20110131_SV
Source: BBC4 Storyville
URL: N/A
Date: 31/01/2011
Event: Film Director Rupert Murray presents Storyville 16: Meet the Climate Sceptics.
People:
- Professor John Abraham: Professor of Thermal and Fluid Sciences, University of St Thomas School of Engineering
- Professor Michael Ashley: Astrophysicist, University of New South Wales
- Greg Craven: Teacher, Central High School, Independence, Oregon
- James Delingpole: Sceptical writer and journalist
- Professor A Scott Denning: Associate Professor, Atmospheric Science, Colorado University
- Professor David Griggs: Monash University, Former Director of the Hadley Centre
- Dr Mayer Hillman: Public Policy Expert, Policies Study Institute
- Alex Jones: American talk radio host
- Professor Richard Lindzen: Atmospheric physicist and Professor of Meteorology at MIT
- Steve Milloy: Author of Green Hell
- Lord Christopher Monckton: 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
- Rupert Murray: British film director
- Professor Andy Pitman: Climate Scientist, University of New South Wales
- Professor Ian Plimer: Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide.
- Dr Ben Santer: Climate Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- Dr Kevin Trenberth: Head of Climate Analysis, National Centre for Atmospheric Research
Rupert Murray: The Earth's climate, changed by us, is a terrifying prospect. We've been told it's the greatest threat humans have ever faced. But over the last few years, a group of people have been actively denying that there is any danger. They're called "climate sceptics" and their aim is to slow down action on emissions. I decided to go on a journey to find out who they were and what they had to say.
I don't know about you but over the past few years, I've been quite frightened by all the media stories about global warming. Even the British government mounted an ad campaign to try and scare us, and our children, into acting on CO2. [Footage of DECC's "Bedtime Stories" ad.] I'd thought, like quite a few people, that we humans were heading for disaster. I was scared we were going to lose our freedoms, because our freewheeling lifestyle was having an impact.
I was worried for my children. What kind of world were they going to grow up into? Then one day I came across this film [Apocalypse? No!], and the more I watched, the better I felt. My guilt for being human began to evaporate, as leading sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton seemed to demolish many of the key predictions of doom.
If the sceptics were right, we could all celebrate. But what if they were wrong? And by listening to them, we were taking a gamble with millions of people's lives and our future. I set aside my own green beliefs and any preconceived ideas I might have had. I wanted to hear their side of the story, to find out if they had the answers we're all looking for.
In October of 2009, a series of hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia seemed to show that some of the scientists behind the theory of man-made global warming had been distorting the data and conducting a dirty tricks campaign against their opponents. No-one knows who hacked the e-mails, but the sceptic media like Fox News went into overdrive. And leading sceptics were now in the spotlight. The United Nations summit in Copenhagen was to many people the last hope for an agreement after years of inaction and a sense of powerlessness. But the sceptics were making their presence felt. At a sceptic conference, the debate spilled over into direct action as climate campaigners tried to silence Lord Monckton just before he was about to speak. I began to wonder: who exactly was this British aristocrat and why was he getting so worked up?
The sceptics felt they had helped to make Copenhagen a failure, and as deep snow covered many parts of the Northern hemisphere, more people started to question whether global warming was happening. In Britain, Parliament had made up our minds for us, when almost every MP voted for a bill to cut our emissions. So I followed Lord Monckton as he focussed his attention on those places where the debate was still raging and temperatures were soaring.
[Sydney, Australia.] When Premier Kevin Rudd mentioned Lord Monckton in a speech, Monckton was invited to give a lecture tour around the country, as an unofficial response. It was a critical time, as Rudd was trying to push through legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The sceptics were up in arms, so the arrival of this British peer was big news. As Australia competed with America to see who could emit more carbon dioxide per person, a lot of Aussies were keen to meet the man who could reassure them that global warming wasn't their fault.
The sceptics had an image in the press of being evil conspirators, but when I arrived, Christopher seemed extremely considerate at the plight of others. Christopher agreed I could follow his tour. I found out he was a keen biker, so I struck up a conversation.
Lord Monckton: Definitely, yes I've got three of them, as I say, they've all got huge mileages on them. But I love them all to bits, because I used to live partly in Cyprus, partly in the south of France and partly in Scotland, so I had a bike in each place. And then when I fell ill a few years ago, we consolidated everything in Scotland, so all the bikes ended up there. I ended up not using them very much, but now I'm better again, so who knows what'll happen next.
Rupert Murray (voice over): Christopher had recovered from incurable Graves' Disease about three years before, around the time he became interested in climate change. I discovered he didn't have a background in science, but had started out as a journalist and worked as a policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
Lord Monckton: Then fell sick and moved up to Scotland and was then more or less out of action for 25 years. Through 20 years anyway, through quite severe illness, but in the end fell so sick that I had to come back here and be operated on several times. My life was saved - just. And I was still, however, not well. And then, 18 months ago, I cured myself with an invention which shows much promise with curing people with anything from HIV to malaria to multiple sclerosis. I mean, quite extraordinary, it sounds barking mad when you say it like that, but this appears to have a radical capability to cure people. It certainly cured me of 25 years of quite nasty illness.
