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Debunking "The Great Global Warming Swindle"
On March 13th 2007, Channel 4 (C4) broadcast a programme called "The Great Global Warming Swindle", (TGGWS) made by the already infamous Martin Durkin.
The flavour of the programme is well summarised by the following paragraph taken directly from C4's own webpage:
"We've almost begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made
phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention,
a group of naysayers have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming"
The purpose of this web page is to fully debunk the information presented in TGGWS and expose it for the politically
motivated propaganda that it is.
It almost physically hurts me to provide a link to a video of the programme,
such is my despair at the content, but in the interests of fairness
you can watch it here. You will need to have seen it, of course, to understand the references that I will make in this web page.
Before I take on the points presented in TGGWS, it must be said that the programme has been devastatingly convincing
to a lot of people. This is clear to me from the hundreds of comments I have read in various blogs and forums all over
the internet. I think that it has preyed on the average person's desire to want man-made global warming to be untrue,
and to the natural resistance to life-style change that we all must face if we are to stop it in it's tracks.
Next will follow a discussion of the bad science presented in the programme point by point,
followed by some information about the backgrounds of contributors and the film maker Martin Durkin.
Where required I have used numbered superscripts for referenced material, the links to which may be found at the end of the page.
Point 1) Man-made contributions to CO2 are insignificant compared to natural causes...
TGGWS argued that the human contribution to the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere is totally dwarfed by that
coming from such sources as the ocean, volcanic activity, animals, decaying vegetation, bacteria etc, and
therefore cannot be responsible for the measured rise in global temperature in recent times.
Whilst it is true that the static amount of CO2 is much larger than the man-made contribution,
it is the recent change in CO2 concentration that is the problem.
The atmospheric concentration of CO2 now by far exceeds the natural range over the last 650,000 years
(as determined by ice-core studies). The concentration of CO2 has risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 380 ppm in
the last 150 years1.
It can be clearly seen in the graph in this link
that the concentration of CO2 has not risen above 300 ppm for at least 400,000 years.
Now is a good time to point out the first example of deception in TGGWS, as it has relevance to the way that the programme was trying to put over this issue about human CO2 insignificance.
One of those interviewed was Carl Wunsch, a Professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT. The views of Prof. Wunsch were completely and cynically misrepresented in the programme. Here is an extract from a statement made by Prof. Wunsch:
"In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the
fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to
absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean
could be dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its
placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide
exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be
very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was
making---which is that global warming is both real and threatening.
"
The full text of Prof. Wunsch's statement can be found here, and my personal view is that both Durkin and C4
should publicly apologise to Prof. Wunsch (and the rest of us!) in a statement to be shown repeatedly at prime viewing time.
Point 2) The world cooled from (about) the 1940's to 1980's so warming can't be due to CO2...
TGGWS argued that the global surface temperature cooled from around the mid 1940's to the mid to late 1970's and
that because human CO2 emissions were growing rapidly during this time, CO2 could not be responsible for global warming.
Here we see a classic example of selective presentation of information - TGGWS have, quite blatantly, lied by omission here.
It is well known and universally accepted that aerosol usage over the period was the cause of that cooling -
and it beggers belief that the interviewees did not know this (my emphasis).
Usage of aerosols has reduced since that time and warming due to CO2 has again dominated (as it did before that period).
Dr William Connelley of the British Antartic Survey describes Durkin's discussion about this as "deeply deceptive".
To emphasise their point, the programme heavily relied on this graph:
However, take a look at the graph below that normally appears in peer-reviewed scientific papers:
(from Wikipedia here):
Not only does the period of cooling appear less obvious, but it is clear that the data on Durkin's graph has also been falsified.
Durkin has, of course, been taken to task over this2. Mr Durkin has admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. "There was a fluff there," he said, and added
"The original NASA data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find," Bless him!
Point 3) The Sun is causing the recent warming...
The evidence is clear, the Sun is not responsible for the recent (last 3 decades of) warming.
Despite it being (possibly) responsible for events such as the Little Ice Age, Medieval Warming Period,
and closely correlating with temperature before the human influence took over.
I don't know how to say this more strongly, notice I said that "The evidence is clear..." this is to emphasise that we have
to use evidence in science to form the best opinions we can.
This evidence I speak of is overwhelming on this point and the measured data shows that the change in the 'radiative forcing'
component due to solar warming since 1750 is +0.12 Wm-2 (watts per sq meter) which is much smaller that the radiative forcing contibutions from man made sources1.
To put it another way, today's best science tells us that the Sun is responsible for about 15% of the external forcing of our climate, whilst CO2 and other greenhouse gases are responsible for about 85% of the heating.
Again TGGWS is guilty of presenting information in a false manner. Take a look at the following graph that was shown on the programme.
This time the graph is purporting to show a correlation of Solar Activity and global temperature.
The first thing to notice is the source of the data - Svensmark and Christensen. The blue line is the temperature and the red line is meant to
be the Solar variation, but it isn't - it is an index of Solar cycle length. Notice how the red line stops at 1980. Why not use the most up to date data? It has, after all, been published. The answer
of course is that it doesn't fit into the story that TGGWS is preaching.
