Why do global warming skeptics keep citing the swindle movie when it's scientifically wrong?

Question

It is a political statement which distorts science. The director has a history of putting out misleading stuff.

"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/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

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

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2032572,00.html

"Pure Propaganda"

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php

Explanations of why the science is wrong.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/

History of the director.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_(television_director)

Even Channel 4 undercuts it. The "Ask the Expert" link on their website goes to a scientist who says man is mostly responsible for global warming.

Answer 1

The best bet is to follow the money - does anyone benefit monitarily if global warming is real?  No, they actually face negative economic actions.  Does anyone benefit if they try to force global warming as junk science?  Yes, big companies do, especially those that are guilty of making global warming happen.

Answer 2

The longer this controversy rages, the more it appears that denial of Global Warming is a red herring. It is fear of change disguised.

The real issue is care of the Earth. Detractors wish to do nothing about it, or to continue harmful practices.

Those who hide behind productions like "Swindle" should ask themselves if energy costs will continue to rise, or begin to fall if we stick with conventional fuels.

My bet is on the future of alternative energy. Whether they cost more now, or not, these new technologies will not only lead to better jobs and a revitalized economy, they will cost less in the long run. That's the bottom line - long-term cost.

I am willing to admit that if coal, oil, and other non-renewable  energy resources were my cash-cow, I would be tempted to preserve the status-quo. In that case, nothing would scare me more than the thought of complete energy independence from me and the carbon-based fuels under my control.

Fortunately, there are more important things than lifestyles of the rich and famous. Not everyone fears change.

Scientists of conscience (there are some without) have spent their entire careers promoting renewable alternatives to "dirty" fossil fuels.

It didn't take the threat of Global Warming to convince them that today's wasteful practices are a dead end. It will take more than cheap documentaries to stop them.

Whether or not coastal cities of today join ancient cities that are now underwater - human activity, until now, has done little to prevent that possibility. De-forestation, and the burning of fossil fuels have been practiced since pre-historic times, and now they've got to go.

No theory, or counter-theory, should be construed as an excuse to stop real progress toward a neutral carbon footprint. Defeatism is not the answer, and should never be an option.

Will Global Warming skeptics join the rest of us in our quest for a better future, or be left behind as fossils themselves? "Swindle" could be their answer.

Answer 3

Ask  how many of the skeptics are religious ???

global warming clashes with their belief and their god is supposed to be in control.

On top of that their focus is not on the Earth it is beyond in the heavens to the paradise awaiting them

to accept that something is wrong here ,means that somebody is to blame ,is their God incompetant  ?? or is he punishing the people

(this is if Global warming is a Natural cycle)

or are the people responsible and must do something about it.

both notions are not atractive,and the latter is expensive

much easier to  ignore,and deny  the truth ,when one  has been weened on lies anyway.

Besides we cannot do much about Climate change ,who or what is to blame is debateble and becoming more and more irrelevant

that we are in trouble does matter

and the least we can do is not make matters worse,and try to behave responsibly  with our Environment

instead of blindly accepting whats coming to us ,because not all of us are going to that beautiful, wonderful heaven in the sky somewhere

At least i wont ,the only Paradise that i will ever know is down here

but i dont have to die first to get there

ha ha ha

Answer 4

Why does the global warming crowd keep citing An Inconvenient Truth when that presents a political statement and distorts science.  Oh wait that would mean the documentary actually contained science, it contained 2 graphs and no data hardly enough to get a good grade on an elementary school science fair project let alone convince everyone in the world to change their lifestyle.  While we're in the business of attacking each others documentaries what business does Al Gore have in this issue anyway?  He is a politician with a bachelors degree in government and a law degree, he probably never even took a college science class.  Most of the people who are pushing global warming as a man-made problem are not scientists.  People like Al Gore, Oprah, Clinton, all liberal politicians; seems to me they all forgot to mention where they got their PhD's in climatology.

