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Conan The Westy 
"Father, Faithful Friend, Fwiffer"
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 Posted - 03/12/2007 : 00:22:49
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G'day from Aus.
I'm watching a documentary on Google Video that screened in Britain during the week (ain't the Internet a hoot). It's called The Great Global Warming Swindle and it definitely wasn't made by Al Gore. I'm guessing it won't be up for an Oscar but it does show another side to the debate. |
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GHcool 
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 02:12:00
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quote:
Originally posted by Conan The Westy
G'day from Aus.
I'm watching a documentary on Google Video that screened in Britain during the week (ain't the Internet a hoot). It's called The Great Global Warming Swindle and it definitely wasn't made by Al Gore. I'm guessing it won't be up for an Oscar but it does show another side to the debate.
I admit that I haven't watched the video in its entirety, but I got the general idea after a while. Because the information presented in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is incompatible with the information presented in An Inconvenient Truth, the mainstream media, and the United Nations climate change study, it appears to me that either the scientists and filmmakers of the "Swindle" video are lying or that Al Gore, the United Nations, and the rest of the mainstream media is lying. I am no scientist, so I cannot say which party is lying with any certainty, but Occam's razor tells us that the likelihood of the worldwide media swindling the worldwide population is very low indeed. Furthermore, what motive would prompt a conspiratorial puppetmaster to create such a scare? It seems to me that more people in power (oil companies, politicians, etc.) would have more to gain without a false global warming scare. |
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benj clews 
"...."
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 02:32:20
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Nearly watched it all and I've gotta' say, it seems to present a pretty believeable counter-argument.
No, we don't really know who's telling fibs and who's not, but I'd say the likelihood of the world's media alone lying about this (or, at least, making things sound far more dramatic than they perhaps are) is highly likely. As one guy in the documentary basically says, "Global temperatures set to rise and then drop" doesn't quite shift as many newspapers as "Global temperatures soar". |
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Mr Savoir Faire
"^ Click my name. "
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 02:47:24
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quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
I am no scientist, so I cannot say which party is lying with any certainty, but Occam's razor tells us that the likelihood of the worldwide media swindling the worldwide population is very low indeed. Furthermore, what motive would prompt a conspiratorial puppetmaster to create such a scare? It seems to me that more people in power (oil companies, politicians, etc.) would have more to gain without a false global warming scare.
Scientist make their money researching grants. If there is a scare that threatens the Earth, there is scientific research to be done and scientists have work to do. Hence global warming.
News agencies want it to be true for the sensationalism.
Politicians want global warming to exist because it can control the populace, or give a great campaign platform.
In this day and age it is impossible to tell who is telling the truth. For instance, at the end of the 2004 US presidential election, I had no clue what Kerry or Bush did in Vietnam.
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 03:24:16
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I watched the whole thing. Very interesting. GHcool, I'd recommend watching the whole thing, all the questions/points you ask/raise are answered in that documentary, it doesn't just raise the issues, it answers it's own questions. By the way, it's not necessary for anyone to be 'lying', just deluded and good at 'filtering' facts to suit their desired conclusions. It's a common human trait. Similarly opposite conclusions are reached by those 'investigating' the murder of JFK, and nobody needs to be lying. Likewise for the "lunar landings are a hoax" crowd, they're not lying either, just very selective in the data they look at.
I haven't watched An Inconvenient Truth yet, it's been on my netlifx queue for a while, it'll arrive in my mailbox one day. It'll be interesting to compare.
I don't have Google video player installed, or I would have been able to save this documentary. I tried to steal it from my Temp folder but it didn't work.  Wouldn't mind showing it to some others.
Thanks for the link, Conan, good food for thought.  |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 03:31:37
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quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
Because the information presented in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is incompatible with the information presented in An Inconvenient Truth
I don't see an incompatibility. Just a difference in emphasis on particular data, a difference in the interpretation of said data, and modelling using different assumptions, all resulting in totally different conclusions. |
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Conan The Westy
"Father, Faithful Friend, Fwiffer"
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 03:35:54
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quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
I watched the whole thing. Very interesting...
I'm only 23 minutes in as I started watching but had to head out for a few hours to walk across our city's dry lake.
Global warming or El Nino???
quote:
Thanks for the link, Conan, good food for thought.
My pleasure. |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 05:55:00
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One way or another, global warming or global cooling or no change whatsoever, what we are doing to this planet is horrific. Polution has got to be contained and is just not healthy for anyone or anything. Period. And if we're being 'swindled' into trying to clean up our environment, then I say let the swindle continue. A cleaner earth cannot be a bad thing, and if people have to threaten or scare us into cleaning up our act, then so be it.
However, the point they make about environmentalism making third world countries more poor, because it keeps them from getting access to proper sources of electricity is a valid one. The problem is that alternative sources of energy are just that - alternative ones - and should be used in addition to the conventional ones to help reduce the damage that using only coal and oil have proven to cause in the past.
