User reviews

This film prevents a compelling counterpoint to the popular conception of anthropogenic global warming. It highlights some of the theory's failings, and offers an alternative explanation for the recent warming and the historical link between temperature and CO2. It relies heavily on the testimony of a dozen or so scientists, professors, and researchers whose qualifications are surprisingly notable (including, for example, the co-founder of Greenpeace).

From a technical standpoint, the production values are high and the direction excellent. It maintains a good pace throughout, though sometimes reiterates the same point a bit. There were a few areas I wish they'd have explored more thoroughly, but such is the case with all documentaries.

Overall, its format is very compelling; it compiles the facts in a straightforward manner, building to a conclusion which is remarkable in its discrepancy with the man-made global warming theory. It touches on many different aspects of the issue, including some which many will find surprising, such as the impact on developing nations. I was expecting a shoddy piece of work, full of half-truths and outrageous assumptions, but this film is very scientific and professional. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.

I don't understand why people claim they know something about climate science when they don't understand the complexity of it. The documentary doesn't necessarily say that the climate doesn't change, just the complexities of predicting such a change are largely incomplete and points out many variables that the environmental movement shys away from like decomposing tree leaves giving off more CO2 than any other source. Also, the documentary makes a nice point of saying you can't just blindly discard data because it doesn't say what you like i.e. climate is affected by more than CO2, the data's right in front of you showing an 800 year lag between temperature and CO2. Also, i found the cosmic wind vs solar wind very fascinating, I've done some looking and it's a pretty hot topic in climate science w/ cloud formation... kind of odd that a lot of earth nuts don't mention it cuz it'd disprove the whole CO2 theory.

BTW, i already gave up on the theory of man made climate change when i did a bunch of research on ocean currents and i found it was nowhere to be found in any environmental writing(not that they didn't mention it but instead that they didn't say the inaccuracy of ocean currents since we don't know how to predict them).

The obvious comparison with this documentary is An Inconvenient Truth (especially since some of this documentary is rooted in disproving the other). Both are excellent documentaries, both make strong arguments to support their side of the debate. Both have dubious motives and issues pertaining to their interpretation of the data. Anyone who takes one perspective as rote and dismisses the other out of hand (or by using the same "Look at the source/funding" arguments) have missed the point, especially of The Great Global Warming Swindle, and the debate that has opened up after it's airing. Which is this - much of the data the general public is presented with is skewed, edited and presented by someone according to their own beliefs, their funding, background, political aspirations, etc. Anyone who claims impartiality is wrong. I hope the effect of this documentary is to encourage people to look, read and research for themselves the information they are presented with every day and allow themselves the greatest chance of acting with understanding and knowledge rather than ignorance.

This is a very unusual British documentary because it aired on regular public television and contradicts the widely accepted belief that there is global warming AND that it's caused by mankind. While you may or may not agree with this, the film does seem well documented and presents its case well. All the many scientists they feature in the film cannot just be dismissed as "a bunch of kooks". And, showing the FOUNDER of Green Peace speaking against the global warming movement was truly amazing as well as the UN (with the IPCC committee) suppressing dissenting opinions in their reports! It's also rather interesting--provided you have a reasonably open mind. Now I am NOT saying you need to say global warming is a hoax--just be willing to listen to facts and weigh what you hear yourself. But the reasonable arguments being posed in this film need to be answered and not just dismissed offhandedly.

Unfortunately, there is no real debate on global warming today. I do NOT mean that there are disagreements and great differences in what scientists think about global warming. Instead, it is simply not a debate because there is no discussion or even systematic discussion of the phenomenon. Many hardliners, like Al Gore, say "there is no debate--it is fact" as if that somehow means no one has a right to even question this dogma and if they do they hate the planet. So it isn't surprising that some of the reviews on IMDb sound dogmatic--not even addressing whether this TV special is true or partially true or even if it raises some reasonable concerns. In other words, because it doesn't fit into a generally accepted view, it won't even be considered. This is the sort of thinking that kept humans believing that the Sun revolved around the Earth. While I would never say global warming could not occur, it's crazy that no one is listening to contrary opinions--and it's more like a religion instead of science. EVEN IF IT'S WRONG, true science considers options and doesn't just assume it's correct. And, even if celebrities insist it IS true, this does not constitute scientific evidence.

