The Great Global Warming Swindle Documentary Breakdown

This post is a breakdown of Martin Durkin’s documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which first aired on the UK’s Channel 4 on 8th March 2007. I chose this film for its broad coverage of the many aspects behind the CO₂-driven global warming narrative. It even touches briefly on biological influences, but not enough to my liking and I will cover these more thoroughly in a dedicated post.

While the film is embedded directly below and can be watched in its entirety, people not wanting to watch the documentary can skim through the material by reading the direct quotes and summaries further down.

The screenshots are direct links to the timestamp they were taken at, for people to view more detail if they wish.

The following headings are my own and indicate the topics the documentary segues through.

The Don’t Question the Narrative Narrative

Timestamp 0:33-0.37
Narrator:
“Each day the news reports grow more fantastically apocalyptic. Politicians no longer dare to express any doubt about climate change.”

Timestamp 0:40-0.54
Lord Lawson of Blaby:
“There is such intolerance on any dissenting voice. This is the most politically incorrect thing possible, is to doubt this climate change orthodoxy.”

Timestamp 0:55-1:07
Narrator:
“Global warming has gone beyond politics. It is a new kind of morality.”
News anchor:
“Now the Prime Minister’s back from his holiday. He’s unrepentant and unembarrassed about yet another long-haul destination.”

The Narrative is Questioned Regardless

Timestamp 1:20-1:32
Professor Nir Shaviv, Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem:
“There were periods for example in Earth’s history when we had three times as much CO₂ as we have today, or periods when we had ten times as much CO₂ as we have today, and if CO₂ has a large effect on climate, then you should see it in the temperature reconstruction.”

Timestamp 1:33-1:38
Professor Ian Clark, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa:
“If we look at climate for the geological timeframe, we would never suspect CO₂ as a major climate driver.”

Timestamp 1:39-1:46
Dr Piers Corbyn, Climate Forecaster, Weather Action:
“None of the major climate changes in the last thousand years can be explained by CO₂.”

Timestamp 1:47-1:51
Professor Ian Clark, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa:
“You can’t say that CO₂ will drive climate. It certainly never did in the past.”

Timestamp 1:53-2:05
Professor John Christy, Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Lead Author of Chapter 2 of the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report:
“I’ve often heard it said that there is a consensus of thousands of scientists on the global warming issue, and that humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system. Well I am one scientist, and there are many that simply think that is not true.”

On the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Timestamp 2:24-2:32
Professor Philip Stott, Department of Biogeography, University of London:
“The IPCC, like any UN body, is political. The final conclusions are politically driven.”

[And if you want direct evidence of this politicisation and interference, see World’s top climate scientists told to ‘cover up’ the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years.]

Timestamp 2:33-2:46
Professor Paul Reiter, Department of Medical Entomology, Pasteur Institute, and Contributor to the 2001 IPCC Working Group II Report:
“This claim that the IPCC is the world’s top one-thousand five-hundred, or two-thousand five-hundred scientists — you look at the bibliographies of the people, and it’s simply not true. There are quite a number of non-scientists.”

Timestamp 2:47-3:01
Professor Richard Lindzen, Department of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Contributor to Chapter 4 of the 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report and Chapter 7 of the 2001 IPCC Working Group I:
“And to build the number up to twenty-five hundred, they have to start taking ‘reviewers’, and government people and so on, anyone who ever came close to them. And none of them are asked to agree. Many of them disagree.”

Timestamp 3:02-3:15
Professor Paul Reiter, Department of Medical Entomology, Pasteur Institute, and Contributor to the 2001 IPCC Working Group II Report:
“Those people who are specialists, but don’t agree with the polemic, and resign, and there have been a number that I know of, uh, they are simply put on the author list, and become part of this two-thousand five-hundred of the world’s top scientists.”

