OPINION: THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING LET DOWN
Social Affairs Unit, 25 March 2007
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By Richard D. North
The Great Global Warming Swindle, 2007
Directed by Martin Durkin
Channel 4, 8th March 2007
Available on DVD from WAG tv
Richard D. North - who has himself frequently been described as a climate change
sceptic and even a climate change denier - wanted Martin Durkin's contrarian The
Great Global Warming Swindle to be a wonderful piece of work. It wasn't - indeed
it was almost as bad as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Arguments about climate
change are about uncertainties and dealing with uncertainty, argues Richard D.
North. From their very different perspectives Al Gore and Martin Durkin claim to
have answers - they don't.
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A clutch of reasons suggests that it would be shrewd to leave off writing this
review. One is that the quality of Martin Durkin's film won't be known for some
days or months. Another is that I admire Durkin, and I'd much rather not do his
cause any harm. But the tough one is that when I first saw a preview of the
piece, I told Durkin that he was a genius (he is) and that his film was a
wonderful piece of work. It's that last bit I was wrong about.
The Swindle argued several points:
1. The present rise in the Earth's temperature are pretty normal and survivable.
2. Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas and man's output of it is
insignificant.
3. Historically high CO2 levels were an effect and not a cause of rising
temperature.
4. Carbon is an ill-chosen villain and we should instead look at the sun.
5. The whole alarmist nonsense is an industry.
None of these views is new. Numbers 1-4 have all been attacked in detail by the
fans of the IPCC "consensus". So here's the difficulty. The argument is further
advanced than Durkin's treatment implied. If this were a boxing match, we might
say it was Round 1 to the IPCC, Round 2 to the Contrarians. But Round 3 is well
advanced, and Durkin didn't report it.
I certainly agree with Durkin that the IPCC's policy-makers' summaries (the only
bit most people see) have generated a sense of certainty and omniscience - an
orthodoxy - which is deeply flawed in almost all its parts. But it is part of
the point that the IPCC summaries don't convey the richness of the IPCC science
which has been gathered in a process which is not quite as flawed as some
contrarians suppose. Certainly, the IPCC summaries and their promoters seem to
assert a flawed account of the underlying science of climate change, and its
likely impacts, and of policy options. That whole orthodoxy very badly needs to
be challenged. But I fear this film constructed an overly confident counter case
which has at least as many uncertainties and would be at least as absurd an
orthodoxy and is as contestable. I hate to say it, but it is nearly as bad in
its way as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. It certainly makes the same class of
mistake.
What's more, I am not sure that all or most of the scientists in the film would
go along with the certainties it gave us. I have looked around online at some of
their views, and I find a bit more diversity than might be supposed. They are a
varied bunch of sceptics, critics, and straight deniers. I found some who do not
deny the general idea of anthropogenic carbon-influenced climate change. There
is already some evidence from the Independent on Sunday and the Observer that
one vital contributor, Carl Wunsch, is not happy with his treatment by Durkin.
Another, Ian Clark of Ottawa University, has signed-up to the Fraser Institute's
Independent Summary for Policy Makers, which explicitly relies on IPCC material
and is itself more nuanced both than the IPCC's summaries and Durkin's film.
In a way, it's a pity that broadcasters have done so badly on climate change
that it fell to Martin Durkin to pick up the challenge. We know he can work with
science material, since his 2000 Channel 4 film The Rise and Fall of GM was a
pretty good account of that issue. (I was in it, and proud to be.) But the
analogy quickly breaks down. The row about genetically-modified crops was more
or less one between "mainstream" science and green campaigners who talked a good
deal of palpable nonsense. The "mainstream" was itself nuanced, as will be the
way almost always, but still Durkin could have a characteristically robust romp
around the material.
Because everyone else has, it's a good moment to recall Durkin's C4 series from
1997, Against Nature, which provoked a deal of fuss when it was shown. Durkin
was accused of not playing fair with his green contributors, who he sent up
rotten having - apparently - misled them as to his purposes. I remember thinking
that they were treated rather better than they treat anyone they oppose and am
now glad that Dominic Lawson has unearthed an account of the affair which has
Simon Hoggart agreeing with this view.
Climate change is different. Both the alarmists and the best of Durkin's
sceptical sources are mostly impeccably mainstream. It is the nature of the
collision between these forces which is of interest. Sure, IPCC has been
politicised and rendered deeply suspect, and sure the sceptics are so far as we
can tell completely honest. Sure, right-minded serious people should be vastly
sympathetic to the so-called contrarians. But this remains an argument which is
mostly about uncertainties and dealing with uncertainty. I don't trust anyone
who claims to have the answers.
This is where Durkin seems to go wrong. He believes the whole anthropogenic
greenhouse theory - all of it, every jot, from start to finish - will prove to
be bunk. Good luck to him. But his case will have to survive a good deal of
serious challenge, and he hasn't bothered to give us much of a sense of whether
it will.
There is a good chance climate change will turn out to be full of surprises,
including the possibility that the greenhouse alarmists' explanation of it was
complete bunk, or - more likely - importantly wrong, but also including the
possibility that we come to wish we had never unleashed our carbon orgy. And we
may regret it knowing that once kicked-off, there was precious little to be done
about its awesome capacity to run on by itself.
The bit where I am much more confident is policy. There'll be too little of it
to make much difference. In other words, we will probably find out if man caused
some climate change because we will live through it and because we will
understand the processes better. Quite a lot of Durkin's sources seem to think
much the same. Others, of course, are fundamentalist refuseniks and we should be
glad of them. But they are no more an infallible guide than anyone else.
Richard D. North is the author of Rich is Beautiful: A Very Personal Defence of
Mass Affluence and the just published Scrap the BBC!: Ten Years to Set
Broadcasters Free.