An anonymous reader writes: A few days ago the BBC aired a show in the UK under the title "The Global Warming Swindle" (which soon after became available for download from sites like the Pirate Bay). In a nutshell, a panel of people with apparently solid credentials in the discipline of climatology claim the following:
1) Gore gets it back to front in "An Inconvenient Truth": Although there seems to be a correlation between increased atmospheric temperature and CO_2 levels, the increase in CO_2 concentration is caused by the temperature increase — not
the other way around.
2) Humanity's contribution to CO_2 levels in the atmosphere is negligible when compared with natural phenomena such as volcano activity and the oceans — by far the major contributor.
3) There is a clear correlation (as far as historic data is available — some
400 years worth of it) between solar activity and atmospheric temperature increase.
4) The abundance of clouds (which is indirectly determined by solar activity) has a direct influence on atmospheric temperature — above and beyond what realistic CO_2 levels can do.
5) Some scientists (it's not clear how many) who contributed to the recent United Nations' IPCC report explicitly asked that body to withdraw their names from the report, on the grounds of their disagreement with its contents. Apparently the IPCC would not comply without further pressure or even threats of legal action.
6) By imposing stringent restrictions on exploitation of some natural sources of currently cheap energy (oil, coal) and pushing them towards using currently expensive and inefficient ones (solar, wind) instead, western countries are putting a break to the economic development of Third World nations.
7) There is a vested interest in the media to magnify the nature of climate-related problems (this one is very easy to believe, for the media have a tendency to exaggerate everything) and also in climate research circles — the jobs of thousands of people depend on the current global warming scare (apparently the resources allocation for this kind of research has ballooned from some $170M a year in the US in the early 90s to some $2B now).
In the face of it, the show is a pretty thorough debunking of the global warming claims that one can witness on the media daily. It would be interesting to
see how members of the global warming camp refute this, other than dismissing it as the makings of scientists prostituted to corporate interests (which might, or might not, be true, regardless of the quality of the data) or resorting to personal attacks and summary dismissal, without attempting to contest the evidence
on a rational basis, like Greenpeace and other groups have done with Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist". Feedback from contributors to this forum is very welcome.