Timestamp 3:16-3:27
Professor Richard Lindzen, Department of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Contributor to Chapter 4 of the 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report and Chapter 7 of the 2001 IPCC Working Group I:
“People have decided you have to convince other people that since no scientist disagrees, you shouldn’t disagree either. Uh, but whenever you hear that in science, that’s pure propaganda.”

‘Global Warming’ is a Story of Political Activism and the Distortion of Science

Timestamp 3:28-4:38
This section shows various scientists speaking of the big business ‘global warming’ has become, and how there “needs to be a problem” in order to get funding. There is a “vested interest in creating panic” in order for money to flow to climate science, and that “tens of thousands of jobs depend on global warming". Should the “whole global warming farago [collapse], there’d be an awful lot of people out of jobs and looking for work".

‘Global Warming’ is a Story of Censorship and Intimidation

Timestamp 4:43-4:54
Nigel Calder, former editor, New Scientist:
“I’ve seen and heard their spitting fury at anybody who might disagree with them, which is not the scientific way.”

‘Global Warming’ is a Story of the Developing World Not Being Allowed to Develop

Timestamp 4:55-5:27
This section mentions Western interference in the dreams and ambitions of developing countries seeking to industrialise and advance themselves.

An Entire Generation Has Been Sucked into an Ideology

Timestamp 5:28-5:54
This section mentions the media’s influence in turning the concept of global warming into a religion, to the point that anyone who disagrees is a heretic.

Timestamp 6:00-6:49
In 2005, a British House of Lords enquiry into global warming found that the science was surprisingly “weak and uncertain". There are many silent dissenters too afraid to come out and publicly state how much of the ’science’ just does not add up.

Previous Warm and Cool Periods, in Graphs

Timestamp 6:51-7:17
The climate is always changing, with countless periods when it has been much warmer and much cooler than it is today. Much of the world has, at different times, been covered by tropical forests and vast ice sheets. The climate has always changed, and without any help from us.

Timestamp 7:18-9:54
The current warming trend can be traced back to the end of a very cold spell known as ‘The Little Ice Age’. 14th century European artists recorded this ‘Little Ice Age’ in their paintings and other illustrations.

The River Thames froze so solidly in winter, that markets and recreational activities were routinely held on the ice.

Before The Little Ice Age was the Mediaeval Warm Period. Temperatures were much warmer than today, to the point that grapes could be grown in northern Europe.

This time is associated with wealth and prosperity in Europe, and was known as the Great Age of the Cathedral Builders. Chaucer wrote of vineyards flourishing in the north of England, and to this day, street names and places about London attest to this time.

Going back further still takes us to the Holocene Maximum during the Bronze Age, where temperatures were significantly higher than now, for over three thousand years. And polar bears were perfectly fine during this time.

Timestamp 11:27-13:20
The Earth’s temperature has risen 0.5 °C since 1880, but most of this was before 1940. When industry and manufacturing were on the rise post-WW2, and when man-induced CO₂ output would be highest in all our history, temperatures were falling during this time. Temperatures wouldn’t rise again until about 1975, interestingly enough, during a global economic recession.

This cooling period was behind the predictions in the 1970s of a coming ice age.

Where Does the Idea of CO₂ Causing Climate Change Come From?

Timestamp 13:21-18:26
CO₂ is a very small component of the atmosphere, and a very small component of the greenhouse gases. Human contribution to this already small amount is much smaller again. Greenhouse gases themselves make up a small proportion of the atmosphere, and of that proportion, water vapour is by far the most important one at 95% of total greenhouse gas concentration.

If it weren’t for greenhouse gases, solar radiation hitting the Earth’s surface would bounce back into space, and the planet would be cold and lifeless. Greenhouse gases in the troposphere trap this heat.

[The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere, and varies from 6 km high in the polar regions to 18 km high in the tropics, with a global average of about 13 km high.]

If greenhouse gases are responsible for planetary warming, it is here in the troposphere that the rate of warming should be highest. However, both satellite and weather balloon data show the opposite, that the surface is warming slightly more than the atmosphere. There appears to be a negative correlation between temperature and altitude.