Rupert Murray (voice over): The Graves' Disease had caused his eyes to bulge. But Christopher was living proof his own cure had worked in some way. Now he gave Planet Earth a clean bill of health.
Lord Monckton (speaking to audience): Here is what would have happened if everybody followed Kyoto. Practically no difference, compared with if nobody had bothered at all. In fact, as nobody had bothered at all, it's made no difference at all.
Four dead polar bears. And does the paper say that they were killed by global warming? No, it does not. Now, we have a scientific phrase, we scientists, for this. Shit happens.
It is very clear that the ice is indeed rapidly accumulating exactly as Johannessen et al had actually found. We now have the lowest hurricane activity world-wide, for 30 years.
Rupert Murray: Christopher attacked Al Gore and climate scientists. He presented specially selected science papers that he thought proved there was no problem with the climate, mixed in with his own analysis.
Lord Monckton (speaking to audience): There is simply no pattern of catastrophe discernable there. And it's high time that we got back in this debate to just giving the people the facts.
Rupert Murray: As the room of retirees rapturously applauded, I wondered: exactly, who were the sceptics?
Bigoted elderly man: I endorse your stand on homosexuals and AIDS. They should be locked up. They should be exterminated.
Lord Monckton: Well, I wouldn't go that far...
Bigoted elderly man: I would. I would.
Religious woman: You're protected. I've asked St Michael the Archangel, please send a whole legion of angels to be with him all the time.
Rupert Murray: Apart from the obvious eccentrics, most of them seemed very normal. But I wondered: why were they all so old? Perhaps they felt a life's work, built on cheap fossil fuel, was about to be dismantled. Whichever country I went to, I seemed to meet the same sort of people. There were those who took an interest in the science...
Man dressed like an orthodox Jew (at Heartland Institute Climate Change Conference): You'll find some people think it's the sign, it's only the sign, there are other people who are basically IPCC-lite, which is to say: we think the low end of the estimates and it's not catastrophic.
Rupert Murray: ... a few climate scientists rejected the idea of dangerous warming...
Richard Lindzen: I mean, I can live with five degrees. [Strange image of young man's upturned face streaming with sweat.] You can live with five degrees' increase.
Rupert Murray: ...then there were the organised sceptics, some funded by companies like Exxon Mobil, who went on the offensive.
Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute (speaking on Fox News): It's so shameful that I can't believe anybody would try to brazen this out. They should be talking to their lawyers...
Another man, speaking on Fox News: Well, that was certainly a shameful comment...
Rupert Murray: I felt the anger rising from both sides, as they went head to head in the media...
Angry man 1 on Fox News: You can be sceptical... but not in denial - the debate is over!
Angry man 2 on Fox News: On global warming? The debate is very clear!
Rupert Murray: Then there were the people who felt everyone connected to global warming was part of a political conspiracy without any scientific basis, to control the people of the world through an unelected global government...
[Scenes of angry young men being evicted from an Al Gore book signing event in Chicago.]
Angry young man 1: You do not need to assault me, sir. I have a First Amendment right! This man wants a grand centralised global government! There anyone doubts the scientists [?] That man is a - this is Nazi fascism!
Angry young man 2: Climategate, research Climategate! That guy's a fraud, it's a scam! They'll try and institute a global government through a carbon tax! This guy's working on a carbon tax, that's all it is, it's global government, there are 30,000 scientists trying to sue this guy! Get your hands off me! First Amendment rights, get your hands off me!
[On screen: 'Email to a climate scientist: "YOU ARE A PATHETIC FUCKING C*NT. YOU ARE A LIAR! YOU ARE A CRIMINAL! YOU ARE A FRAUD! DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO WEASEL YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE!"]
Rupert Murray: The impact of the campaign was that science itself came under attack, with sceptics sending some pretty nasty e-mails of their own. I've always liked listening to scientists. I knew most of them thought man-made climate change was very real. But what did they think of the sceptics?
Kevin Trenberth: The trouble that we have in debates, as scientists, is that we're stuck with telling the truth. They tell lies. You can't have your own facts. You can have your own opinions about what to do about the facts, but the facts are - that's what science is. And that's where they have an advantage.
Andy Pitman: They keep sending me e-mails to say, you know, climate scientists are going to be subjected to legal action, and they're going to be destroyed, and all that kind of stuff. I think it's the other way round. The science is right. In time, that will become clear, and I am very much looking forward to the day when some of the well-organised sceptical groups - not individuals but the really well-organised ones - are held to account for knowingly (because I think it's knowingly) misinforming policymakers and the public.
Rupert Murray: Back on the tour, we travelled north to Queensland and rested at a local golf club. I wondered: did the sceptics have real scientific grounds for concern? For doubt? What was at the heart of their case?
Lord Monckton: The central question is this. It's not whether CO2 or other greenhouse gases can cause warming, because we've known for 200 years that they can. It's not whether we are causing the CO2 in the atmosphere to rise, because we are. The only question that really matters is: given the rate at which we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere, how much warming will that cause, if it continues?