Let's dig a little further. There is an analysis of the Svensmark and Christensen data in an article
by Damon and Laut. Here is a paragraph from the article - I'll let you read the
rest for yourselves here
"
In 1991, Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen
published an article in Science claiming a “strikingly
good agreement” between solar cycle
lengths (that is, the fluctuating lengths of the
cycles undergone by the number of sunspots)
and northern hemisphere land temperatures
over the period 1860–1990. The article attracted
worldwide attention and is still frequently
referred to in the scientific literature; it still plays
an important role in the public debate on the
possible causes of global climate change. These
results were later extended and updated by the
same authors in 1995 and 2000, respectively.
However,close analysis of the central graphs
in all of these articles reveals questionable
handling of the underlying physical data.
"
So, as the Damon and Laut article explains, the data was badly handled, more than once, but these errors have often been presented ever since.
The real situation is shown in the graph below - see the difference? The current warming event departs entirely from the lines due to the Solar variations.
Apart from all this, the most up-to-date work on Satellite measurement of radiation from the Sun by Frohlich at the Davos Solar Observatory shows that there has been no increase in irradiance (brightness) of the Sun since 1976.
There is no other way to say this, but the programme is just plain wrong on this.
So to summarise this point - the evidence is saying that we have around 0.6 degrees C of warming over the last 3 decades yet we do not have a any evidence of a change
in the influence of the Sun that would cause that. Again one has to question why the so-called "experts" did not know this, and the only
answer I can think of is that they do know it, but have another agenda that prevents them from revealing it.
Point 4) The known lag of about 800 years of CO2 behind temperature in past history challenges the theory of CO2 causing warming...
I got the feeling that this was one of their killer points. Antartic ice core studies show that rises in levels of
CO2 have lagged about 800 years behind temperature rises at specific times in the geological past.
Durkin argues that this "proves" that CO2 cannot be responsible for global warming.
This is such an easy effect to fully explain, in fact it is so well understood and simple that it just re-enforces
the fact that this programme clearly has a hidden agenda, and was deliberately misleading. The explanation for point 4 goes like this...
The periods of warming in question all occur at the ends of the ice ages that have been occuring every 100,000 years or so,
and TGGWS failed to mention this!
To understand what is happening here we have to first know that the ice ages are cyclical due to the fact
that the Earth's orbit is slightly eliptical (as are all the planetary orbits) and also because the
Earth wobbles slightly on it's axis.
Together these effects produce a 21,000-ish and a 100,000-ish year cooling/warming cycle known as
Milankovitch cycles.
The warming period in the cycle, just after the cold part, takes about 5000 years and the lag is only the first 800 years of that.
The CO2 and other greenhouse gases take a bit of time to be released from the oceans as they warm,
but when the levels get up enough they take over the warming role again. The best explanation3 we have for the 800 year lag is that this is
the amount of time it takes for the deep oceans to be 'flushed' of the CO2 that they stored up during the ice age.
Point 5) Climate models are too complex and uncertain to provide useful projections of climate change.
In the programme, this was illustrated by a statement made by Professor Joseph Smagorinsky, a pioneer in climate modelling.
Perhaps TGGWS has a real point here, after all Joseph Smagorinsky is one of the NOAA's Top Ten History Makers which you can
read about here.
However, like just about everything else in the programme, the reality of the situation is different. What was not made clear is that Prof. Smagorinsky's
comments were aimed at the earlier models in the 1970's and 80's. Modern models are so much better that they virtually bear no comparison
at all. There are over 30 major modelling groups currently in the world, and their results are under constant comparison and
careful scrutiny.
It might seem ridiculous to rely on any kind of model when the average weather forecast is often hopelessly wide of the mark! However
long-term global modelling is much more reliable than relatively short-term regional modelling and forecasting.
Modern climate models include interactive clouds, complex coupling of the circulation of atmosphere and oceans,
aerosols, the carbon cycle and other detailed chemistry - a far cry from the simpler models that Joseph Smagorinsky was refering to.
Obviously, climate modelling is a hugely complex subject. I will leave the reader with a good starting point for more
research with this link to Wikipedia.
Point 6) Volcanoes emit more CO2 than man...
Simply untrue! Volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes of CO2 into the
atmosphere every year whereas emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning,
cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year. By my reckoning volcanoes emit
about 100 times less CO2 than produced by the activities of man. For more details see here.
More about Martin Durkin and his "experts"...
Martin Durkin has a track record of deception, and has been caught at it before. I find it extraordinary that C4
continue to show this man's "work". In 1997, C4 was forced to issue a public apology over some previously aired
programmes directed by Durkin. The series called "Against Nature" was found by the Independent Television Commission
to have "distorted by selective editing" the views of the interviewees and "misled" them
about the "content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.". Well he's at it again as
the statement of Professor Carl Wunsch shows. (see section on Point 1 above.)
The backgrounds of Durkin's "experts" also require further scrutiny. I'll let you decide for yourselves in
this interesting web page, and also in some of the Further Reading links below.
Further Reading: (click them to read.)
Martin Durkin: Swindler Extraordinaire
Response from The Royal Society
Pure Propaganda - the Great Global Warming Swindle
Channel 4's Climate Swindle - The Distortions Continue
Channel 4 Now Ashamed of its Experts
The Indepenent - The real global warming swindle
Channel 4’s Problem with Science
Response from Campaign against Climate Change
Emails from Durkin to show what a pleasant chap he is!
Critique by John Houghton, President, John Ray Initiative
References: (click them to read.)
1 - IPCC WGI Fourth Assessment Report
2 - The Independent - 25th March 2007
3 - Real Climate website
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