Truth and the Devil

There was a recent ‘documentary’ shown in the UK calling Global Warming a hoax. See the link for a few clips. I could barely get through the first one it was so sensational and filled with bullshit.

Global warming denial is beginning to be quite insulting. Questioning scientific conclusions among your colleagues through a process of peer-review is one thing, attempting to insinuate that the vast majority of scientists the entire world over are greedy, arrogant, lazy, incompetent fools simply trying to scare the population of the world, is another. Especially when the deniers/skeptics are saying these things by perpetuating lies and myths through the media, rather than through science. It’s quite despicable.

Real Climate covered the main points, and as you can see, most of what they say in the documentary is flat wrong.

Sorry the burst the bubble of conspiracy theorists, but these global-warming-denial claims are not suppressed, they actually discussed in scientific circles, and experimented upon (if they’re testable, of course). Scientists are definitely not in the habit of ignoring evidence when it doesn’t match their theories. The way science works is to change theories to match the facts, not the other way around (that’s how politics work). It’s not always a perfect method, of course. Scientists are only human, after all. But to actually insinuate that the majority of climate scientists in the world are ignoring evidence and suppressing dissenting views is tantamount to slander. On the contrary, it seems that many climate scientists have had their science supressed in some way by the government.

Fortunately, for anyone willing to put in a minimal amount of effort, you can do your own research and easily find rebuttals to these skeptical arguments. I’m not going to claim expertise in this area in the slightest, this is my understanding of current global climate change science. The ‘documentary’ claims:

Earth’s 4.5 billion year history is one long story of climate change. There were several periods in history, notably the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene Maximum, which were much warmer than today. In the 17th century, Europe experienced the Little Ice Age, where temperatures were so consistently chilly that ice skaters revelled on the completely frozen London Thames.

There is climate change in Earth’s history. I’ve never heard any single scientist argument with that. That is in no way the point. The point is that climate change, whether natural or human caused causes massive changes, often detrimental ones to life on the planet. Furthermore, the evidence seems to indicate that the warming we are experiencing now is unprecedented within the span of human history (at least). Besides, the Medieval Warming did not get as warm as the Earth is now, and was probably restricted to Europe alone.

Oh, and the ice is melting, the water level is rising.

Another claim:

From the 1940’s until the 1980’s, the Earth experienced a significant cooling period, despite the fact that industrial production and release of CO2 vastly accelerated during this time. This led to political and media scaremongering about global cooling, the threat that the earth was in the midst of a new ice age. The documentary featured telling clips from alarmist documentaries at the time that implored us to try and reverse the trend of worldwide temparature decrease or face meterological apocalypse.

There wasn’t a ’significant’ cooling period from the 40’s to the 70’s. There was a minimal one due to increasing human use of aerosol type devices starting in the 40s. Later regulations to prevent the destruction of the ozone layer removed the damaging aerosols from the atmosphere resulting in more warming. Indeed this is an example of how easy it is for human activity to affect global climate. Also, global cooling in the 70s was never a scientific consensus. Merely a hypothesis that was tested and found wanting.

Next claim:

Antarctic ice core samples show that the rise in carbon dioxide levels lags behind temperature rise by 800 years, therefore cannot be the cause of it. The documentary exposes how Al Gore, in his film Inconvenient Truth, deliberately reverses these figures to claim CO2 causes temperature change, when in fact the opposite is the case.

CO2 lag in temperature change is an interesting phenomenon, but one related to the feedback of increased temperatures being amplified by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

As far as the claim that volcanoes put exponentially more CO2 in the atmosphere than man, that basically seems to be a lie.

Next claim:

Sun spot and solar radiation activity almost exactly parralel temperature change on the Earth. “Solar activity very precisely matches the plot of temperature change over the last 100 years. It correlates well with the anomalous post-war temperature dip, when global carbon dioxide levels were rising.” The increase of cosmic rays produced by the Sun prevents the formation of clouds, which have a cooling effect on the planet, therefore the temperature rises.

The idea of solar radiation being the primary cause of global climate change of the past 100 years seems to be a fairly weakly unsupported claim. It’s possible that there might be a minimal effect from the sun regarding cloud-cover, but the effects of cloud formation in regards to global climate is still poorly understood.

