It would seem that no one who has any credibility supports the recent airing of the climate skeptic film, ‘The great global warming swindle’. Here is the press release from Australia’s most exalted science body. It is also worthwhile going to the specifics of the Academy’s rebuttal (www.science.org.au/reports/index.htm).
Thursday 12 June 2007 : Verdict remains the same: the CO2 is guilty
The Australian Academy of Science maintains the view that recent global warming is caused by unprecedented CO2 levels in the atmosphere, despite claims made in a recent documentary.
The pseudo-documentary ‘The great global warming swindle’, shown on ABC television on 12 July, poses a simplistic question: Is the Earth’s climate driven by CO2 or the sun?
The answer is, both. It’s true: the sun does have an impact on the Earth’s climate, but this is on a 10,000 year cycle. The sun and the moon control long-term shifts in the orientation of the Earth’s axis. Variations in the sun’s energy output on shorter time scales, particularly for recent decades, cannot explain recent warming.
Solar effects are small compared to the unprecedented human-induced changes to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
President of the Academy of Science, Professor Kurt Lambeck said: ‘Those who deny human-induced global warming are in the same camp as those that deny smoking causes lung cancer and that CFCs deplete the ozone layer.
‘There is too much at stake to be side-tracked by discredited theories and out-of-date data.’
The overwhelming view of the scientific community engaged in climate research is that human-induced CO2 is having a powerful and potentially irreversible impact on the planet’s climate.
A scientific rebuttal of the so-called swindle is available on the Academy’s website at www.science.org.au/reports/index.htm
Contacts:
Professor Kurt Lambeck
Phone: (02) 6125 5161
“Australian Academy of Science” <scied@science.org.au>