The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, “individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming.” It’s a who’s who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words.
In Martin Durkin’s recently released film, entitled, ‘Climate – the Movie’, 17 academics, retired academics and bloggers were interviewed. How big a proportion of them have their own page in the DeSmog database? Go on, have a guess.
It’s 76%.
Climate change denial is like a kind of flying circus. This same old carnival troupe is wheeled out time and again to spread doubt about climate science. Why? Because that’s what they are good at doing, with decades of combined experience under their belts.
More than 2 dozen long-debunked myths
The first 42-odd minutes of this 80 minute long festival of misinformation, once the initial ‘elevator-pitch’ is done with, are dedicated to “The Science”. But instead of that, what one is exposed to is a veritable Gish-gallop of climate myths, with the phrase, “we are told” liberally scattered among them. In order of appearance, with the myth’s fixed number in our database, here they are:
#
Code
Myth
Quick rebuttal
56
mwp
Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Globally averaged temperature now is higher than global temperature in medieval times.
31
lia
We’re coming out of the Little Ice-age
15
cold
A local cold day has nothing to do with the long-term trend of increasing global temperatures.
6
temp
The warming trend is the same in rural and urban areas, measured by thermometers and satellites.
20
uhi
Urban and rural regions show the same warming trend.
38
troposphere
Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
The most recent satellite data show that the earth as a whole is warming.
45
pastco2
Climate has changed along with CO2 levels through geological time.
120
plant
127
trace
11
lag
CO2 didn’t initiate warming from past ice ages but it did amplify the warming.
31
greenhouse
Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
The strong CO2 effect has been observed by many different measurements.
43
correlate
There’s no correlation between CO2 and temperature
There is long-term correlation between CO2 and global temperature; other effects are short-term.
8
1970s
The vast majority of climate papers in the 1970s predicted warming.
5
model
Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.
2
past
Climate reacts to whatever forces it to change at the time; humans are now the dominant forcing.
207
uah
UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models are wrong
143
cloud
Clouds provide negative feedback
14
cosmic
Cosmic rays show no trend over the last 30 years & have had little impact on recent global warming.
191
cern
CERN CLOUD experiment proved cosmic rays are causing global warming
1
sun
In the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been going in opposite directions
17
1934
1934 was one of the hottest years in the US, not globally.
240
wildfires
Wildfires are not caused by global warming
16
hurricane
Hurricanes aren’t linked to global warming
There is increasing evidence that hurricanes are getting stronger due to global warming.
37
bear
Polar bear numbers are increasing
Polar bears are in danger of extinction as well as many other species.
185
gbr
Great Barrier Reef is in good shape
With 25 myths (and a few more – see below), the list is rather long, so here is a one image summary with the ones we spotted check-marked:
Fig 1: most of the myths rehashed in the movie in one handy graphic (click for larger version)! To create your own “myth-bingo-card”, download it from here.
It would be fun to turn up at a Chinese takeaway with just the numbers, to see what you get. Mind you, it would be a pretty expensive surprise!
Additional myths and misdirections
There are a few claims that are not in our database. Did you know that at the height of the last glaciation, there was a “CO2 famine” that, had it gotten any worse, would have made life on Earth go extinct? No, neither did we. The claim may have originated from a post at the Wattsupwiththat? blog from June 2017, which doesn’t present any actual evidence for it.
After that, the movie drifts off into a mixture of stuff. Apparently, until the 1980s, climate change was just a scare caused by a few radical environmentalists. Then Al Gore came along, there was limitless government money all of a sudden for climate research (so long as you sang to the same hymn-sheet) and a Consensus was formed, with which “to bludgeon opponents”. Etcetera etcetera etcetera. Never mind the likes of Foote, Tyndall and Arrhenius, who in the 19th Century had pretty much worked out the greenhouse gas properties of CO2.
Fig 2: The History of Climate Science and how far back it goes. Image source
Next thing, we are subjected to ‘Climate versus Freedom’, which is a mishmash of populist conspiratorial themes that mention the World Economic Forum, the EU and various other perceived bogeymen. The BBC, who only recently stopped giving deniers equal exposure, are not spared. The environmental movement is, the movie mansplains, the “sworn enemy of free-market industrial capitalism”. Tired old cliches abound, for example the meme that workers, ”don’t attend climate protests because they’re too busy working”. Meanwhile, “Big Government” wants nothing more than to control us, with comparisons made to Covid lockdowns. And on and on and on it goes.
Finally, they insist that climate mitigation measures will hurt the poor. Erm, are they forgetting that adverse climate events are already impacting the poor disproportionately? In the final thrashings of the movie, Chinese coal-fired power stations get a mention (no surprises there). When, the film pleads with its viewers, will people realise that climate change is an “invented scare”, an assault on, “freedom and prosperity”? If you can get through to the end of this 80-minute assault on reality, medals, or maybe replacement head-vices, should be awarded. Arrhenius must be turning in his grave…
Other debunkings….
For two other takes on this non-documentary, see the review at DeSmog here and a short video by The Disproof here.