Both these observations, of a surface warming more than the atmosphere, and this warming beginning in the early rather than late 20th century, are the complete opposite of what should occur from man-made global warming.

Observations of Temperature and CO₂

Timestamp 18:27-21:56
Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth shows a correlation between temperature and CO₂ concentrations, as measured from ice core samples.

He claims that there is a “complicated” relationship of CO₂ increases leading to temperature increases. What he inconveniently neglects to mention is that there is an 800-year lag of CO₂ following temperature.

Every one of several ice core surveys shows this same trend of temperatures rising and followed several hundred years later by CO₂ rising. CO₂ cannot possibly be responsible for rising temperatures.

On CO₂ Emissions

Timestamp 21:57-25:05
The amount of CO₂ humans produce is single-digits percentage-wise of the total in the atmosphere. Living organisms produce 150 gigatonnes of CO₂ each year, to the 6.5 gigatonnes produced by humans. Dying vegetation, eg fallen leaves, is a larger source again, but the largest source of all are the oceans. Warmer oceans emit CO₂ and cooler oceans absorb CO₂.

What Drives Climate if not CO₂?

Timestamp 25:37-33:47
The Sun drives climate change, and weather can be predicted by monitoring sunspot activity. There is a very strong correlation between temperature and solar activity.

[This correlation is so strong it needs a dedicated post, which is coming.]

Solar physicist and weather forecaster Dr Piers Corbyn won money “month after month after month” betting against the UK’s Meteorological Office forecasts.

Further, there is an inverse relationship between temperature and cosmic rays — high solar activity repels more cosmic rays, which results in less cloud formation, which results in warmer temperatures. Low solar activity results in higher cloud formation and cooler temperatures.

The correlation is even clearer when the cosmic ray graph is inverted:

Here are side-by-side comparisons of CO₂ plotted alongside temperature (very poor correlation), and solar activity plotted alongside temperature (very high correlation).

CO₂ is clearly irrelevant, and it is the Sun driving climate change.

Where Did the CO₂ Driving Climate Change Theory Come From?

Timestamp 33:48-39:33
During the 1970s’ predictions of a coming ice age, one Danish scientist named Bert Bolin offered some hope by suggesting — whilst stating he couldn’t be sure — that increasing CO₂ from human activities could mitigate this by warming the planet. At first he was disparaged, but two things happened which eventually changed public opinion. Firstly, temperatures began to rise again from 1975, and secondly, there was a miners’ strike in the UK. UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saw nuclear power as the solution to energy security, with the lack of carbon emissions an added reason to go ahead. She made funding available for research, and from this came the politicisation of climate research with a particular emphasis on CO₂ and temperature.

And from this came the first IPCC report and the complete disregard of the role of the Sun in climate, which had been the subject of a major meeting just a few months earlier.

CO₂ Led to Environmental Extremism and Out-of-Proportion Government Funding

Timestamp 39:34-44:45
The environmental movement rallied behind CO₂-driven global warming to push anti-car, anti-industrialisation and anti-growth agenda. At one point, environmentalists wanted to ban chlorine — an element in the periodic table! — worldwide. By the 1980s the idea of CO₂ causing global warming had moved from “a slightly eccentric theory to a full-blown political campaign” attracting media attention and more government funding.

The Berlin Wall coming down due to the failure of communism saw neo-Marxists moving into environmental activism, where they used ‘green’ language in clever ways to disguise their anti-capitalisation agenda.

In the US, funding for climate-related sciences was roughly USD170 million/year prior to George H. W. Bush becoming President in 1989. This jumped to USD2 billion/year (date not specified, implied to be the early 1990s), bringing a lot of jobs and new people into the field, who otherwise were not interested unless it involved global warming.

On Climate Models

Timestamp 44:46-46:15
Climate models are only as good as the assumptions which go into them, and just one wrong assumption can throw the model way off. All models assume man-made CO₂ to be behind climate change, rather than the clouds or Sun.

