Climate change culprit? Short answer: the Sun
The data was misinterpreted by Al Gore and those who have come since then who agree with him. Looking closely at the link between CO2 and temperature actually shows that temperature causes CO2 to rise, not the opposite that was proposed by Al and all the others who want to gain power and money off of our fear. Oceans, volcanoes, and dying vegetation are all far bigger sources of CO2 than human industry and the Sun is the primary cause - by far - of climate change. I'll talk below about all of this.
From the documentary (link below):
The 'Great Global Warming Swindle' caused controversy in the UK when it premiered March 8, 2007 on British Channel 4. A documentary, by British television producer Martin Durkin, which argues against the virtually unchallenged consensus that global warming is man-made. A statement from the makers of this film asserts that the scientific theory of anthropogenic global warming could very well be "the biggest scam of modern times."
According to Martin Durkin the chief cause of climate change is not human activity but changes in radiation from the sun. Some have called The Great Global Warming Swindle the definitive retort to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Using a comprehensive range of evidence it's claimed that warming over the past 300 years represents a natural recovery from a 'little ice age'. According to the program humans do have an effect on climate but it's infinitesimally small compared with the vast natural forces which are constantly pushing global temperatures this way and that. From melting glaciers and rising sea levels, The Great Global Warming Swindle debunks the myths, and exposes what may well prove to be the darkest chapter in the history of mankind.
According to a group of leading scientists brought together by documentary maker Martin Durkin everything you've ever been told about global warming is probably untrue. Just as we've begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, Durkin's documentary slays the whole premise of global warming. "Global warming has become a story of huge political significance; environmental activists using scare tactics to further their cause; scientists adding credence to secure billions of dollars in research money; politicians after headlines and a media happy to play along. No-one dares speak against it for risk of being unpopular, losing funds and jeopardizing careers."
The documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ
Fun fact: The medieval period was warmer than now.
Sunspots are intense magnetic fields. Scientists used to count sun spots and decided that more sunspots meant warmer temperatures were coming. In 1991 scientists found a correlation between solar activity and temperature. Here's a graph showing that correlation over the past 100 years. Notice the variance is merely from -0.4 to 0.2, less than one degree of temperature difference over the course of 100 years.
So let's zoom out. Here's a graph showing that correlation over the past 400 years.
Fact: Clouds have a cooling effect.
Earth is constantly being bombarded by subatomic particles. When these particles meet water vapor rising up from the sea, they form clouds. When the sun is more active (mostly measured in number and size of "sun spots") and the solar wind is strong, more particles get through and more clouds are formed. A tight correlation is obvious; cosmic rays have an inverse affect on temperature.
Here's a graph showing that correlation over the past 500 million years.
Here's a graph from 2005 Harvard scientists of CO2 and temperature correlation over the course of the 20th century:
Here's a graph from 2005 Harvard scientists of the Sun and temperature correlation over the course of the 20th century:
Here's an image showing the above two graphs side by side:
How & why did this begin?
In 1974 "The Weather Machine," a BBC show, warned of impending climate disaster. After four decades of cooling temperatures, the idea was there was a threat of a new ice age coming.
Then temperatures rose some. In the early 1970's the oil crisis plunged the world into recession. Coal miners went on strike. Energy became a political issue. Britain's Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher set out to break their power. She didn't trust oil sources - including the Middle East - and pushed nuclear power. She turned on the money spigot for any researchers who could "prove" a relationship showing CO2 influencing temperature and creating global warming.
The flag of this new "eco-friendly" paradigm was taken up by environmentalists and luddites. It could be used to legitimize a whole suite of myths and belief systems such as anti-car, anti-growth, anti-technology, anti-development, and anti-USA.
In the 1990's, a whole new industry emerged focused on global warming. Grant applications having any relation to concern over global warming were awarded huge amounts of money.
Part of this rise in popularity was an increase in creation of climate forecast models, as well as confidence in the predictions. The higher the confidence, the higher the paycheck.
Professor Tim Ball, Dept of Climatology, University of Winnipeg:
My car is running poorly. I'm going to ignore the engine (Sun), ignore the transmission (water vapor), and I'm going to look at one nut on the right rear wheel (human produced CO2). The science is that bad.
The range of climate forecasts vary greatly because small changes to underlying assumptions can cause large variations in the resulting predictions.
Professor Carl Wunsch, Dept of Oceanography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
If I run a complicated model that shows nothing surprising or alarming happening, it is not likely to get printed. However, if I adjust my model to show something dramatic happening, it will get published and picked up by the media. There is a powerful bias within the media and within the scientific community toward dramatic results [paraphrased]...
Nigel Calder, Former Editor, New Scientist:
The thing that amazes me is how the elementary principles of journalism seem to have been abandoned. You've got a whole new generation of reporters; environmental journalists. So if the idea of global warming goes in the trash can, so does your job. It really is that crude.
Ice and sea levels
Professor John Christy, Dept of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville:
We have temperature records from Greenland that go back thousands of years. Greenland has been much warmer. Just 1000 years ago Greenland was warmer than it is today, yet there was no dramatic melting event.
