The Great Global Warming Swindle -- A Summary

[First published on Google Knol on September 20th, 2008]

Summary

There are scientists who dispute the popular belief about the cause of global warming, also known as climate change. They have identified five reasons why man-made production of carbon dioxide cannot cause global warming. They believe that climate change is an entirely natural process.

Introduction

This article is a summary of the documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle (2007). The documentary asserts that the man-made climate change hypothesis is false. The hypothesis is that man-made production of carbon dioxide, principally from the combustion of fossil fuels, is causing the earth's climate to change.

Origin of the man-made climate change hypothesis

The man-made climate change hypothesis originated at a time when the global temperature was falling. By the early 1970s, the global temperature had been falling since 1940. Climatologists believed that this might continue and lead to extreme weather conditions and even the onset of a new ice age. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) presented this viewpoint in a television series called The Weather Machine (1974). There was a dissenting opinion expressed in the program by the meteorologist Bert Bolin, who suggested that man-made production of carbon dioxide resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels might help to increase the global temperature by a few degrees over a period of about fifty years. Nigel Calder, responsible for the program, was strongly criticized for giving wide publicity to what was regarded as an eccentric view.

Two things happened to change the main-stream view about climate change. Firstly, the decline in the global temperature came to a halt in 1975 and the temperature began to rise. Secondly, politicians became concerned about the security of the supply of fossil fuels. In the United Kingdom in 1984, the coal miners went on strike. The Conservative Party, led Margaret Thatcher, had reason to be concerned about this because strikes by the miners in 1972 and 1974 had led to the downfall of the Conservative government of the time. Concerns also persisted about the security of the supply of oil, because of the 1973 oil embargo by the Arab oil-producing countries. The government wanted to promote the use of nuclear power, though this was being hampered by the fear of nuclear accidents and radioactive pollution. The government was thus keen to highlight possible problems with the use of fossil fuels. They were aware of Bolin's climate change theory and offered research funding to gain support for the theory. The Meteorological Office set up a climate modeling unit, which provided the basis for an international committee called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC went on to produce a report in which they claimed that man-made production of carbon dioxide was causing the global temperature to rise.

Why the man-made climate change hypothesis is wrong

There are five key reasons why the man-made climate change hypothesis is wrong.

Climate change is a natural occurrence

The earth's climate has always changed. There have been periods much warmer and much cooler than today. Over the past one thousand years there have been two such periods. There was a warm period, which lasted from approximately 950 to 1350 and is known as the Medieval Warm Period. This period was then followed by a cold period, which lasted from approximately 1350 to 1900 and is known as the Little Ice Age. Over the past ten thousand years there have been further cycles, most notably a warm period which lasted from approximately 7000 BCE to 4000 BCE and is known as the Holocene Maximum.

Global temperature fell during the period of greatest man-made carbon dioxide production

The man-made climate change hypothesis is based on the belief that carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels during industrialization has caused the global temperature to rise by approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius since the mid-1800s. However, on a global scale, industrial production was still in its infancy in the early 1900s, being restricted to a few countries, and even these were hampered by war and economic depression. The growth in industrialization was most rapid after the Second World War, in a period known as the Post War Economic Boom. In a period of relative peace, mass production of consumer goods spread throughout the world. People of all backgrounds were able to buy cars and travel on planes, things that most people could not afford before the war. If man-made production of carbon dioxide had been the cause of a rise in the global temperature, the bulk of the temperature rise would have occurred after 1940, but in fact most of it occurred before 1940. The global temperature actually fell after 1940 and continued to fall until 1975. There was real concern in the early 1970s about the prospect of further global cooling and the onset of a new ice age.

Carbon dioxide is not a significant greenhouse gas

The Greenhouse Effect is a natural process by which some of the heat received from the Sun is retained in the the lower atmosphere (troposphere) because of adsorption by certain gases in the earth's atmosphere, including carbon dioxide. The process makes the temperature at the surface of the earth warmer than it would otherwise be and is essential for life on earth. Those who support the man-made climate change hypothesis, claim that the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide due to man-made emissions is enhancing the greenhouse effect and thus is raising the global temperature.

Only a small proportion of the gases in the atmosphere are greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is one of them, but the concentration of this in the atmosphere is 0.054 % and only a small proportion of this is from man-made sources. The most significant greenhouse gas is water vapor, which accounts for 95 % of all greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide thus plays a very minor role in the greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is not being enhanced

A consequence of the accepted theory of the greenhouse effect is that an increase in the amount of greenhouse gases leads to a rate of warming that increases from the earth's surface to a maximum at the middle of the troposphere, at an altitude of 10-12 km. However, satellite and weather balloon data show that the actual rate of warming in the troposphere is not higher than the rate of warming at the surface. Indeed, most observations show a slightly lower rate of warming in the troposphere than at the surface. Thus, the increase in the global temperature that is occurring cannot be the result of an enhanced greenhouse effect.

