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Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

2. Complete Transcript and Rebuttal

[Narrator]	There have now been several major ice core surveys. Every one of them shows the same thing. The temperature rises or falls, and then after a few hundred years CO₂ follows.
[Dr Frederick Singer]	So obviously carbon dioxide is not the cause of that warming. In fact we can say that the warming produced the increase in carbon dioxide.
[Prof Ian Clark]	CO₂ clearly cannot be causing temperature changes – it’s a product of temperature – it’s following temperature changes.
[Dr Tim Ball]	The ice core record goes to the very heart of the problem we have here. They said: “if the CO₂ increases in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, the temperature will go up”. But the ice core record shows exactly the opposite; so the fundamental assumption, the most fundamental assumption of the whole theory of climate change due to humans is shown to be wrong.

[Comment 50: This accumulation of consecutive interviewee statements, taken together with statements by the narrator, amount to a highly misleading narrative coverage of the lag of historical CO₂ increases behind temperature increases.

The “CO₂ lags temperature” argument against anthropogenic global warming theory has been discussed in the literature and rebutted many times, for example see: http://tinyurl.com/2g4cq8 [UK Met Office], and http://tinyurl.com/27lfdu [RealClimate]. In order to demonstrate conclusively that the narration was apparently intentionally misleading, however, it is necessary to include a brief rebuttal here:

The temperature of the Earth has fluctuated naturally and cyclically over many millennia. There are a number of known causes of these fluctuations, including changes to the Earth’s orbit and solar activity.

During the glacial periods, cyclical changes in the earth’s orbit (the Milankovitch cycles, see http://tinyurl.com/293grf [NOAA]) triggered warming.

When the oceans warm, their capacity to absorb CO₂ is reduced. This leads to CO₂ being expelled from the oceans, and atmospheric CO₂ levels rising (as described by Carl Wunsch in the Channel 4 programme, see page 49). However, this process is usually very slow, hence the lag between the start of a warming period triggered by Milankovitch cycles, and the rise in atmospheric CO₂ levels.

This increase in the levels of atmospheric CO₂ – a known greenhouse gas – causes further increases of temperature, and thus further increases in the level of CO₂. This feedback mechanism thus enhanced the initial relatively small (orbital) warming trigger.

These warming periods lasted for 5,000 to 10,000 years, and for the majority of that time, temperature and CO₂ rose together. While it is correct to say that CO₂ did not initially trigger the warmings, CO₂ was an important factor in the magnitude of the ultimate change.

Continued …

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Comment 50: Misrepresentation of ice core record]


Page 45 of 176	Final Revision	Last updated: 11 Jun 2007