Rupert Murray: I was quite shocked that the arguing came down to one small, but very significant, point called climate sensitivity. The establishment climate scientists said there would be more warming from carbon dioxide, and the sceptics said there would be less. That was about it.
Richard Lindzen: On the one hand you have models that are suggesting that CO2 should give you a reasonably large amount of warming, and they depend, critically, on feedbacks, not the effect of CO2 alone.
Rupert Murray: On its own, carbon dioxide would give us just one degree of warming. This could trigger natural warming effects, from things like increasing water vapour and retreating ice, which would drive the temperature up and up. The so-called "feedbacks". The establishment scientists modelled how much warming the feedbacks might generate, by using the largest computers in the world. Most models projected that if we doubled carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we could warm the world from between two and four-and-a-half degrees, with a central estimate of three degrees Centigrade. The sceptics didn't think the models were conclusive proof, and they exploited this uncertainty.
Kevin Trenberth: To produce that link in the causality and do the so-called "diagnosis" that global warming is happening and humans are the cause of it - that depends upon climate models. Now climate models are not perfect, and so they are - it's easy to criticise those, in various ways, but still they are the best tools that we have.
Rupert Murray: But if the models were wrong and our carbon dioxide emissions weren't causing the warming, what was?
A Scott Denning: When these guys say the planet's not warming, you turn it around and say: why not? What is it that's taking away all that energy, how come it's not warming? Is there some kind of mysterious mechanism that's getting rid of all the warming? Well, that just doesn't stand the test of common sense, unless there's some silver bullet that's going to save us. Well, if that's real, we need to learn about it.
Rupert Murray: During his research, Christopher buried himself in the highly technical data from the UN's climate body, the IPCC.
Lord Monckton: But in among this was a complete bombshell. And it was in Figure 1 of that paper.
Rupert Murray: Monckton had found a paper from a Dr Rachel Pinker, that he thought proved by measurement, and not modelling, that a change in cloud cover was responsible for the warming of the last 25 years, and not our CO2.
Lord Monckton: If this confusion is correct, then this is the silver bullet which shoots down the vampire of global warming.
Rupert Murray: This would revolutionise science, if he was right.
Andy Pitman: If you came up with an alternate hypothesis that disproved global warming, you would win a Nobel Prize, in my judgement. You'd win a Nobel Prize because you had replaced a century-old hypothesis, or a century-old theory, with something new.
Rupert Murray: Now that Christopher had the theory, it was time to write it up and publish it in a peer-reviewed journal.
Michael Ashley: Let's, you know, "put the dukes up", as we say. The real test of science is to get out there and publish. If you don't, you're just wasting everyone's time.
Andy Pitman: And the only reason that Monckton and Plimer and others haven't done that is because their ideas, their hypotheses, do not withstand scrutiny. Monckton publishes his stuff, he'll get critiqued. If he's right, he'll get a Nobel Prize. If he's wrong, he'll be shown to be wrong. And that's the appropriate way to conduct science.
Rupert Murray: The sceptics seemed to take consolation from the past. Monckton's Australian sparring partner, and mining geologist, Professor Ian Plimer, felt the most damning evidence was in the geological record. So they took some time off from the lectures and travelled to the outback. Ian had found 750 million year old rocks, which he thought showed when the Earth had frozen over like a snowball, there'd also been very high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. How then could carbon dioxide cause the atmosphere to warm up if the Earth had been so cold?
[In the Australian outback.]
Lord Monckton: At that time, there was 30% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And we're looking 750 million years ago...
Ian Plimer: Game, set, match. If we had [unclear] at the Equator with 30% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere...
Lord Monckton: Clearly CO2 wasn't driving climate at that time...
Ian Plimer: Exactly.
Lord Monckton: ... and we have no reason to suppose, therefore, that it is driving climate now.
Rupert Murray (voice over): The intrepid duo poured acid onto the rocks to release trapped carbon dioxide in order to demonstrate their theory.
Ian Plimer: So you've got an acid bottle there. I suggest you pour it on a couple of pieces of dolomite and see if it fizzes. Careful... I'm watching in great detail, this is... What you've done, Lord Monckton, is absolutely sinful, because you're putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Lord Monckton: Hooray.
Rupert Murray (to Plimer and Monckton): So is this new science?
Ian Plimer: This is science that has been around for more than 100 years, and it is very very convenient for those people who want to torture the atmosphere with their computer models to totally ignore what happens in nature.
Rupert Murray (to Plimer and Monckton) : So why has this science been ignored for 100 years?
Lord Monckton: Because they are not interested in doing what we do, which is to ask questions. For instance, we went over there, we poured a little acid onto rocks which we thought probably contained a lot of carbon dioxide and, sure enough, the sort of chemical reaction that we would have expected happened. Now that is the kind of checking in the real world that no amount of computer modelling, which is the way they do it, could ever achieve.