Now, I’m not going to say I’m an expert on climate change in the slightest. I’ve merely shared some reliable resources I’ve found refuting the claims of those in the ‘documentary’. Since science is constantly changing do to the discovery of new evidence, and better experiments, it’s possible that some of this information might be outdated in the future. But for the past 30 years or so, scientific consensus on the human effects of global climate change has been growing dramatically. Believe it or not, this level of scientific consensus is rare, and should be noted.

So armed with this information, despite what the so-called ‘documentary’ would like you to believe, there is evidence for human-caused global warming. Very much so. Since we all can’t be scientists, we need to give at least some credence to what the experts in their fields are telling is. Completely ignoring them is the height of arrogance.

Update:
In the Green takes the film apart.
Also, for those convinced global warming is a conspiracy, I urge you to read this little piece by a climate scientist, who’s surprised he’s part of some cabal with Maragret Thatcher. Though, if you’re that fervent a believer in a conspiracy, I doubt any sort of evidence will sway your opinion.
Some excerpts below:

Cycling into work this morning, I had little idea that I was part of a global conspiracy, a cabal even. Especially one involving Mrs Thatcher. Colleagues did not mutter behind their hands when I walked into the office. There were no brown paper envelopes stuffed with cash on my desk. Yet, according to a Channel Four documentary last night called the Great Global Warming Swindle (reviewed here), I am heavily involved in such a plot. In fact I’m in it up to my neck.
…
It’s a new twist in an old story. I didn’t watch the programme, partly because Mrs Thatcher popped round to discuss the performance of our shares in nuclear energy companies (not good, since you ask), but mainly because I quite like my television and didn’t think it would work so well with a hurled plant pot nestling where the screen used to be. The pre-publicity for the show was enough: a familiar roll call of fringe commentators who mask their dislike for policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions as objections to the scientific basis for doing so.
…
Most obviously, a genuine story that manmade climate change is a hoax would be front page news. It would make my career and bring lucrative prizes for both me and the scientist who provided the evidence. News editors (the clue’s in the name) prefer fresh ideas and novel concepts. Climate change stories generally provide neither.

That global warming is a myth is a far sexier tale, which is why some journalists still cling to the dwindling number of “experts” who are willing to stand up in public and say so.
…
That’s not to say I don’t seek out dissent. Time and again I have looked at the reports, papers, books and pamphlets churned out by the thinktanks and lobby groups that try to knock the climate change consensus down. Time and again, they fail to stand up the mildest scrutiny.

Update:
Here’s some more links to problems with the documentary.
A response by one of the scientists featured in the film. He claims he was misrepresented and wants to clarify his views on Global Warming. Also, I must say that his part of the film came off exactly as he intended (at least to me). When I saw his part I noted that oceans releasing more CO₂ from warming was a bad thing and also helped refute the previous claim in the film of CO₂ following temperature increases due to a atmospheric feedback effect.
An ‘adjusted’ graph used in the documentary.
Another misleading graph used.
A link discussion problems with the cosmic ray theory of could cover
An article referencing the ‘problems’ with temperature rising in the troposphere at different rates than the surface temperature. Apparently it has a lot to do with miscalculated satellite data and inaccurate radiosonde temperature readings. When these problems were corrected the team behind them acknowledged the error, and admitted to a greater concern over global warming:

For what it’s worth, the UAH team has acknowledged the error. Spencer put up something of a concession of sorts at Tech Central Station last week . He’s not quite saying “we were wrong…” yet, but he’s clearly shifting from “it ain’t happening!…” to “maybe it won’t be so bad…” Ron Bailey of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (who edited the book Global Warming and other Eco-Myths, which included a piece by Christy himself) has also acknowledged the error in an editorial in Reason magazine . Until last week, he was one of the more visible and vociferous of global warming skeptic science commentators. Now, he says that “anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up. All data sets-satellite, surface, and balloon-have been pointing to rising global temperatures..” A very honorable and reasoned concession on his part.

The more I read about what climate scientists actually write, and browse through a scientific journal article and notice how carefully they craft their sentences, I get more frustrated at these ‘global warming is a hoax’ people.
A big problem with the issue seems to me a confusion between what the science says and what the media reports. When writing their papers scientists are usually rather cautious in their estimations for the future, especially when many variables are uncertain. The media, on the other hand, are those producing tv-movies about the coming end-of-the-world. These differences are important to note, and attempting to discredit scientists by putting the media’s words in their mouths is quite dishonest.