I have evidence that your holy book, the IPCC report, is riddled with lies and distortions.  (the hockeystick graph which was a forgery, thats not a conspiracy, the IPCC had to reprint the third report when their dirty little secret was uncovered, they also continued to use the graph afterwards but thats another story)  If you have problems with the documentary fine, but do something for me, take a look at the graph Al Gore shows in his movie, look at it closely, every single time CO2 rises after temperature rises.  That is one of the ideas that the swindle doucumetary proposes, take a look for yourself at the graph from your movie and tell me what you see or don't and stay ignorant to the issue, I know its hard to come to the realization that a commonly held belief is not true.

Here it is:

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precaut...

Take a look if you dare, CO2 rises after temperature each time.

Opposision to global warming is not a conspiracy, if anything global warming itself is closer to a conspiracy.  I can't understand why so many people believe global warming with no evidence.

In regards to the first answer, how can you be so ignorant to say no one benefits if global warming is real.  How much has Al Gore made off his movie (answer millions), how much do carbon offset companies make (answer millions), how much do companies specializing in alternative energy make (answer millions), the list goes on and on.

The theory of man-made global warming is false.  Anyone who believes otherwise has not investigated the evidence or is purposely remaining ignorant to the legitimate opposition to global warming.  I have given up an one and a half hours to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” so I ask you to do the same and watch the movie detailing the opposition.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...  

And another video for those of you short on time: http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.ph...

Some more general resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warm...

http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.ph...

http://www.john-daly.com/

CO2 is not causing the globe to warm the opposite is true, the warming is increasing the atmospheric CO2.  When the world heats it gradually increases the temperature of the oceans which serve as the largest CO2 sink.  As the oceans heat up they release CO2 which is stored in them.  The information comes from the same data Al Gore uses, the temperature always goes up before the concentration of CO2 goes up.

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/artic...

CO2 makes up only .03% of our atmosphere.  Water vapor, another greenhouse gas, makes up 1-4% of our atmosphere, this gas is acknowledged to be the main greenhouse gas.  All human activities combined contribute only 6 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year.  Animals, through respiration, decomposition, etc contribute 150 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere.  So humans contribute only a small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere which is already in very small concentrations in the atmosphere.

http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/science.html This is where my data came from, it is an interesting site, it displays the same graphics as Al Gore in his movie but it tells how low the human contribution is.  So Al Gore is using the same data but coming to a different conclusion, who do you want to believe a politician with no scientific training or the NASA CO2 laboratory, a group of scientists who spend their entire careers studying CO2.

We know the greenhouse effect is real it is a necessary effect to keep our planet at a habitable temperature.  However if our current warming is due to greenhouse gasses it would cause warming in the troposphere , but the troposphere is actually getting cooler.

http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature... That points to other explanations to our current warming.

So what is causing our current warming, it is the sun.

http://web.dmi.dk/solar-terrestrial/spac...

http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2003/s...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/06...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/...

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php...

The fact that only the earth’s surface is warming points to direct heating from the sun rather than heating due to greenhouse gasses.  Also other planets in our solar system are warming pointing to a common cause of warming, that common cause being the sun.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/0...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/sola...

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/sola...

The global warming crowd says our glaciers are melting and animals will suffer this is another false claim.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2Sci...

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA235.htm...

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/

The global warming crowd also insists our seas are rising due to global warming, however this is not entirely correct.  Seas in certain areas are rising, there is no global sea rise.  The seas have been rising ever since the last ice age: http://globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:H...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Post-...

These two sources show that sea level increase now has actually leveled off from a very steep rise for the past 20 thousand years.  For proof of this look here:

http://www.climateark.org/articles/1999/...