Rupert Murray (voice over): I was a bit confused as to how these rocks from Earth's deep past were proof that carbon dioxide didn't warm the atmosphere by very much. But I was determined to check with some experts, as Christopher used these findings in his testimony to a United States congressional hearing on climate change three months later. I wondered: what was driving Christopher, when by this time, he'd only been investigating climate change for just over three years?
Lord Monckton: I have a long nose and I poke it into all kinds of things, simply because they amuse me. As I do a bit of medical research, so far with promising results. I do a bit of scientific research, into this, again with reasonably promising results, rather exciting results. If I'm right, then this entire problem is going to disappear, we'll lift it off the shoulders of humankind.
Rupert Murray: Climate scientists may have attacked Christopher for his lack of scientific training, but he certainly had a very good memory.
Ian Plimer: Well, Lord Monckton, the only way you can prove to me that you understand something about chemistry, is to give me the periodic table.
[Lord Monckton laughs and starts to sing Tom Lehrer's song The Elements, which segues into soundtrack of Gilbert & Sullivan's Major-General's Song.]
Rupert Murray: Christopher was bringing his version of the science directly into the public arena in quite some detail.
Lord Monckton (addressing audience): You multiply the emissivity of the Earth, roughly one with respect to long-wave radiation, by a constant, 5.67 times ten to the minus eighth, that's the sigma there, times the fourth power of temperature gives you the change in flux. That's...
Rupert Murray: Sometimes I really couldn't understand what he was talking about. I wondered if the audience had really understood it either.
Caller to Australian radio talk show: None of the climate change deniers have a coherent message, whether it's Ian Plimer or Lord Monckton, they're all coming from different angles and there's nothing coherent about it. And what the deniers' camp need to do is really put up some peer-reviewed science, or please just go away and let us get on with the job.
Rupert Murray: How were audiences supposed to decide who was right, as Christopher took on professional scientists on national television.
[Channel Seven TV studio.]
Scientist: To somehow discredit what we do in our lives, in our professional lives, is outrageous.
Lord Monckton: With all respect, you are not an expert on the central question in this debate, which is climate sensitivity: how much warming will you get if you add CO2 to the atmosphere.
Scientist: I'm sorry, you are a climate scientist?
Caller to ABC radio talk show: Apart from having "Lord" in front of his name, what qualifications does Lord Monckton have to speak on this, apart from the rest of us?
David Griggs: How can we, the scientists, distil something which is incredibly complex to something which is understandable, credible and that other people can't just say: "Well, no actually, it's the opposite." "I'm sorry, well yes it is." "No, it isn't." "Yes it is." "No, it isn't." How can you possibly - how can you do that?
[Debate on ABC radio show.]
Scientist: If you would like me to have something to say, I'm more than happy to let you talk on...
Lord Monckton: I thought I'd just answer the point - do carry on...
Scientist: No, no that's okay, I don't need to be here if you would like to do all the talking yourself.
Lord Monckton: I believe you can, but I advise you to stay and carry on.
Scientist: In Australia we perhaps have a few more manners when we're having a debate, we allow both people to talk about something...
Talk show host [?]: Lets' talk about the issues here and I'll do all the regulations...
Rupert Murray (voice over): Christopher began to present on live television his interpretation of Dr Pinker's work before it had been rigorously tested.
[Channel Seven TV studio.]
Lord Monckton: The radiative forcing, the change in temperature forced by something happening was naturally occurring. Cloud cover change of 3 watts per square metre, all anthropogenic forcing estimated by the IPCC 0.8, five times as much forcing from natural causes as from CO2. And from that you can calculate that the effect of CO2 on temperature is once again one sixth, one seventh of what the UN says. That is an observed result.
Andy Pitman: It's very difficult to disprove a statement without recourse to the full explanation of why that statement's false. And doing that in a public arena, it's easy to make a mess, it's hard to destroy it.
Rupert Murray: To his fans, this was the truth they had been searching for. And public opinion swung 10% against the crucial legislation to restrict carbon dioxide emissions the Rudd government was trying to bring in.
Elderly lady in street: He's speaking the truth, and we hear it very little. And we don't get enough of it in the media. And he gets, you know, like pushed down in the media, like he was on SBS the other night, pushed down. And told - made to feel like he's a total and utter idiot. And we can see he's not.
Elderly lady 2: Sums that up. It sums that up...
Elderly lady 1: We are desperate, we are desperate to have the truth - set people free in this country. I prayed for a blessing on him, as he's blessed us. He said "May God bless you", and I said "May God bless you", then he kissed me.
Rupert Murray: Buoyed by his success down under, Christopher travelled to America, with me in tow. Here he was a hero to many conservatives and regularly appeared on right-wing TV and radio stations.
Alex Jones (speaking on radio show): The President of the Czech Republic has said it, Ron Paul has said it, Christopher Monckton has broken it down on record. If you study the Club of Rome, the UN, Al Gore, all these groups, they openly admit they want a global, authoritarian, environmentally backed and based tyranny. Lord Christopher Monckton is our guest. Lord Monckton, good to have you on.
