I am trying to campare both films, 'the great global warming swindle' and the 'inconvienient truth'

Answer 1

Pretty easy. The Swindle is basically a propaganda film containing a ton of misinformation and lies.

An Inconvenient Truth has a few minor errors, but the basic science is correct.

See the links below for further details.

Answer 2

The UK department of education has been taken to the high court by a father claiming that Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and sentimental mush.

The presiding Justice Burton will make a final ruling within a week but has already stated that the film does promote partisan political views. This is resulting in the government education system having to amend their Guidence Notes to make clear that:

1.) The film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument.

2.) If teachers present the film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1966 and guilty of political indoctrination.

3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

The eleven inaccuracies are:

1. The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

2. The film suggests evidence from ice cores covering the last 650,000 years proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases. The court found that the film was misleading due to the fact that the actual evidence from those ice cores demonstrate that the CO2 rises actually followed temperature increases by 800 to 2000 years and so could not have been causative.

3. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.

4. The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.

5. The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr. Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

6. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

7. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

8. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.

9. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.

10. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

11. The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government is unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

THE NUMBER ONE GREENHOUSE GAS IS WATER VAPOUR AND ACCOUNTS FOR 95% OF THE EFFECT. A marginal increase in CO2 makes no overall difference

Both the amount of global warming and the degree to which man's activity is responsible has been grossly exaggerated.

AWG sceptics have been subjected to threats and abuse by political activists both in and out of the media, a tactic used when there is no valid counter argument.

Answer 3

Swindle is utter nonsense. The British press took it apart.

"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

Explanations of why the science is wrong.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/

History of the director.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_(television_director)

Gore's movie may be a little over dramatic, but it has the basic science right. This movie does not.

Channel 4 itself undercuts the movie in a funny way. If you go to their website on the movie you find links to real global warming information. They also have a way to "Ask the Expert" about global warming. The questions go to a respected mainstream scientist who supports (mostly) human responsibility for global warming.

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

Gore's movie has some details wrong, and is overdramatic. But it has all the basics right.

There've been some better movies on PBS and some cable channels.

Rick - All scientists know that water is the number one greenhouse gas. But it can't cause global warming. Excess water in the atmosphere falls out in hours. Excess CO2 is there for years. More here:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11652

Answer 4

I have zero time for Al Gore. I think he is just a glory hunter using this issue as a convenient bandwagon. The IPCC condemned him as scare mongering and gross distortions of the facts.

My view is this. If this was in fact such a serious issue the governments of the world would commit to Nuclear power. But since they are all messing around with wind farms and recycling then I don't think there can be too much in it.

Answer 5

At the risk of being accused of being impartial...

SWINDLE: Complete garbage produced by a highly controversial TV journalist who has already acquired a string of convictions for his programmes. The mainstream networks have shunned him, he has no scientific background, repeatedly makes one unfounded claim after another on all manner of subjects (global warming being just one of them) and is a self confessed revolutionary communist who seeks to stir up controversy. His name is Martin Durkin, the above and much more will be confirmed should you wish to Google him. Here's Mr Durkin being interviewed about his movie by Australia's ABC's Tony Jones - http://www.desmogblog.com/video-abc-australias-tony-jones-dissects-debunks-martin-durkin

TRUTH: Whilst not perfect it is largely based upon scientific principles. Gore himself isn't a scientist so he has to rely on the work of others, he is crusading for steps to be taken to combat climate change so his move is somewhat one sided. A mistake he made was to not run the script by any climate scientists, consequently there are some errors.

OVERALL: Swindle scores a big fat 0 out of 10 whilst Truth scores 7.

Don't be surprised if someone points out that 'a judge ruled truth to be wrong' or something to that effect. The reality: a defendant brough a case in the UK High Courts of Justice seeking to have the movie banned from being shown in UK schools because it was wrong. The defendant lost the case, the Judge threw ruled that the movie was based upon accurate science but in order to prevent political indoctrination of school-children (an offence in the UK) ruled that when the movie was shown in schools it had to be accompanied by a leaflet outlining the arguments raised against the movie.

