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While the title of the video is a bit hyperbolic, I’ve been in agreement with these guys for years, but too lazy to do all the legwork and to argue the arguments bound to come from the ‘true believers’. I am VERY MUCH in favor of good stewardship of the environment, but CO2 regulation and the measures suggested by the acolytes of the religion of climatology bear little in common with science of stewardship…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638If the above video isn’t working for you, you can try this link. You can get more information on this documentary here, as well.
HT: Verum Serum
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This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Arts & Culture, PC Follies, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Great posting!
I agree. I watched this movie over the weekend and it was an eye-opener to the abuse of the environmentalists globally. I agree that we need to be good stewards of the environment, but corruption and greed has strangled the environmental movement to the point that I cannot even trust it anymore. Too many radicalists have hamstringed it into a political nuthouse.
Thanks for speaking about this.
Blessings,
I watched this piece of anti-science propaganda camouflaged as a plea for scientific rigor, all 76 minutes of it. My estimate is that 70 minutes of it is nothing but political whining: some bizarre account of Mrs. Thatcher’s suborning of scientists in order to break the coalminer’s union and environmentalists’ turning it into a political cause to enforce communist doctrines, all owing to a contemptuous hatred of all of mankind in general and of poor people in particular. Still, credit where credit is due: the film is slickly produced, with splendid graphics and music, and warmly confident experts assuring us it’s all crap.
I can’t say for sure how anyone could take all this seriously, but I’ll offer the opinion that people find it much more interesting than global warming, which actually is pretty boring stuff.
The remaining 6 minutes or so that addressed the facts surrounding global warming were filled entirely with misinformation and irrelevancies, which may be summarized as follows:
1) Solar activity explains past changes in Earth’s temperature.
No one challenges this notion. It’s clear that when the CO2 level was lower and essentially constant, solar activity was the main driving force. That’s changed since 1900. CO2 concentration is higher now, and it is changing rapidly. Now CO2 concentration is a bigger driver than solar activity.
2) Solar activity matches temperatures in the last 100 years better than CO2 concentrations, especially 1940-1970
This is also plainly false. Solar activity clearly increased between 1940 and 1960. To justify this claim, the producer presents a sunspot plot that doesn’t even resemble the data. He doesn’t give a reference, so one can only speculate, but it appears that someone used a smoothing procedure on the data, and somehow made it appear that sunspots decreased between 1940 and 1960, even though the real data clearly show that they increased.
What happened between 1940 and 1980 is actually well-understood. Pollution during and after the war, when industrial activity was raised to unprecedented levels, caused temperatures to decline. Particulates and aerosols have a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight and by causing clouds to form. About 1970, serious efforts were started to control particulate emissions from fossil-burning power plants, and the temperature data clearly show that global warming accelerated.
Furthermore, and more importantly, solar activity peaked in 1980, but temperatures have continued to rise. The only factor that can explain this is greenhouse-gas concentration.
3) CO2 levels lag behind temperatures by 800 years or so.
First, this reading depends on proxy data, since records don’t go back that far. But it could well be true because it’s so consistent. If it is true, it’s not good news. The proxy records show what you’d expect anyway: global warming causes greenhouse gases. Since greenhouse gases cause global warming (an inescapable fact of physics), we could face a compounding effect, where greenhouse-gas concentration and temperature reinforce each other all the way to the worst case. This is the possibility that causes the most concern.
With respect to global warming, however, all this is irrelevant to the question of whether or not artifical CO2 emissions are causing an increase in global average temperature.
4) Troposphere data don’t reflect the same degree of heating as would be expected.
This is outdated, incorrect information. Here’s a quotation from the Executive Summary of the Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Analysis Product 1.1:
“Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of humaninduced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies.”
5) Artificial emissions aren’t sufficient to explain the increase in CO2 concentrations. Natural emissions are greater.
This is plainly false. According to the International Energy Agency’s “Key World Energy Statistics”, 26,883 million tons of CO2 are emitted from artificial sources per year. That is 0.87% of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the concentration of which is rising roughly 0.5%/year. So, if 60% of the emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere, it explains all of the increase. But it’s true that other greenhouse gases are contributing as well.
———-
I’ve noticed a willingness of people to accept this argument without any reservation, even people who brag about how naturally skeptical they are. Perhaps the reason is that the subject usually is discussed in bits and pieces, so people don’t have a reference point from which to consider misinformation. I’ve put together a coherent exposition of the facts on a web page called Global Warming: A Guide for the Perplexed.
Sorry,
But as a scientist and engineer, this looks more solid than most of the theory pumped out by the Global Warming nuts – Al Gore included (and especially), whose world view depends on gloom and doom (whether it’s an impending ice age or a greenhouse, doesn’t seem to matter all that much)…
I would dare to suggest that your disdain for Al Gore and his politics is clouding your attitude to this debate. I have tried to understand why some Christians are so dismissive of the science behind global warming simply by “instinct” and “gut-feeling”. You might want to take a look at the discussion at Challies.com after he reviewed a book titled “the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming” and gave some very strong opinion.