Rupert Murray: And on network television, he had challenged Al Gore to a debate many times.
Lord Monckton (speaking on NBC News): I'd be delighted to do that, and Al baby, if you do happen to be watching, my challenge remains open. If you're so confident of your position, then step up to the plate. Otherwise, take off your jersey and retire.
Rupert Murray: I also met another Englishman, who was fanning the flames of the debate, in the type of media we don't have at home.
Alex Jones (speaking on radio show): James Delingpole is a best-selling author, and he's one of the leading people out there exposing the fraud of man-made global warming.
Rupert Murray: He attended a sceptics conference with like-minded souls.
James Delingpole: I've loved being here. It's like coming out, it's being gay and going to your first, you know, gay club. You're surrounded by people who understand you and love you in a special way.
Rupert Murray: To James, climate change represented an attack on personal liberty.
James Delingpole: I want to be free to pursue happiness, and I think we should all be free to pursue happiness. I think that has got to be our ultimate goal, in this life anyway. And to deny ourselves that opportunity seems to me to be poisonous and evil.
Rupert Murray: Both men wanted to convince Americans not to allow Obama to bring in controversial climate legislation to curb emissions.
President Obama (speaking on television):... to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050.
Rupert Murray: Opponents of the legislation used the media to whip up opposition to the bill.
Steve Milloy (speaking on Fox News): This is the most significant piece of legislation that will happen in our lifetimes. This completely rewrites the American dream, the American standard of living. Unless people wake up and stop this in the Senate, we are all going to be in for a world of hurt.
Rupert Murray: I met Rita and Ben, climate sceptics who are travelling to hear Christopher speak in Washington. Rita was the leader of a local branch of the Tea Party.
Rita: There are a few voices out there who are trying to brainwash, I would say, the public. It's a question of freedoms, and those regulations that would be imposed, and carbon taxes, would bind our hands and empty our pockets, so it affects us all as Americans - it's interconnected. Lord Monckton's fought this battle for us and with us, and I really, personally am thankful for his being outspoken and making the American people aware of some of the false data...
Rupert Murray: In America, the fight against global warming had become a fight for freedom, a fight against government control. And grass-roots organisation the Tea Party rose up against climate legislation and increased taxes.
Lord Monckton (speaking on phone in hotel room): ...just over a year ago, when ordinary Americans of all parties, terrified of the administration that they had elected, and the way that it was encroaching on their freedoms by excessive taxation and regulation and legislation, decided to band together and stand up and be counted.
Rupert Murray: Like Australia, America's attempt to limit its carbon emissions became a key political issue and high up the sceptic media's agenda.
Newsreader on Fox News: ...the Climate and Energy Bill unveiled in the Senate today...
Senator John Kerry (speaking on television): We have the broadest base of business support for this in history, we have utilities, oil company major executives, big corporations in America...
Rupert Murray: Christopher always thought big. He saw the opportunity to stall US climate legislation as a way to make a global treaty on carbon emissions impossible.
Lord Monckton: And all we've got to do is try to keep the latest Senate bill in the United States from actually being passed. Therefore by the time of the Cancun UN conference, the Americans have still not effectively done anything much on climate. Nobody else is going to do so.
[Tea Party rally.]
Rupert Murray: The Tea Party sceptics were the kind of hard-working people who built our homes and dug our mines, flew our planes and fought our wars. But whilst I can understand their anger, being told that everything they had worked for was wrong, and it had to be torn down, it seemed to me as if the debate about the science had been lost, and it had become one of pure politics.
Impassioned speaker in hard hat (FreedomWorks Foundation): They've passed this cap and trade bill, called the climate change bill, does nothing - does absolutely nothing - for the climate. It's a pure and simple tax bill that will be paid by every one of you hard-working Americans. And I think we've all paid enough taxes. One last little bit of information for President Obama is America bows to no-one.
Lord Monckton (speaking in hotel room): The organisers have in particular asked me to say why it is that global warming is rubbish. They want a little bit of the science.
[Again at the Tea Party rally.]
Presenter: It gives me great pleasure to welcome Lord Monckton!
Lord Monckton (addressing rally): America, [?] land of opportunity! You can be born in Kenya and end up President of the United States.
Rupert Murray: Christopher seemed to forget the science as he namechecked his favourite TV station. The science came at the end, just before he ran out of time.
Lord Monckton: Although there would not be almost 50,000 people here today, were it not for the freedom-loving, balanced journalists of the freedom-loving channel Fox News.
Rupert Murray: As the sceptics, and Lord Monckton, rose in popularity, any remaining support for the Democrats' climate change legislation evaporated.
Senator John Kerry (speaking on television): In order to pass comprehensive climate change legislation, you gotta reach 60 votes, and to reach those 60 votes you gotta have some Republicans.
Lord Monckton (addressing rally): Altogether now, global warming is...
Crowd: Shit!
Senator John Kerry (speaking on television): As we stand here today, we do not have one Republican.
Lord Monckton (addressing rally): Here, Barack Hussein Obama has just flown overhead in Marine 1 and landed on the White House Lawn. He is now hiding behind the drapes in the Oval Office. He cannot hear you. Global warming is..
