New "documentary" claims global warming is a lie

[BushOut06]

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

<snip>
Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary.

‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.

The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world’s poor.

Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2.
<snip>

WTF is up with this recent upsurge in global warming denying? The scary thing is that there are enough people out there who just don't know any better, who see all this as "debate" and won't see the need for immediate action.

This is NOT debate. This is a deliberate LIE being perpetuated by right-wing elements around the world. Man's contribution to global warming, and the rapid rise in worldwide temperatures over the past few decades, has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet these pseudo-scientists, with their ties to Big Oil, are deliberately trying to impede any progress. These people, through their words and actions, could ultimately be responsible for billions of deaths.

[soothsayer]

1. I believe it's a combo of us plus natural cycles, but even if it's strictly

natural, who the hell wants another ice age??? We should do whatever we can to mitigate the bad things that are heading our way.

[unpossibles]

2. how is trying to reduce pollution

killing the poor? If anything, it's the opposite. Wow, this is sad.

The recent upsurge? My guess is $10,000 offered by Big Oil to contradict reality would be behind it. Although you'd think Big Oil could afford a better bribe.

[zeemike]

3. When was it made?

it sounds familiar to me.
I have been having this argument for at least the last ten years and the only thing that has changed is that there is a lot more evidence for global warming now, and the weather is acting in complete concert with global warming. We are seeing extremes in weather which is consistent with the hearting up of the earth. Remember just this year the cherry blossoms were blooming in January and then we had a cold blast from the north.This is exactly what to expect if the overall temp of the earth is warming.
We are fools to listen to the nay sayers.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. It's a new programme

but yes, the arguments are old. Here's George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist, commenting on it about a month ago:

Some chance. A company called WAG TV is currently completing a 90-minute documentary for Channel 4 called “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. Manmade climate change, the channel tells us, is “a lie … the biggest scam of modern times. The truth is that Global Warming is a multi-billion dollar worldwide industry: created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists; supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding; and propped up by complicit politicians and the media. ... The fact is that CO2 has no proven link to global temperatures … solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit.”(10)

So it’s the same old conspiracy theory that we’ve been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years, and it carries as much scientific weight as the contention that the Twin Towers were brought down by missiles. The programme’s thesis revolves around the deniers’ favourite canard: that the “hockey-stick graph” showing rising global temperatures is based on a statistical mistake made in a paper by the scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes(11). What it will not be showing is that their results have now been repeated several times by other scientists using different statistical methods(12); that the paper claiming to have exposed the mistake has been comprehensively debunked(13) and that the lines of evidence used by Mann, Bradley and Hughes are just a few among hundreds demonstrating that 20th century temperatures were anomalous.

The decision to commission this programme seems even odder when you discover who is making it. In 1997, the director, Martin Durkin, produced a very similar series for Channel 4 called “Against Nature”, which also maintained that global warming was a scam dreamt up by environmentalists. It was riddled with hilarious scientific howlers. More damagingly, the only way in which Durkin could sustain his thesis was to deceive the people he interviewed and to edit their answers to change their meaning. Following complaints by his interviewees, the Independent Television Commission found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.”(14) Channel 4 was obliged to broadcast one of the most humiliating primetime apologies it has ever made. Are institutional memories really so short?

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/01/30/another-species-of-denial/

[GeorgeGist]

4. Burning CO2?

"Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2.

[OneBlueSky]

6. the bottom line is the bottom line . . . it all has to do with protecting corporate profits . . .

if corporations are forced to correct their horrendous patterns of polluting and degrading land, air and water, it would cost them a fortune . . . money that would come out of the pockets of their shareholders and executives . . .

[zalinda]

7. Actually, I don't care whether it is true or not

The fact is, that if it is false, we will have significantly cleaned up our environment which can only be good. If it is true, then it becomes even more dire.

But, if we do nothing, and it proves to be true then we are screwed, well actually our kids and grandkids. So, doing nothing is not an option.

zalinda

[frogcycle]

8. yep - Cheney's 2% theory

even if there is only a 2% chance the world as we know it will die if we don't take some clearly doable steps, the consequences on insisting on waiting until it is 100% are too dire