The Great Global Warming Swindle Swindle Confirmed
stick this in your pipe and smoke it | 23.07.2008 21:33 | Climate Camp 2008 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Other Press | World
We already knew this but... media regulators today confirmed that the controversial Great Global Warming Swindle 'documentary' commissioned by Channel 4 film was a pile of misrepresentation and misleading crap. The long-awaited judgement from Ofcom said that Channel 4 had not fulfilled it's responsibilities and obligations in airing the documentary which claimed that global warming is not a result of human activities.
The Great Global Warming Swindle has been treated by climate change deniers as a handy stick to beat down any argument, as if somehow the fact the Channel 4 choose to air the documentary proved that climate change is all a hoax. However, todays Ofcom report confirms that what many of those who had been interviewed for the show had said at the time, they were unfairly treated and what they said was shown out of context.
Former UK chief scientific adviser Sir David King had been misquoted and had not been given a chance to put his case, the regulator said.
The ruling also found in favour of Carl Wunsch, an oceanographer who said he had been invited to take part in a programme that would "discuss in a balanced way the complicated elements of understanding of climate change", but was horrified at the resulting "out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance".
"I think this is a vindication of the credibility and standing of the IPCC and the manner in which we function, and clearly brings out the distortion in whatever Channel 4 was trying to project," said Rajendra Pachauri, the organisation's chairman.
Channel 4 will now have to broadcast an outline of the Ofcom ruling against them but that's all, there are no further sanctions. Sir John Houghton, former head of the Met Office and chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the Ofcom ruling wasn't a damning as it should have been.
He said, "It's very disappointing that Ofcom hasn't come up with a stronger statement about being misled, I know hundreds of people, literally hundreds, who were misled by it - they saw it, it was a well-produced programme and they imagined it had some truth behind it, so they were misled and it seems Ofcom didn't care about that."
Bob Ward, of the Royal Society, said "The ruling noted that Channel 4 had admitted errors in the graphs and data used in the programme, yet decided that this did not cause harm or offence to the audience."
The Ofcom definition of a misleading programme requires not just that the viewer it misled but also caused harm or offence in the process. Apparently making people feel that climate change wasn't caused by human activities did not result in harm or offence.
Former UK chief scientific adviser Sir David King had been misquoted and had not been given a chance to put his case, the regulator said.
The ruling also found in favour of Carl Wunsch, an oceanographer who said he had been invited to take part in a programme that would "discuss in a balanced way the complicated elements of understanding of climate change", but was horrified at the resulting "out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance".
"I think this is a vindication of the credibility and standing of the IPCC and the manner in which we function, and clearly brings out the distortion in whatever Channel 4 was trying to project," said Rajendra Pachauri, the organisation's chairman.
Channel 4 will now have to broadcast an outline of the Ofcom ruling against them but that's all, there are no further sanctions. Sir John Houghton, former head of the Met Office and chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the Ofcom ruling wasn't a damning as it should have been.
He said, "It's very disappointing that Ofcom hasn't come up with a stronger statement about being misled, I know hundreds of people, literally hundreds, who were misled by it - they saw it, it was a well-produced programme and they imagined it had some truth behind it, so they were misled and it seems Ofcom didn't care about that."
Bob Ward, of the Royal Society, said "The ruling noted that Channel 4 had admitted errors in the graphs and data used in the programme, yet decided that this did not cause harm or offence to the audience."
The Ofcom definition of a misleading programme requires not just that the viewer it misled but also caused harm or offence in the process. Apparently making people feel that climate change wasn't caused by human activities did not result in harm or offence.
stick this in your pipe and smoke it
Comments
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Didn't cause offence?
23.07.2008 22:12
I was offended.
Not only by the fact that they misrepresented (and therefore slandered) legitimate scientists, but by the fact that they thought I was stupid enough to buy into their bullshit.
I take that as a personal insult.
MonkeyBot 5000
Why 'climate swindle' film is dangerous, despite ruling
24.07.2008 08:47
Documentary makers here have no obligation to be accurate, though factual programmes should present a wide range of views.
That is the implication of a series of rulings by Ofcom, the regulatory body for responsible for upholding broadcast standards in the UK, on complaints made about a British TV documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle.
Channel 4, the television company that commissioned and broadcast the documentary, first shown on 8 March last year, subsequently sold the show to 21 countries and released it on DVD. Numerous clips have been viewed on video-sharing site YouTube.
According to the Ofcom ruling, while all programmes dealing with important issues should be impartial, only news programmes have to be presented with "due accuracy". It doesn't matter if other programmes are misleading as long as they don't cause "harm or offence", and the regulator's interpretation of harm is so narrow that it effectively gives broadcasters a green light to mislead the public.