A mark left by Sir James Clark Ross, an Antarctic explorer, in 1841 is still visible.  Not only that but the mark was placed in 1841 to show how high the sea was, not only is the mark visible it is 30cm above current sea levels.  Now it is possible that the mark was placed at high tide and the picture taken at low, but even then the mark would still be above current sea levels.  The seas have risen dramatically over the past thousand years not due in any part to us.  If you want proof of that take a look at one of the dozens of ancient underwater cities that spot the globe.  When these cities were built they were on land now they are deep underwater: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/20...

This shows a dramatic increase in sea level during human time but long before the world became industrialized.

The global warming crowd also claims a scientific consensus on the issue, this is wrong in two ways.  One, there is no consensus, this is a false claim to make you believe in global warming by suppressing the opposition.  http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

Second, even if there was a consensus it would mean nothing, science is not politics, you don’t vote on theories to determine their legitimacy.

Here’s 21 pages of websites that disagree with global warming.

http://www.climatechangedebate.org/docum...

The thought that the only scientists who disagree with global warming are paid by oil companies is simply a stupid statement with no reality.  This is the most illogical argument by people in support of global warming.  Aside from being completely false it begs another question: Who pays global warming supporters?  The answer is big environmental agencies that make millions off of global warming each year by teaching, publishing books, and selling environmentally clean products.  

The IPCC is the main supporter of global warming, their statements are defended blindly by people who don’t want to admit that global warming is not real.  People will claim that they took into account natural sources of CO2, they didn’t.  Take a look for yourself:

http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/srccs/index....  That is the latest IPCC report, read the entire report, do a search of the documents, there is absolutely no mention of natural sources of CO2.  The natural sources have been completely ignored.  Also people will claim that the IPCC took the sun into account in their report, this is not entirely correct, while the sun is mentioned the report it’s effects have not been accurately represented.

http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/moderr....  The IPCC did not take into account the Svensmark factor.  This would greatly reduce the effect of solar radiation on the earth.  Look back up to the solar resources to see the effect of the sun correctly represented.

Also allegations have been by IPCC scientists who disagreed with the IPCC statements.  They say that their research was censored or taken out of the IPCC report.  This is not the first time the IPCC has lied, they forged the famous “hockey stick” graph, which later resulted in a reissuing of the IPCC report.

Here’s another source that disagrees with the IPCC: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/Sept1004Glo...

And another: http://www.sepp.org/Archive/NewSEPP/ipcc...

And another: http://www.john-daly.com/guests/un_ipcc....

Quotes form politicians, CEO’s, and others are not proof of global warming, they issue these statements to get votes and customers.  Scientists are able to get published and get time on the media by supporting global warming.  The IPCC continually lies and misrepresents data so they keep their jobs.  

In regards to the precautionary principle that says we can only help if we switch over to alternative energy, this idea is not correct.  While this may seem legitimate it only helps the first world, third world countries can not afford to switch to the more expensive energy options.  Also the US currently spends 4 billion dollars a year on global warming research which could be better spent on research for disease or to fight poverty.  For an excellent example of how the precautionary principle is harmful you do not need to look further than DDT.  This pesticide was cheap and incredibly effective but it was banned because of it harmful effects on egg shells.  Now thousands of people die every year in third world countries because of malaria, a disease that could be easily controlled with DDT.

I hope anyone who believes in global warming they will take a look at the resources I provided.  These resources should convince you that global warming is not man-made, it is caused by cycles in the earths climate.  If you are not convinced I hope you at least take a new look at global warming as an unproven idea.  Remember that global warming is big business for anyone who aligns themselves with it.

I could not go this entire post without mentioning global cooling.  

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

http://www.michaelkubacki.com/cooling.ht...

In the 1970’s it was claimed that there was a consensus on the fact that the world was headed into an ice age.  We have seen once before how damaging a false claim about our climate change can be to our world.  Most of the global warming crowd does not want you to know about this scare because it is so similar to the scare today.  Government panels were formed and claimed the world was headed to an ice age, evidence poured in supporting the claim, a consensus was claimed, then the whole issue just faded away.  That is what will happen with the false scare of global warming.