Great Global Warming Swindle--An Update

Since first posting this wonderfully controversial video, YouTube has been busily downloading the video to curious students and websurfers around the world.

The documentary has sent scientific authorities and activists into attack mode. Sir John Houghton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, insists that global warming is a "weapon of mass destruction." The Independent, a notorious megaphone for environmental activism, launched an "investigation" into the program and found it "riddled with distortions and errors."

Yet the counter-charges mostly evade the issues raised by Durkin's film: that humans produce miniscule amounts of carbon emissions; that carbon samples from polar ice sheets contradict global warming predictions; and that solar activity corresponds closely to temperature change. Moreover, some of the solutions--insisting on solar energy for developing nations, switching to low-wattage light bulbs--appear ludicrous. Program viewers have noticed: They're blogging feverishly about the film, downloading it from YouTube (over 249,000 hits), and lashing out at slanted media coverage.

....The Great Global Warming Swindle makes at least one incontestable charge: A "discourse of catastrophe" has infected the scientific community's approach to global climate change and is shaping the budget priorities of government. In this, the issue has taken on a quasi-religious character, with devotees on a quest for radical lifestyle alternatives to avert an apocalyptic future.

Source

I have noted with interest that some bloggers who had previously been rather intolerantly apocalyptic in their belief in CAGW, have begun to have second thoughts after watching the video, and presumably giving it some thought.


In a sense, Global Warming (CAGW) is the perfect religion, for atheist and believer alike. It helps if you have an apocalyptic streak, and a weakness for sensationalist and alarmist news stories. It also helps if you trust "authority" a good deal more than you should, or if you have a difficult time sorting out complex topics for yourself.

In other words, CAGW is a religion custom made for the psychologically neotenous products of modern school systems. Politically correct to a fault, they will believe what they are told they should believe--because to do anything else would require taking responsibility. We cannot have that. That might threaten the orthodoxy.
;-)