Now if you are a fair person, you cannot give this movie a score of 10 or 1 just because they agree or disagree with your current beliefs. Some of it is surely correct and some of it surely isn't. Plus, whether you mark that you agree or disagree with a review does NOT mean you should mark it "helpful" or "not helpful". It's a lot more important whether or not it makes you think, challenges you and is not a regurgitation of what you are already thinking. And, wow, did this film challenge my thinking. These were not idiots and cranks featured in THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SCANDAL and the reasons they theorize for the theory's popularity make some sense.

My advice is to give it a watch and then watch AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH or some other video that affirms that there is global warming. Don't dismiss or praise a movie before you even see it. A sane person listens to both sides and tries to think before just dismissing one opinion or the other.

By the way, one review mentions how angry and foul the film's creator was when he was later confronted. This is interesting but may just be a reaction to the bombarding of repeated personal attacks and the vehemence of the opposition. I'm not excusing boorish behavior, but have seen that those who are convinced they are 100% correct in this argument are generally angry and impossible to engage in a meaningful discussion. Had I been in his spot, I might have found myself giving some of them the finger or losing my cool because of these nasty and very personal attacks. Why can't we all just have a reasonable dialog? Are we that afraid what the other side has to say?

This documentary interviews scientists who were once on the IPCC, who once claimed there was a global ice age coming, and one who is even the co-founder of Greenpeace! All of them say the public is being lied to about this issue: that man-made CO2 is causing global warming. Basically the earth has gotten warmer over the past 100 years - by 0.7 degrees.

There is a scientific explanation about the cause of this temperature rise.

No politics, fear tactics, or personal threats are used by the scientists. Only rational science is offered for your consideration.

Excellent documentary. 10/10

-LD

PS: good addendums to this google video are "Doomsday is called off" and the Alex Jones interview of Martin Durkin. Watch all three for a truly amazing understanding of how much lying is going on about this single issue.

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my faith: http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/jbc33/

How scary is it when heads of the IPCC and Greenpeace say that global warming is not what the press says it is?

This is a must watch for anyone who feels guilty for owning gas guzzling cars. Read it in conjunction of State of Fear and then watch Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and see who you wish to trust for the future! Still none of these mentioned that the ozone hole over Australia has nearly closed, why not?

Why is it that time and time against scientists are misquoted and their data manipulated and when they ask for a retraction they are just ignored. The lawyers are ruling the world!

there's been a disturbing trend over the last 15 years to call films which are quite obviously propaganda and label them as documentary. at the center of this trend is Micheal moore, but both sides of every political issue seem gleefully willing to commit the same mistake in taxonomy. part of it stems from the fact that the word "propaganda" itself has been so indelibly married to nazism and soviet socialism that in any context it seems to connote inherent falsehood. while this is not necessarily the case it does seem to be the vast public perception of the issue. so instead of admitting to watching propaganda we get documentaries which are chock full of bias opinions specifically chosen to fulfill preconceived notions. when it comes to the issue of global warming on one side you have the propaganda of al gore and on the other side you have this little bit of propaganda. now personally i'm more inclined to believe the point of view that this movie states, the problem is that spotting some of the logical shortcomings is not that difficult of a task. add to that the kind of "i'm a victim" mentality brought on by people skeptical of anthropogenic global warming and you get to wonder if when they say their being persecuted whether it's just hyperbole or whether they really have no historical perspective of what constitutes persecution.

6 out of 10, as much as i want to agree with the subject matter, the obvious biases and numerous rational shortcomings are too much to ignore and do a great disservice to the message.

I'll start talking about this documentary as it should be, honestly: it is a fraud.

It's presented as a serious movie, but it doesn't take long until you realize that there's something wrong about it. Anybody who has already made a little research about Global Warming know that today's temperature are higher than in the so called "Medieval Warm Period". The graph this movie shows about the recorded temperature shows us that the temperature nowadays are way lower than in that period. I thought myself: "there's something wrong about that", and I decided to make again, a little research about it. Yes, it is a LIE. Pure, unmasked LIE. The period showed by the graph as "NOW" is actually about 1990~1995. Woah, a movie made in 2007 using a 12~15 year-old graph? That doesn't make sense. Why? Because if they had used the graph showing the temperature in, say, 2005, it wouldn't fit to their claims.

There's a lot more misinformation about it than just that. I'll just leave here a link for those interested: http://www.durangobill.com/Swindle_Swindle.html

If you think that this movie is real, please, read the information on that link. Please! Don't let people fool yourself. Also, there was a debate on the Australian Television "ABC" about this movie with real experts which debunked almost everything in this pseudo-documentary. Look for it over at google and you'll find.

