Finding Martin Durkin’s film on YouTube was more trying than it ought to have been (see my comment here and Jaime’s reply). Once I had found it, how did I find it?

Well, it has strong points, and weak points. Sadly, although the strong points greatly outnumbered the weak points, the weak points rendered the whole thing a missed opportunity. When metal fatigue caused explosive decompression on the old Comet 1, it was easy to overlook how well made the rest of the plane was. It only takes one serious flaw to crash a plane, or a movie, no matter how well the rest of it is put together.

(ASTERISK: The Comet 1 failures in 1954 (jet airliners! 70 years ago!) were not caused by the square windows. This is probably an idea that is impossible to kill. It certainly makes for a more memorable tale than describing the real place on the fuselage that the cracks propagated from. Subsequent marks did not have square windows, making this an obvious point of difference.)

The problem is quite simply that the film decides, not merely to prove that climate change is not an existential threat, but to show that CO2 has nothing to do with atmospheric temperature changes at all. This occurs in a substantial block of the film from about 22 to 32 minutes in. And while the eminent talking heads in that portion make entirely cogent points, the narrative stitching those soundbites together would leave the uninformed viewer with the impression that CO2 is not the driver of any of the recent temperature rise.

This is not true, and I don’t believe that the assorted professors believe it to be true. They may think that CO2 has produced half of the recent warming, or below half. But not none of it, as the film would have us believe.

As I am fond of saying, if you debunk, you had better be damn sure of your ground. It’s a version of “When you strike at a king, you must kill him,” which is a lesson that Yevgeny Prigozhin did not live very long to ponder. But what it means in this sense is that your criticism of an untrue theory must itself not contain any obvious flaws.

It is also a natural quality of an authoritative film that it must present the opposition case with the diligence that the opposition themselves would present it. In terms of Teh Climate Crisis, this means the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere and feedbacks. Nowhere is this mentioned in Climate : The Movie, let alone debunked. The well-known emission spectrum of Earth should have been presented, with an explanation of increasing CO2 concentrations causing greater absorption on the flanks of its key frequency bands. In other words: it’s not nothing, but it’s not catastrophe. This is a position that is well supported by the data. “It’s nothing” – as presented or implied here – is a fatal flaw.


Emission spectrum: Dave Burton’s gif version

What about the good bits? Well, we had great punches thrown by a range of talking heads who will be familiar to climate sceptics, as will their observations. The vast quantity of funding for climate science (a problem for the search for truth that I term “searching in the wrong woods”), the personal jeopardy of anyone who takes a sceptical position, the censorship, the bandwagon and the forced consensus are all telling points. Less well fleshed out are the sections at the end where the problems of climate policy for personal freedom, wealth and third-world development are mentioned. Perhaps, to do justice to the whole field, a series of short films, each on a different subtopic, would have been better. I am asking for too much, I know.

The film ends with a problem we are all familiar with: China and coal use, and the fact that (I paraphrase) only the guilt-wracked Western nations are on board with the self-destructive Net Zero policies. The implication is that our wealth has peaked, and we are set for decades of decline, or rather our descendants are, for many sceptics – as exemplified by the talking heads in Climate : The Movie – are of an age that they will avoid the worst of the outcomes. And yes, climate policy will cause more problems than climate change.

The central flaw in the film means that I would not recommend it to non-climate obsessives, despite all its good points. I could not, in good conscience, leave them with the idea that a key argument of sceptics is to deny the greenhouse effect altogether. I don’t. And I promise there will not be a climate catastrophe, despite CO2 interacting with infrared photons in the atmosphere.

This is the version of the film I watched. The description says it has an updated figure.

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36 Comments

  1. As I’ve just posted elsewhere, I’ve been able to view the film via YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55n-Zdv_Bwc

    And I still am (despite Jaime’s reference to Martin Durkin’s comment). I sent the link to my MP (Bim) yesterday. However (like Jit), I think it’s most unfortunate that it gives the impression that CO2 is in no way a contributor to increased atmospheric temperature – thereby giving critics a perfect excuse for rubbishing the whole thing. (BTW Jit I loved your Comet 1 analogy.) And those who know my views won’t be surprised that I’m disappointed that it didn’t say more about the absurdity of Western climate policies and less about the science.

