To coincide with the ABC’s broadcast of the controversial UK documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” on Thursday 12 July at 8.30pm, the Australian Science Media Centre is providing this reaction from Australian climate scientists.
Reaction from Australian Scientists
Climate scientists from the National Climate Centre (Australian Bureau of Meteorology) have prepared a critique on the documentary, just published in the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS).
The group summarise the documentary as follows:
" The Great Global Warming Swindle does not represent the current state of knowledge in climate science. Scepticism in science is a healthy thing, and the presence of orthodox scientific scepticism in climate change is ubiquitous. Many of the hypotheses presented in the Great Global Warming Swindle have been considered and rejected by due scientific process. This documentary is far from an objective, critical examination of climate science. Instead the Great Global Warming Swindle goes to great lengths to present outdated, incorrect or ambiguous data in such a way as to grossly distort the true understanding of climate change science, and to support a set of extremely controversial views."
Reaction from Australian Scientists
Dr Andrew Ash, Acting-Director of the CSIRO Climate Change Adaptation Flagship
"There is now almost no doubt that human-induced climate change is happening.
Our planet's climate is complex so it is not surprising that there are still uncertainties, but that should not be an excuse for denying the impacts that humans and our greenhouse gas emissions are having on the earth's climate and environment.
CSIRO is at the forefront of producing useful climate projections. We are in the business of informing government, industries and communities about the threat of climate change and its impacts. We are also developing practical and effective adaptation options so that society can better cope with the inevitability of climate change.'
There is overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming, that it is very likely that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is due to human induced increases in greenhouse gases (IPCC). What's more, we can say with confidence that this warming will accelerate if emissions are allowed to continue unabated."
Snow Barlow is Professor of Horticulture and Viticulture and Head of the School of Agriculture and Food Systems at the University of Melbourne
"Climate change has now reached a level of scientific and political acceptance that demands a greater understanding of this complex scientific phenomena by the voting public prior to undertaking significant and meaningful action at the national and global scale.This global action will inevitably mean changes to our lifestyles which will not necessarily be disadvantageous. The key to public acceptance of this action is a balanced public debate of the scientific knowns and unknowns and an understanding of the costs of inaction as well as action, particularly for our grandchildren. It is critical that this debate is based on science and economics rather than evangelism and political correctness.The popular press have a particular responsibility to promote this debate based on knowledge-based discussion rather than sensationalism
The Great Global Climate Swindle has missed a great opportunity to lead this important balanced debate by opting for 20th century sensationalism for a 21st century problem.The producer of this program has blatantly adopted a position and assembled footage to support his position. Recent data and advances in climate science meticulously gathered over the past 40 years have been completely ignored in favour of the correlative science that we began with in the 1960s and 1970s.The enormous increases computing power in the past 30 years has allowed scientists to investigate simultaneously all factors that may contribute to climate change rather than one at a time as done in this program.This is also reflected in the emeritus status of many, but not all, the scientists and commentators featured in the program .
Climate change as the first truly global environmental challenge to our society deserves a more balanced and up-to-date debate than projected in this program. Its producer has succumbed to the very problem he was seeking to address , a balanced debate , by being very selective in his evidence and failing to consider recent peer reviewed science in critical areas.As such the program has become a political intrument rather than a science based environmental argument."
Professor Nathan Bindoff is a physical oceanographer and Director of the Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing (TPAC). Partners include the University of Tasmania, CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC. He was a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC AR4 Working Group 1 chapter on oceanic climate change and sea level observations (Chapter 5).
"I have watched this video twice. The casual watcher would think the storyline was plausible.
On the second time, I realised time series of past temperatures were quoted out of context, were ancient science, not current science, and could well have been bogus. I am appalled. All of the climate science portrayed in the program is out of context, incorrect, or neglects other processes that are well known. The cooling from the 1940s to 1970s is an example of this deceptive discussion. It is well known that this cooling is driven mostly by aerosols (ie pollution) in the atmosphere. Nothing contradictory about this cooling when all sources of radiation changes are considered.