At least you state clearly that “I am VERY MUCH in favor of good stewardship of the environment” – something all Christians agree on, well not all. I asked someone about planting a tree to replace one cut down to make furniture for my home and his response blew me straight back and firmly into the kingdom of lurkers!
I don’t know either way whether this global warming thing is real or not. I think our best response as Christians is to show that we are pursuing a Biblical mandate to care for the environment God has given us and to avoid waste and excess, rather than attacking the motives of the science, the scientists (and the crusaders) for global warming.I have said this same thing elsewhere. Simply because Al Gore has attached his name to something is not an excuse for this kind of carelessness. Makes one wonder what will happen if Al Gore wakes up one day and makes an anti-abortion film.
Robbo,
Al Gore was, at one time, pro-life.
I’ve pretty much stayed out of the debate (because of the energy required to sift through all the data) until now. My PRIMARY concern with Kyoto and Global Warming (specifically) is that it is primarily being used as a stick which prevents a number of basic infrastructure upgrades in “third world” countries, where drinking water and medical care are of utmost importance but greatest scarcity. This particular film deals with that specific issue – which is why I decided to post it.
I support a whole plethora of things that are environmentally friendly (responsible use, reduction of waste, regrowth), and some that are controversial – primarily nuclear power. I don’t think that the data is really there for CO2, and the scientists I come into contact with in my professional and private life continually discuss the academic dishonesty that goes into the demonization of CO2 at the expense of much more serious issues.
Robbo,
The problem with Christians attaching themselves to Global Warming and Al Gore is the science. If the science is faulty, we cannot trust it. God has given us rational minds to interact and understand the world around us. But when we have faulty thinking, and even worse lies, coming from scientists and a non-scientist trying to be one, how can we trust them to get the application right. I much rather trust those who have done the work, looked at all the details, and have come to the conclusion based on actual science than those who use fear-mongering for their own political agenda.
As Christians we should also be wary about signing on with Global Warming as most of the data clearly shows that it non-human influences that is causing the warming. By this I mean that if we use faulty data and faulty conclusions we will aply it faulty. That is what Global warming will do, especially with the poor and the non-developed world. Global Warming will not hurt the developed world. No, it will hamstring and push the poor down further with its damaging economic reforms. There is already evidence of that in developing countries.
Christians should not sign on to the Kyoto or IPCC resolutions. It will make us look dumb and it will hurt our message and our chances to tell the Gospel.
Blessings,
Truth Seeker,
I actually agree with most of what you have said. My problem is that many Christians are attacking Al Gore and his supposed hypocrisy instead of looking at whatever scientific evidence there is. I listened to NPR one morning when they interviewed a spokeswoman for the consensus of about 100 scientists who released a recent review of the evidence so far. The interviewer tried to draw her into the political implications but she politely declined.
As I said earlier , I do not know and probably no one knows for sure if mankind is responsible for any global warming but we do know that human activities influence the environment, examples are poor air quality in our cities, smog etc. My main point is that as Christians the best response we can give to this controversy is not to go about attacking the motives of the scientists or smugly point out the hypocrisy of Al Gore (leave that to AM Talk radio) but rather to show the world that we pursue a Biblical mandate to “be fruitful, multiply, subdue and replenish the earth “(Genesis 1; 28 KJV), and in this context, I am talking about stewardship and “replenishingâ€.
Regarding your point about Kyoto (also alluded to by Chris L) I have to honestly tell you that it reminds me of the apartheid era in South Africa when even the South Africans themselves were calling for sanctions against the regime to help end that horrible injustice. I was quite young then but I distinctly remember British PM Margaret Thatcher saying on TV that neither the UK (nor the USA) is going to support any sanctions because it will hurt the South African blacks. Never mind that they supported sanctions in other places. We all know it was all about the investments Western companies had in South Africa, about arms and technology sales etc.
I grew up in the so-called “Third Worldâ€, I go back often and my siblings still live there. Hear it from me, as a Christian brother, the lack of adequate clean drinking water and access to basic medical care has absolutely nothing to do with Kyoto or Global warming, but that is a completely different discussion. Do not forget the lack of access to elective medical care (and sometimes emergency medical care) by the poor and uninsured in this most prosperous of nations, the USA.
By all means, be against the Kyoto protocol or the “global warming agenda’ but do find other reasons than this “it hurts the third world†thing. Speaking for my own country, I can tell you that there is a lot of stuff going wrong and some good stuff happening, but Kyoto or IPCC resolutions are not in the top 100 of what is “hurting” us.