“The Great Global Warming Swindle”

A friend of mine sent me a link to this video, a British presentation called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" At an hour and 15 minutes, it's not a quick view. However, if you're someone like me who believes the idea of Global Warming is preposterous and a con to get liberal environmental agendas enacted into law, then this video is well worth watching all the way through.

Link:

Early on, the program describes the idea of global warming and introduces a number of scientists, with excellent credentials, who argue that the science behind global warming is ridiculous and politically-motivated. To begin, they agree that while temperatures are changing, temperatures in fact always are changing. They point out that while global temperatures have risen 1.5 degrees (wow, so much!) in the last 150 years, most of this change happened before 1940, after which it plummeted for the next 35 years. It's now climbing again.

At about 23 minutes, they explain that the fundamental premise of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," the idea that global temperature levels track CO2 levels over time, is flat wrong. In fact, it's backwards. Temperatures are not driven by CO2 levels; instead, CO2 levels are driven by temperatures. The graphs Gore shows in his movie do show the correlation, but they don't show which of the two series on the graph is the cause and which is the effect.

At 30 minutes, they illustrate how studies have shown that the climate/temperature is, over time, changed by the amount of clouds in the sky. The number of clouds in the sky is affected by the amount of solar wind, and particles hitting the earth from space. More solar activity produces more solar wind, which blows the particles away from the earth and prevents clouds from forming. "The Sun is driving climate change. CO2 is irrelevant."

At 36 minutes, having essentially made their point about "global warming" being ridiculous, the producers move more toward speculating on the motives behind people who push the whole global warming agenda. They show a TV show made in the 1970's that warned about the same scary things happening to Earth, only this time it's due to Global Cooling – a coming Ice Age. They then illustrate how this scare morphed into Global Warming by focusing on CO2 as a solution to Global Cooling, then later as a potential cause – now a bad thing – of global warming or "climate change." Not surprisingly, in the end it comes down to grant money: Scientists studying whatever put a "global warming" spin on their grant proposal and stand a better chance of getting funded due to the huge amounts of money now being poured into this supposed problem. Follow the money.

At 47 minutes, they tackle the new computer models that have been put together to show global warming's effects on the earth. The theme: a lot of variables go into any model, and the results are only as good as the worst variable. So it's difficult to place any faith into these models, especially when scientists are biased to produce a "dramatic" result with their model, as that will be covered in journals and in the media.

At the hour mark, they begin talking about the dominance in the scientific community of the global warming theory – despite the horribly bad science behind it – and the ostracization of scientists who admit publicly to disagreeing with it.

This is followed, and the program is wrapped up, by a moving piece about the plight of third-world (aka "developing") countries and how their moves toward industrialization – and out of the third world – are being met with heavy resistance from global warming groups that want them to use only solar and wind power, and how unrealistic and, as one interviewee puts it, "anti-human" these policies are. One third of the planet does not have access to electricity, and solar & wind power is among the most expensive ways to produce it. Yet this is what enviromentalists are telling developing countries that they must use, exclusively.

The piece was produced in 2007 and makes a very convincing case for the "right" or conservative position on the issue. Certainly when President-Elect Barack Obama said that, "the science is irrefutable," as usual he didn't know what the hell he was talking about.