    Because of that, although it raises a multitude of interesting matters, the film is of little practical use to me.

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  2. I have yet to watch it. I tend to switch off when something (anything) is heavily promoted and I’m not a big fan of visual media for conveying sweeping generalisations of very complex science anyway. The accumulated evidence points to CO2 and other GHGs playing a minor or even negligible role in post 1950 warming. but there’s an awful lot of it and much of that is quite subtle and in my opinion would be difficult to communicate in an hour long film, let alone 10 minutes of video. I kind of guessed it wasn’t going to be a game-changer when Matt Ridley tweeted that the film was good but that he didn’t agree with all of it. I think I’ll just watch the end of ‘Roadhouse’ tonight.

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  3. Many thanks for this. I promise I’ll watch the whole film, really I will. The bits I’ve seen featured well known & highly respected figures (Roy Spencer, Ross McKitrick) but they didn’t say anything that hasn’t been said for the past 20 years and, like the rest of us, they’re not getting any younger. I fear we’re going to see a reversal of the apothegm: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.” It’s going to be: “the science is settled (like cement) one funeral at a time.”

    By the way, it’s only since I stopped writing here that I’ve realised how very good this site is. Congratulations all, including especially the commenters.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. David Whitehouse (GWPF) has a very good review of the film.

    He starts with an excellent point: the film might not be easy to find ‘because just a day after it was released on March 21, it was shadow-banned by YouTube, making it difficult to do a Google search for it. In a way, this proves some of the points made in the second-half of the film; that information on climate change is censored and highly-controlled, even if it is true and undisputed’.

    I was particularly interested in his comment about Prof Sallie Baliunas whose story, he says, ‘is a stain on science’. Whitehouse concludes with a quotation from James Randi (the scourge of Uri Geller):

    “Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.”

    https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/climate-the-movie

    Liked by 1 person

  6. The Science is not settled and it’s about time those who claim it is were forced to settle – just like the FDA, which claimed Ivermectin was horse paste. Enough of this censorship nonsense already; it has gone on far too long. If doctors can force the institutionalised drug industry and its captured agencies to back down, then scientists promoting honest communication of the huge uncertainties in climate science should be able to do similar with the climate-industrial complex.

    Like

  7. With the IPCC not agreeing on the sign of cloud feedback, and the variability of cloud feedback swamping ANY change caused by CO2, is it not reasonable to suggest that CO2 has no measurable effect upon the global temperature?
    Sounds clear cut really. Yes it is brave to suggest the CO2 has ‘no effect’ but if you look at other forces as discussed then what they stated is reasonable.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. ‘scientists promoting honest communication‘

    The problem Jaime is that there are so few such scientists. There may be many who would like to do so – but are frightened of so doing because of the probable career destroying consequences.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. ‘There may be many who would like to do so – but are frightened of so doing because of the probable career destroying consequences.’

    Prof Patrick T. Brown being a case in point. He has bravely made the case for a more honest communication and his reward was being thrown under the bus by the climate science mafia.

    Burn the Witch! – Climate Scepticism (cliscep.com)

    Liked by 2 people

  10. Thanks for doing this Jit. I do agree with Steve Richards that the movie was pretty self-consistent on the significance of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Of course it is one but compared to water vapour and clouds does it matter? I think not.

    My favourite bit was Will Happer saying he prefered ‘scam’ to ‘hoax’ but if others wanted to say it was a hoax he’s fine with that too. Yup.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. I’ve had a response from Bim Afolami (my MP):

    Dear Robert,

    Thank you for taking the time to share this video with me.

    I shall watch it closely. Thank you again for getting in contact with me.

    Best,

    Bim

    Let’s hope he does ‘watch it closely’. I look forward to his comments.

    Liked by 3 people

  12. “It is also a natural quality of an authoritative film that it must present the opposition case with the diligence that the opposition themselves would present it.”

