[ExI] "Up against the warming zealots"...hmmm

[Emlyn]

Is anyone else as confused about Global Warming as I am? I can't get a
clear idea of whether it is real or not, and if so, whether it is
caused by human CO2 emissions or not. It's clearly important to get
this right, because
- if it's not real, we shouldn't be doing all this carbon emission handwringing
- if it is real and human caused, lowering carbon emissions is a good idea
- if it is real and not human caused, we still have a very scary
period ahead in which we need to do something else entirely to cope
with future rising sea levels and temperature increases.

Emlyn

Fry - "It's a good thing global warming never happened"
Leela - "It did. But it's a good thing nuclear winter cancelled it out"

On 21/07/07, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
>
> <http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22105154-30417,00.html>
>
> Martin Durkin says his British documentary rejecting the idea of
> human-caused global warming has survived last week's roasting by the
> ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]| July 21, 2007
>
> WHEN I agreed to make The Great Global Warming Swindle, I was warned
> a middle-class fatwa would be placed on my head.
>
> So I wasn't shocked that the film was attacked on the same night it
> was broadcast on ABC television last week, although I was impressed
> at the vehemence of the attack. I was more surprised, and delighted,
> by the response of the Australian public.
>
> The ABC studio assault, led by Tony Jones, was so vitriolic it
> appears to have backfired. We have been inundated with messages of
> support, and the ABC, I am told, has been flooded with complaints. I
> have been trying to understand why.
>
> First, the ferocity of the attack, I think, revealed the intolerance
> and defensiveness of the global warming camp. Why were Jones and co
> expending such energy and resources attacking one documentary? We are
> told the global warming theory is robust. They say you'd have to be
> off your chump to disagree. We have been assured for years, in
> countless news broadcasts and column inches, that it's definitely
> true. So why bother to stamp so aggressively on the one foolish
> documentary-maker - who clearly must be as mad as a snake - who steps
> out of line?
>
> I think viewers may also have wondered (reasonably) why the theory of
> global warming has not been subjected to this barrage of critical
> scrutiny by the media. After all, it's the theory of global warming,
> not my foolish little film, that is turning public and corporate
> policy on its head.
>
> The apparent unwillingness of Jones and others at the ABC to give
> airtime to a counterargument, the tactics used to minimise the
> ostensible damage done by the film, the evident animosity towards
> those who questioned global warming: all of this served to give
> viewers a glimpse of what it was like for scientists who dared to
> disagree with the hallowed doctrine.
>
> Why are the global warmers so zealous? After a year of arguing with
> people about this, I am convinced that it's because global warming is
> first and foremost a political theory. It is an expression of a whole
> middle-class political world view. This view is summed up in the
> oft-repeated phrase "we consume too much". I have also come to the
> conclusion that this is code for "they consume too much". People who
> believe it tend also to think that exotic foreign places are being
> ruined because vulgar oiks can afford to go there in significant
> numbers, they hate plastic toys from factories and prefer wooden ones
> from craftsmen, and so on.
>
> All this backward-looking bigotry has found perfect expression in the
> idea of man-made climate disaster. It has cohered a bunch of
> disparate reactionary prejudices (anti-car, anti-supermarkets,
> anti-globalisation) into a single unquestionable truth and cause. So
> when you have a dig at global warming, you commit a grievous breach
> of social etiquette. Among the chattering classes you're a leper.
>
> But why are the supporters of global warming so defensive? After all,
> the middle classes are usually confident, bordering on smug.
>
> As I found when I examined the basic data, they have plenty to be
> defensive about. Billions of dollars of public money have been thrown
> at global warming, yet the hypothesis is crumbling around their ears.
>
> To the utter dismay of the global warming lobby, the world does not
> appear to be getting warmer. According to their own figures (from the
> UN-linked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the temperature
> has been static or slightly declining since 1998. The satellite data
> confirms this. This is clearly awkward. The least one should expect
> of global warming is that the Earth should be getting warmer.
>
> Then there's the ice-core data, the jewel in the crown of global
> warming theory. It shows there's a connection between carbon dioxide
> and temperature: see Al Gore's movie. But what Gore forgets to
> mention is that the connection is the wrong way around; temperature
> leads, CO2 follows.
>
> Then there's the precious "hockey stick". This was the famous graph
> that purported to show global temperature flat-lining for 1000 years,
> then rising during the 19th and 20th centuries. It magicked away the
> Medieval warm period and made the recent warming look alarming,
> instead of just part of the general toing and froing of the Earth's climate.
>
> But then researchers took the computer program that produced the
> hockey stick graph and fed it random data. Bingo, out popped hockey
> stick shapes every time. (See the report by Edward Wegman of George
> Mason University in Virginia and others.)
>
> In a humiliating climb down, the IPCC has had to drop the hockey
> stick from its reports, though it can still be seen in Gore's movie.
>
> And finally, there are those pesky satellites. If greenhouse gases
> were the cause of warming, then the rate of warming should have been
> greater, higher up in the Earth's atmosphere (the bit known as the
> troposphere). But all the satellite and balloon data says the exact
> opposite. In other words, the best observational data we have flatly
> contradicts the whole bally idea of man-made climate change.
>
> They concede that CO2 cannot have caused the warming at the beginning
> of the 20th century, which was greater and steeper than the recent
> warming. They can't explain the cooling from 1940 to the mid-'70s.
> What are they left with? Some mild warming in the '80s and '90s that
> does not appear to have been caused by greenhouse gases.
>
> The whole damned theory is in tatters. No wonder they're defensive.
>
> The man-made global warming parade, on one level, has been a
> phenomenal success. There isn't a political party or important public
> body or large corporation that doesn't feel compelled to pay lip
> service. There are scientists and journalists (a surprising number)
> who have built careers championing the cause. There's more money
> going into global warming research than there is chasing a cure for
> cancer. Many important people and institutions have staked their
> reputations on it. There's a lot riding on this theory. And it has
> bugger-all to do with sea levels. That is why the warmers greeted my
> film with red glowing eyes.
>
> Last week on the ABC they closed ranks. They were not interested in a
> genuine debate. They wanted to shut it down. And thousands of
> wonderful, sane, bolshie Australian viewers saw right through it.
>
> God bless Australia. The DVD will be out soon.
>
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