Have you heard of the right-wing great global warming swindle documentary?

Question

Why did they ignore data that they didn't like?

READ THIS:

A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.

It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain's Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.

"All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that," he told the BBC News website.

"You can't just ignore bits of data that you don't like," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.stm

Answer 1

Sure. It was just a piece of sensationalism, they didn't objectively look at the data. This is not the only refutation of it.

The British press took it to pieces:

"A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

"Pure Propaganda"

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php

So did scientists:

http://www.durangobill.com/Swindle_Swindle.html
http://www.amos.org.au/BAMOS_GGWS_SUBMISSION_final.htm

So, why did Channel 4 broadcast it?

"The science might be bunkum, the research discredited. But all that counts for Channel 4 is generating controversy."

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2032572,00.html

EDIT - Tomcat. If you don't like the BBC article, here's the source paper:

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar
climate forcings and the global mean surface
air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A
doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf

Here's a good critique of Scafetta and West. As a guy who does numbers, you'll surely agree with this part:

"one should stay away from analyses based on the difference between two large but almost equal numbers, especially when their accuracy is not exceptional. And using differences of two large and similar figures in a denominator is asking for trouble."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/how-not-to-attribute-climate-change/

Answer 2

i'm an environmental scientist with a grasp's degree in physics. As is the case with virtually all scientists, I agree that the scientific data overwhelmingly shows that people are the prevalent clarification for the present international warming. The Swindle is little extra desirable than a propaganda action picture. I watched it, in spite of the undeniable fact that the 1st time i ought to purely abdomen a couple of minutes. the 1st actual argument made purely 30 seconds into the action picture is truthfully stupid. you already know that one the place it says traditionally CO2 lags in the back of temperature as a result CO2 would be unable to reason international warming. hi?! CO2 is a freaking greenhouse gas! have you ever heard of the greenhouse consequence?! of path CO2 could reason warming! If CO2 did no longer reason warming, Earth may well be a frozen ineffective block of dirt!! i grow to be actually yelling at my seen show unit whilst the action picture made this thoroughly absurd argument astounding off the bat. something of the arguments have been not extra advantageous. They used previous information which has considering been superceeded, they took interviews out of context, they reported information which has considering been corrected to coach the alternative consequence (Christy's ecosystem cooling data), etc. etc. I gave the action picture a gamble - I watched it. It took me some tries to get by using it, and it grow to be thoroughly unfavourable, so i wish you're happy.

Answer 3

Their was so much data omitted from the documentary and so many of the scientists in it have said they were misrepresented. Similarly all of their theories were based on absolutely false information, when they showed graphs they had no scales on some axis and the figures swirled around which was a bit confusing. I can see how people would believe it but it is almost like watching a spoof movie with some of the absolute crap they spoke.

Answer 4

I have not watched the swindle, but I have seen that BBC article plastered all over this forum, and it really is about the most pathetic example of temporal measurement of solar energy that I have seen. Surely you can come up with something better out there than a BBC article showing a neutron/hour graph compared against surface temperatures, as a measurement of solar energy.

http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2005GL025539.pdf

EDIT:

There is a response to the cosmic ray theory that the BBC article is referring to. I doubt you will find it on the BBC though. The theory has support among scientists and data that supports it as well, so the issue is not dead.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SvensmarkPaper.pdf

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Answer 5

Saying that the graphs 'diverged' is something of an understatement, the line showing temps shoots up like a space rocket and the line showing TSI drops like a lead balloon. They couldn't show this as it totally destroys their argument that global warming is caused by the Sun.

'Swindle' also doctored the same graphs, there are sections where they conveniently didn't have any data so they created their own. Strangely the invented data matched temps perfectly but when the 'missing' data was accurately included there was another opposing divergence.

You can watch the producer of 'Swindle' squirming when he's put on the spot over his movie - http://www.desmogblog.com/video-abc-australias-tony-jones-dissects-debunks-martin-durkin

Answer 6

Yeah, we've discussed the Swindle here a few times.

Most people in the Environment section realize it was a terribly inaccurate film. Usually when discussing it I go over to the Politics section, where many people still think it was accurate.

Here people will usually admit the Swindle was inaccurate, but claim Gore's film was also bad. In reality at least "An Inconvenient Truth" got the basic science right, though it contained a few minor errors.

The Swindle was blaitantly deceptive and wrong.

Answer 7

yes