    That’s a pretty high standard to expect from a science paper (too high for a climate science paper) much less a film documentary, but it’s definitely something that should be strived for. I like to think that I strive for it, like when I made this comment at Judith’s and got piled on by the guest author and other commenters:

    https://judithcurry.com/2018/08/14/nature-unbound-x-the-next-glaciation/#comment-878465

    I think the best skeptic living up to this standard was the late Pat Michaels. Here’s a pithy clip of him from the movie, Sizzle:

    The movie’s producer, Randy Olsen, deserves credit for including Michaels and another sceptic. This movie is no longer available. I contacted Olsen and he sent me a DVD in exchange for an hour phone conversation on the topic (I could barely get a word in edgewise).

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Here’s what I wrote to my brother nine days ago, which was 6 days after the premiere of CtM:

    Hi again. I got through last week, despite the disappointment of not ending up going to Martin Durkin’s Climate the Movie. And it really was quite a deep disappointment. His previous climate documentary/polemic was The Great Global Warming Swindle which was shown on UK Channel 4 in March 2007. That would never be allowed today. Climate the Movie also alludes to his excellent and I believe influential Brexit the Movie of a few months before that much-derided vote. Nigel Lawson was a common factor of soundbite providers on the ‘wrong side’ in those first two.

    And some of those I would have known and in some cases loved at the cocktails afterwards on Tuesday will no longer be with us next time, no doubt, like Lord Lawson and his key friends David Henderson and Christopher Booker this time. C’est la vie (or its opposite, I suppose).

    Thoughts rather in line with Geoff earlier:

    The bits I’ve seen featured well known & highly respected figures (Roy Spencer, Ross McKitrick) but they didn’t say anything that hasn’t been said for the past 20 years and, like the rest of us, they’re not getting any younger. I fear we’re going to see a reversal of the apothegm: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.” It’s going to be: “the science is settled (like cement) one funeral at a time.”

    Add Durkin himself to that

    Time to take a bit of stock, for me anyway. March 2007 was also the time of the New York debate I’ve just brought up (again) on Robin’s long Net Zero update thread.

    And around that time the ‘climate change denier’ smear emerged and quickly hit prime time.

    Unless this thread’s fuehrer objects I’d like to widen things here, not least to include the aftermath of the Mann-Steyn trial, including Steve McIntyre’s position from 2007 to the present.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. From the folk at SkepticalScience:

    Climate – The Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths
    https://skepticalscience.com/climate-the-movie-a-hot-mess-of-cold-myths.html

    This attempted rubbishing of distinguished scientists is a perfect illustration of why undistinguished people like ourselves will get nowhere by trying to discredit Net Zero by focusing on the science. Far better to stay with the practical absurdity and pointlessness of the policy.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Robin,

    Thanks for the link. I haven’t visited SKS or DeSmog for some time. It seems I was correct to stay away from life in a parallel universe.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. This article is a good and thoughtful examination of the film and I certainly agree with its’ main points of too little too late, plus the implication that CO2 has no role at all rather than a just a trivial one.

    There is one jarring note in Jit’s essay, though:

    ” …  many sceptics – as exemplified by the talking heads in Climate : The Movie – are of an age that they will avoid the worst of the outcomes.”

    I suppose that one could assert that dying is a form of avoidance but I suspect it is likely to be a disappointment.

    Like

  17. Regarding your “…leave them with the idea that a key argument of sceptics is to deny the greenhouse effect altogether”, that is absolutely incorrect.

    The movie specifically says that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Hello Tom – sorry that you got trapped in spam and thanks to whoever it was (?Mark) who released you.

    In my notes on the film, under minute 32, I have recorded the narrator as saying “If CO2 doesn’t drive climate change, what does?” You can’t really argue that this is a lukewarm position. This is followed by a section on Svensmark.

    It is hard to see a viewer new to the topic coming away with any other impression than “CO2 doesn’t matter.” I can’t be entirely objective about this, but I believe it to be so. (Only viewers new to the topic can confirm that.)

    Like

  19. I enjoyed the film. The presentation was a bit Mickey Mouse, but probably aiming at a non scientific audience. The lead/lag section was compelling as was the urban/rural data collection. Would love to see a “both sides locked in a room” documentary were the gloves come off.

