The Great Global Warming Swindle (1 Viewer)

[tim]

I think they were slurring the truth a good bit. They said CO2 doesnt cause global warming but the sun does.

We know CO2 is creating a hole in the Ozone layer thus letting the suns rays through more, so if the sun is being allowed through more and the sun is becoming more hot due to these "sun spots" then we are contributing.

Saying that though they were claiming that animals and nature itself was producing more CO2 then man made devices.

Ah we shall just wait and see.

 

[Space]

given that they're blaming the sun for the increase, was there any input from solar astrophysicists?

There was a guy who studied sun spots to predict the weather but he was a meteorologist I think. His proof was winning bets on what the weather would be.

My understanding of climate change is that the earth is warming up of its own or the suns accord but we're accelerating this change with CO2 emmisions.

Billy: The hole in the ozone layer wasn't mentioned last night for some reason.

 

[ratmonkey]

-Lots of bad science has gone into creating this mass hysteria.

Gillian McKeith was involved?

 

[broken arm]

We know CO2 is creating a hole in the Ozone layer thus letting the suns rays through more,

??

 

[Goodbye]

I was willing to give this documentary a chance.
But when they starting implying that the whole basis of the climate crisis is based on some report Margret Thatcher requested on a study about nucular energy, allbeit plausable, they lost me after that.
Toward the end I was shouting at the telly.

The "experts" were full of words like "theoretically" or "may" and showed nothing to back up their claims.

Noone is saying that cabon emmissions are that cause of global warming! What is fact is that they contribute to global warming because of the fact that they ARE a greenhouse gas.
What was not mentioned was the growth of population that is more than it has ever been on this planet rendering a lot of their theories defunct.
Of course if the population was consistant with there records then perhaps they would have had a leg to stand on.

And to completely ignore the hole in the ozone layer in the documentary was stupid and obviously diliberate as it weakens their case.

Of course the planet is warming. It's always in flux. Its a living breathing object in space who's behaviour is directly linked with that of our nearest star.

And its that star that gave us life is precisely what we want to protect ourselves from.

(Also, it's a good thing that Mars is warming, as that where the human race will prolly continue. In about a billion years time of course)

 

[magicbastarder]

Billy: The hole in the ozone layer wasn't mentioned last night for some reason.

bgecause it's got little to do with global warming?

 

[Space]

bgecause it's got little to do with global warming?

How so?
If this was the case I would've thought they might have at least said it had little to do with global warming rather than ignoring it altogether.

 

[Goodbye]

bgecause it's got little to do with global warming?

It's got nothing to do with global warming.
But the fact that it's there emphasises the fact that human industry/behaviour has a negative effect on the enviroment

 

[Goff]

The hole on the ozone layer means more radiation can get in, is all.

There's water flowing on Mars. The whole solar system is heating up. Pluto is melting.

This latest round of Environmentally aware politicians harping on about our responsibilties to the planet seem to have only one answer. Charge people for the energy they're using and make them feel guilty about it if they don't. And who benefits from that?

Not us. Their rich, "energy producing industry" mates.

And as for this recycling shite.
By recycling all our gick, we're not giving the planet a chance to make more fossil fuels.

I say, waste is great. If we manage to kill ourselves by the shite we make, something else will take our place.

Who's to say they won't make a better job of it? Maybe they deserve it.

We certainly don't.

 

[broken arm]

And as for this recycling shite.
By recycling all our gick, we're not giving the planet a chance to make more fossil fuels.

ha ha brilliant...

 

[magicbastarder]

How so?
If this was the case I would've thought they might have at least said it had little to do with global warming rather than ignoring it altogether.

i don't follow you - they should have mentioned a side issue precisely to say 'this is just a side issue"?

ian, i get you now.

 

[TenRabbits]

From the Observer:

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Robin McKie
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer


[/FONT]We live in an era of conspiracies. Princess Diana was killed by Nazis; 9/11 was the work of the US government, while the manned lunar landings were hoaxes filmed in TV studios. To this list of internet-fuelled daftness, we can now add a new plot: that the world's scientific community is not just wrong about global warming, but is collectively lying when it says industrial carbon dioxide emissions are heating up the planet.

