The Great Global Warming Swindle

 

Channel 4 Thursday 8 March at 9pm in UK         

The film argues that the earth's climate is always changing, and that rapid warmings and coolings took place long before the burning of fossil fuels. It argues that the present single-minded focus on reducing carbon emissions not only may have little impact on climate change, it may also have the unintended consequence of stifling development in the third world, prolonging endemic poverty and disease.

The film features an impressive roll-call of experts, including nine professors – experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, environmental science, biogeography and paleoclimatology – from such reputable institutions as MIT, NASA, the International Arctic Research Centre, the Institut Pasteur, the Danish National Space Center and the Universities of London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Winnipeg, Alabama and Virginia.

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html


At last we have a mainstream debate:

http://community.channel4.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/503603557/m/7640097947


'Global Warming Is Lies' Claims Documentary

Sunday, 4th March 2007, 11:04


http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=CZ434669U&news_headline=global_warming_is_lies_claims_documentary



All you Niners in the UK tells us what you think of the documentary.

I heard an opinion on NPR that the last 100 years of progress are worth the price of human-caused global warming and that another 100 years of it are warranted to increase our technological advances.

Global Warming is not a simple issue with a simple solution.

Jury is out, in my mind, but I shall be proactively reducing my own emissions consciously, driving a hybrid, etc...

Poverty, disease, and hunger are much more important than climate change, as the opinion stated, and that makes sense to me.

Too often we are reactionary and emotional without thoughtful study; I certainly was 20+ years ago.

Those who "pooh-bah" global warming are even worse, imho, in that their knee-jerk reaction is selfishly motivated and absolutely no less thoughtless.

[A][A][A][A]

Here's how it works boys and girls: people with a certain take on political/social philosophy will never be convinced by the evidence for human-induced global warming because any attempt at a solution demands things that are unacceptable to them: government regulation, controls on the right of corporations to do whatever they like (especially if it saves them money), and an emphasis on sensible restraint rather than mindless consumption.

Or to quote (in the Guardian, March 4, 2007) Robin McKie quoting John Gray:

'It is widely assumed that to control climate change, we will need a raft of government measures and increased bureaucracy - anathema to these people,' says political philosopher John Gray. 'So they deal with the issue by denying the problem in the first place. They say there is no such thing as global warming and therefore no need for more controls. They have closed their minds.'

It's not a coincidence that when the members of this merry band are forced to concede that warming is occurring and is serious, they then insist that there's nothing that can be done: that's their excuse for doing nothing.

But for all that, the Earth is round.

JohnAskew wrote:

I heard an opinion on NPR that the last 100 years of progress are worth the price of human-caused global warming and that another 100 years of it are warranted to increase our technological advances.


Poverty, disease, and hunger are much more important than climate change, as the opinion stated, and that makes sense to me.

And I do agree with you, Kevin, that there is nothing we can do about it. It's one of those "real world" things like crime, poverty, and disease that just won't go away by wishing.

Give me the magic wand and I will use it. I conserve energy in every way I can today short of living in the streets with my family and eating out of dumpsters or just offing myself (the %100 path).

Think about it. Isn't it a matter of priorities? Should we give up on technology preemptively or have faith that we will find a way to adapt to living in our fishbowl filled with our own doo and no sucker fishes to clean it... Perhaps we can genetically engineer some sky CO2 sucker-creatures -- like the flying pizzas that Spock and Jim had to deal with on Star Trek . heh

??

Kevin Daly wrote:



Here's how it works boys and girls: people with a certain take on political/social philosophy will never be convinced by the evidence for human-induced global warming because any attempt at a solution demands things that are unacceptable to them: government regulation, controls on the right of corporations to do whatever they like (especially if it saves them money), and an emphasis on sensible restraint rather than mindless consumption.

Or to quote (in the Guardian, March 4, 2007) Robin McKie quoting John Gray:

'It is widely assumed that to control climate change, we will need a raft of government measures and increased bureaucracy - anathema to these people,' says political philosopher John Gray. 'So they deal with the issue by denying the problem in the first place. They say there is no such thing as global warming and therefore no need for more controls. They have closed their minds.'

