So that just about wraps it up for global warming

[alitalf]

I watched "The Great Global Warming Swindle" a couple of days ago. It increased my knowledge of some of the reasons I had already had doubts about the theory that human activity was causing any significant fraction of the climate change that is happening, as well as adding other reasons not to be a true believer.

Global warming caused by human activity seems to have many aspects including; a misunderstanding, a scam, an excuse to increase taxes, and a cult or a religion.

Comments

[emperor]

Are you aware of the pedigree of the chap who made that film? He previously made a set of anti-global-warming films, about which the regulator upheld complaints that he deliberately distorted what interviewees said such that they appeared to support his thesis when in fact they opposed it. Furthermore, he appears to have done so again in making this film.

Ben Goldacre, who does the excellent Bad Science column in the Guardian, has written a couple of columns on the program, which you can find online here and here. Now, climatology is far from my specialty, but Dr Goldacre's commentry on science done in areas of my expertise in the past has always been very good, so I'd be inclined to give his comments considerable weight.

The Royal Society, not known for jumping on bandwagons, has a page on the issue, too.

The IPCC's latest summary for policymakers summarised a lot of the evidence on climate change into a short report.

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

That programme was based in large part on ideas in a paper which were later refuted by the paper's own authors.

Lots of people where I work (Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge) are bubbling with fury at the bad science in that programme and at its potential to mislead members of the public. I see their point...

(S) (pointed here by emperor)

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Even if this chap is correct, which I very much doubt (from the comments above and my own knowledge on the subject) why shouldn't we as human beings try to make a difference?

The global warming issues aside, and taking just one element as an example, do we (that is everybody) enjoy living in an environment which is polluted by vehicles that use far more fuel than they need? I think the answer to that one is "No". Wouldn't it be a good idea, from a health perspective if nothing else, if we could reduce the number of those types of vehicles? I think that answer to that is "Yes". And an effective way of doing it is to put up the tax on those types of vehicles. An even better way is to outlaw then altogher, but I think you (and many other people) would like that even less than raised taxes on them.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen the programme, but I've met up with similar sorts of theories on the subject.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

The Independent have been banging on about the general badness (?) of that programme since it aired and in fact one of the talking head scientists on it has objected to the programme in the Indie, and is talking to regulators apparently, claiming that he was misrepresented and lied to about the editorial direction of the programme. Various bits of the graphs and science the programme used have been shown to have been manipulated and even based on inaccurate, and since superseded, research. C4 have stated in the Indie that all is well and that it provokes debate yadda, yadda.