“The Great Global Warming Swindle”

Main Points Addressed

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” film addresses many points rejecting anthropogenic driven climate change. The first argument stated by the film is that Humans cannot be responsible for the rise of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere because the affect that humans have on rising CO₂ levels is negligible in comparison to the total rise of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere. Other sources that produce the majority of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere are dying vegetation, oceans, volcanoes and animal waste. According to the film the increase of Temperature recorded in the last few decades is mainly due to a higher solar activity and has nothing to do with the increase of green house gases emissions, Therefore Climate change is not controllable by Humans and only driven by the sun. Finally a major influence in the ever-growing Anthropogenic climate campaign is the political and economic influence it holds. Many new laws for raising taxes and implementing new regulations, allegedly, are aimed to reduce greenhouse gases. However, a strong argument can be made that its main goal is to exploit another area of revenue for the government and certain research organizations. Issue” is often regarded as a “hybrid organization, mixing policy and science.”

Comparing the Film to Our Research

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has supportive evidence that in fact humans do produce a negligible amount of CO₂ in comparison to other CO₂ producers such as the oceans,  dying vegetation and animal waste, which create the majority of CO₂ emissions. However, the EPA believes that “Human activities are altering the carbon cycle–both by adding more CO₂ to the atmosphere and by influencing the ability of natural sinks, like forests, to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.”(EPA web site, July 2012) Meaning that human production of CO₂ gas emissions may be negligible in comparison to the total production of CO₂ gases but the net output of CO₂ gases (net output = production – consumption) by humans is significant in comparison to other sources, which the movie failed to present.

Some of our research has shown that there are also others not shown in the movie are wary of IPCC’s political influences on the science. As Judith Curry and Reiner Grundmann note in their works, the IPCC’s current process produced unintended consequences such as distorting the science. Furthermore, the very organization (IPCC) founded to provide scientific basis for climate change policy is arguably “introducing biases into the science” and the scientific and policy debates are being hyper-politicized (Judith Curry, 2007) an Americanclimatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Reiner Grundmann, professor of Science and Technology at the University of Nottingham, further enhances this notion, stating that the IPCC, who seems to “present itself as the leading authoritative body pronouncing scientific expertise on the matter” (Reiner Grundmann, 2007).

While scientists presented in the movie argue that global warming is correlated with solar activity and that humans cannot control such an occurrence, they fail to omit the trend observed in the last 25-30 years. Many scientists of high credibility and multiple publications over the globe have found that solar activity is decreasing and the sun is cooling down (Laut, 2003; Bard, 2006). Yet global temperatures continue to rise at unprecedented levels. While the scientists agree that the sun does affect global temperature, solar activity is accountable to only 30%(Georgieva, 2006; Vitousrek, 1994). The majority of the remainder is caused by anthropogenic sources such as excessive greenhouse gas emission. Therefore, the scientists in the movie do not show the whole picture, and only consider aspects of the problem that focuses on their point of view.

Justifying Our Evidence

In order to verify the accuracy of our sources we took several steps. The first step we took was to search for reputable Internet sites made by reliable sources such as universities, government organizations etc. Our next step was to verify the credibility of the authors. To do this we would perform background checks on the authors to be sure that they were reliable, and qualified. It was important to check the affiliations, credentials, and contact information provided for the authors to be sure that there was no bias, and to be sure that the author was truly reliable. This was the process we used for each of our sources, and once the credibility of the author and the site was confirmed we were confident that our sources were accurate.

Links/Sources of Research

Curry, J. (2012 йил 28-10). Climate Etc. Retrieved 2013 йил 26-01 from http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/28/climate-change-no-consensus-on-consensus/

EPA. (2012 йил 14-June). EPA. Retrieved 2013 йил 28-January from http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html

Erlynkin, A. D. (2009). Solar activity and the mean global temperature. Environmental Research Letters , 4.

Frank, E. B. (2006 йил 06-May). Climate change and solar variability: What’s new under the sun? Earth and Planetary Science Letters , 248.

Georgia, K. (2006). Once again about global warming and solar activity. Solar Variability and Earth’s Climate , 969-972.

Grundmann, R. (2007 йил 3-06). academia.edu. Retrieved 2013 йил 28-01 from http://www.academia.edu/160178/Climate_Change_and_Knowledge_Politics/

Houghton, J. (2005). Global Warming. Reports on Progress in Physics , 68 (6), 1343-1403.

Krivova, N. A. (2003). Solar variability and global warming: A statistical comparison since 1980. Solar variability and Earth’s Climate , 361-364.

Laut, P. (2003). Solar activity and terrestrial climate: An analysis of some purported correlations. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics , 801-812.

Lean, J. (1998). Climate forcing by changing solar radiation. Journal of Climate , 3069-3094.

Solanki, S. (2003). Can solar variability explain global warming since 1970? Journal of Geographycal Research-Space Physics , 1200.

Vitousrek, P. (1994). Beyond global warming-ecology and global change. Ecology , 1861-1876.