Hacker Cinema
The Great Global Warming Swindle
2007 · Film · documentary · 74 min
Directed by Martin Durkin
This film tries to blow the whistle on what it calls the biggest swindle in modern history: 'Man Made Global Warming'. Watch this film and make up your own mind.
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7 comments on Hacker News
I looked up that film and found a Wikipedia article on it.
I hardly find credible a "documentary" wherein multiple scientists interviewed complained to regulators that they were misrepresented[0].
Of course, many other scientists complained about the film as well [1]. One stated that "First, let's deal with the main thesis: that the presence or absence of cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere is a better explanation for temperature variation than the concentration of CO2 and other gases. This is not a new assertion and it is patently wrong: there is no credible evidence that cosmic rays play a significant role...Let scepticism reign, but let's not play games with the evidence"
The the regulators found partially in favor of the scientists and further sanctioned the film [2] for not presenting an objective outlook on the politics surrounding global warming. The regulators only declined to take a position on the science of the piece as it was beyond their regulatory scope.
It seems as though that film is misinformation propaganda that doesn't belong on HN. Am I missing something?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Criticism_from_two_scientists_featured_in_the_programme
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Reactions_from_scientists
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Ofcom_investigation_of_complaints
>c: burning a ton ton ton of fossil fuels.
Then, fine, that's the solution that should please you. Go ahead. No worries. E.g., you and Bill Gates might be very happy to watch the BBC
The Great Global Warming Swindle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
Thumbnail version: Human sources of CO2 have nothing to do with climate. Instead for at least hundreds of thousands of years to the present and the foreseeable future, essentially the main cause of climate change is just the level of solar activity. As that varies so does the rate of sun spots, the strength of the solar wind, the rate at which the solar wind blocks cosmic rays, cosmic rays hit water molecules in the atmosphere, water droplets are formed, clouds are formed. More clouds have a cooling effect. So, a more active sun blocks more cosmic rays, causes fewer clouds, and warms the earth. A less active sun, ..., more clouds, and a cooler earth.
CO2 levels don't fit the temperature data at all well, e.g., in the Vostok data Gore's movie used, the CO2 levels went up about 800 years after the temperature went up. E.g., the cooling from The Little Ice Age was not from less CO2 but from a very inactive sun. The increase in temperature coming out of The Little Ice Age was from a more active sun. The global cooling from about 1950 to 1980 was from an inactive sun while CO2 levels increased.
Net, CO2 is irrelevant. The cause is the activity level of the sun. Burn all the fossil fuels you want.
Solar? Maybe can find a use for it: E.g., maybe in desert areas, smelt aluminum, desalinate water and use it in greenhouses, convert water and coal to gasoline. A key to such desert applications is don't need to store the electric energy from the solar panels -- instead, just smelt aluminum, the clean water, or gasoline when the sun shines and store that.
Solar for the US electric grid? Nope: Need storage, and it alone is more expensive than the alternatives so that for the grid solar is not wanted even for free.
>c: burning a ton ton ton of fossil fuels.
Then, fine, that's the solution that should please you. Go ahead. No worries. E.g., you and Bill Gates might be very happy to watch the BBC
The Great Global Warming Swindle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
Thumbnail version: Human sources of CO2 have nothing to do with climate. Instead for at least hundreds of thousands of years to the present and the foreseeable future, essentially the main cause of climate change is just the level of solar activity. As that varies so does the rate of sun spots, the strength of the solar wind, the rate at which the solar wind blocks cosmic rays, cosmic rays hit water molecules in the atmosphere, water droplets are formed, clouds are formed. More clouds have a cooling effect. So, a more active sun blocks more cosmic rays, causes fewer clouds, and warms the earth. A less active sun, ..., more clouds, and a cooler earth.
CO2 levels don't fit the temperature data at all well, e.g., in the Vostok data Gore's movie used, the CO2 levels went up about 800 years after the temperature went up. E.g., the cooling from The Little Ice Age was not from less CO2 but from a very inactive sun. The increase in temperature coming out of The Little Ice Age was from a more active sun. The global cooling from about 1950 to 1980 was from an inactive sun while CO2 levels increased.
Net, CO2 is irrelevant. The cause is the activity level of the sun. Burn all the fossil fuels you want.