It's not a coincidence that when the members of this merry band are forced to concede that warming is occurring and is serious, they then insist that there's nothing that can be done: that's their excuse for doing nothing.

But for all that, the Earth is round.

I disagree with your borrowed assesment.
If global warming is in fact an effect of humanity, then please do provide some solid evidence.

To arbitrarily state that the science is known, without any hard facts/understanding/debate is counter-inductive to the entire scientific process; regardless of how passionate you 'feel' or who's funding your research.

I don't really believe that any logical person would be against relenquishing a few modern amenities in order to safe-guard the world for the future; but really, give us something more than conjecture and politics.

There is already enough pro-human warming links, so here is some recent counter arguments:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=440049&in_page_id=1965

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388

Basically, what I am saying is that it is premature IMHO to formulate an opiio either way.

JohnAskew wrote:



JohnAskew wrote: I heard an opinion on NPR that the last 100 years of progress are worth the price of human-caused global warming and that another 100 years of it are warranted to increase our technological advances. Poverty, disease, and hunger are much more important than climate change, as the opinion stated, and that makes sense to me.

And I do agree with you, Kevin, that there is nothing we can do about it. It's one of those "real world" things like crime, poverty, and disease that just won't go away by wishing.

Give me the magic wand and I will use it. I conserve energy in every way I can today short of living in the streets with my family and eating out of dumpsters or just offing myself (the %100 path).

Think about it. Isn't it a matter of priorities? Should we give up on technology preemptively or have faith that we will find a way to adapt to living in our fishbowl filled with our own doo and no sucker fishes to clean it... Perhaps we can genetically engineer some sky CO2 sucker-creatures -- like the flying pizzas that Spock and Jim had to deal with on Star Trek . heh

??

CO² levels and global warming are 2 seperate issues in my mind at this juncture.

Not to disuade ppl from conserving energy and resources, those are always good practices; but there is too much FUD, politics and emotion in the global warming debate to formulate any kind of intelligent hypothesis on the issue for the laymen in my rationale.

Raymond, before you get too excited - other C4 programs this week included Dispatches: Greenwash. Dispatches has also had a good run on the war on terror. All that demonstrates is that C4 tries to fulfill its PBS remit by pushing contreversial views and opinions to stimulate debate - which is a good thing.

PS why do you find the need to use C9 as your political soap box? 3 threads this morning - all politics. What do you think this is achieving?

Tensor wrote:


PS why do you find the need to use C9 as your political soap box? 3 threads this morning - all politics. What do you think this is achieving?

And do we really need another global warming thread?  How many does that make now?


Herbie

phreaks wrote:



Kevin Daly wrote:  Here's how it works boys and girls: people with a certain take on political/social philosophy will never be convinced by the evidence for human-induced global warming because any attempt at a solution demands things that are unacceptable to them: government regulation, controls on the right of corporations to do whatever they like (especially if it saves them money), and an emphasis on sensible restraint rather than mindless consumption. Or to quote (in the Guardian, March 4, 2007) Robin McKie quoting John Gray: 'It is widely assumed that to control climate change, we will need a raft of government measures and increased bureaucracy - anathema to these people,' says political philosopher John Gray. 'So they deal with the issue by denying the problem in the first place. They say there is no such thing as global warming and therefore no need for more controls. They have closed their minds.' It's not a coincidence that when the members of this merry band are forced to concede that warming is occurring and is serious, they then insist that there's nothing that can be done: that's their excuse for doing nothing. But for all that, the Earth is round.

I disagree with your borrowed assesment.
If global warming is in fact an effect of humanity, then please do provide some solid evidence.

Global warming is a fact.  The cause may be up for debate, but the rising temperature average has been factually documented.

phreaks wrote:

To arbitrarily state that the science is known, without any hard facts/understanding/debate is counter-inductive to the entire scientific process; regardless of how passionate you 'feel' or who's funding your research.

The science isn't known, because most science isn't about 'knowing', it's about observation and adjustment of theories.  It has been observed that the average temperature of the planet has risen over the last 100+ years. 

phreaks wrote:

I don't really believe that any logical person would be against relenquishing a few modern amenities in order to safe-guard the world for the future; but really, give us something more than conjecture and politics.