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  20. CO2 is one of many many factors that influence Earth’s climate, but CO2 doesn’t DRIVE climate change.

    The BS narrative is that CO2 is the climate control knob. It isn’t.

    Lots of big-name climate realists carefully reviewed this movie for accuracy.

    Trashing the entire movie over this point isn’t wise.

    Like

  21. David, I have just the thing for you, as Richard reminded us of a few days ago here.

    Crichton’s speech is part of the wider debate, which the sceptics won hands down.

    Tom, I think the BS narrative is that climate change is an existential threat. It isn’t. But slow warming from increasing CO2 scares nobody – hence the escalating rhetoric. But I have to admit that other climate drivers are mostly not directional, as CO2 concentrations have been since the Industrial Revolution. They are cyclical, and act over a range of periods. There is a CO2-induced trend, slow and gradual, which can be swamped by other things depending on the stage of the cycle.

    (There are also non-cyclical climate drivers – I think of aerosols, which had their moment (depressing temperatures) and whose effect is now greatly reduced.)

    I don’t think I trashed the movie – but I fundamentally disagree with that section. I would have been effusive with praise had the narrative there been CO2 increase -> mild warming -> no crisis.

    Liked by 3 people

  22. My take on such films, FWIW, is that if they are to serve any purpose, it must be to win hearts and minds of the undecided, and of those previously committed to the climate crisis narrative, but who are perhaps now wavering.

    Climate sceptics are already on board, so there’s no point preaching to the converted. Climate hysterics simply can’t be reached, whatever evidence is put before them. That leaves those who are open to being persuaded by a narrative which differs from the drumbeat of propaganda to which they are selected daily. And so I agree with JIT – such people are more likely to be amenable to a message that says CO2 is a factor, but that there is no crisis, and that net zero is causing more harm than good, etc.

    Liked by 2 people

  23. Got it; Jit: You didn’t trash the movie; you only compared it to a crashed airplane!

    Thanks so much for not trashing it!

    I wish more of the scientists who reviewed the movie could have spotted our allegedly fatally flawed, weird attempt to claim that CO2 *isn’t* a greenhouse gas in a movie that specifically says that CO2 *is* a greenhouse gas.

    I eagerly await your attempt to produce a superior movie.

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  24. Tom and JIT,

    “If CO2 doesn’t drive climate change, what does?”

    It looks like there’s a lot of room for interpretation in that statement. Is it just referring to 20th and 21st century temperature increase? It also has the big ‘if’ qualifier which is itself open to interpretation. Judith Curry likes to point out the uncertainty as to how much of the current rise is from variability as opposed to CO2. It’s hard to tell what impression the statement (or rather question) will make on a newcomer or whether it will make any impression at all.

    The stuff about cosmic rays and cloud formation looks cogently argued. I have no idea how valid it is. I can see people thinking it might be fringy if for no other reason that it’s unusual. I’m, of course, the guy who argues that Jerry Sandusky is innocent in the Mann v Steyn posts (BTW he is. Check out my pinned tweet thread).

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Jit, I’m going to use stronger language here, because this is important. When you say “the film decides, not merely to prove that climate change is not an existential threat, but to show that CO2 has nothing to do with atmospheric temperature changes AT ALL”, that is a straight-up lie.

    Please stop lying.

    One followup question: This climate realist movie clearly doesn’t meet your standards, but I’m trying to figure out which climate realist movies *do* meet your standards. Over the last thirty years, according to you, which climate realist movie has been better than this one?

    Like

  26. Mike, the Svensmark hypothesis had promise, but I do not believe it has a significant role to play in global temperature. My disillusionment follows a decade or more of reading Willis’s posts on the topic at WUWT.

    Looking back at it now, I just found this typically pithy comment by occasional visitor and sceptical legend Steven Mosher under one of Willis’s posts:

    err you miss the point.

    Svensmark continues to ignore negative results.

    Willis did his own work. He got the data and looked.

    FOUND NOTHING

    I wasted about a month of my life looking

    best cloud data… AIRS every pressure level.
    I looked glbally, looked at individual cells, looked at every pressure level.
    I lost track of how many ways I cut the data.