Solar? Maybe can find a use for it: E.g., maybe in desert areas, smelt aluminum, desalinate water and use it in greenhouses, convert water and coal to gasoline. A key to such desert applications is don't need to store the electric energy from the solar panels -- instead, just make the clean water or gasoline when the sun shines and store that.
Solar for the US electric grid? Nope: Need storage, and it alone is more expensive than the alternatives so that for the grid solar is not wanted even for free.
If his concern is CO2, then he might want to watch a good movie, the BBC
The Great Global Warming Swindle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
What to do with the resulting electric energy?
(1) Smelt iron or aluminum?
(2) Split H2O into O2 and H2 and use the H2 for fuel.
(3) Convert water and coal to gasoline.
(4) Desalinate and/or purify water and use the water for humans food and drink, bathing, washing, swimming, lawns, greenhouse agriculture, or just to make the desert bloom?
(5) Heat salt to store the energy, and then run water through tubes in the hot salt to generate high pressure steam to drive steam turbines and, then, electric generators and, then, transmit the power across the Mediterranean to Europe and sell it?
Uses (1)-(4) have the advantages that get just to use the power while the sun is shining and don't have to store the power for nighttime use or transmit the electric power long distances. Would have to transmit the hydrogen or gasoline for those options.
In the words of the skeptical mayor's wife in the movie The Music Man, "I'm reticent. Yes, I'm reticent."
Why? The idea is not nearly new. So, I do have to suspect that a good engineering-economic analysis would show that we would need progress in:
(1) Keeping desert sand off the solar panels.
(2) In case want to use the electric energy to make hydrocarbons, a good source of coal near the desert.
(3) Energy storage.
(4) Superconductivity for the transmission lines across the Mediterranean.
Might be able to pay for it if the world can agree on some huge carbon taxes.
Nukes might be be cheaper.
Might keep in mind that the spot, wholesale cost of electric power in the US has been under $0.01 per KWH and the full cost, say, ballpark $0.06. So, the cost to a consumer of 10, 12, 22 or so cents per KWH is mostly for distribution, not generation. But the panels in the desert handle only the generation part, do nothing for the short distance distribution costs where the consumers are and make the long distance distribution, e.g., across the Mediterranean, more expensive.
Also on the money side, might want to keep in mind that the major oil sources in the Mideast pump oil for less than $1 per barrel. That price is tough to compete with.
Right, might be shipping the power to France which is doing quite well with nukes.
Then once carbon taxes start to take hold, people might watch
'The Great Global Warming Swindle'
at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
and discover the evidence that CO2, methane, etc. from human activities has nothing at all to do with the climate or temperature of earth and, instead, changes in those two are driven by changes in the activity level of the sun, the sun spots, the solar wind, the blocking of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere, the rate of formation of water droplets, the rate of H2O cloud formation, and, thus, the cooling effect of clouds.
Then people will object to carbon taxes.
Net, it appears that while the Watts of solar energy per 1000 square miles of desert are astoundingly high, for what people in the population centers want in electric power, motor fuel, clean water, etc., that desert solar power is just not very valuable.
> The article uses the word "electricity" not "energy".
Wrong. E.g., one of the statements in the article is, and I saw and responded to, was:
> The country has recently made headlines by operating 100% on renewable energy for 285 days.
So it's the "country", presumably the whole "country", including electricity, cars, trucks, home heating, airplanes, etc.
And that statement said "energy" and not just "electricity".
Sure, in the article, the pictures I saw were for solar panels and wind turbines. I saw mention of their hydroelectric facility but no picture. So, tough not to guess: The article is propaganda for electric energy via wind and solar and, then, wants to jump to say "energy" for the whole "country".
I responded very calmly to the misleading propaganda.
It it crystal clear that this article is solidly in the center of the community of global warming and climate change alarmists. Okay, let's look at that subject. Surprisingly, we now have some quite good ways to do that.
We look in two parts, (1) the predictions of warming and (2) the real science.
(1) THE PREDICTIONS
So, the claims of human caused global warming claimed to be science and made some predictions. Good: The predictions were for a lot of global warming.
At
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg
is a comparison of actual temperatures and temperatures predicted from the global warming community. Immediately from the graph, the predictions are way too high.
Then, net, according to science, we regard the candidate science as failed, as junk.
Really, right there is the end of the global warming science. Done.