Crowd: SHIT!!!
Lord Monckton: That's better. I think he heard that one.
Rupert Murray: Scepticism was successfully stalling political action. US climate legislation was put on the back burner, and in Australia heads rolled. The sceptics were winning.
Australian news reporter: He will face his judgement day. Some will say his execution.
Kevin Rudd (speaking on television): I'm proud of the fact (and some people have probably never heard of this one) that we have a national organ transplant authority...
Rupert Murray: Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, had shelved the emissions trading scheme because of a lack of public support. And he was ousted by his deputy.
Andy Pitman: Climate change isn't like, say, an election. There's a campaign running up to an election, and by definition whoever wins that election won. That's it. But this isn't like that, this is an attack on the science, and that doesn't actually change the truth. The climate will change as the climate changes, irrespective of whether the sceptics win the public relations battle. Winning that battle doesn't change the trajectory of the Earth's climate. It doesn't change how rainfall and temperature and everything else will change as a consequence of global warming. So by winning, they win a battle such that we all lose the war. It's not like politics, where if they win the battle they win the war. In climate, if the sceptics win, everybody else loses. And I think that's reprehensible.
[TV news footage of flooding in China.]
TV newsreader: 132 people have been killed and a further 68 are missing after floods, landslides and heavy rain have brought havoc to south-east China. According to Chinese military officials, over nine million people are affected by the torrential rain. It's hard to believe only a few months ago, parts of the south were suffering from the worst drought in a century.
Rupert Murray: Pakistan experienced the worst floods in a hundred years. China and West Africa were severely affected, and a heat wave in Russia killed 11,000 people. Although it's impossible to prove that a single weather event is or isn't linked to climate change, I felt there couldn't have been a worse example of what might happen if man-made global warming was real and dangerous.
TV newsreader: The unprecedented heat wave sweeping Russia continues unabated, with July already the hottest month on record.
Rupert Murray: The sceptics thought the climate was just acting normally. They felt the UN's climate body the IPCC had exaggerated the effect of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere. But in fact, quite a few climate scientists thought the UN's projections were too conservative. They found examples of measurement that actually exceeded the UN's computer projections.
Scientist giving a presentation: Now what the IPCC's models suggest is that green range down below and you can see that even the most pessimistic of the models at the top of them, is 1.6 times less than the amount that's actually happened.
Richard Alley: This is how much warming we expect from rising CO2, the blue number up there, which is a little over five degrees Fahrenheit, is sort of the most likely. If you can bet on one horse, you'd bet on that horse. But the orange arrow shows that it could be higher than that, and the red arrow shows that it could be a lot higher than that.
Rupert Murray: It seemed the sceptics were on one side, the climate catastrophists on the other, and the IPCC in the middle. But importantly, I discovered there were far less papers supporting the sceptic position of low sensitivity, and far more supporting the central estimate of the IPCC and above.
Andy Pitman: There are no papers that have destroyed global warming theory. The sceptics would have you believe there's lots. But actually there aren't any.
Richard Alley: Is there any other possible thing to explain this? And it really took, I'm sorry sir, it took a few billion dollars of your money and about 30 years to say that there's nothing else that we can find in nature to do this.
Ben Santer: The changes in all of these things are not consistent with natural causation alone. Now you may not like that result but that's our best understanding that we have.
Rupert Murray: Time was running out for us to make a global decision. Either to act or do nothing. So how would we make the right one? I found a video on the internet. With 8 million views, that incredibly seemed to have the answer for people still unsure about the world's biggest problem - or tax burden, depending on your perspective.
Greg Craven: Central High School, Independence, Oregon: You know that whole shouting match about global warming? What if I told you I've got a way to look at it without having to believe anyone, but you still decide with confidence what we should do. First off, no-one's perfect. So every choice you make brings with it a risk if that choice turns out to be a mistake. Given that, which risk would you rather take? Listen to the activists and take big action now, risking the possible harm to the economy that the sceptics warned us about, or listen to the sceptics and don't take big action now, risking the possible destruction and upheaval that the activists warned us about? Bottom line is: what is the more acceptable risk? The risk of taking action or the risk of not taking action?
Rupert Murray: Oregon high school teacher Greg Craven created a risk management graph with rows and columns that allows you to decide what to do, based on the best and worst case scenario.
Greg Craven: Now obviously this is grossly simplified, the smiley faces give that away, but we can say that the future will fall roughly into one of these four boxes. Most of the shouting match is about trying to predict which row the future will fall into. Which we can't know for certain until we actually get there. But what we can know, because we control it, is which column the future will not fall into. Because by taking action or not, we are choosing a column, and that eliminates the risk in the other column. The grid by itself isn't a silver bullet. But what it does do, is it allows us to make a decision using uncertain knowledge, by changing the question from "Are humans affecting the climate?" to the real question "What's the wisest thing to do, given the uncertainties and the risks?"