Timestamp 46:16-46:33
Professor Tim Ball, Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg:
“This analogy I use is like, my car is not running very well, so I’m gonna ignore the engine, which is the Sun, and I’m gonna ignore the transmission, which is the water vapour, and I’m gonna look at one nut on the right rear wheel, which is the human-produced CO₂. It’s that, the science is that bad.”

Timestamp 46:35-46:54
Professor Ian Clark, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa:
“If you haven’t understood the climate system, if you haven’t understood all the components — the cosmic rays, the solar, the CO₂, the water vapour, the clouds, and put it all together — if you haven’t got all that, then your model isn’t worth anything.”

Timestamp 47:12-47:22
Professor Ian Clark, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa:
“I’ve worked with modellers, I’ve done modelling, and, with a mathematical model and you tweak parameters, you can model anything. You can make it warmer, you can make it get colder, by changing things.”

Timestamp 47:25-47:36
Narrator:
“Since all the models assume that man-made CO₂ causes warming, one obvious way to produce a more impressive forecast is to increase the amount of imagined CO₂ going into the atmosphere.”

Timestamp 47:37-48:02
Professor Patrick Michaels, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia:
“We put an increase in carbon dioxide in that is one percent per year. It’s been point four nine percent per year for the last ten years. Point four two for the ten years before that, and point four three for the ten years before that! So the models have twice as much greenhouse warming radiation going in them as is not known to be happening. It shouldn’t shock you that they predict more warming than is occurring.”

Timestamp 48:05-48:29
Narrator:
“Models predict what the temperature might be in 50 or 100 years’ time. It is one of their peculiar features that long-range climate forecasts are only proved wrong long after people have forgotten about them. As a result, there is a danger, according to Professor Karl Wunsch, that modellers will be less concerned in producing a forecast that is accurate, than one which is interesting.”

Timestamp 48:31-49:13
Carl Wunsch, Professor of Oceanography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
“Even within the scientific community you see it’s a problem. If I run a complicated model, and I do something to it, like melt a lot of ice into the ocean, and nothing happens, it’s not likely to get printed. But if I run the same model, and I adjust it in such a way that something dramatic happens to the ocean circulation, like the heat transport turns off, uh, it will get me published. People say this is very exciting, it will even get picked up by the media. So there is a bias, there’s a very powerful bias within the media and within the science community itself, towards results which are, um, dramatisable.”

On Environmental Journalists

Timestamp 49:36-50:51
Models look impressive to the untrained eye, and provide countless stories for the media. The theory of man-made global warming has created a new branch of journalism: environmental reporters. All motivated to push this narrative so as to keep their jobs, and all needing to “get shriller and shriller and shriller” to counter the “hardened news editors still around who will say ‘you know, this is what you were saying five years ago.’ ‘Oh, but now it’s much, much worse, you, know, there’s going to be ten feet of sea level rise by next Tuesday or something’.”

[Very recent examples of this hysteria are the claims that global warming is leading to a rise in home-runs in baseball and that gas stoves should be banned.
Update: gas stoves are now banned in new buildings in New York State.]

Also (I just can’t help myself!):

]

All Bad Weather Now Blamed on Global Warming

Timestamp 50:53-51:01
Narrator:
“It is now common in the media to lay the blame for every storm or hurricane on global warming. But is there any scientific basis for this?”

Timestamp 51:02-51:33
Professor Richard Lindzen, Department of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Contributor to Chapter 4 of the 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report and Chapter 7 of the 2001 IPCC Working Group I:
“This is purely propaganda. Every textbook in meteorology is telling you the main source of weather disturbances is the temperature between the tropics and the pole. And we’re told, in a warmer world, this difference will get less. Now that would tell you, you’ll have less storminess, you’ll have less variability. But for some reason, that isn’t considered catastrophic, so you’re told the opposite.”