But, maybe that devastating refutation is too succinct. So, for more, below I include three chunks of evidence, (A) -- (C):
(A) A WSJ DISCUSSION AND GRAPH
There is a lot of expert overview discussion, at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#
with
"Commentary
No Need to Panic About Global Warming There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy. January 27, 2012
Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:"
See also the graph there that compares actual temperatures with measured temperatures.
(B) THE US NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE REPORT
There is the report:
Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press, 2006,
available at
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html
From that report, if only from just the graph on page 2, as far as we can tell, the temperature in 2006 was exactly the same as in year 1000 well before any human industrialization.
(C) THE VOSTOK DATA USED BY AL GORE
In his movie, Al Gore showed a graph of data from the ice core samples from the Vostok station in the Antarctic. The graph covered several hundred thousand years and showed both temperature and CO2 concentrations rising and falling together. That graph was Gore's main evidence that more CO2 causes global warming.
But, just looking at the graph shows that the CO2 levels rose about 800 years after the temperature rose. So, clearly the higher CO2 levels did not cause the higher temperatures. The higher temperatures were caused by something but not CO2 levels. That situation was clear right in Gore's movie for anyone who just looked at it. Net, Gore's evidence was really solid evidence that CO2 did not cause global warming -- just read the graph.
SUMMARY OF PART (1)
For the science, pictures of arctic sea ice in the summer, polar bears, glaciers falling into the ocean, stories about the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, other anecdotal evidence, etc. are just irrelevant and not at all convincing otherwise.
Instead, we need just a simple comparison of real temperatures and predicted ones. Since the predictions of the candidate science were badly wrong, we reject the candidate science. In science, it really is just that simple.
(2) THE REAL SCIENCE
But we do have some real science that explains temperatures quite accurately back at least for some hundreds of thousands of years.
Here in just a few lines I take the entire, global, IPCC, Al Gore, Kyoto, Paris, etc., EPA, NOAA, Obama, carbon footprint movement and totally destroy it. It's, to use a word, "settled".
Sure, can strike a match and, thus, warm the planet, but that warming is not significant.
For anything significant, for anything reasonable, CO2 and methane have nothing to do with the climate. Even a factor of 10 times the present concentration of CO2 will do essentially nothing to the climate. Same for CFC's. Same for men not shaving and drinking Coke instead of Pepsi.
Yes, CO2 and methane have to be counted as greenhouse gasses, but their effects are just insignificant for earth in the past, the present, and any reasonable future, no matter what is going on on Venus (has a lot of CO2 and is really hot).
And, so far human activity has had nothing to do with the climate.
Instead, here is what the heck has been driving climate change so far, back at least for some hundreds of thousands of years and right to the present as in year 2015:
More clouds have a cooling effect. The rate of cloud formation varies with the rate of water droplet formation, which varies with the rate of cosmic rays (a significant cause of water droplet formation) hitting the atmosphere which varies with the amount of solar wind blocking the cosmic rays which varies with the rate of sun spots which varies with the activity level of the sun which has absolutely nothing at all to do with anything on earth, not CO2, not methane, not humans or human activity.
Reference:
A very nicely done BBC video:
"The Great Global Warming Swindle"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg
As in the BBC piece, in the last 100 years, temperature has varied with the solar wind and not with CO2.
Net the climate science arguing about the effects of CO2 on the climate no longer has even a square nanometer to stand on. That candidate science is done, "settled", forget about it.
Here, for asking a very appropriate question challenging some outrageous propaganda, I've been attacked and am due sincere, public apologies.
That is a very week premise, which looks disguised as an attempt to sell one book by criticising another. You could equally apply that much scrutiny to any public profile book or movie (anything by Michael Moore, for instance).
I'm sure Lomborg's book contains exaggerations and selective presentation of the truth - after all, it's a popular literature, not a scientific work. But the very same standards applied to other 'popular' works of Global Warming media, like 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' and 'An Inconvenient Truth' have also showed up outright lies, fabrications and distortion of the truth.
In other words, it's unlikely that anyone can print or make something in this genre without someone else finding all sorts of facts that are wrong. But the whole thing is down to interpretation.
Ultimately we should be judging these books and movies for ourselves, and realising that much of the material contains a kernel of truth, probably much embellished for the narrative.