Political Football

There are two sides to the Global Warming debate; and that should not be denied. Let’s debate with facts not the emotion and hysteria that has settled in Algore’s camp.

The issues outlined in this documentary is that Global Warming is:

1) A multi-billion dollar worldwide industry

2) Created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists

3) Supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding

4) Propped up by complicit politicians and the media

The documentary said that CO2 has no proven link to global temperatures and that solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit.

This documentary tracks the global warming theory back to the Thatcher Administration in the 80’s UK – when the oil crisis was at its height and coal workers were on strike in the UK. The “left” was demoralized by the fall of communism and needed a new guise to promote their anti-capitalist campaign and THIS attracted media attention.

After Reagan left office, funding for Global warming jumped from about 170 million in several years to over 2 billion dollars. The documentary says it’s taken a political, not scientific track since then.

The Co-Founder of Greenpeace (Patrick Moore) said, Greenpeace morphed into something unrecognizable to him – click here to visit the new organization he founded. Moore says the final straw for him was when Greenpeace campaigned to ban chlorine worldwide.

I pointed out that chlorine was the main element used in our medicine and adding it to drinking water was the biggest advance in public health in human history, but my argument fell on deaf ears. Greenpeace considered a global chlorine ban was a good campaign for them.

Moore left the group he co-founded in 1986.

The Scientists interviewed for this documentary all believe that man’s responsibility for the slight warming (of 0.6C) over the past century is much less than the “consensus” view – and ridicule the more alarmist predictions of future “man-made” climate change.

Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was very upset and said ”consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science”. He also says that the UN wasn’t going to remove his name as he requested until he threatened legal action. ”that’s how they make it seem that all the top scientists agreed. It’s not true.”

Frederick Seitz, also noted that 15 key statements were struck from the IPCC report. One of the removed statements were:

None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.

In a letter to the Wall Street Journal Seitz said:

This report is not what it appears to be – it is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists on the title page.

…

I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

read the full article and WSJ reply here.

One of the claims made in the IPCC report was that mosquitoes that carry malaria do not survive in weather colder than 16-18c. But Reiter says malaria is spread by the same mosquitoes that exist in colder climates. He documented a malaria epidemic in northern Russia that infected millions and killed 600,000 people which refuted the idea the previous claim.

The head of the International Arctic Research Center, Syun-Ichi Akasofu, described how the Arctic Ice has always been expanding and contracting. He says because there are now satellites that record it, the events seem to be news. “The press come here all the time and ask us: will you say something about the Greenhouse disaster? And I say: there is none.”

A parallel theme of this documentary outlines the psychology of scientific work that frequently drives biased conclusions.

You really need to watch this for yourself.

Keep saying to yourself, if there’s something that doesn’t make sense – follow the money.

Finally I am posting one overview of the documentary from a skeptic’s view point here. And there is some detailed deconstruction of the piece if you take links inside that page.

All good stuff – don’t stop the debate!

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