The Great Global Warming Swindle

About the Title 

          The term “swindle” means to obtain or get money, property and any other forms of advantageous gain through deliberate deception, trickery, cheating, or telling and propagating lies and false ideas. The film’s title, “The Great Global Warming Swindle” conveys the creators’ belief that global warming is not caused by anthropogenic activities but is just continuously asserted to be so by many scientists because of the funds that they can acquire from researches concerning this. They also deem this issue as politically influenced. Hence, the people behind this film pushes the idea that anthropogenic global warming is a lie and is "the biggest scam of modern times." In other words, it is a swindle.

Summary of the Film in 10 Words

            Anthropogenic global warming is a lie and an exaggeration.

Five Arguments Used to Support the Film’s Stance on Anthropogenic Global Warming

1. The sun’s activity is very influential on global warming and cooling than any other anthropogenic or natural activity on Earth. The film even presented a graph showing a nice correlation of the occurrence of solar flares and the increase in earth’s temperature.
2. In contradiction to the asserted great effect of the increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the film argued that 95% of greenhouse gases is water vapor. Water particles in the atmosphere in the form of clouds serve as the reflector of incoming solar heat and thus is the one that has a greater impact on our temperature, greater than the greenhouse gases.
3. Carbon dioxide has a minimal influence on climate change. The film stated that CO2 is only as small as 0.054% of the Earth's atmosphere. It added that activities of us human race contributes much less than 1% of that. This percentage is so much small compared to the contribitions of volcanoes. Animals and plants also produce 150 gigatons of CO2 each year, significantly bigger than human’s. Decaying leaves produce even more CO2, and the oceans are "the biggest source of CO2 by far." Human activity is reckoned to produce only 6.5 gigatons of CO2 each year. Thus , as a conclusion, man-made CO2 emissions alone cannot be causing global warming.
4. The relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperature change is opposite as most are forced to believe. The documentary stressed that increase or decrease of carbon dioxide levels follows the increase or decrease of temperature rather than and not otherwise. It argued that as the global climate cools, the Earth's oceans absorb carbon dioxide. On the other hand, as the climate warms the oceans release carbon dioxide.
5. The documentary also lobbied the fact that there has been occurences of warming before. Thus, the warming that we are experiencing today is nothing unusual. They added that temperatures were way more extreme during the Medieval Warm Period, when great western Europe is in it’s peak of prosperity.

My Reaction

       
        The documentary really paved and created another way of viewing Global Warming for me. I am a little surprised when I eventually realize what it’s about. Somehow it lightened the issue of global warming as an environmental concern. Instead ,it emphasized that it’s really driven by self-interest and political influences. This film has kind of shook my understanding on what the issue is. I am uncertain now as to what manner I would deal with the issue. If it’s not that serious, then I won’t care and I suggest that the government would do as well. There are many researches that are more worthy of the funds that they are giving to the scientists dealing with this issue. There are many concerns much deserving of the efforts they are exerting such as how to combat poverty, malnutrition, starvation, pandemics, graft, corruption , crimes, terrorism etc.

      Also, as I imply from the film, we humans have not much power in combatting this problem as it is mainly caused by nature itself. Who can control the Sun? The film said that it’s the origin of most climate variability. Hence, none of the movements pushed can solve this problem wholly. It just a waste of effort and money.

I am not an expert to give criticisms to the evidences presented in the film. Yet, convincing as they are for me, I deem it’s not bad to deal with the issue, whether it may be serious or not. For one, being apathetic to it may consequently lead to the one that they are opposing. No one knows for sure that we are causing or not causing this dire global warming. The fact that we are discussing about it, and debating on it’s truthfulness is a manifestation that there are things to settle.

***Another assignment on my Enivironmental Science course. Now it's about the film "The Great Global Warming Swindle." The submission of this work is our last meeting since the Semester is about to end. I felt kind of sad. I want to thank my teacher, Sir Levi Francisco. More power to you!