The claims about IPCC and the IPCC process were extraordinary. Some of the scientists were or have been part of the previous and current assessments from IPCC, they know how the process works, they know how transparent it is, they have participated in the review processs. The IPCC is an extraordinarily open and transparent review process with a range of checks and balances to ensure a balanced assessment of the science. No single document published in the scientific literature receives this level of scrutiny and comment by scientists, government and the public. The reviewers comments and the authors responses are publicly available. There are literally thousands of comments on each chapter of these assessments. Each comment has a formal response. It is difficult to imagine how the IPCC could be any more comprehensive in its engagement with the scientific community.
The last part of the video discussed poverty in Africa. The Kyoto Protocol specifically omitted under-developed and developing nations from having to meet a carbon emissions target, so that these nations have not been penalised.
Relevant science, with profound impacts on every level of society, with important economic and social consequences, should of course attract strong funding to ensure that sound decisions about the future can be made. This is why climate change is an Australian priority area for research."
Professor Barry Brook is Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle (GGWS) is a deeply deceptive and propagandist portrayal of the science of global warming. But this is not really surprising, when you consider that the producer, Martin Durkin, has been previously charged by the UK Independent Television Commission for using selective editing to misrepresent and distort the views of interviewees in his earlier anti-environmentalist documentary, 'Against Nature'. Indeed, the running time of the 75 minute original GGWS, screened in the UK in March this year, has since been pruned by Durkin to 52 minutes, for the ABC. Deletions include the blatant out-of-context quotes of Carl Wunsch (he threatened legal action after the UK screening), a removal of a slew of false statements (such as that volcanoes release far more CO2 than humans, when volcanoes actually release about 100 times less), and a number of distorted graphics, such as the 20th century temperature rise (alas, many others remain).
Amongst the select cadre of contrarian 'experts' Durkin has rallied to his cause, there includes Tim Ball and Patrick Michaels (who also happen to deny that CFCs cause damage to the ozone layer), and Fred Singer and Richard Lindzen (who, in earlier incarnations, had been active denialists of the link between passive smoking and lung cancer, despite neither having any medical expertise). Investigative journalism has revealed that many of the interviewees have received 'research funds' in various forms from the fossil fuel industry.
The GGWS programme is riddled with errors and distortions, including howlers from 'climate scientist' Tim Ball who says the atmospheric content of CO2 is 0.054% (it is 0.038% - someone who purports to understand the atmosphere should get this basic fact right!) and Fred Singer mis-attributing a statement made by James Lovelock to the UK Chief Scientist, Sir David King. Durkin never states that the mythical chart, which apparently shows a medieval warm period and Holocene climatic optimum that were warmer than the present day, actually comes from doctored diagrams produced by a German school teacher, E.G. Beck.
Nor is it mentioned that solar activity has declined over the last 30 years - at the same time as the major spike in global temperature. This list goes on (and on), and has been detailed by numerous scientific and media outlets. Essentially all the 'contradictory science' presented, such as that the upper atmosphere is not warming, has been debunked by later research.
The IPCC lead author, Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, has previously rebuked the arguments of political scientist Bjorn Lomborg, contained in his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, for 'selective inattention to inconvenient literature and overemphasis of work that supports his lopsided views'. This is indeed an apt description of the GGWS. It is remarkable that for each apparent 'inconsistency' presented in the programme, the alternative (and evidence-based) scientific explanation is never offered. For instance, the cooling from the mid-1940s to the late 1970s is attributable to global dimming (primarily sulphur pollution from post-war industry, prior to implementation of clean air acts). The 800-year lag between the beginnings of temperature increase and CO2 rise in the polar ice record is because the initial warming that provoked the end of the ice ages was caused by changes in the Earth's alignment and orbit around the sun; not anthropogenic CO2.
But it was an eventual increase in CO2, subsequently released by the oceans and biosphere after they had begun to warm, that caused much more substantial global heating, and an eventual sea level rise of 120 metres.