I think this is refreshing to see the other point of view. Much of the press is devoted to one point of view and this represents an attempt at balancing that inequity. Some of the reactions to this movie are attacks upon the accuracy of said movie. Al Gore's statement that the debate is over could not be further from the truth. What is true is that those who contradict his viewpoint do not receive the same degree of publication as do those who support his viewpoint. It is good to hear from those who do not agree and to see what they have to say. It is up to the viewer to decide and investigate further. Much of what the popular press reports seems to be so superficial and lacking in empirical evidence. This report, at least, addresses both theory and evidence even if one camp in the discussion considers it merely "denial." Viewing this movie with the objectivity these individuals say they represent would be a refreshing change.

The idea that Al gore has a better explanation is uninformed. Al Gores' movie is politically motivated in concert with the the environmentalist activity. If one follows his lead, we need to understand the underlying agenda is to depopulate the planet and give it back to nature.

The new world order is not new at all. This idea has been used by centuries by ruthless dictators including Hitler, Stalin and others. Under different guises, the agenda is always the same. Genocide of certain groups of people.

Al Gore thinks we should get rid of about 6 billion people. This loosely translates into the idea that if he were in absolute power like previous dictators, he would set out to kill about 6 billion of us including you.

This film is incredibly logical.

Follow the money--this "climate change" fraud (note how it morphed from "global warming" when empirical evidence showed the earth in a cooling trend) is enriching the few at the expense of the peoples of the planet.

Don't mistake me for some right wing zealot either, I'm a person who vociferously believes in not wasting resources or polluting the planet. I haven't had trash service for about 18 years because I recycle virtually everything, drive an electric car, designed & built my own passive/active solar home.

Al Gore is the ultimate hypocrite. At the time of filming, he was living in a mansion in Tennessee that consumed 28 times the energy of other homes in his neighborhood, buying "carbon offset credits," and flying private jets around the globe to grandstand with a Nobel Prize--makes me wanna puke. "Carbon offset credits?!" That is a colossal WTF where any logical person comes from...

And finally, most of the argument for "climate change" is based on static analysis. The world is changing rapidly and technology and innovation will NATURALLY render many of the pollutants obsolete in the future, without massive governmental control and manipulation. If the government wants to steer than innovation, there is a fantastic alternative to their current folly of "picking winners and losers" (a euphemism for crony politics) and that is:

Create bounties or prizes for the entities that solve the puzzles of helping make this a better planet. What is a billion dollar prize for a desalination technology or fuel cell in the grand scheme of governmental waste and corruption? You get no reward unless you make some positive change and can prove that you've built a better mousetrap!

Well, this film has changed my life. Once seeing it i spent a year in gathering information about climate change. To be more precise i wanted to find the same information, but from different source so that it could sound more plausible. And i did. I have found undisputed evidence that everything we are told about climate is wrong and they do all this for manipulating the world. The best thesis why they do all this is formulated in Zeitgeist - The Movie. I have even made a project about climate change in my school. I was considered as a freak by most of my classmates :D But i was satisfied. I have changed my point of view to the world. Now i read philosophy. I stopped watching TV. I am a new person thank to The Great Global Warming Swindle. My rating 10/10

I've been doing a lot of research on this matter. And even though more facts affirm global warming, this documentary was refreshing to me because I always appreciate different perspectives.

My main point: It is a wrong idea that environmentalists are evil. I personally, don't care much if the earth is warming or cooling as these are long term effects. I'm more concerned about the present - I do want a clean earth and preservation of ecosystems for aesthetic and practical reasons. So global warming or not, it's the pollution I'm worried about which is irrefutable and overly apparent. Now I'm an engineer and a nature friendly guy. It's a wrong idea that we're against development. I do want development but I just want technology that doesn't pollute. Such technology is development and progression itself.

Secondly the anti-Africa theory is apparently a valid point. But also it should be understood that there might not be any conspiracy at all. Maybe an underdeveloped Africa would just be a consequence if exploitation of oil and gas was to be stopped completely; but that doesn't necessarily mean that preventing development in Africa is a motive to the people behind this supposed global warming propaganda.

Never mind the fact that the perspective of this documentary is slanted harshly to the right, condemning the left, the environmentalist movement and people critical of unrestrained capitalism. Never mind the inflammatory claims put forwards about the scientific community along with the environmental movement being beyond reason. Even never mind this outrageous claim that the global warming issue is stifling the development in developing nations.