I would like to believe that, but how often have we had to take corporations to court to get them to stop doing things that were detrimental to some part of the public.

For example would you eat fish caught in the York river in Virginia?  Or, would you prefer to have less mercury in your diet?

phreaks wrote:

There is already enough pro-human warming links, so here is some recent counter arguments:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=440049&in_page_id=1965

The daily mail is the british equivalent of the national enquirer.  And the article simply references the movie that Raymond started out with.

phreaks wrote:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388

Good catch.  It appears that someone is actually discussing the issue, but if this woman was canada's premier climate scientist, then I'm pretty sure she was around for that big egghead meeting a few months ago where this was discussed.

phreaks wrote:

Basically, what I am saying is that it is premature IMHO to formulate an opiio either way.

It may be, but people who actually get paid to study and think about this stuff have already addressed all of these sceptics.  

Ultimately, though, why would anyone even want to avoid the issue.  Solving the problem would create enough industry that it would be an huge boost to the economies of anyone who tries.  Controlling our climate would be a wonderful achievement and another step towards terraforming other worlds. 

Or, we could just keep listening to Raymond's nonsense...

Dr Herbie wrote:



Tensor wrote: PS why do you find the need to use C9 as your political soap box? 3 threads this morning - all politics. What do you think this is achieving?

And do we really need another global warming thread?  How many does that make now?


Herbie

Threads about global-warming cause global-warming!

No one posting here can claim they care about energy conversation or global warming for that matter when you are using precious electricity to argue on a developer oriented forum about global warming!

Bah im j/k

nightski wrote:

No one posting here can claim they care about energy conversation or global warming for that matter when you are using precious electricity to argue on a developer oriented forum about global warming!

Bah im j/k

Alas, I confess.... I'm a bit of a hypocrite here.

    * I leave my Domain Controller on 24/7, once I had an uptime of 114 days straight, along with the router and switch
    * I sometimes leave my laptop's docking station power on
    * I sometimes leave the printer on
    * When recording programmes on TV I leave the MCE box on (not even in standby mode, I admit)
    * I download torrents overnight on my main 500W box and not on the DC
    * I use dual-CRT monitors

Yeah, there's lots of room for improvement.

nightski wrote:

No one posting here can claim they care about energy conversation or global warming for that matter when you are using precious electricity to argue on a developer oriented forum about global warming!

Bah im j/k

You are right, we could all jump on planes, fly to Vegas, rent cars, drive to a meeting hall and discuss it in person...

JohnAskew wrote:



nightski wrote:No one posting here can claim they care about energy conversation or global warming for that matter when you are using precious electricity to argue on a developer oriented forum about global warming! Bah im j/k

You are right, we could all jump on planes, fly to Vegas, rent cars, drive to a meeting hall and discuss it in person...

lol

Actually even if it's not directly related to global warming, we should still burn less fossil fuel and reduce air pollution.

I've heard about a study regarding air pollution and Pacific storm track conducted by Texas A&M University this morning.  It states that particles in the air increased the amount of "deep convective clouds"  by 2% to 5% within the past 20 years, the makes more and stronger storm formed in the Pacific storm track.

I think it's reasonable that air pollution have similar effect to other regions as well.

foxbar wrote:

We have to leave the planet some day, whether global warming happens or not. It will happen anyway. So what.

Leaving the planet not an option in foreseeable future (seem no space-colony sized construction is planning).

And unless you're going to be that rich (living in artifical environment requires a lot of money), you'd better concern more about our lovely planet.

ScanIAm wrote:



phreaks wrote: There is already enough pro-human warming links, so here is some recent counter arguments: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=440049&in_page_id=1965

The daily mail is the british equivalent of the national enquirer.  And the article simply references the movie that Raymond started out with.

To be fair the Daily Mail is more like the British equivalent of Fox News. Right wing and allways angry at something for reasons no-one can quite work out.  

Sigh...

It doesn't really matter if you believe it is caused by humans or not - the weather is changing .

If you do nothing and it was caused by human energy consumption then it is too late.

If you do something and it wasn't caused by human energy consumption then what have you lost?