- - - - - - - - - -

TO PUNKER: You state that the mainstream networks have shunned Durkin because they are biased. No, they have shunned him because he has a long record of producing distorted propoganda which has landed the broadcasters themselves in trouble and earned Durkin several convictions.

He was fortunate that Channel 4 in the UK agreed to air the programme, the last time they broadcast one of his programmes they were ordered to make repeated public apologies and issue statements that the programme was wrong (Durkin, on that occasion, was arguing that silicone breast implants were beneficial and quite safe).

As I'm already commenting to you I'll just add that the source you linked to (cei.org) is funded by ExxonMobil, American Petroleum Institute, Cigna Corporation and Dow Chemicals amongst others with Exxon alone having contributed more than $2 million in recent years. The author of the article (Marlo Lewis) has a PhD in Government from Harvard and a BA in Politics from Claremont McKenna College. Clearly an intelligent and qualified person but hardly a scientist.

Answer 6

"Pretty easy. [An Inconvenient Truth] is basically a propaganda film containing a ton of misinformation and lies." What dana1981 said, except about AIT.
If you want to know the truth, go to this link:

http://www.cei.org/pdf/ait/app.pdf

It exposes ALL of Al Gore's "misinformation and lies."

Here's what I think:

AIT:
-Al Gore is using false arguments to prove his point, backed, not by facts, but by emotional scenes (not even all true) about his life, and what he's gone through to push this issue forward. He's such a *sniffsniff* TRAGIC HERO!!!! Ha...ha....SYKE!!
-He only looks at one side of the argument. He doesn't tell us what the skeptics are saying, and then refute it with facts.
-Al Gore is a POLITICIAN! He is not qualified to tell us about global warming. Not to mention that he's a hypocrite (living in a house that uses as much energy as a small town, and flies around in private jets while telling us that we have to limit our energy use).

GGWS:
-Throughout this movie, we hear what the alarmists are saying, and then why we shouldn't believe it.
-ALL of their arguments are based on real scientific data, and they clearly explain it all instead of breezing over the most important points.
-All of the people speaking in the movie are EXPERT SCIENTISTS. Clearly they are much more qualified to be speaking to us on this matter than Al Gore the lawyer.

(Trevor: The mainstream networks have shunned him because they are completely biased, and only ever show the politically correct view of anything. Have you thought that maybe his programs are said to be distorted BECAUSE the people who say so are biased, and support things only when they are politically correct? The GGWS has received critical opinions, both good and bad, as has AIT.
Yes, I am aware of Marlo Lewis' credentials. May I make it clear that Mr. Lewis is not using his own work, but using well-tested and proven studes to refute Gore's arguments.
And as for your argument about ExxonMobile funding CEI, I would just like to add that Gore is funded much more highly by environmental groups, the governemt, the media, and the list goes on.)

In closing, here's a quote from Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University, Australia:
"Gore's circumstantial argument's are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

Answer 7

Good to see someone willing to look at both sides!

Artic melting? How about antarctic growing?
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050516/full/news050516-10.html
"A satellite survey shows that between 1992 and 2003, the East Antarctic ice sheet gained about 45 billion tonnes of ice"

Polar Bears dieing? How about bear populations growing?
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2007/03/09/more-on-the-polar-bear-overload/
"the Wall Street Journal did some checking. The newspaper found in January that there are 20,000-25,000 polar bears out there — 4 to 5 times as many as the 5,000 polar bears in the 1960s." +
Now there are so many they are selling hunting licenses for Polar Bears - check it out on the internet.

Funny that the Alarmists can only name call and don't even seem to know about the NUMBER 1 "Greenhouse Gas"

Answer 8

Well you can talk about how they are both propaganda and the truth lies somewhere in between.