Carbon dioxide concentration lags global temperature

The claim made by proponents of the man-made climate change hypothesis that an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes an increase in the global temperature, relies on the results of an ice-core survey carried out in Vostok in the Antarctic. It was the key evidence supporting one of the claims made in the film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) which was written and presented by former US vice-president Al Gore. In the film, Gore presented a graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global temperature for the past 650,000 years and suggested that changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide had obviously led to changes in the global temperature. What he did not say was that the carbon dioxide data lags the corresponding global temperature data by 800 years. This lag has been confirmed by several subsequent ice-core surveys. Thus, if there is indeed a correlation between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the global temperature, it would have to be that an increase in the temperature causes an increase in the carbon dioxide concentration. There is no evidence that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has ever determined the global temperature.

There is a rational explanation for the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide increasing as a result of an increase in the global temperature. Carbon dioxide is produced naturally by all living things. The contribution from human beings is small by comparison with the total contribution from the other sources, such as volcanoes, animals, bacteria, dying vegetation, and the oceans. The oceans, which cover most of the surface of the planet, are by far the largest source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but the size of the contribution fluctuates because carbon dioxide is slightly soluble in water. Carbon dioxide becomes less soluble in water as the temperature of water increases and more soluble as the temperature falls. Thus, as the surface temperature of the planet rises, the oceans release dissolved carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and as the surface temperature falls, the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, this process cannot happen quickly because the oceans are deep. The low depths of the oceans may take many centuries to respond to a change in the surface temperature. This is consistent with the observed 800-year lag between the global temperature and the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.

The real causes of climate change

There are other reasons for the observed changes in the environment that have been attributed to global warming.

Rising global temperature

The earth's climate is driven by heat and by far the strongest source of heat on the earth is the sun. However, the output from the sun fluctuates between periods of high and low solar activity. High solar activity is accompanied by an increased magnetic field and the visible sign of this is the presence of sunspots.

In 1893, astronomer Edward Maunder reviewed the records of sunspot activity and noticed that there was a period when very few sunspots were recorded, a period which is known as the Maunder Minimum. This period falls within the Little Ice Age, a period when temperatures were much lower than they are today. More recently, in 1991, the Danish Meteorological Institute found that there had been a very strong correlation between solar activity and global temperature in the 20th century. Solar activity rose sharply until 1940, fell until 1975, and then rose. This pattern closely matches the pattern of the temperature record for the same period. The Danish study was supported by a Harvard University study in 2005, which examined the temperature change in the Arctic over a period of 100 years and found that the temperature correlated with solar activity on a decade timescale, but correlated poorly with carbon dioxide concentration. The Danish study was later extended to the last 400 years and the correlation between solar activity and temperature was also found to be close over this period.

The mechanism by which solar activity influences global temperature is through the formation of clouds. Clouds are formed when cosmic rays from outer space meet water vapor rising from the sea, which results in the formation of water droplets and then clouds. A consequence of an increase in solar activity is an increase in the strength of the solar wind, which is a stream of particles emitted by the sun. The solar wind reduces the intensity of the cosmic rays that reach the earth's atmosphere, and thus when there is high solar activity and a high solar wind, there is a low intensity of cosmic rays, a low rate of cloud formation, and consequently a high global temperature. Supporting evidence for this mechanism has come from a comparison of global temperature and cosmic ray intensity over the past 600 million years, which shows a strong inverse correlation.

Storms

The main cause of serious disturbances in the weather is a difference in the temperature between the tropics and the poles. However, this temperature difference decreases as the global temperature increases. Thus, if there has indeed been stormier weather in recent years, it is not the result of an increase in global temperature.

Melting ice

The polar ice caps naturally grow and recede. Ice breaking away from the caps to form icebergs is part of this natural process, which for the Arctic ice cap, occurs every year in the Spring. There is no evidence that recent increases in the global temperature have resulted in an increase in the melting of ice from the polar ice caps.

Rising sea level

The sea level is governed by two factors, local and global. The local factor is the result of land movement. When the altitude of land falls as a result of plate tectonics, there is an apparent sea level rise. The global factor is thermal expansion. An increase in the global temperature will cause the oceans to expand and the sea level to rise. However, this is a slow process because the low depths of the oceans take hundreds of years to respond to surface temperature changes. Current changes in global sea level are thus the result of temperature changes that took place many centuries ago.