The "documentary" in question attacked the idea that global warming is caused by human activity.
To achieve this, writer and director Martin Durkin didn't look at the many genuine questions and uncertainties relating to climate change. Instead, he assembled a one-sided package of misrepresentations and fabrications based mainly on inaccurate newspaper reports, opinion pieces and old propaganda disseminated by the oil lobby and its stooges.
Blatant errors
For instance, parts of some of the graphs were actually made up, as the programme makers effectively admitted when they corrected the most blatant errors for later broadcasts.
For me and my colleagues, this shameful piece of television was the final straw that persuaded us to do a special setting out the science behind the many climate myths and misconceptions.
We were not the only ones outraged. Durkin's documentary also prompted many complaints to Ofcom. Dave Rado, a concerned layman, worked with scientists to produce one detailed complaint claiming 137 breaches of the UK's broadcasting regulations. Those involved stress that they are not trying to stifle free speech, but rather to prevent the media from practicing "systematic deception".
Now, more than a year after the broadcast, Ofcom has finally gotten around to ruling on these complaints (pdf). It has upheld some of the claimed breaches.
Upheld complaints
The programme misrepresented the views of David King, then the chief scientific advisor to the UK government, and gave him no opportunity to respond, Ofcom has decided. The programme criticised King for comments he did not make.
Ofcom also partly upheld similar complaints by oceanographer Carl Wunsch and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Channel 4 will have to broadcast summaries of Ofcom's ruling in each of the three cases.
So much for fairness. What about the general issue of factual accuracy? According to Ofcom's broadcasting code: "Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the public".
The code goes on to say that "due impartiality must be preserved on ... major matters relating to current public policy" and "in dealing with matters, an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight".
Ofcom has ruled that the final part of the programme was in breach of the code relating to impartiality and presenting a wide range of views.
The decision is fairly meaningless, however, as it has not imposed any sanction. Channel 4 will not have to broadcast anything relating to this ruling.
Factual failings
What seems extraordinary, though, is that Ofcom has decided Durkin's programme was not in breach of the code when it comes to factual accuracy. So apparently:
• It's OK to fabricate graphics.
• It's OK to state that volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans when in fact humans emit far more.
• It's OK to present scientists as experts in fields they in fact know little about.
• It's OK to present disputed claims as if they were well-established and accepted scientific facts.
• It's OK to claim: "There is no evidence at all from Earth's long climate history that carbon dioxide has ever determined global temperatures", when there is overwhelming evidence going back many decades that CO2 does play a role.
• It's OK to deliberately confuse long-term changes in sea ice cover with the seasonal coming and going of ice.
• It's OK to state that Margaret Thatcher made a speech to scientists at the Royal Society saying: "There's money on the table for you to prove this stuff" (meaning global warming) when she did not say any such thing. The extraordinary idea being that climate change was an issue cooked up by climate scientists in order to get funding.
• It's OK to state that, "The common belief that carbon dioxide is driving climate change is at odds with much of the available scientific data: data from weather balloons and satellites, from ice core surveys, and from the historical temperature records" when this is clearly untrue.
• It's OK to claim that an individual called Piers Corbyn produces more accurate weather forecasts than the UK's Met Office when there is no evidence of this at all.
The list could go on and on, but you get the picture. I can't think of any supposedly factual programme on British TV that was less accurate than Durkin's polemic. For Ofcom to rule that it was not factually misleading is extraordinary and sets a disastrous precedent for programmes relating to controversial scientific issues.
'Harm and offence'
The reasoning behind this decision, according to the judgement, is that for non-news programmes the rule on factual accuracy applies only to "content which materially misleads the audience so as to cause harm and offence". It goes on to say that only "actual harm" rather than "potential harm" matters.
In other words, discouraging action to avoid future catastrophes does not count as harm.
On this basis, Ofcom decided that all the falsehoods in the programme relating to the causes of climate change could simply be ignored. The programme will not cause harm by affecting people's behaviour, the judgement claims, because most viewers know the views expressed are not the scientific consensus.
Well, yes, most viewers might know what the consensus is, but an awful lot of them do not accept it. What's more, most viewers would not have been aware how many of the statements in the programme were false.
Poor record
By Ofcom's logic, a programme that presented the long-discredited myths about AIDS not being caused by HIV as being true would not count as causing harm either. Indeed, astonishingly, the ruling makes exactly this comparison.
As for the factual inaccuracies not causing offence, well, I get hopping mad when I see a pack of lies presented as the truth. Does that kind of offence not count? Clearly not.
The other thing I find extraordinary about this case is that Channel 4 is a publicly owned company. Despite its public remit, it has a record of broadcasting similar nonsense.