Timestamp 51:34-52:20
We’re told that even a minor increase in temperature will lead to a catastrophic melting of the polar ice caps. Yet Greenland just a thousand years ago was much warmer than it is today yet “didn’t have a dramatic melting event". The permafrost of Russia melted far more 7-8,000 years ago than today, and is another example of a historical pattern not causing the planet to “come to a crunching halt because of it.”

Timestamp 52:22-53:03
Polar ice sheets have always expanded and contracted, but this is only now news because of satellite imagery upping the drama factor.

Timestamp 53:04-53:27
This section is of a NASA animation showing the huge natural expansion and contraction of sea ice at both poles during the 1990s.

Timestamp 53:40-54:02
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Professor and Director, International Arctic Research Center:
“They [the press] ask me, ‘Did you see ice falling from [inaudible] glaciers?’ ‘Yes, that’s the spring breakup. That happens every year.’ Press come to us all the time, you know, ‘I want to see something that, uh, the greenhouse disaster.’ I say ‘there’s none!’”

What Causes the Sea Level to Change?

Timestamp 54:03-55:07
There are two causes. Local [relative] factors, to do with the relationship of the sea to the land, which more often than not is to do with the land rising or falling than anything to do with the sea. And eustatic [worldwide] changes due to the thermal expansion of the oceans, which has nothing to do with melting ice. Eustatic changes are extremely slow and long. It can take hundreds to thousands of years for the deep ocean to respond to forces and changes taking place at the surface.

The ‘Spread of Deadly Tropical Diseases’ Claim

Timestamp 55:08-55:30
It has been claimed that even a small rise in temperatures will lead to the spread of tropical diseases like malaria into more temperate regions.

Timestamp 55:40-56:37
Professor Paul Reiter, Department of Medical Entomology, Pasteur Institute, and Contributor to the 2001 IPCC Working Group II Report:
“Mosquitoes are not specifically tropical. Most people will realise in temperate regions there are mosquitoes. Um, in fact, mosquitoes are extremely abundant, uh, in the Arctic. The most devastating epidemic of malaria was in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. There were something like 13 million cases a year, and something like 600,000 deaths. A tremendous catastrophe that [inaudible] to the Arctic Circle. Archangel had 30,000 cases and about 10,000 deaths. So it’s not a tropical disease! Yet these people, uh, in, in the global warming fraternity invent the idea that malaria will move northwards.”

The IPCC Encourages Hysteria and Climate Scare Stories

Timestamp 56:38-58:36
This section covers the IPCC’s spreading of misinformation, its deletion of data, and its ignoring of scientific literature by field specialists. It quotes from a 1996 letter to the Wall Street Journal by Professor Frederick Seitz, former President of America’s National Academy of Sciences, in which he reveals the censoring of comments by scientists and that the released report was not that which they had approved. At least 15 sections of the science chapter had been deleted:

Professor Seitz concluded: “I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.”

Timestamp 58:37-59:19
Professor Paul Reiter, Department of Medical Entomology, Pasteur Institute, and Contributor to the 2001 IPCC Working Group II Report:
“When I resigned from the IPCC, I thought that was the end of it. But when I saw the final draft, my name was still there, so I asked for it to be removed. Well, they told me that I had contributed, so it would remain there. So I said no, I haven’t contributed, because they haven’t listened to anything I’ve said. So in the end it was quite a battle, but finally I threatened legal action against them, and they removed my name. And I think this happens a great deal — those people who are specialists, but don’t agree with the polemic, and resign, and there have been a number that I know of, uh, they are simply put on the author list, and become part of this two-thousand five-hundred of the world’s top scientists.”

Global Warming Research is One of the Best Funded Areas in Science

Timestamp 59:20-59:56
The US government alone now spends more than USD4 billion a year on global warming research, and scientists who have taken a public stand against this theory find it much harder to get research funding. Scientists not getting this finding are then accused of being in the pay of multinationals and oil companies.

Timestamp 59:57-1:00:05
Professor Philip Stott, Department of Biogeography, University of London:
“I get it all the time. You must be in the pay of the multinationals. Sadly, like most of the scientists you’ll talk to, I haven’t seen a penny from the multinationals.”

