Thursday, March 15, 2007

The Truth about climate change


I got around to watching the Channel 4 programme on the "The Great Climate Change Swindle" after avoiding listening and reading the debate about the programme which has dominated over the past few days.

The main body of the argument, as the title suggests ,is that we the public has been duped into believing that the human race is responsible for the increasing temperatures,rising sea levels and increasingly ferocious weather that we are to be subjected to.

The argument rejects the link between carbon emissions and warming,pointing to evidence that changes in climate are a natural force of nature which has happened over many millions of years without any interference from humans and is related to solar activity.

It appears that the media is partly responsible having been duped by the strong environmental lobby into reporting the link between carbon emissions and warming and have repeatedly exaggerated stories that show how our weather will change.

According to the programme one of the beneficiaries has been the environmental reporter who now occupies one of the more important jobs in the news room

The on sided nature of the programme has been roundly criticized in recent days as has its manipulation of data,notably the graph showing the link between atmospheric c02 and temperature.Some scientists that appeared in the programme claim their comments have been taken out of context and misrepresented.

It is not the first time that Director Martin Durkin has been so accused.In 1998,a similar programme was criticized by the ITC who said:

he had "misled" his interviewees about "the content and purpose of the programmes". Their views had been "distorted through selective editing".

Channel 4 has reportedly distanced itself from the programme.

There is no doubt that weather stories are dominating the press at the moment and not only in its traditional areas such as the Express and the Mail.The Independent has become the champion of the environmental lobby and newsprint has been filled with stories of our mild winter and early spring.They have all been linked to global warming.

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