 9 major errors in his science fiction piece. Probably the biggest is his large graph plotting CO2 vs Temp. He should have know, or did know that CO2 lagged temp, but he sure did not let people know that.

The movie was subject to a lawsuit in UK and the courts specifically noted 11 innaccuracies.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sh...

Answer 11

Personally I'm not a big fan of Al's but I found the documentary O.K. The anti GW movement have made much of the errors and that an english judge said there were errors. While there are certainly mistake the judge also made errors. He stated coral bleaching wasn't linked to GW, several research groups have since made this link.

On the other hand GWswindle when it played here (Australia) on the ABC (sort of like the BBC) was torn to pieces.

A lot of noise is made about the hockey stick diagram (from Al film) but the fact is it is correct and has been reevaluated by other scientific groups as correct.

Two scientists have disowned the swindle film Carl Wunsch and Eigil Friis-Christensen, the later, claims some data had been fabricated

The second link below pretty much sums up what the ABC who aired the documentary in Australia thought of it.

Answer 12

The problem, and it's a huge one, with the "Movie" An Inconvenient Truth. Is that is only takes into account the time period that records have been kept. The REAL truth is that we need to look at the data as far back as we can see (Antarctic Ice, Ocean Mud and other data like fossil remains). They show that Alaska was a "Rain Forest" up until the last Ice Age. The Earth has been slowly warming since the last Ice Age and still has not reached the temperatures of pre Ice Age.

The other thing to consider is "life thrives in a green house type environment". Very few animals live in the cold climates.

I have not seen either one. I believe neither is telling the WHOLE truth.

Answer 13

you mean the swindle that is being promoted by the oil industry, and the Saudi royals, claiming global warming is beneficial, and we will all live in the land of plenty, as long as we go on buying their commodities?

Yes, I've seen it,  it's all over the place, must cost them billions, but I'm sure they have many billions remaining in their coffers.

Answer 14

No...but I feel like I'm living it.

Answer 15

I saw it.  I thought it was good.  I do not know if it helps but here is the web site from the shows producer Martin Durkin.  Contrary to what others say, most of his key points are based on scientific literature.

http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com...

Answer 16

An answer above cites a British law case about An Inconvenient Truth.  What is being omitted is that the movie WON the lawsuit.  The right wing "spin" on this has been incredible.  Read the full decision:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admi...

"It is clear that the Defendant understandably formed the view that AIT was an outstanding film, and that schools should be enabled to show it to pupils. "

Here's a bunch of stuff about "Swindle".  You'll need to look at the links.

It is simply a political statement which distorts science.  The director has a history of putting out misleading stuff.  In 1997 he made a series for Channel 4 called “Against Nature”, which compared environmentalists with n***s. Channel 4 had to apologise for the misleading stuff in that one.  The present movie is also a distortion of the science. More here:

"A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environmen...

"Pure Propaganda"

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313p...

Explanations of why the science is wrong.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

History of the director.

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

Gore's movie may be a little over dramatic, but it has the basic science right.  This movie does not.

Channel 4 itself undercuts the movie in a funny way.  If you go to their website on the movie you find links to real global warming information.  They also have a way to "Ask the Expert" about global warming.  The questions go to a respected mainstream scientist who supports (mostly) human responsibility for global warming.

So, why did Channel 4 broadcast it?

"The science might be bunkum, the research discredited. But all that counts for Channel 4 is generating controversy."  

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climat...