Rupert Murray: Despite the ins and outs of the climate debate, our growing civilisation moved inexorably towards its uncertain future. It was going to be hard to stop using fossil fuels, especially when they were such damn good fun. I went to a bike rally in Virginia, and I met some servicemen who weren't sceptics but were enjoying some R&R. They eloquently explained how hard it was going to be to wean ourselves off black gold.
Man 1: This is America. [Taps upper arm.] Right here.
Man 2; Oil! Gas!
Man 1: America. You are seeing it. It's crack.
Man 2: We're addicts! We're addicted to it!
Man 1: Crack. Addicts. On oil.
Rupert Murray (voice over): Just like the sceptics, I really didn't want climate change to be true. So that we could carry on doing what the hell we liked.
[Rupert Murray shoots with a pistol at a target.]
Rupert Murray: That's what we came here for. Fuck global warming.
Rupert Murray (voice over): I love burning petrol. Who doesn't? I love bikes, a passion I shared with Christopher.
Lord Monckton (looking at motorbikes): So you have a Honda SP1 in the immediately recognisable Valentino Rossi colours...
Rupert Murray: But should each person be allowed to burn as much fuel as they wanted?
Man 1: We all want to ride it, we all want to do it. It's a statement, a statement of freedom. But you know, here's the deal babe, there's a price. You gotta pay the price. We pay it.
Rupert Murray: What is the price?
Man 1: Blood.
Rupert Murray (voice over): Should governments ration the amount of energy we use? Was climate change going to bring in the same kind of controls we had in the Second World War? But this time for a faceless enemy?
Mayer Hillman: There are certain points in history when we have just got to set democracy aside, and I can think of no more justified situation than that relating to the future of the planet.
Rupert Murray: How would the right-wing pundits react to the curtailing of democracy?
Alex Jones (speaking on radio show): This is fascism. This is Stalinism, this is communism, it's all the same.
Mayer Hillman: It's just got to be some external force that requires them to make that change.
Rupert Murray: I love my freedom to do stuff. But I was scared, that unless we all started to agree on a way forward, we could lose more freedoms, as this car advert suggested.
[Audi 'Green Police' commercial]
Customer (to sales clerk): Plastic.
Policeman (arresting customer): That's the magic word. Green Police! You picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy.
Rita (Tea Party person): We will stand firm. We will not give up, we will not lose our freedoms. No way.
Rupert Murray: Now, did Glenn Beck suggest that he was prepared to defend his right to have modern comforts, with force?
James Delingpole (speaking on Fox News): ... the guy in charge of the IPCC wants us all to learn to stop having ice in our drinks...
Glenn Beck: You can take my ice after you've taken my gun.
Rupert Murray: Liberty or death. I was genuinely worried that some time in the future, it might come to that. This climate campaign film presented a deliberately exaggerated scenario, but suggested that we either reduce our emissions or face the consequences.
[Footage from 10:10's "No Pressure" video.]
James Delingpole: One of the most common accusations is that we are so selfish, we don't want to change our lifestyle. And that's the reason why we deny the truth. That's not the reason, it's just that we've looked at the facts and we know what the truth is.
Lord Monckton: If we go back to Abu Ali Ibn al-Husain Ibn al-Haytham. This was in 11th-century Iraq. The road to the truth, he says, is long and hard, but that is the road we must follow.
Rupert Murray: The truth will set us free. But the national science academies of the world and the non-conformist climate dissenters both believe the truth was on their side. Who was most right? In 2010 the accusations and counter-accusations of falsehoods reached a new intensity. John Abraham is a professor from the University of Minneapolis. In 2009 Christopher had given a lecture in nearby St. Pauls, and a film of the talk had gone viral and was watched by two and a half million people just before the crucial Copenhagen summit.
Lord Monckton (speaking at lecture, Minnesota Free Market Institute): The science is in. The truth is out. And the scare is over.
Rupert Murray: Abraham had then spent the next eight months examining Christopher's speech in detail, with worrying results.
John Abraham: It seems pretty authoritative and it's very convincing to folks in the audience. But it's not right. He's got a lot of scientific errors. And I think the most telling thing is the authors he references don't agree with his interpretation.
Lord Monckton: It's a very very serious allegation that's being made here. It goes right to the heart of my reputation.
John Abraham: He says the cooling since the turn of the century has been rapid and statistically significant, and that is not scientifically accurate. He says "It's the sun", and he attributes the statement to the International Astronomical Union - not true. He says Arctic ice is fine - not true. He says the Greenland ice sheet is fine and in fact it's growing - not true. He says...
Rupert Murray: The argument became very heated, and Christopher threatened legal action, making his own claims against Abraham. Claims which the scientist strongly denies.
Lord Monckton: We will be making him put his denial to the court, we will be examining all his financial records. We will be - there are already people watching him to see where he goes, in case he's taking any interesting holidays somewhere, in case he's got money stashed. But this is not an honest man.
John Abraham: I'm not motivated by funding, no-one paid me, and you know, this is a thankless job. But scientists are entering the fray, to make sure that their science is accurately represented.
