It is too easy to pick on the global warming skeptics that have used crazy arguments such as
the possible detonation, on uninhabited land north of 70° latitude, say, of a limited number of hydrogen bombs. [...] The presence of those particles would serve to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching most of the Arctic’s surface. The effect would be to maintain the frigid climate of the region and to prevent the further melting of its ice or, if necessary, to increase the amount of its ice.
So, for once, I’ll admit it was very educative to devote some time to the The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary, now available in YouTube (75min), written and directed by Martin Durkin and produced by Channel 4 (United Kingdom), which presents a very solid set of arguments to counteract the now mainstream believe that global warming is caused by man, preached by Al Gore with his now famous Oscar-winning documentary and supported by the IPCC. The “swindle” documentary presents what seem to be irrefutable facts by some experts in the field:
- Prof Tim Ball: “I don’t believe human CO2 is causing that warming”
- Prof Nir J. Shaviv: “Natural or Anthropogenic?”
- Prof Ian Clark: “if we look at the climate for geological timeframe we would never suspect CO2 as a major climate driver”, “CO2 follows temperature changes”
- Dr Piers Corbyn: “none of the major climate changes in the last 1000 years can be explained by CO2″
- Prof Philip Stott
- Prof Richard Lindzen of Meteorology at MIT
- Prof Syun-Ichi Akasofu from the International Arctic Research Centre
- Patrick Moore Co-founder of Greenpeace
- and many others
While it is not my intent to refute the skeptics and support blindly any cause, you should know there is a lot of controversy around the validity of some of the arguments. In general, I think the documentary provides a good alternate explanation to global warming: solar activity has a direct impact on atmospheric conditions which over time cause fluctuations in CO2. Unfortunately, it was written as a direct attack on the recent IPCC report and will be used as a tool to discredit it.
I don’t expect the debate over the true causes of global warming will be settled any time soon. There are scientists and politicians at both ends and they both have important arguments. However, I do hope the immediate impact of the current global warming alarm is that of creating a global culture of environmental sustainability. We can’t accept the simple excuse that our evolution as a society needs to destroy the very same resources on which we depend without looking at the long-term picture. We should not need to get to the point of detonating hydrogen bombs in order to rectify mistakes made by previous generations. We should use our scientific knowledge to craft technologies that allow progress across the globe, not just the most powerful nations.
Its a major problem, every country should work on ways to eliminate future damage to the ozone layer in finding more natural ways of living, natural products, etc.
Sir Nicholas Stern calculated the economic loss of Global Warming between 5% and 25% of the global GNP, that is in the order of the trillions (10 factor 12) of dollars. Its report was released on Davos. I cannot see how we could recover from such havoc even in the optimistic scenario. Any short term gain will be quickly offset by the medium-term consequenses.
The issue we need to address is whether or not we should even address global warming.
If doing so would cause noticeable economic setbacks, then the best way to save human lives might be to allow global warming and use the moneys derived from CO2-producing technologies to, for instance, fight AIDS in Africa, or even common malaria and sleeping sickness.
Yes Manuel, but what I meant is that the social debate need not discuss *whether* there is warming and *whether* we are causing it –these are scientific matters and there is near consensus on them. A social debate on how to address this problem is, of course, warranted.
The social debate is caused because the implications that the matter have got for all us. While inconsistencies in gravity law are fascinating, they have no immediate repercussions on our daily life (you will still falling after slipping on a banana skin). Furthermore, there is nothing we can do to stop the Earth of going around the sun every year. Global warming has got very close consequences for us in the immediate future, and there are some actions that we can do, hence the social debate. By the way, I was wrong about Dr. Molina, he had got the Nobel prize not for his studies in global warming but for his work on the reduction of the Ozone Layer (Does anybody remember that?, I wonder which will be the next media sensation while our ice caps are melting…)
And, finally, the documentary even falsified temperature charts to make its argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GISS-TGGWS-temp-data-comparison.svg
…which will give you an idea of the amount of distortion going on in the film.
(Sorry to keep coming back to it, but this topic is vital for us all)
As an additional note, you can check out this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Reception_and_criticism
From the link:
“Carl Wunsch, one of the scientists featured in the programme, has said that he was “completely misrepresented” in the film and had been “totally misled” when he agreed to be interviewed. He called the film “grossly distorted” and “as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two.”
As the scientific community explores a domain, any domain, there’s bound to be an academic debate. Even in seemingly stable fields (for example, the study of gravity) there are inconsistencies, unanswered questions, and once in a while, considerable paradigm shifts.
But the debate inside most of these fields does not extend to the rest of the community. We (those of us who do not, for instance, study gravity) only take those scientific elements for which there is near consensus, and we use them in our daily lives. Though there might be an academic debate beneath, there is no social debate in these topics. There is no point in having a social debate: we do not have the knowledge nor the resources that the experts have.
It should be like that with global warming. The overwhelming majority of people that dedicate their full lives to understand our planet’s weather have concluded that it is extremely likely to be caused by our own actions. I really mean *the overwhelming majority* –there are some skeptics, for sure, though less of them every day. Most undecided scientists a few years ago have shifted their stance and now back up the majority’s conclusion. For the larger part, the academic debate is not on whether CO2 influences the weather, but on how large will the damage to the planet and to our societies be.
There is still an academic debate, and there will always be one. But there should not be a social debate: we shouldn’t second guess the experts, and their instructions are clear. It even makes pragmatic sense: if we listen to the majority of experts and they are wrong, we will suffer a minor economic setback; but if we do not listen to them and they are right, we’re in for one awful ride.
A 75 minutes documentary might convince some lay people, but if the majority of experts remain unconvinced, that tells us something important about the gullibility of those lay people and the ease with which their perceptions are manipulated.
Martin Durkin is known for his innacurate documentals and should not be a reference. I will watch the video, but, since 1980, Carl Sagan predicted a possible greenhouse environment for earth due to an increase of CO2 and Sulfer Acid on the athmosphere, that after reviewing the outcome of the Venera’s project on Venus. Mexican Dr Molina won the Nobel Prize of chemistry I think in 1999 precisely for his works in the 80’s predicting Global Warming. My own studies in sustainability shown that, even with El Ni√±o and the increased Solar Activity, the change is too great. Hence I think the video will be no more than bollocks. With the rise of China and its amount of coal consumption, the greenhouse emissions won’t decline soon…
Wiki on Martin Durkin
Director of the Anti-Global Warming Film “The Great Global Warming Swindle ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_(television_director)
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