The makers of Channel 4 documentary the Great Global Warming Swindle, which handed a comfort blanket to all those people who wanted to kid themselves that Global Warming wasn’t really happening, are about to cash in on their propaganda prog by bringing out their programme – presumably including the graphs that had to be corrected after it was first broadcast – on DVD.
So I can’t think of a better time to flag up this document, produced by my former colleagues at the UK’s national science academy The Royal Society. It paints an accurate picture of the scientific consensus on climate change, and provides a pretty thorough rebuttal to the programme.



5 Comments
Thanks Rob. I have no wish or even need for a climate-change-denial-comfort-blanket, but I still feel that the Channel 4 documentary made some important points, especially regarding the hopeless ideological muddle that so characterises the modern environmental movement. In particular, their implacable opposition to nuclear power, on what are essentially emotional grounds, runs the risk of kiboshing what is potentially the one source of energy that may yet lead us out of the abyss. I am dismayed that Lib Dem policy on nuclear energy appears to be playing along to this popular tune, instead of showing the leadership that we so desperately need. For those who remain to be convinced of the case for nuclear energy, I would strongly recommend James Lovelock’s recent book The Revenge of Gaia. This from page 117:
An outstanding advantage of nuclear over fossil-fuel energy is how easy it is to deal with the waste it produces. Burning fossil fuels produces 27,000 million tons of carbon dioxide yearly, enough to make, if solidified, a mountain nearly one mile high and with a base twelve miles in circumference. The same quantity of energy produced from nuclear-fission reactions would generate two million times less waste, and it would occupy a sixteen-metre cube. The carbon-dioxide waste is invisible but so deadly that if its emissions go unchecked it will kill nearly everyone. The nuclear waste buried in pits at the production sites is no threat to Gaia and dangerous only to those foolish enough to expose themselves to its radiation.
I was fascinated to read on this website that apparently the temperature of the sun is responsible for why summers are warmer than winters.
A good article. Reasoned and based on facts.
Why can we not do that sort of thing more rather than applaud the scare mongering of Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’?
We need reasoned debate about the consequences of climate change and our responses and the effects of our actions on people’s lives and other aspects of our environment.
We need to realise that environmentalism is not a coherent whole – actions to prevent one environmental problem can cause an increase in another. Some actions may have a long run effect which is detremental to people which will then cause them to neglect their environment.
The Liberal Democrats have the makings of a decent environmental policy, we just need to make sure it is fully evidence based and consistent with liberalism and not just following received wisdom and fad and being dictatorial and authoritarian.
“about to cash in on their propaganda”
A bit harsh, Rob. I think all production companies sell their programmes on DVD now, don’t they?
Your moral outrage at the programmes content is understandable, but it is overdone when aimed at the sale of the DVD.
You might as well suggtest that all books casting doubt on global warming should be distributed for free.
A great deal of the environmental movement is emotional rather than scientific. Opposition to nuclear is one example. Support for windpower is another. Recycling another.
Remind me what the LibDem positions are on these issues..?