Green Swindle

Briefing  |  By Ben Giles  |  June 9, 2008

Since Martin Durkin’s controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle originally aired on the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 on March 8, hundreds of complaints have been filed to Ofcom, the independent regulator of communications industries in the UK.

In one case, Carl Wunsch and Eigil Friis-Christensen, both featured in Swindle, said they felt their contributions were “completely misrepresented.” Wunsch alleges that global-warming has occurred and must be addressed.

“I had never before encountered a filmmaker who clearly quite deliberately understood my point of view but set out to imply, through the way he uses me in the film, the reverse of what I was trying to say,” Wunsch said in an interview with the Australian ABC program Lateline.

Both scientists’ testimony has been removed from the DVD version of the film.

These accusations are only a few of the many roadblocks Swindle faced before being released on DVD, a success unto itself considering the negative response the film received.

Yet Durkin and officials at WAGtv—Durkin’s independent production company—point to a statistic dissenters would rather ignore: Ofcom calculated that at a ratio of 6 to 1, calls taken following the March broadcast were positive.

The negative reaction and attempts to suppress Durkin’s work are reminiscent of a key argument of the film itself. Climate change naysayers claim that a large number of scientists are alarmed by claims of global-warming supporters, yet their voices are widely suppressed.

“There are more and more thoughtful people—some of them a little bit frightened to come out into the open—but who quietly, privately, and some of them publicly, say, ‘Hang on, wait a minute. This doesn’t add up,’” said Lord Lawson of Blaby, a British politician and outspoken global-warming dissenter.

Durkin’s film seeks to uncover the methods behind global-warming activist campaigns. He also poses alternative evidence concerning the global rise in temperature.

The music makes the documentary feel more like a mystery theater performance; Durkin assumes the role of Sherlock Holmes on the prowl for the truth. As an environmentally aware Sherlock, Durkin is at his best when he moves beyond the graphs and charts that scientists with opposing views often cling to.

Arguments concerning data such as the infamous “hockey stick” graph only prove that the two sides are equally well entrenched in their separate beliefs.

The more compelling interviews occur with the likes of Paul Reiter, professor of entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. Reiter resigned from the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) when the organization was preparing its latest report on global-warming in 1995.

The IPCC still found a use for the highly-regarded scientist after his resignation.

“When I resigned from the IPCC, I thought that would be the end of it,” said Reiter. “But when I saw the final draft, my name was still there. So I asked for it to be removed. Well, they told me I had contributed, so it would remain. So I said, ‘No I haven’t contributed, because you haven’t listened to what I said.’”

The IPCC continually refused to remove Reiter’s name from their list of 2,500 hundred scientists whom they claimed supported the findings in the report. They only backed down after Reiter threatened legal action.

Reiter said he knows of other scientists who found themselves in a similar situation; after resigning to acknowledge their opposition to the report, they still found their names on the list of contributors.

Durkin also cites a letter from Frederick Seitz, renowned American physicist, which called the report a “disturbing corruption of the peer-review process,” and contended that the final report was nothing like the first draft approved by contributing scientists.

The evidence left out dealt with skepticism of a human caused global-warming hypothesis.

From an economic standpoint, Durkin points to third world countries as an abused battleground in alternative energy campaigns. The film notes that 2 billion people are without electricity, effectively hindering their ability to live.

Author Paul Driessen and Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore are two subjects interviewed who express fear over what effects global limitations on industrial advancement may have on poor countries. The film uses Africa as an example of a country with the resources for industrial revolution.

Driessen notes that enviromentalists are quick to talk about the risks of using certain technologies, but ignore the potential benefits.

It is these arguments—ones that touch on human interest subjects of global-warming—that leave the most lasting impressions from Durkin’s work. It shows the disconnect between UN agendas that are largely politically driven and the needs of people who would benefit greatly from use of their own natural resources for energy.

“The rich countries can afford to engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy,” said James Shikwati, Kenyan economist. “But for us, we are still at the [basic] stage of survival.