Michael Crichton started the ball rolling with his novel State of Fear and the idea has bubbled along nicely in online chatrooms ever since. But now the idea is to get the full terrestrial TV treatment when Channel 4 screens Thursday's The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary which says claims that carbon emissions are causing global warming are 'lies' and that attempts to debate the subject are being suppressed.
Given that the world's climatologists have just published a careful, sober report showing global warming is real and worrying, the programme is an astonishing foray into the debate. Certainly, there many reasons to deride it. Its contents are largely untrue, for a start. That is Channel 4's problem. Yet a couple of important points do emerge from this nonsense and we should not make the mistake of ignoring them. To back his case, director Martin Durkin interviews climate-change deniers including Phillip Stott, Piers Corbyn, Nigel Calder and Nigel Lawson who reveal their antipathy to the idea we are altering Earth's weather systems.
These names are scarcely unknown. Listeners to Today and viewers of Newsnight have been hearing Stott and the rest promote their views for years. Indeed, they have dominated and distorted the whole global warming debate, a point stressed by Alan Thorpe, head of the Natural Environment Research Council. 'These people are never off the radio or TV, yet now they claim debate is being suppressed? It is preposterous.' So what, we might ask, is the deniers' problem? Examine their movement and you see a common thread: most proponents are elderly, only a few are scientists and several have pronounced pro-market views. And hereby hangs a tale.
'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.'
The problem is that denial - in all its ludicrous glory - makes it easy for us to gloss over genuine concerns about society's right reaction to global warming and carbon emissions. And that is what is wrong with Durkin's programme. It opts for dishonest rhetoric when a little effort could have produced an important contribution to a critical social problem.
Consider emission controls. This is now assumed to be as much an issue of individual responsibility as of international negotiation. Petrol-guzzling 4x4s must be taxed, foreign holidays discouraged, TVs unplugged and lavatories left unflushed. After decades of waiting, the green movement has found the cause of its dreams: a crisis that gives them carte blanche, they believe, to rule our lives.
Hairshirts are being knitted and the self-righteous are gathering. The Observer's travel desk already gets hate mail merely for highlighting interesting destinations that might seem to encourage carbon-producing air travel. No wonder those poor old deniers cringe.
But it simply does not have to be that way. For a start, air travel accounts for only 2 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. So I refuse to feel guilty because I have a family holiday in Spain and then write about the threatened glories of the Great Barrier Reef.
Indeed, if one looks at the world's last great ecological scare, the dwindling of our protective ozone layer, it is intriguing to see how we dealt with a threat that seemed as apocalyptic then as climate change does today. Ozone depletion, caused by CFC chemicals used in fridges and deodorants, was not contained through individual sacrifice. We were not asked to sell our Hotpoint freezers or go smelly to the office. Governments and industries agreed to replace CFCs with safe substitutes. So there was no need for an army of self-appointed greenies to sniff our armpits to check if they were suspiciously non-malodorous. The crisis was contained at an industrial, not a consumer, level, as it should be with greenhouse gases.
Climate change is a bigger, more pernicious problem and will require broader, more intense efforts to cut back on carbon emissions, which, in turn, offers more opportunities for campaigners and politicians to hijack a sound cause to gain control of people's lives. 'That is the striking thing about global warming,' says Myles Allen, of Oxford's climate dynamics group. 'It is a Christmas tree on which each of us can hang virtually everything we want.' Thus, everyone from EU commissioners and Ken Livingstone to parish councils and writers of green-ink letters now uses global warming as an excuse to tell us how to live. Some of this advice, and attempts at lifestyle control, is sound. Some is not. Either way, it is misplaced. The lead must come from government and industry. So far it hasn't. That is incompetence. Not conspiracy.

 

[broken arm]

the observer would say that, wouldn't they.

 

[magicbastarder]

Basically talking about getting funding for research. If you wanted to study the feeding habits of a certain type of squirrel you'd find it pretty hard to get funding but if you were to study the feeding habits with relation to global warming you'd get it no bother.

on the flipside, in the states, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that scientists are being pressured to take any references to global warming out of reports drawn up for governmental agencies.

 

[Dixer]

Surely there's an argument that whether or not human usage of fossil fuels is contributing to Global Warming, its necessarily a good thing that we ween ourselves off them in so far as possible given that they're not gonna be around forever?
That being said, last nights documentary was quite strong I thought, not least in what it said about our dictats to developing countries.

 

[magicbastarder]

australia are banning tungsten bulbs from 2010, i think. a good idea.

 

[tim]

The point of that Observer article was: Last nights programme was wrong. Why? It was just wrong OK.

 

[Franco]

The point of that Observer article was: Last nights programme was wrong. Why? It was just wrong OK.

It was wrong because the contributors were old. And no-one listens to old geezers droning on about shit.

 

[broken arm]

what did it say about these?

 

[Franco]

It showed a social centre in Nirobi that was using two solar panels for electricity, but couln't have the lights and the fridge on at the same time.

Basically it suggested that it was unethical to promote sustainable power in poor countries that thave no infrastructure at all. These countries are being denied the cheaper forms of electricity, and being guided towards more expensive, albeit it more enviromentally friendly sources of power. Africa has coal and oil, yet is being advised by the West to look at alternatives.