The Great Global Warming Swindle Swindle

The climate crisis deniers are abuzz about a TV show broadcast in England and available on the Internet, called The Great Global Warming Swindle, which has instantly turned out to be itself a swindle.

As the British newspaper the Independent reports: But now the programme - and the channel - is facing a serious challenge to its own credibility after one of the most distinguished scientists that it featured said his views had been "grossly distorted" by the film, and made it clear that he believed human pollution did warm the climate.

Professor Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said he had been "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" on its content. He added that he is considering making a formal complaint.

Professor Wunsch said: "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled."

The "programme" is further tainted by the fact that charges of distortion similar to this were made in the past against its producer, and the network that commissioned and aired it, called Channel 4, has been forced to apologize for distortions in other recent programs on environmental matters.

People who are making major amounts of money for climate crisis denying (principally from Exxon-Mobil, which continues to break its own records for the largest profits and as the largest company in the history of the planet), or who use it to get attention or political power--these are pretty simple if obviously corrupt motives. They do great harm when they persuade ordinary people that there is enough doubt among scientists to make action unnecessary or unwise, when the science shows that every year we delay, we make the problem so much worse until very soon, it could be literally out of control.

And I guess I can understand people who use ideology to hide from what is not merely inconvenient truth, but very painful facts. Facts that require pervasive change.

But even more sadly, they are intent on ignoring evidence, which at this point is so scientifically overwhelming on the basic points that some scientists say that only things like gravity demonstrate a stronger scientific consensus. One of our local bloggers who seems to think the climate crisis is a slightly silly political conspiracy has admitted that he hasn't even seen An Inconvenient Truth. That's apparently how he knows it's wrong. Not only is it a political conspiracy of some kind, it also involves thousands of climate scientists over half a century. Climate crisis skeptics are one things, but those who refuse to engage the evidence join the climate crisis deniers.

While climate scientists endorse the basic evidence and conclusions in An Inconvenient Truth, the so-called science in The Great Global Warming Swindle has already been debunked on line, and all the major arguments also have been carefully corrected on various other sites. But some people will not be swayed by evidence, even in the unlikely event that they read it, or read the accounts of climate crisis effects already underway.

Of course, an unusually warm day in March, as today was here, is not evidence, nor is snowfall in Washington, DC the other day. But there is plenty of real evidence of real climate disruptions over time, in places like Alaska where entire villages have had to relocate. But U.S. Fish & Game officials aren't supposed to talk about that, nor are they supposed to discuss the plight of polar bears or any of the other evidence the current Administration wants to keep quiet.

I understand the general suspicion of science as well as of politicians, and I believe in being skeptical. But this is denial, which is not often affected by evidence. Obviously, saying that the scientific consensus for civilization's causing a climate crisis is as strong as the consensus for Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is not going to be convincing to people who don't believe Darwin either.

But besides religious fundamentalists, the people who by now will not accept the accumulation of evidence that surely should be enough to motivate urgent action, may be beyond my abilities to reach. Which is one reason that on this site I don't normally engage the latest denying. As this latest attempt in England shows, only distorting the evidence provides counter-argument on the basics. In the end, perhaps only the constructive way that the actual problems are approached will persuade them. If their opposition is powerful enough, it could be fatal to our already questionable common future, and that's a heavy responsibility. But our responsibility may be to go forward without them.