Timestamp 1:00:06-1:00:14
Professor Tim Ball, Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg:
“And I’m always being accused of being paid by the oil and gas companies. I’ve never received a nickel from the oil and gas companies — I, I, I joke about I wish they would pay me then I can afford their product.”

Timestamp 1:00:15-1:00:27
Nigel Calder, former editor, New Scientist:
“Whenever anybody says that I’m in the pay of an oil company, I say my bank manager would wish!”

Pressure on the Developing World Not to Develop

Timestamp 1:01:48-1:02:06
This section begins with the ubiquitous commercial jet flying overhead which marks each major segment of this film, then segues into a scene of an activist demanding everyone “just turn it off, anything you don’t need if you’re not using it. It’s easier than you think to make a difference." — whilst being projected onto a massive screen before a somewhat bored and disinterested audience.

Timestamp 1:02:07-1:02:43
Here we learn that over 6,000 civil servants, professional NGO campaigners, carbon-offset fund managers, environmental journalists, and ‘others’ have flown in from all over the world to attend a ten-day UN-sponsored conference in Nairobi, Kenya. To discuss everything from solar panels in Africa to global warming and sexism.

Timestamp 1:02:44-1:02:54
Professor John Christy, Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Lead Author of Chapter 2 of the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report:
“The billions of dollars vested in climate science means there is a huge constituency of people dependent upon those dollars, and they will want to see that carry forward. Happens in any bureaucracy.”

Timestamp 1:03:46-1:04:08
Professor Tim Ball, Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg:
“It’s the old English saying, if you stand up in the coconut shy, they’re gonna throw at you. So I understand that there’s going to be some of that, but it, it gets pretty difficult, pretty nasty, and very personal. And it been, er, you know, death threats, and all sorts of things, so I’m not doing it for my health.”

Timestamp 1:05:02-1:05:15
Paul Driessen, Author: Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (2003):
“My big concern with global warming is that the policies being pushed to supposedly prevent global warming are having a disastrous effect on the world’s poorest people.”

Timestamp 1:05:16-1:05:29
Narrator:
“Global warming campaigners say it does no harm to be on the safe side, even if the theory of man-made climate is wrong, we should impose draconian measures to cut carbon emissions just in case. They call this ‘the precautionary principle’.”

Timestamp 1:05:30-1:05:55
Paul Driessen, Author: Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (2003):
“‘The precautionary principle’ is a very interesting beast. It’s basically used to promote a particular agenda and ideology. It’s always used in one direction only. It talks about the risks of using a particular technology — fossil fuels for example — but never about the risks of not using it. It never talks about the benefits of having that technology.”

Timestamp 1:05:56-1:06:30
This section covers the living conditions of the third of the world’s population who have no access to electricity. Cooking meals requires burning wood or dried dung in their homes, which exposes people to indoor smoke, “the deadliest form of pollution in the world". Four million children under the age of five die each year from respiratory illnesses caused by indoor smoke. Many millions more women die early from cancers and lung diseases.

Timestamp 1:06:31-1:06:56
James Shikwati, Economist and Author:
“If you were to ask a rural person to define ‘development’, they’ll tell you, yes, I know, we’ve moved to the next level, we now have electricity. Actually, not having electricity creates such a long chain of problems, because the first thing you miss is the lights. So you get that they have to go to sleep earlier, because there’s no light, there’s no reason to stay awake. I mean, you can’t talk to each other in darkness.”

Timestamp 1:06:57-1:07:59
Narrator:
“No refrigeration or modern packaging means that food cannot be kept. The fire in the hut is too smokey and consumes too much wood to be used as heating. There is no hot water. We in the West cannot begin to imagine how hard life is without electricity. The life expectancy of people who live like this is terrifyingly short, their existence impoverished in every way.

“A few miles away, the UN is hosting its conference on global warming in its plush gated headquarters. The gift shop is selling souvenirs of peasant tribal life while delegates discuss how to promote what are described as ’sustainable forms of electrical generation’.

