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the great abc swindle .....

 

the great abc swindle .....

from Crikey …..

Global warming, big oil and silicone breasts: the links

Ben Oquist, political consultant and former Greens staffer, writes:

‘The ABC's screening and treatment of The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

Since when has ANY documentary on the ABC received such an extensive promotion and thoroughgoing coverage? A special Tony Jones interview – recorded in London; a live studio panel discussion; endless advertising; news radio etc etc.

All this would be funny except that the effect of Swindle is serious. Deadly so. The aim of the program and its lackeys is to create doubt, any doubt, about climate change.

Because even a little amount of doubt helps persuade the public and politicians that the really substantial action needed to address climate change should be put off until we are more certain about the science.

This is the strategy so helpfully exposed in 2003 through a famous memo from US communications guru and advisor to US Republicans, Frank Luntz, who wrote:

The scientific debate remains open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate...

"Doubt is our product," stated the legendary tobacco industry memo from 1969. So it is again today with the climate skeptic industry. And it is an industry – an industry funded clique of self-promoters.

Those interviewed in Swindle are portrayed as "leading climate scientists" when in fact they are far from it. They are part of the skeptic network working with organisations funded by the fossil fuel industry.

This best way to demonstrate this is to use the superb Exxon Secrets website. Here you can put in an individual’s name and see which think tanks they are connected to and which of those receive funding from Exxon.

Incredibly eight people who appear in Swindle are connected to 26 separate think tanks, policy centers and organisations that receive funding from Exxon. You can see in this map (to access it, click launch and then skip intro) the people who appear in Swindle and the grey lines show which organisations they are connected to. Those institutions with the dollar signs are those that have received money from Exxon.

Unfortunately the right wing climate change deniers within the ABC and the nation’s opinion pages have successfully convinced some that the debate about Swindle is a debate about free speech and the suppression of dissent and ideas. But the real issues not being discussed are the links of those in this film to the fossil fuel industry. To talk of such things is to risk being labelled "extreme" and a "conspiracy theorist".

But perhaps the best guide is filmmaker Martin Durkin's previous film efforts. In 1999, Channel 4 in the UK broadcast in its Equinox series (which claimed to be a series of science documentaries) a film produced by Durkin called “Storm in a D Cup”, which argued that silicone breast implants were beneficial to a woman’s health.

The Swindle documentary does contain a great story. But it is a story that hasn’t yet been told.’

Even the title...

New research challenges global warming theories

Posted Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:00pm AEST
Updated Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:23pm AEST


New research from scientists in Britain and Switzerland has again challenged the view of other researchers who say global warming is not man-made.

Some sceptics have argued that climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon caused by changes in the activities of the sun.

But a report in a Royal Society journal says that data on sun spot activity and cosmic rays shows the sun's impact on the climate since the mid-1980s has been a cooling one.

The lead author of the report, Dr Mike Lockwood, says instead of temperatures dropping, results show the opposite effect.

"Temperatures just keep marching on upwards," he said.

"And so we know that the solar effect over recent years has been completely negligible.

"We haven't seen any response in the temperatures that mean that the earth has cooled in response to a decrease in solar activity."

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Gus: even the title of this article on the ABC website is misleading about its contents... It should say as in the body of the text that it debunks the "Swindle concept" and reinforce the global warming theory...

Thus let's reiterate as strongly as one can shout from rooftops that GLOBAL WARMING  is real and created by human activity — mainly reintroducing Carbon into the atmosphere in two notable form: CO2 and methane. From growing cattle to flying jets, from using cars to turning on a switch, from cutting trees to having populations beyond natural sustainability, we are adding two of the most greenhouse gases in quantities never seen before on this planet since times when humans were barely a concept in the wombs of rodents.

Sure, the planet won't die from it — but it will suffer massively not-unlike the times when up to 90 per cent of species were wiped out in the various eons of its evolution. These time were traumatic enough in their effects but their time-scale was somewhat spread out — up to a million years in the case of the extinction of ALL dinosaur species... (although related to dinosaurs, birds are a very distinct offshoot).

At the moment humanity is looking at a 100 years possible, 200 max down the barrel of massive change.

The list of our fiddles is long but in short, EVERY YEAR, we are reinstating into the atmosphere, the equivalent energies stored (and modified) of between 25,000 and 250,000 years of "solar photosynthesis" and subsequent bio-changes associated with the making of coal and oil. The greenhouse effect resulting from this large release is an element of the natural climatic balance that settled nearly 450 million years ago, after plants started to colonise the surfaces above the sea. But "climatic balance" has ups and downs... some severe. The severity of the present up will be known in full within 15 years — but as we drive our car along too fast, can we wait another two second to know the extend of the damage before we hit the brakes? No. We're still going to hit the wall but the sooner we slow down, the less damage we're likely to have to pay for and the less injuries we're likely to experience.

The people who are presenting the "swindle theory" should be ridicule, tarred and feathered out of town to never come back. Their arguments have nothing scientific to them. Those financing these charlatans should be ashamed... and, actually, they should be scared: Climate change is not a dream.