Rupert Murray: In 2010, Christopher had been invited to testify for Congress as the sole witness against global warming for the Republican Party.
John Abraham: His testimony actually is a bit more - there's a larger concern than his public speech, because that's on the record, and it's involved setting policy.
Man in suit (speaking on television): We're here as the House representatives to have the state of the science discussed about climate change. And I was impressed that those who have denied the threat this poses to planet Earth couldn't produce one scientist.
Lord Monckton (speaking to Congress): This is Dr Pinker's paper establishing that the warming of that period...
Rupert Murray: As America was trying to decide whether to cut emissions, Christopher his version of the science, and told them to have the bravery to do nothing. Now Professor Abraham, and 20 leading climate scientists from top universities and government institutions, analysed Christopher's written statement and sent a report back to Congress which cast serious doubt on the validity of his scientific knowledge. The evidence about the snowball earth, from our trip to outback Australia. But Dr David Archer, from the University of Chicago wrote back. "Monckton is using a theory that is using carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas to argue that it proves the opposite." In short, Monckton's statement is ridiculous. The authors summarised the content of the document by saying that Lord Monckton's key scientific assertions were without merit, based on a thorough misunderstanding of the science of climate change.
I really liked Christopher. I liked his remarkable brain, and his maverick outlook. He wasn't scared of taking anyone on. He had taught me to be a sceptic. But now I was sceptical about the arguments he had put forward.
The criticisms were mounting against Christopher. He was presenting papers that had not been peer-reviewed or had been criticised. Even Dr Pinker had written to Congress, saying he had misinterpreted her work on clouds. So I travelled to one of his London clubs to give him a chance to reply. I repeated the question the scientists had been asking. Had he deliberately misled people on this important political issue?
Lord Monckton: No, and besides I thought I was addressing a scientific issue.
Rupert Murray (voice over): And what about Abraham's claims that he had misrepresented the scientists' findings?
Lord Monckton: The vast majority, the overwhelming majority of the points which Professor Abraham tried to challenge, in his attack on my presentation - it was he, and not I, that got them wrong.
Rupert Murray (voice over): Christopher felt that Abraham had misquoted him to the scientists, but Abraham told me he had either reflected exactly what Christopher had said, or the impression he felt Christopher had left in the minds of a non-scientific audience. One of the errors Abraham noticed was the statement that the International Astronomical Union had concluded that most global warming was caused by the sun.
Lord Monckton (speaking at lecture, Minnesota Free Market Institute): They attribute 69% of all the recent global warming to the sun. Most solar physicists agree. The International Astronomical Union 2004 had a symposium on it. They concluded that that was the case.
Rupert Murray (voice over): The International Astronomical Union have never agreed this. This argument was put forward by one paper out of 241 submitted to the symposium in 2004.
Rupert Murray (speaking to Lord Monckton): ...didn't represent the view of the whole union. And you said in your talk that it did.
Lord Monckton: [I never said?]... that was the view of the whole union.
Lord Monckton (speaking at lecture, Minnesota Free Market Institute): The International Astronomical Union 2004 had a symposium on it. They concluded that that was the case.
Rupert Murray: There was no such conclusion made.
Lord Monckton: So there was no such paper.
Rupert Murray: Which you agreed in an e-mail to this gentleman Spencer David. He put these accusations to you, and you said: you are right. So you admitted that you had made a mistake.
Lord Monckton: If what I said gives the impression that it was the view of the entire (and that was the word you used but I didn't in my speech) IAU, then I'm very happy to make it clear that it wasn't the view of the "entire" IAU.
Rupert Murray: Okay, so you made a mistake.
Lord Monckton: So, if you like, I made a mistake. But when he says that I was deliberately trying to deceive people. No, I wasn't.
Rupert Murray (voice over): Christopher disagreed with quite a few points in the film. And so he asked to make a statement.
Lord Monckton: The Climategate e-mailers have been pursuing an agenda of their own, and some of its errors I have pointed out. And in this film, to large extent, they've had a chance to hit back. These are the kind of people who have pushed the climate change agenda too hard, and one of the reasons why the scepticism that you see in my remarks is prevailing worldwide now, in the public debate. Listen carefully to both sides. Believe no-one. Science is at root a sceptical endeavour. But thank you for watching.
Rupert Murray (voice over): The sceptics had made me feel less guilty about climate change. But until someone comes up with a silver bullet, or the balance of evidence tips in the other direction, I'm willing to accept a curtailing of my freedom. In the end I trusted the scientists. I trusted their logical language and measured tones. I trusted the mechanics of science to allow the good ideas to rise to the surface and the bad ones to sink into obscurity.
David Griggs: Anybody who speaks on climate change, who doesn't do it with the facts at hand, in an objective way, trying to uncover the truth, you know, is dangerous.
Rupert Murray: Weather is not the same as climate. But 2010, one of the hottest years on record, has certainly seen some extreme events. England had the coldest December since records began. In Greenland, temperatures set record highs. And in Australia, Queensland had the worst floods in its entire history. So it comes down to: who do you trust with your future? Can we risk trusting the advice of the sceptics?