The Great Global Warming Swindle

[JLTucker]

I have the dvd An Incovenient Truth but have not finished viewing it. A friend of mine told me about this British documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle. My friend says that global warming being caused by humans is complete bullshit. Since I have no vast knowledge of global warming, I could not argue with him. My question here is this: should I view The Great Global Warming Swindle after I watch An Inconvenient Truth, and if any of you have seen the former, is it complete bullshit? Does it have any credibility?

[TheKwas]

It is full of bullshit. Merely doing a wikipedia article on the film will give you a pretty good idea of the countless mistakes and propaganda tactics they use.

But to address the crux of the main argument, they say that because increases atmospheric carbon actually lags behind temperature increases according to Ice Core Data, temperature changes must thus increase atmospheric carbon instead of vice-versa. Of course, this is fallacious thinking and totally ignores the work done by the likes of Tyndall and many other scientists that have proven in laboratory settings that carbon dioxide absorbs heat, thus carbon causes an increase in temperature.
However, the video is correct in asserting that carbon lags behind temperature (although the 800 years figure they constantly use is the lag at it's very longest), but they totally ignore positive feedback mechanisms that most scientists use to explain the carbon lag. Carbon heats up the earth alittle bit originally, that heat causes more water vapour which in turn causes more heat which leads to more forest fires and more CO2 being released into the air from the Ocean reserves.

They actually have an interview with an MIT prof who is trying to explain this positive feedback mechanism, but they twist his words around to imply that he saying that an increase in temperature is the direct cause for more carbon and thus carbon doesn't cause temperatures.


Next, in order to explain the heat curves, they believe that solar activity is to blame. The main graph they use comes from a Danish scientist, and was constructed in 1989, where the Dane showed how well solar activity lines up with global temperatures. Sounds great, right? Not really, they also forgot to mention that the author himself says that greenhouse gases also have a significant impact on the atmosphere, and they forgot to mention that the graph, being constructed in 1989, has being challenged numerous times since it's publication and is generally considered obsolete by the scientific community.


There are so many more mistakes and distortions in that movie, but those two are the main points they try to advocate. However, as you can see, both are based off of authorities they have misrepresented and have been largely refuted constantly by the scientific community as a whole.

I'm doing this quick review off the top of my head, but seriously I suggest you watch the movie simply to understand the general skeptic point of view, and then go read some scientists work concerning those exact issues so that you can effective debate with the skeptics.

[Fire Fly]

It gives a voice to all of the so called "suppressed" "scientists" whose primary argument against global warming is that the sun might be causing he increase in temperatures and that we shouldn't do anything about it still. It also misrepresentsa lot of views by the more mainstream scientists that they interview. Its worth watching if you want to try to understand how they see global warming and how they engage in any sort of discussion. For a more detailed refutation of the movie's points by climate scientists, see this site.

[metavac]

IPCC has the support of 16 national and international scientific bodies, 5 to 10 percent of Nobel Laureates, 10 to 15 percent of National Medal of Science winners, around 10 percent of National Academy of Science members, and at least 1 percent of working scientists.

[Admiral Valdemar]

We had a huge thread on this not long ago, we do not need a repeat.