What's more, with its advertising revenues falling, it is currently campaigning to get its hands on part of the BBC's licence fees. What a horrifying prospect.
In my opinion, if Channel 4 carries on producing programmes like The Great Global Warming Swindle, the sooner it goes bust the better off Britain and the world will be.
Michael Le Page
Homepage: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn14379&print=true
So they did what they always do but did it again anyway (suprised?)
24.07.2008 10:34
Two good examples would be most war-porn and the pro-vivisection propaganda (such as monkey rats & me). It gets pulled, they apologise, but the damage is already done. Will they bring out another documentary to represent it in the light they should of?
Not at all, that's the idea. Welcome to videoworld of youtube, etc, that will continue showing the now considered "rare" and "banned" "truth" about global warming, only by C4!
Think about it. After you've aired some crap, all you have to do is apologise and in doing so you re-popularise the entire fairy tale - great!
However. Words mean nothing, direct action is everything and the states getting desperate.
eco-veganism is winning
Homepage: http://directaction.info
What about pro-global warming
24.07.2008 13:55
Do your comments mean that pro-global warming should be subject to similar criticism?
For instance, it is debatable that a majority of climate scientists support human-made global warming.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/08/29/less-half-published-scientists-endorse-global-warming-theory
Less Than Half of Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory
By Noel Sheppard
August 29, 2007 - 14:01 ET
...Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."...
Simon
The Scientific Concensus
24.07.2008 17:54
Here is a repost from 'Science' world-leading scientific journal, from 2004 - the evidence has only got stronger since:
Science 3 December 2004:
BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER:
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes*
Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.
The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].
IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].
Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).
The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).
The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.
This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.
The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.
Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.
References and Notes
A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1.
S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2 (1), 3 (2003).
See www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm.
J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).
American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003).
American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003).
See www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.
The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put "climate change" in their key words, the paper was not about climate change.
This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, "Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong," presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions.
10.1126/science.1103618
An different Simon
the other Simon
25.07.2008 06:39
Finally, it's worth noting that the temperature rise has been stalled for some time. But the rise in atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise. As has the rise of statism and the 'greening' of politicians. For them man-made global warming has been very profitable.
Progressive Contrarian
Homepage: http://progcontra.blogspot.com
Facts and global warming
25.07.2008 08:30
FACT - most media debate about human-made global warming concerns two positions, one says it is worsse than the other.
FACT - the media predominantly attacks global warming sceptics.
FACT - most people who believe in human-made global warming are clueless about some of the basic evidence that should form the basis of their belief despite the amount of media coverage of the issue: i. what has been the temperature rise since the industrial revolution? - most people are clueless?; ii. what has been the increase in CO2 since the industrial revolution? - most people are clueless; iii. what proportion of gas in the atmosphere is made up of CO2? - most people are clueless.
FACT - IPCC summarised its scientific papers in line with pre-conceived political positions, and they have said so.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/130207Warming.htm
MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING IS POLITICS NOT SCIENCE
John Bender
Etherzone
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
On Friday, February 2, 2007 the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a document titled: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers. This is a political document. It is not the supposedly scientific document which is titled: IPCC Working Group I Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.
The “scientific” document is still being edited and will not be issued for several months. Yet the buggy whip media is using the political document to gin up hysteria among the gullible masses.
None of the fear mongers in the buggy whip press are bothering to mention the fact that the political document says right in the beginning that the “scientific” document is being edited to conform to the already released summary. That’s right. The U.N. politicians and bureaucrats wrote and released a summary of a report that isn’t written yet and is being edited to conform to their political summary.
The political summary itself says: “CHANGES (OTHER THAN GRAMMATICAL OR MINOR EDITORIAL CHANGES) MADE AFTER ACCEPTANCE BY THE WORKING GROUP OR THE PANEL SHALL BE THOSE NECESSARY TO ENSURE CONSISTENCY WITH THE SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS OR THE OVERVIEW CHAPTER.” There is no outcry about this among the fear mongers. Contrast the total lack of reportage on this with the huge outcry in the buggy whip press when some language (no data) was allegedly altered in some US government climate reports.
NOR ARE THE PURVEYORS OF PANIC GIVING MUCH NOTICE TO THE SCIENTISTS LIKE DR. CHRIS LANDSEA WHO IN HIS OWN WORDS, RESIGNED FROM THE IPCC BECAUSE:
“I PERSONALLY CANNOT IN GOOD FAITH CONTINUE TO CONTRIBUTE TO A PROCESS THAT I VIEW AS BOTH BEING MOTIVATED BY PRE-CONCEIVED AGENDAS AND BEING SCIENTIFICALLY UNSOUND.”