The 'expert views' presented in the GGWS represent the opinion of far fewer than 1% of scientists engaged worldwide into research on the causes and consequences of global warming. It is therefore staggering that such minority views are given such air time by the ABC, and moreover, that they are presented in current promotions as providing 'the answer to the lies'. One must wonder what's next, a documentary on the reality of a 6000-year-old flat Earth, orbited by the sun and other planets, and resting on the shell of a giant turtle?"
Professor Paul Cally is a solar physicist at Monash University's Centre for Stellar and Planetary Astrophysics in Melbourne.
"The results described in the Proceedings of the Royal Society paper by Lockwood and Fröhlich are very much in accord with many other recent studies. It is very clear that variations in solar activity over periods of decades and beyond have influenced climate in the past, although the exact mechanisms are still unclear. There is both a direct effect through variations in solar irradiance (brightness), and an effect through changes in the flux of cosmic rays hitting the Earth, which in turn is affected by solar activity.
Indeed, the ramp up of solar activity through the first half of the 20th century probably did contribute to global warming at that stage. However, it is equally clear that it could not explain it all, especially in the last two or three decades. Perhaps 30% of 20th Century global warming is likely to be solar.
As solar physicists, my colleagues and I would love to claim global warming for the Sun. Imagine how much it would increase our funding! However, it is clear that the data does not support the hypothesis that the Sun is the dominant cause of the observed temperature increases."
Dr Marc Duldig is a senior principal research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division (Atmospheric Science Research - Ice, Ocean, Atmosphere and Climate Program). He is an astrophysicist with expertise in solar physics, cosmic rays and space weather.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle program has caused much controversy and this is largely due to its selective use of data and only using the parts of those data that suit its arguments.
There are some serious questions about the veracity of some of the data presented in the original UK Channel 4 program, particularly the date scale quoted on the 'World Temp - 120 Years' graph where the last 20 years were clearly not correct or matched to the NASA source. A similar concern exists for the 'Temp & Solar Activity 400 Years' graph. Between about 1690 and 1750 almost no sunspots were visible indicating very very low solar activity. The program uses this dip to explain the little ice age (which was not a global phenomenon but only present in Europe) yet the dip to the lowest possible levels did not appear on the graph. If it was there, as it should have been, then the global temperature would be very different from the solar activity of that period. Many of the graphs were changed or deleted for the current release of the program.
The use of selective data periods is most clear when considering solar activity and global temperature. The claimed match between the sun's activity and global temperature breaks down entirely after 1985 as is demonstrated most rigorously in a paper by Lockwood and Fröhlich to be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on Wednesday this week (11 July at 9am AEST). These authors show that there is no relationship between five different indicators of the activity of the sun with the global temperature over the last 30 years. It is interesting that the swindle program chooses to ignore all data after 1980 in its presentation, precisely when their claims fail entirely."
Dr Paul Fraser is a Chief Research Scientist in the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research. He has been working on climate change and the role of greenhouse gases for over 30 years.
"It is prudent to constantly question and test the science of climate change. This is a major strength of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change process, which relies on robust scientific debate.
The best way to debate the science is through the peer-reviewed publication process. The so-called 'facts' [stated in the GGWS documentary] do not stand up to critical scientific evaluation, and their foundations cannot be found anywhere in the peer-reviewed scientific literature."
Professor Nick Harvey, is a coastal zone expert from the School of Social Sciences at the University of Adelaide and a Lead Author in Working Group 2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"The Channel 4 Great Global Warming Swindle documentary paints a sceptical view of climate change science using short grabs of selective material, often out of date and out of context. Two of the program’s sceptics professors Richard Lindzen and Patrick Michaels pushed similar storylines in another Channel 4 documentary The Greenhouse Conspiracy screened in Australia on SBS in 1991. Both programs criticise funding of climate change science but strangely neither program details their own source of funding.