“Africa has coal, and Africa has oil, but environmental groups are campaigning against the use of these cheap sources of energy. Instead, they say Africa and the rest of the developing world should use solar and wind power.”

Timestamp 1:08:00-1:09:02
The rest of this section covers the film crew’s discovery of the first solar panel they found during a short drive from Nairobi. It belongs to a clinic which serves several villages. The only electrical equipment in this clinic are the lights and one refrigerator which is used for vaccines, medicines, and blood samples. All electricity needed is provided by two solar panels, but only enough power is produced to use either only the lights or only the refrigerator. An alarm sounds if both are used at the same time.

Timestamp 1:09:03-1:09:13
Narrator:
“Wind and solar power are notoriously unreliable as a source of electricity, and are at least three times more expensive than conventional forms of electrical generation.”

Timestamp 1:09:14-1:09:43
James Shikwati, Economist and Author:
“The question would be, how many people in Europe, how many people in United States, are already using that kind of energy, and how cheap is it? You see, if it’s expensive for the Europeans, if it’s expensive for the Americans, and we are talking about poor Africans, you know, it doesn’t make sense! The rich countries can afford to engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy, but for us we are still at the stage of survival.”

Timestamp 1:09:45-1:10:01
Narrator:
“To former environmentalist Paul Driessen, the idea that the world’s poorest people should be restricted to using the world’s most expensive and inefficient forms of electrical generation is the most morally repugnant aspect of the global warming campaign.”

Timestamp 1:10:02-1:10:15
Paul Driessen, Author: Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (2003):
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear. If we’re telling the Third World that they can only have wind and solar power, what we are really telling them is you cannot have electricity.”

Timestamp 1:10:16-1:10:50
James Shikwati, Economist and Author:
“The challenge we have when we meet Western environmentalists who say we must engage in use of solar panels and wind energy, is how we can have Africa industrialised. Because I don’t see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar panel is going to power maybe some railway train network. It might work maybe to power a small transistor radio.”

Timestamp 1:10:51-1:11:06
Patrick Moore, Co-Founder, Greenpeace:
“I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is this romanticisation of peasant life. And the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world.”

Timestamp 1:11:07-1:11:19
James Shikwati, Economist and Author:
“One clear thing that emerges from the whole environmental debate is the point that, er, that there, there’s somebody keen to destroy the African dream. And the African dream is to develop.”

Timestamp 1:11:20-1:11:28
Patrick Moore, Co-Founder, Greenpeace:
“The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries.”

Timestamp 1:11:29-1:11:35
James Shikwati, Economist and Author:
“We are being told don’t touch your resources. Don’t touch your oil. Don’t touch your coal. That is suicide.”

Timestamp 1:11:36-1:12:03
Patrick Moore, Co-Founder, Greenpeace:
“I think it’s legitimate to call them anti-human. Like, ok, you don’t have to think humans are better than whales, or better than owls, or whatever if you don’t want to, right? But surely it is not a good idea to think of humans as sort of being scum. You know, that it’s okay to have hundreds of millions of them go blind or die, or whatever, I, I just can’t relate to that.”

Timestamp 1:12:04-1:12:21
Narrator:
“The theory of man-made global warming is now so firmly entrenched, the voices of opposition so effectively silenced, it seems invincible. Untroubled by any contrary evidence, no matter how strong, the global warming alarm is now beyond reason.”

Timestamp 1:12:24-1:12:55
Professor Frederick Singer, Professor Emeritus, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia:
“There will still be people who believe that this will be the end of the world. Particularly when you have, for example, the Chief Scientist of the UK telling people that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the Earth will be the Antarctic! And it may, humanity may survive, thanks to some breeding couples who move to the Antarctic, I mean it’s hilarious! It will be hilarious actually, if, if it weren’t so sad.”

Timestamp 1:12:56-1:13:32
[Roll Credits]