When it comes down to fact this documentary have manufactured its own. The writer/producer/director of this documentary (Durkin) excused himself with the following statement, when confronted with the fact that he had used outdated data of questionable validity in his graphs: "The original NASA data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find". When some concerned scientists contacted him about validity of some of the statement in this documentary, Durkin simply told them to go *beep* themselves. He even stated "Never mind an irresponsible bit of film-making." If that wasn't enough, contributors to this documentary claim to have been misrepresented, and that false assertions with no scientific validity had been made through their words taken out of context. Any of the key arguments vigorously assured in this documentary, were all rooted in falsehoods that are easily refuted by simply fact checking the basic premise of the argument.

However impressive the animations and visualizations in this documentary, it doesn't help the fact that what they describe is plain untrue. Not on the basis that it shows merely one opinion without even a remote attempt at scrutiny, but on the basis that the assertions presented are either false or insignificant to the issue.

A subjective perspective in a documentary is not a problem as long as opinion is inserted where there is room for opinion, and not as in this documentary where the covered perspectives are in harsh contradiction to fact.

This is a must see movie for everyone!

In the past the earth has had extreme warm and cold periods during times where cars, factories and planes did not even exist.

Only the last 20 years are politicians and the media making us believe that it is us humans causing global warming. Being so-called environmental friendly has now led to more expensive products and more taxes for the average person. Only a very small number of people are profiting financially or politically from this hype called global warming.

But planet earth will continue to have more warmer and colder periods, with or without us humans. Nothing can be done about that. Even with technology we have nowadays, we still are not capable of changing mother nature and the climate...

I've always said there is no such thing as global warming! Do you think that after millions of years this planet earth is has never seen hot weather? I remember back in the 1950s the weather was twice as hot as it's been in the 2000s and I mean hot not just 100%, My brother and I used to to peal the skin off our backs it one big sheet, and that was just one day on the beach in the sun. This weather is just a cycle the world goes through the same as the ice age the stone age etc,etc, You don't hear people in Arizona or Las Vegas make comments on global warming, in fact they laugh at the suggestion...So we get summers in the 80% and maybe if we are lucky 100%, Christ almighty they have 130% every day in Las Vegas!! and that is normal for them. What would they say if it was 140%? Global Warming? I think not...Global warming is just an excuse for Goverments and certain people to make money out of stupid people like us... There are scientists who will tell you, the is no such thing as Global warming, It is just a progression that the earth goes through and has gone through for million of years, so write to you goverments and tell them you do not like to be treated like imbeciles before it goes the whole 9 yards and becomes acceptable. Who invented the term Global warming? Not you, not I, and not the scientists who say it's not happening...But your politicians who screw you for everything they can get out of you!! Stand up and be counted show them your not a fool or an idiot...

If you like conspiracy theories like the fake moon landings, 9/11 inside jobs, Elvis's death, then this is the documentary(?) for you. Almost every climate disinformation found on the web is 'copy and pasted' into this hour-long programme. And for bonus points, the programme takes the extra step of doctoring graphs and skipping relevant information to bolster its case. Take the case of the 'cosmic ray theory'... hmmm... stop the graph in 1980s... why... showing the rest would put a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in that claim; then there's the blatantly false 'volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans'claim, which was quickly removed after the first edition; or the CO2 lagging crock peddled on the denial websites... The rest I'm not even going to bother because I don't think there are enough gigabytes on the IMDb servers.

This travesty is narrated by Martin Durkin, a producer with a history of releasing refutable documentaries, featuring an entire host of questionable characters like Tim Ball, credential fudging professor of the Climatology Department at the University of Winnipeg. Only problem is, Ball was a professor of geography and there was never a climatology department at the University of Winnipeg; Piers Corbyn, who ran a weather predicting service that was so successful it went bankrupt; Fred Singer，a physicist who will say anything for a small fee. About the only characters worth their salt were Carl Wunsch and Eigil Friis- Christensen, both of whom lodged a complaint about this programme.

But for extra laughs, the programme claims climate science is cooked up by scientists for funding purposes and it is a greenie scam to hamper African development, except that wouldn't be so funny because the people who are going to suffer most from a changing climate are those in the Third World.

If this was a documentary and if it was serious about doing an expose, Durkin could have done an investigation into the millions of dollars spent by the Koch brothers and Exxon just on climate disinformation.

I'd give this programme negative rating if IMDb would allow it but as it is, I gave it one star for its comedy value. Watch it but bear in mind, there is no scientific value in this, just a mish mesh of incoherent conspiracies and factual inaccuracies.