Just finished watching a nicely produced TV series called Earth: The Climate Wars. It was originally screened in 2008 on BBC2 in the UK, and as far as I know hasn’t yet been broadcast here in Australia. You can see it in three one-hour segments at stwr.org or in eighteen ten-minute segments at YouTube.
Presented by Dr Iain Stewart, a Scottish geologist at the University of Plymouth, it gives a general audience a nice taste of the world of climate science. Stewart presents well: he’s engaging and personable. His comments on making the series, and the way his views on climate change have changed, are worth reading too.
The first episode mainly looks at the history of climate science up to around 1990. The second covers the “fight back” of arguments against anthropogenic climate change. It looks at what the main criticisms were, and how they were examined and debunked, mainly over the course of the 1990s. The third hour looks at the future: climate models, projections, and uncertainty.
Even though much of the material was familiar, it’s great to see the story retold in a visual, highly polished format. It’s good viewing – well worthwhile.
#1 by Pete Ridley on March 21, 2012 - 9:54 pm
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Hi Matt, don’t let yourself be fooled by everything that you see on BBC TV. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CACC) campaigner Professor Iain Stewwart and the BBC are not averse to misrepresenting the facts about the negligible impact that CO2 has on the different global climates.
I think it was in the first part of the Climate Wars series that Dr. Stewart made what in my opinion were deliberately misleading claims about what a deliberately misleading demonstration showed.
I discuss this in my “What does Iain Stewart’s CO2 experiment Demonstrate” thread on the University of Cambridge’s “Naked Scientists” Science Forum (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=38723.25).
That demonstration has been used by CACC supporting organisations to promote the unproven CACC hypothesis to the general public when in fact it was deliberately rigged to present an exaggerated effect. Without the inclusion of a 4 micron IR filter the viewers would have seen the true effect of CO2 on IR radiation from a warm object like a candle flame (or even the Earth) – effectively nil.
Best regards, Pete Ridley
#2 by Pete Ridley on March 21, 2012 - 10:05 pm
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BTW Matt, you can find out a bit more about the BBC and Dr. Stewart at http://globalwarmingsupporter.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/suzuki-elders-we%E2%80%99re-doomed/#comment-448
Best regards, Pete Ridley
#3 by matt on March 21, 2012 - 10:21 pm
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Well, if you’ve really got good evidence that CO2 has “effectively nil” effect on the atmospheric absorption of thermal radiation, you’ve got a scientific hit on your hands! Get that paper out and publish, man!
… oh, right.
#4 by Pete Ridley on March 21, 2012 - 10:28 pm
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But Matt, I’ve provided you with links to the evidence about that rigged demonstration by Dr. Stewart.
I speculate that you haven’t bothered to go to them and read about the evidence, but that is the way of true believers, isn’t it.
Best regards, Pete Ridley