Professor Philip Stott, Dept of Biogeography, University of London:
7000 to 8000 years ago, there was far more melting of permafrost than we are seeing now [paraphrased].
Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Director, International Arctic Research Center in Alaska. It's the World's leading arctic research institute. He insists that over time the ice caps are always expanding and contracting.
People forget that ice is always moving.
Professor Carl Wunsch, Dept of Oceanography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Sea level change takes hundreds of thousands of years...
Propaganda & Humiliation
The US Government alone spends over 4 billion dollars a year on pro-climate propaganda. I'm including research grants here as the primary form of this.
Dr. Roy Spencer, Weather Satellite Team Leader, NASA:
It is a lot harder to get research projects funded because of the stance we have taken publicly and you will find very few who will take a public stance on this because it does cut into research funding.
Professor Philip Stott, Dept of Biogeography, University of London:
[Regarding the idea that if you disagree with the propaganda, you must be in the pocket of big oil or some other interested party.] I get this all the time. Sadly, like most scientists you talk to, I don't get a penny from them. [paraphrased]
Professor John Christy, Dept of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville:
Billions of dollars invested in climate science means a huge constituency of people dependent upon those dollars and they will want to see that carried forward. It happens in almost any bureaucracy.
Lord Lawson of Blaby (really, that is is name and title):
Anyone who stands up and says, 'Let's look at this rationally and carefully and actually see how this stands up, they will be ostracized.
Scientists comfortable with the relatively civility and obscurity of academic life suddenly find themselves under attack if they dare to challenge the hypothesis of man-made global warming.
Patrick Moore, Co-founder, Greenpeace:
These days if you are skeptical about the litany around climate change, you are suddenly like a holocaust denier. The environmental movement really is a political activist movement. They have become hugely influential at a global level. Every politician is aware of that today. Whether you are on the left or the right, you have to pay homage to the environment.
It hurts the poorest
As media and political might align against dissenting facts and opinions, intense pressure is increasing against the developing world to not develop.
Paul Driessen, Author: Green Power, Black Death:
My big concern with global warming is that the policies being pushed to supposedly prevent global warming are having a disastrous effect on the worlds' poorest people.
Almost two billion people - nearly 1/3 of the world's population - have no access to electricity. They burn wood or dung to cook and warm their homes. The smoke this creates is the deadliest form of pollution. Many die from cancer and lung disease because of this. Forget about light and refrigeration!
Promotors of man-made climate change say they should use solar. This is at least three times as expensive as traditional forms of electrical generation. The cost of methods of alternative energy production is decreasing but some people do not have the luxury of time.
James Shikwati, Economist & Author:
The African dream is to level up. Environmentalists are killing that dream. [paraphrased]
"Debunking" the Sun's affects
A new article published by the Washington Post titled No, the sun isn’t driving global warming attempts to discredit Dr. Willie Soon's peer-reviewed, published research papers, some of which have demonstrated solar influences upon climate. The article does not cite nor provide any scientific rebuttal whatsoever to any specific scientific paper written by Dr. Soon, nor to any of the hundreds of other peer-reviewed published papers demonstrating a solar-climate relationship and potential solar amplification mechanisms.
Instead, the author cites the repeatedly-debunked and simplistic propaganda attempting to dismiss the role of the Sun in climate change promulgated by the warmist Skeptical Science website.
These falsehoods include the claim that there was no increase in solar activity during the 20th century. This is debunked by the SkS graph in the article itself shown below. The dark blue moving average line in the graph of total solar irradiance (TSI) clearly demonstrates the average TSI of the first half of the 20th century is much less than the entire 2nd half of the 20th century. Given that many papers have found a lagged effect of solar activity changes upon climate, and the large thermal inertia of the oceans, is it entirely reasonable to expect that a sustained high solar output of the latter half of the 20th century would produce a delayed and gradually increasing trend, as was observed.
This is better demonstrated by calculating the 'sunspot integral' of solar activity, which clearly demonstrates a steady rise in accumulated solar output beginning in the 1930's to the end of the 20th century. The correlation of the sunspot integral to global temperature (~.95) is also far superior to that of CO2 and global temperature (~.35)...
From http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2015/02/yes-sun-was-driving-global-warming.html
A great article on this issue by Kenny Paluritano
You may remember (I don't, I wasn't alive) a time when the media and 'scientists' were raging about global cooling (Newsweek & Time Magazine), which then later became global warming, and has now morphed int Climate Change. This is a logical fallacy called special pleading, also referred to as moving the goalposts. When your argument can't hold up against counterpoints, you shift your argument until it eventually becomes unfalsifiable... Since the climate is ALWAYS changing, you would have to be an idiot to argue against Climate Change...
Resources for the documentary
Prof. Tim Patterson
Prof. Edward J. Wegman
Prof. Bob Carter
Dr. Willie Soon
Dr. Madhav Khandekar
Prof. Wibjorn Karlen
Dr. Hendrik Svensmark
Dr. Dick Morgan
Dr. Fred Goldberg
Hans HJ Labohm
Steve McIntyre
Dr. Ross McKitrick
Dr. Chris Landsea
NASA
Archive.org
ITN
The Newsmarket
BBC
Buyout footage