The Great Global Warming Swindle

Did anyone see The Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4 last night? If you missed it keep an eye out for the repeat as it is well worth watching.

The programme was about whether the human race and CO2 emissions are actually the cause of the current temperature increases. It wasn't advocating that everyone suddenly switches on all their lights and drives ten yards down the road but putting forward the argument that climate change will happen regardless of the what we do.

They looked at one of the key arguments in An Inconvenient Truth which was that CO2 emissions went up when the temperature went up thus proving that CO2 raises temperatures. What the film didn't say was that it was the wrong way round ie the temperature goes up and then a few hundred years later CO2 rises. One of the biggest temperature leaps recently was around 200 year ago (before cars etc). Apparently most CO2 comes from the oceans - if the oceans are very cool they suck in CO2 and if they are warming up they give off CO2. However as the oceans are so vast, they too take hundreds of years to warm or cool.

They also showed a clip from the BBC archive of the man who first mentioned CO2 in conjunction with global warming. In the early 1970's there had been a few really cold winters and they were predicting a new ice age in the UK. This scientist (Swedish I think) suggested releasing CO2 into the air to raise temperatures. The scientific community laughed him off the stage for suggesting CO2 could raise global temperatures.

One other interesting graph they showed was that whilst there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature increases (albeit with the time lag) there is an even closer match between the Sun getting hotter and global warming. The Sun is getting hotter and therefore so are we.

Who knows who is right or wrong but when you see how little CO2 the whole of the human race produces compared to, say, volcanoes it does make you think. Yes we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels but is this because of climate change or just because they are running out? We do need to stop producing so much rubbish and start to recycle but is this because we are running out of room rather than worrying it is melting the ice caps?

The Earth has always had ice ages and heat waves, who is to say this is not just another phase. Certainly made me think and to be honest I am now totally confused over where the truth lies.