    Nothing.

    Willis gets to announce his negative results.
    me too.
    and the scientific literature is filled with them.

    Svensmark avoids the brutal truth of published negative results

    Steven Mosher

    Liked by 1 person

  28. Please stop lying.

    That’s not acceptable, tan12333. As is our general policy, the author of the post is in charge of moderating the resulting comments. But, for what it’s worth, I fully back Jit in removing further comments from you if you continue in this manner.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. Ah, I can see the source of the disagreement here. I’ve watched ‘The Science’ part of the movie, which is sketchy at best and doesn’t really cover the nuts and bolts of THE Science. It does however point out quite rightly that on ALL time scales (using ice core and plant stomata data), atmospheric CO2 FOLLOWS the rise in global temperature, not vice versa. Therefore, following the simple logic of cause and effect, it is very difficult to argue that CO2 atmospheric concentration DRIVES warming. There is a subtle but appreciable difference between claiming that CO2 cannot DRIVE global temperature changes (as the film does) and claiming that it has “nothing to do with atmospheric temperature changes AT ALL”. The message that CO2 does not DRIVE temperature changes is then reinforced by a brief examination of the demonstrable failure of the models to simulate the modest (and variable) warming which has taken place over the 20th century.

    We’re all on the same side here. It’s a shame to see such bitter disagreements over what basically amounts to technical interpretations.

    Liked by 2 people

  30. l’m not a trained scientist, however I have followed scientific developments all my life. This explanation hit the spot for me. I would ask for a critique of the propositions to be made by those scientists who disagree with them. I ve just started to reread Feynman where he challenged himself to simplify a theory for first year students. He failed and said clearly we don’t understand it. Please help

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  31. The climate will change, it always has. This movie is very well done and I am 100% confident CO2 is not warming the planet. One thing I know for sure is that you don’t silence someone unless you’re threatened by them. If you don’t go along with the Climate narrative you will be cancelled. This only happens when others are concerned about being exposed. There’s no arguing that fact.

    Like

  32. “Facebook Censors Climate: The Movie After ‘Fact Check’ by Science Feedback”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/15/facebook-censors-climate-the-movie-after-fact-check-by-science-feedback/

    “…the Science Feedback post is clearly incorrect in its claims that the movie is misleading. Science Feedback looks at the same data and facts that the movie examines and draws different conclusions than the eminent scientists in the movie. They have a different opinion than the experts in the movie. That does not mean the scientists in the movie are factually incorrect. Look at the data yourself, support for all 70 serious scientific claims made in the movie can be found here for those that want to see more.

    Download the bibliography here.

    Read Science Feedback’s ‘fact check’ of Climate: The Movie here.

    Like

  33. The Elephant in the “room” no one is talking here is about is the issue of solar warming effect it’s NOT deniable. 2023 Biden admin was/is looking into how to block the sun, B.Gates is exploring it! just google it! What about the #’s from the past 120+ years…I remember in the 70’s the environmental talk was all about the onset and unfolding of a new ice age! No doubt CO2 has an effect in the movie at least one of the graph showed it did. The movie’s point was it is not the cause of the”crisis” the EPA, IPCC, WHO, industrialized governments all over the globe are claiming it to be. Mass control and forced compliance are those entities goals!

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  35. Mike D,

    I think that’s a strange tweet. I’m possibly a “luke-warmer”, inasmuch as I accept that humankind is having an impact on the climate, and I suspect that most climate sceptics fall into that category. Yet I – and every sceptic I know – is hostile to net zero, and reckon that it and the green blob hoovering up funds and subsidies on the back of it, represent a scam. Perhaps things are different on your side of the Pond?

    Liked by 1 person

  36. Mike, Mark,

    I think what Durkin is doing there is rather clumsily and aggressively trying to express his exasperation at those who do call out Net Zero for its obvious inherent absurdities, harms and contradictions, but are shy of calling out the that which provides pseudoscientific justification for Net Zero – the Settled Science climate change scam – for fear of being labelled Deniers etc. At least, that’s my interpretation.

    Liked by 1 person

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