I didn't get to see the edited version of The Great Global Warming Swindle that was screened last night on ABC TV. I have however seen it - in full - before and have previously criticised this show strongly. Some of the main errors in the show are set out here.
One of the scientists interviewed for the 'Swindle' show, who was extremely annoyed by the slant it placed on his views in the complete version of this film, was MIT's Dr. Carl Wunsch. He was interviewed last night on Lateline. Wunsch's statement is as sensible a viewpoint on the science of global warming as I have seen. Wunsch accepts that anthropogenic warming is the most likely explanation for what we see happening to the world's climate and is worried about it.
To Wunsch, science is not about claiming truths but about advancing hypotheses that skeptical scientists seek to refute. They have not refuted the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis yet and the evidence collected so far is consistent with it. His general approach - the subject is ultra-complex so we should be wary of strong predictions. But we should take measures to deal with likely serious outcomes as insurance and pay particular attention to gradual, though devastating, consequences of climate change such as sea level change.
The Wunsch interview is excellent value.
Friday, July 13, 2007
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If you are interested, I decided to stop sitting on the fence about CO2 and global warming because of the one issue that doesn't attract all that much attention in the media: acidification of the oceans. I don't know if you consider it impolite for people to link to their own blog, but my "conversion" post is here:
http://tinyurl.com/26y8sd
Before that, I had done a post in which I tried to get a simplified picture (getting some graphs together) of the CO2 rate of increase issues:
http://tinyurl.com/2olcfg
The Scientific American story about the possible dangers of very high CO2 levels for the oceans is contained in my "conversion" post above, but here is a direct link:
http://tinyurl.com/luyy2
I am pretty proud of those posts for the way (I think) they paint a compelling reason to worry about CO2 levels even if you are completely sceptical as to how much warming the gas may cause.
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