The Great Global Warming Swindle

The Great Global Warming Swindle first broadcast in March 2007, is a science documentary film directed by Martin Durkin for the United Kingdom's Channel Four. This is not the first science documentary the filmmakers made. It says on their website "The thing they found most shocking when they started to make this one, was the weakness of the case for man made global warming, and the quantity and quality of the evidence which flatly contradicts it."

Summary

This science documentary challenges the Global Warming orthodoxy of 'consensus', used to discount further evidence. The major theme exposes scientists for their alarmist absurdity. The Sun and the reluctance of some climate scientists to consider its role. Earth’s temperature record and when to start the data collection. Ice-core data of CO² climate analysis. IPCC and consensus of world scientists.

The science

The way science functions in the real world is explained. The political bias of scientists, censorship within the scientific community, the failure of the peer review process and inflated conclusions from uncertain data. "The most highly qualified and respected scientists can be blind to obvious deficiencies in a theory, and will be dismissive of evidence when it undermines what they want to believe." Scientists are invoking the threat of climatic disaster to drive an anti-capitalist agenda.

Positive reception

Public service broadcaster Channel Four defended airing the film saying it was to show that the debate on climate change is not settled

The filmmakers have received thousands of emails from scientists and others expressing their support and encouragement. After the legal finding, the filmmakers were allowed to distribute their documentary by DVD.

Negative reception

Complaints came from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the former British government chief scientific adviser Sir David King, and MIT oceanographer Prof. Carl Wunsch. Also, Ofcom noted it received 265 complaints that the film had been factually misleading, one-sided, had omitted alternative views and broke Britain's broadcasting code.

Robert Watson, a former chairman of the IPCC was disappointed that the film had not been found to mislead viewers.

Filmmakers statements

“Everywhere you are told that man-made climate change is proved beyond doubt,” “But you are being told lies.” “This is a story of how a theory about climate turned into a political ideology ... it is the story of the distortion of a whole area of science.” “as the frenzy over man-made global warming grows shriller, many senior scientists say the actual scientific basis for the theory is crumbling.”

Issues surrounding the film

Britain’s independent media regulator, Ofcom has ruled that a documentary skeptical of global warming claims broke some broadcasting rules, but did not mislead or cause harm.