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Edited by - ChocolateLady on 03/12/2007 07:33:31 |
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Conan The Westy
"Father, Faithful Friend, Fwiffer"
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 07:49:19
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quote:
Originally posted by ChocolateLady
One way or another, global warming or global cooling or no change whatsoever, what we are doing to this planet is horrific. Polution has got to be contained and is just not healthy for anyone or anything. Period. And if we're being 'swindled' into trying to clean up our environment, then I say let the swindle continue. A cleaner earth cannot be a bad thing, and if people have to threaten or scare us into cleaning up our act, then so be it.
No argument about the need to clean up our pollution CL. I think the point about how the developing world is expected to maintain its levels of subsistence was well made. Having spent a couple of months in the country rated the happiest in the world, Vanuatu & Port Vila Diary: WHAT�S THEIR SECRET? I can attest to the difficulties of living with unreliable / non existant electricity sources. My family lived in a neat, little house with concrete floors and walls, septic flush toilets and running, cold water. Having no refrigeration made our diet fairly limited.
The school ran a diesel generator for a few hours an evening to provide lights for classrooms and dormitories. Staff cooking was done via bottled gas while food for the 350 students was done over wood fires. Local villages were without electrical power sources at all. There was talk about trying to harness some hydroelectricity from a local waterfall, while solar or wind power was deemed too expensive and unreliable at present. It is little surprise that the life expectancy in Vanuatu is below 70 years.
In our Western societies, it is easy to talk the Global Warming talk without walking the walk (or by buying carbon credits to get someone to do it for us - see Al Gore's energy consumption) but folk in poor countries are expected to forego opportunities for improved quality of life.
Not an easy fix I'm afraid. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 11:15:42
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quote:
Originally posted by ChocolateLady
And if we're being 'swindled' into trying to clean up our environment, then I say let the swindle continue.
I have to disagree. Self-delusion can only end in tears when a reality is inevitably faced and people feel 'ripped off', i.e., they've worked for a fallacy. Also, if societies are exorcising non-existent demons then it is inevitably going to draw the focus away from the places where their efforts are most needed, e.g., pollution, wildlife habitat destruction, poverty etc. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 11:25:23
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IMO "human-induced global warming" is on hold until someone can do a full rebuttal of the data presented in that documentary. E.g., some of the material pointed to a most serious misinterpretation of the fundamental data from the Antarctic ice core, specifically, which came first, the temperature change or CO2-level change? It's totally fundamental, and misreading the chronology of that data is as serious as reading a left-turn as a right-turn. I find it hard to believe that anyone could have got something presumably simple so badly wrong, and yet someone has to have got it wrong.
So, I'm looking forward to either a rebuttal, or a concession that thousands of scientists have either screwed up or have all been working with a single interpretation of the same data - that someone screwed up. Or something like it. |
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Sal[Au]pian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 11:40:27
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I was annoyed that I forgot this was on the night. Thanks for the link, Conan; haven't watched it yet but will. My presupposition is that it focuses on the natural variation in the climate that has always occurred. Gore's film makes clear that changes over the last century and especially the last decade have happened massively faster than at any previous time, despite there having been ice ages etc. Even if natural events are changing the climate, it is idiotic of us to worsen the situation! If anything, given our precarious existence, we should attempt to counter it. (However, I realise that that could lead to a bit of a cane-toad scenario.) It will be interesting to see whether the film comes up with any strong arguments.
I agree that poorer countries should not have to shoulder the burden of too much of the improvements. I think this is generally agreed. The E.U. has just decided to reach 20% renewable energy usage by 2020, and it will be that the Eastern countries do not have to provide an equal share of this. However, we are in this situation because of industrialising in the manner that we have, so we shouldn't just think that developing countries should fully industrialise and then reform later. Where possible, they should make some attempts to minimise their CO2 output. In particular, it will be disastrous if China gets away with doing whatever it likes. The U.S. needs to set a good example, though, if China and other countries are to be expected to develop good policies.
A key issue is whether nuclear power should be expanded or not. France is keen for this to count in the 20%. My grandfather was a physicist at Sellafield (the U.K.'s most prominent nuclear power station, then called Windscale) when it opened and they all had a utopian dream of free power for the people. If it could work safely, then it might be a good idea, but I consider it too risky, especially if developed by poorer countries. We don't want a repeat of what happened on my tenth birthday. |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 12:07:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
So, I'm looking forward to either a rebuttal, or a concession that thousands of scientists have either screwed up or have all been working with a single interpretation of the same data - that someone screwed up. Or something like it.
The question in my mind is: Does what we humans do to planet earth have any effect on what happens on the sun? No one seems to have said anything about that, really.
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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 14:01:25
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Many thanks, Conan, for posting the link ... I'd wanted to watch this and was let down by my silly video recorder. However ... I've now seen the entire program.
I like to think I have an open mind about most issues, and I'm pleased to say that as the film progressed and I kept testing it against my assumptions on this vital issue -- I did, in fact, begin to adjust my position.
