'Global Warming Swindle' vs. 'Inconvenient Truth': A Comparison of Documentaries

Two documentaries that tackled the controversial issue of climate change, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" and "An Inconvenient Truth," took polar opposite positions on the issue. Each documentary took a definite stance on global warming, whether it is human-caused and on whether climate change presents an imminent danger to human kind. While both documentaries received accolades, both documentaries were also criticized for containing flawed data by those for and against anthropogenic global warming theories.

"An Inconvenient Truth" claims that there is a scientific consensus that global warming is anthropogenic. However, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" refutes that claim stating, "The most highly qualified and respected scientists can be blind to obvious deficiencies in a theory and will be dismissive of evidence when it undermines what they want to believe."

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The brainchild of former vice president turned climate change activist Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth" premiered in 2006. In the film, Al Gore made the statement that not only are humans to blame for global warming but that if humans allow it, "it is deeply unethical." In the companion book to the film, "An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It" Gore stated that allowing global warming to continue "would be deeply and unforgivably immoral. It would condemn coming generations to a catastrophically diminished future."

According to an academic report by Texas state climatologist John W. Nielsen-Gammon, here are some of the claims made in "An Inconvenient Truth":

• "Global warming is caused by global warming pollution, which traps extra infrared radiation."

• "Carbon dioxide is going up relentlessly because of the larger changes in our civilization."

• "Impacts of the resulting global warming are visible worldwide in retreating glaciers."
   
• "Temperatures are unprecedented over past 1,000 years, and the trend is intensifying."

• "Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are endangered; their melting would cause catastrophic sea level rise"

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"The Great Global Warming Swindle" which first aired on British television in 2007 purports that scientific consensus on global warming is the result of financial interests, media bias, and a "global warming activist industry." According to the film:

• "Man-made global warming is no longer just a theory about climate; it is the defining moral and political cause of our age."

• "The Earth's climate is always changing. There is nothing unusual about the current temperature."

• "There is no evidence that CO2 has ever ‘driven’ the climate in the past, nor is there any compelling evidence that it is doing so now."

• "Everywhere you are being told that climate changed is proved beyond doubt, but you are being told lies."

• "When people say we don't believe in global warming, I say no, I believe in global warming, I don't believe that human CO2 is causing that warming."

• "Greenland has been much warmer. Just a thousand years ago, Greenland was warmer than it is today. Yet it didn't have a dramatic melting event."

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