The documentary notes that CO2 and temperature are linked over geological time with atmospheric CO2 rises following global temperature rises as the world emerges from a glacial cycle. The major global warming cycles are clearly related to the earth’s orbit and once the oceans begin to warm they release more CO2. What the program doesn’t explain is that in addition to this natural oceanic release of CO2, the post industrial human contribution to atmospheric CO2 has pushed the atmospheric concentration well beyond the limits of any natural changes shown in the geological record for the last 650,000 years.
On the issue of temperature, the program uses a 17 year old European climatic reconstruction to argue that the whole world was warmer in the medieval period. What the program doesn’t show are the up-to-date scientific temperature reconstructions for the whole globe revealing that recent decades are in fact much warmer than the medieval period. The program also fails to point out that it is only the models, which ‘include’ human influence factors in addition to natural factors that can explain the recent global pattern of temperature change.
It is interesting to note what is left out of the Great Global Warming Swindle such as a major section of the program screened in the UK using evidence from Professor Carl Wunsch. The section was removed after he publicly complained that he had been misrepresented. The issue of sea-level rise is also noticeably absent from the program even though the earlier Channel 4 program The Greenhouse Conspiracy suggested that there was no evidence for any global sea-level rise linked to global warming. Perhaps the recent satellite data on sea-level rise make it too difficult to mislead the viewing public on this issue?"
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, The University of Queensland and the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) and a Contributing Author to the IPCC AR4 Working Group 2 report (Chapter 11 - Australia & New Zealand).
"The act of presenting this documentary is hugely disappointing given the problems with its independence and factual basis. This is propaganda not a quality documentary. Where is the rational consideration of all the evidence? Where is the representation of the many responses that exist to the trite claims made in the documentary by the so-called ‘experts’? One wonders whether the ABC has now resorted to sensationalism in the pretence of airing the ‘other point of view’? If so, then perhaps the ABC should consider airing documentaries on UFO and Elvis sightings? They are just as credible and should assist with ratings in a similar way."
Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University and President of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
"The Channel 4 film is indeed a great global warming swindle. It purports to show scientific evidence casting doubt on the conclusion that most of the recent climate change is due to human burning of fossil fuels. In fact, most of the "science" is either wrong or selective, so the film does not pose any real question about even the cautious conservative conclusions of the IPCC. If it is shown without an appropriate public health warning, it could give the misleading impression that the science is still uncertain and delay even further the urgently-needed concerted response..”
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Dr Mike Raupach is a research scientist at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and is co-chair of the Global Carbon Project, an international program that studies the global carbon cycle.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle is sending a shiver of excitement through those for whom global warming is somewhere between a bad dream and a dangerous plot. Can we breathe a sigh of relief and forget climate change?
The major scientific claims in the Swindle are either wrong or are true statements so out of context as to create falsehoods.
Why, then, do a handful of scientists torture the evidence to claim that human activities do not induce climate change? The answer often quoted, that these scientists are in the pockets of oil companies, is probably inadequate (like the counterclaim that most climate scientists are in the pockets of neo-Marxists). A more fundamental reason may be philosophical: those who attack the links between CO2 and human-induced climate change believe that the planetary machinery is too vast and intrinsically variable to be thrown off course by mere humankind, and that the earth's environment is in no way threatened by human exploitation.
Sound science now shows that this view is dangerously misplaced. We have the power to alter the workings of the planet, and are already doing so through climate change. The leap we must make in just a few decades is to accept global stewardship of our shared environment. The position taken in the Swindle is a dangerous dead weight as we endeavour to face this entirely new and critical challenge.
Dr Penny Whetton, Leader of the Climate Impact and Risks Group, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
"Martin Durkin's documentary purports to show that climate change is neither unusual nor due to human activity. In making these claims, the film ignores the vast amount of evidence that supports human-caused climate change, and selects a few points which, with some careful spin, can be made to appear to support the film's case.
None of the arguments presented in the film are new, and none have passed scientific scrutiny when they were raised previously. As a result, the film is highly misleading."
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