The Great Global Warming Swindle

After dedicating plenty of time researching about global warming and attempting to examine how it is likely to affect the practice of PR, my enthusiasm has been dampened by a documentary on Channel 4 this evening.

The Great Global Warming Swindle featured high profile climate scientists rubbishing recent evidence by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC that concluded that human activity is to blame for global warming.

According to the scientists featured on the Great Global Warming Swindle, the climate will and has always changed. And it happens naturally, NOT as a result of human activity or indeed carbondioxide.

So why would a panel of over two thousand top scientists who constituted the IPCC make such an alarming conclusion? According to Tim Ball a Professor Climatology at the the University of Winnipeg, their conclusions were politically driven. "Pure propaganda", he added. " The alarm was raised by climate scientists with a vested interest to get funds for research"

Nigel Calder a former Editor of the New Scientist attributes the hype to the emergence of "Environmental Journalists" who are biased and very eager to cover over dramatised evidence inorder to keep their jobs.

Professor Richard Lindzen of the department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology attributes the "alarm" to the rise of the environmental movement. According to him "Whenever you have a problem which involves the interaction of science with politics and where there are advocates, like the Environmental movement there’s a kind of battle for the public mind, and you are inevitably going to try and simplify the science as much as possible".

The Great Global Warming Swindle also features Patrick Moore, a Co-founder of Greenpeace who attributes the climate change hype to the rise of anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist and anti-American movements.

What is worrying according to these experts is the political backing that the alarmists have succeeded in winning. The US which had for a long time been adamant appears to have succumbed to pressure from the environmentalists. And Climate science is now the most funded area; an estimated 4 billion US dollars is pumped into the sector annually in the United States alone.

And just as I was beginning to wonder who could have paid these experts to challenge a panel of over 2000 top world scientists, they one by one denied having received any penny from any oil company inorder to take the positions they've taken. "It's pure science", they argue.

So it is a great global warming swindle! why the fuss then? why are corporations taking it upon themselves to offset their carbon emissions? Why are heads of state and government of the European Union (EU) meeting this evening in Brussels to agree on binding goals to tackle climate change?

Whoever raised the alarm, whether it was the environmentalists or the media or the scientific community must be nodding their heads with satisfaction because their public relations campaign has succeeded in getting the attention of the media and most importantly action from governments worldwide.


The provocative documentary left me wondering why Channel 4 chose not to feature any opposing view - I mean the view of those who believe cimate change is the biggest threat facing mankind.