There certainly are some extremely powerful arguments by some extremely qualified scientists and commentators, some of whom assure us they have no vested interests in their position that global warming is not only not linked to climate change but to pursue that link will result in an unfair hindering of development in the third world, specifically in Africa.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument expounded by the filmmakers and interviewees is that the presence and intensity of sunspots have over the millennia had a far greater effect on the earth's temperature than any man-made contribution to CO2 levels. They produce with enthusiasm the kind of coincidence graphs which Al Gore used in his film An Inconvenient Truth.
The argument sure is convincing. But from the moment it was posited -- especially in the context of casting doubt on the computer models cited by those scientists which "prove" the relationship between CO2 and global warming -- when, I wondered, were the filmmakers going to produce results from a computer modelling of the effect of sunspots on the earth's climate? When the film ended and no further reference was made to this, I wondered why?
The biggest question for me, though, was the the political argument presented during the first half of the film, ascribing the so-called global conspiracy of those who promote the link between increased man-made CO2 levels and global warming is in the control of the left-wing who no longer had a platform for anti-capitalism after the demise of the Soviet Union and associated socialist/communist regimes.
This was especially resonant during the last 15 minutes of the film when, perhaps, one the most crucial issues was raised. It is simply that those who promote the reduction of man-made CO2 emissions are a priori against human progress and development. It demonizes such people and provides very selective aspects of their argument to the point of a reducto ad absurdum ... e.g. they present a scenario where two tiny solar panels on an African hospital roof are proved not to generate sufficient electricity to run both the lights and medicine-storage fridge simultaneously. This, they conclude, indicates that the only alternatives to third-world development are a similar program of natural resource exploitation and nuclear power which fueled the developed world over the past few hundred years.
I do think the moral aspects of the develpment argument are among the most important in the debate. After all, who are we in the wealthy west to ask the people made poor by our ruthless economic rape of their lands over centuries ... who are we now to tell them they're condemned to a life devoid of luxury, let alone necessity?
The argument, I suspect, would be more cogent on the part of the filmmakers if when investigating the background of the interviewees it were not true that:
1. one of the most persuasive is also a self-confessed Darwin denier
2. more than one participates in a company whose research is funded by oil interests
3. the former UK politician and cabinet minister now serves on the board or is Director of some 20-odd companies whose prime activity is investment in the kind of technologies implied by the film as solutions to the problem.
I'm not saying I don't accept the sun-spot theory. It really does sound convincing. But what I believe the film does -- and perhaps the same can be said of Gore's film -- is that it's politicizing an issue that needs to transcend politics, and big business interests.
Sadly, I also suspect it will continue down this divisive road. Fomenting division has always been a highly effective tool of those in power. On whatever side.
We really only have a hope if enough people become educated in these matters instead of jumping on bandwagons and parrotting simplistic platitudes.
Fat chance, eh? 
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duh
"catpurrs"
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 16:06:11
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I haven't watched the video yet but will try to set aside time to do so.
Presently, although I am skeptical of any/all points of view, I can't see that it does any harm to be mindful and cautious of what effects our activities may have on the planet, and to do what we can to keep the planet livable. There are also...unintended consequences that may have negative effects despite the best intentions.
quote:
Originally posted by benj clews
I'd say the likelihood of the world's media alone lying about this (or, at least, making things sound far more dramatic than they perhaps are) is highly likely.
I agree with benj. I see the media get all too many things WRONG, frequently. My husband has a 'high up' job in the state national guard and frequently when there are news reports about things he has done or said, the reporters give their own spin to it that is not what my DH actually said.
As another example, I offer the self-described "horse whisperer" dude, a liar whom journalists around the world merely parrot the bs he tells them about his life and qualifications, such as that the book and film were based on his life. The book and film were most definitely NOT about him, and that information is easy to find, but journalists are too lazy to do their homework.
I worked at a newspaper for awhile when I was young and was appalled at the laziness and stupidity of the reporters, even while they postured as intellectuals.
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 03/12/2007 : 16:30:14
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quote:
Originally posted by Mr Stupid
quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
I am no scientist, so I cannot say which party is lying with any certainty, but Occam's razor tells us that the likelihood of the worldwide media swindling the worldwide population is very low indeed. Furthermore, what motive would prompt a conspiratorial puppetmaster to create such a scare? It seems to me that more people in power (oil companies, politicians, etc.) would have more to gain without a false global warming scare.
Scientist make their money researching grants. If there is a scare that threatens the Earth, there is scientific research to be done and scientists have work to do. Hence global warming.
News agencies want it to be true for the sensationalism.
Politicians want global warming to exist because it can control the populace, or give a great campaign platform.
In this day and age it is impossible to tell who is telling the truth. For instance, at the end of the 2004 US presidential election, I had no clue what Kerry or Bush did in Vietnam.
I find it difficult to believe that scientists worldwide have developed the same con to get research grants. Imagine a case in which a good grant writer could con the government and other organizations that give money for scientific research into giving him money to research the existence of Santa Claus. The scientist has sound data that on a worldwide basis, the rate of present recieving among Christian children goes up dramatically on December 25 every year for the past X number of years, therefore Santa Claus must exist. Other scientists would quickly find holes in the logic and this scientist and his theory would be discarded into the "crackpot" dust bin of science. |
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Global Warming