That’s right. One of their own scientists who worked on the project for years wrote for it previously and was asked to write part of this report quit because the product is driven by pre-conceived agendas and is scientifically unsound.
It’s not part of the politically correct agenda so the buggy whip media relays only the apocalyptic view touted by media darlings like Al Gore rather than give a balanced report including all sides of the debate.
Dr. Timothy Ball’s excellent debunking of the IOOP political statement, Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? was almost totally ignored by the environmentally correct old media. Dr. Ball’s excellent piece starts with his credentials: “Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian PhDs. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a PhD, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.”
Other prominent scientists ignored by the hysteria merchants include Edward Wegman. Dr. Wegman is a professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association. Dr. Wegman’s basic conclusion on the scientific basis for the hypothesis of man-made global warming boils down to; “junk in, junk out”.
Another prominent scientist ignored by the old media is Dr. Richard S.J. Tol who was an IPCC author, is Editor of “Energy Economics”, and board member of the Centre for Marine and Climate Research at Hamburg University. Dr. Tol believes global warming is real but believes it benefits mankind, especially in the short term.
Duncan Wingham, professor of climate physics at University College London and principal scientist of the European Space Agency's CryoSat Mission, which is designed to measure changes in the Earth's ice masses. Dr. Wigman’s findings show that the scientific evidence to date “is not favorable to the notion we are seeing the results of global warming.”
Dr. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center, believes that changes in the sun's magnetic field, is the reason for global warming, not anything man has done. Dr. Nigel Weiss, past president of the Royal Astronomical Society and a mathematical aerophysicist at the University of Cambridge, also believes the Sun, not man is responsible for changes in the Earth's climate. Adding weight to this view of global warming is the findings of Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the space research laboratory at Pulkovo Astronomical Observatoryin Russia, and others, that Mars is also undergoing global warming. Even Al Gore should know that Mars has no greenhouse conditions and there is no activity by Martians to blame the warming on. Dr. Abdussamatov believes this shows it is solar irradiance, not carbon dioxide, which accounts for the recent rise in temperature.
Nor has the rapidly disintegrating buggy whip media bothered to mention that the U.N. and Ted Turner’s $1 Billion gift to that organization fund the IPCC scientists. Yet, they went ballistic when it was reported that Exxon was offering small stipends to scientists who are not caught up in proving the preconceived agenda of the U.N. and the far left.
Of course, yellow journalism like that is the reason the buggy whip press and the old broadcast media are losing readership, and viewers. They’ve lost credibility with all but the most radical leftists and the Oprah watchers. Still, much of the new media has been slow in getting out the real facts. Giving the fear mongers a bigger edge in the debate than they deserve. One exception in broadcast media has been Rush Limbaugh. Mr. Limbaugh has done yeoman’s work exposing the junk science and the political nature of the hysteria.
None of this will matter to the radical left, the environmental wackos, or to the perpetually scared. The gullible masses who believed the junk science from the same sources now spewing tainted conclusions about global warming when they said the Earth was cooling.
Here are just a few quotes the press used to excite the gullible in the 1970’s:
The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)
I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)
In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)
Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)
This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976
There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)
This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976
If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)
Nor will it matter to the perpetually scared that many of the scientists contributing to the tainted reports are radical leftists. Many of them belong to the radical Union of Concerned Scientists, a far left-wing activist group. David Martosko, executive director of ActivistCash.com - a division of the Center for Consumer Freedom last month told Cybercast News Service the UCS would be "more aptly named the Union of Pro-Regulation, Anti-Business Scientists."
University of Virginia environmental scientist, Dr. Fred Singer, told Cybercast News Service that the union had "zero credibility as a scientific organization" and was more akin to "pressure groups like Greenpeace."
One example of the political agenda of the “scientists at the UCS is this quote from Helen Caldicott; “Free Enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process . . . Capitalism is destroying the earth.” -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists.
This is the same Helen Caldicott who in 1982 made the ridicules claim that the Hershey Foods Corporation was producing chocolate carrying strontium 90 because of the proximity of the Three Mile Island incident to Hershey's factory. Her assertion was easily debunked and discredited but the fear mongers in the old media never gave the debunking the same coverage they gave the unfounded assertion. One can still find the claim on some environmentalists’ web sites along with the silliness about man-made global warming.
There is plenty of evidence that man-made global warming is no more real than man-made global cooling was. The people who believe professional wrestling is real will dismiss that evidence preferring to believe the tainted junk science put out by the U.N. and the radical left.
The more thoughtful among us will consider the source of the hysterical claims along with their record and their radical agenda and not join the gullible in believing the sky is falling.
Simon
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