Further information

The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) is a source of further information and critical views of the man-made climate change hypothesis.

HIV=AIDS: Fact or Fraud? -- A Summary

[First published on Google Knol on August 4th, 2008]

Summary

There are scientists who challenge the popular belief about the cause of the disease known as AIDS. They have identified ten reasons why the virus known as HIV cannot be the cause of AIDS. They believe that the real causes of AIDS are the use of recreational and clinical drugs in the United States and Europe, and malnutrition and poor sanitation in Africa.

Introduction

This is a summary of the documentary called HIV=AIDS: Fact or Fraud? (1996). The documentary asserts that the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is false. The hypothesis is that people infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) develop a severely weakened immune system and then go on to develop one or more of about thirty long-established diseases, a condition known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Origin of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis

In 1981, in Los Angeles, USA, there were many cases of homosexual men suffering from diseases associated with suppression of the immune system. It was assumed that behaviors specific to homosexual men were causing the diseases, and thus the diseases became known collectively as Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID). Later, after drug addicts and hemophiliacs had been found with similar diseases, GRID was renamed the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

The US Department of Health and Human Services provided research funding to solve the problem. Early research focused on known causes of immune suppression, such as malnutrition, repeated infections, overuse of antibiotics, and emotional distress. These causes, which are associated with human behavior, were abandoned after a political decision had been made to regard the problem as an infectious epidemic.

Two virologists at the forefront of the search for a viral cause of AIDS were Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Myron Essex of the Harvard AIDS Institute, who speculated in 1982 that AIDS could be caused by a retrovirus. Dr. Gallo had earlier carried out research to demonstrate that retroviruses cause cancer, but had been unsuccessful. On April 23, 1984, Dr. Gallo joined the Secretary of Human Health and Services, Margaret Heckler, in a press conference. Heckler announced "The probable cause of AIDS has been found, a variant of a known human cancer virus, called HTLV III". Heckler added that the government was going to fund research into HIV, aimed at developing a vaccine against the virus.

Gallo had announced the findings of his research at a press conference without submitting it to peer review. Gallo had thus breached scientific protocol because other virologists had not been given the opportunity to verify his claims. Gallo's findings were later published in Science on May 4th, 1984. Gallo had found the HIV virus in only 44 of the 93 AIDS patients that he had tested, which cast doubt on the validity of his claim. However, the publication of the results had come eleven days after the press conference at which the government had publicly supported Gallo's work and offered funding to others on the basis of it.

More controversy arose when the Institute Pasteur in Paris revealed that Gallo's HTLV III virus was identical to the LAV virus that Dr. Luc Montagnier had discovered and had sent to Gallo six months before his press conference. The ensuing dispute was settled by politicians in 1987 when US President Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France agreed to split the profits on the blood test for the virus that had been developed. They also agreed that the credit for the discovery of the virus would be shared and the virus would be renamed the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

The HIV/AIDS hypothesis challenged

The first published rejection of the link between AIDS and HIV came on March 1st, 1987, when Cancer Research published a review by Dr. Peter Duesberg, a retro-virologist at the University of California at Berkeley, in which Duesberg stated that HIV could not cause AIDS.

Though Duesberg's claims were widely rejected or ignored, other top scientists supported his position, including:

• Dr. Richard Strohman, former Professor of Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley
• Dr. Walter Gilbert, of the Biochemistry Department at Harvard University, and a Nobel Prize winner in 1980
• Dr. Kary Mullis, who invented the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), and was a Nobel Prize winner in 1993

Dr. Charles Thomas Jnr., a former Harvard professor, organized a consortium of twelve signatories under the banner of The Group for Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis. The group made several attempts to have a letter published in a journal. The letter read:

"It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes a group of diseases called AIDS. Many biomedical scientists now question this hypothesis. We propose a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis to be conducted by a suitable independent group. We further propose that critical epidemiological studies be devised and undertaken."

After several refusals to publish, the group were inspired to expand their activities and the list of signatories. By 1994, the list had grown to 600 signatories, 188 of whom had advanced degrees.

The organization later became known as Rethinking AIDS.

Why the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is wrong

There are ten key reasons why the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is wrong:

Viruses are harmless after antibody immunity

A microbe reproduces rapidly after infecting the body, which causes the symptoms of a disease. The immune system then counters the infection. CD4 T-cells detect the microbes and then alert the B-Lymphocyte blood cells (white blood cells) to produce antibodies that kill the microbes or render then dormant. This results in recovery from the disease and immunity from further disease.

Retroviruses do not kill the T-cells they infect

Retroviruses multiply by infecting CD4 T-cells, but only in rare laboratory conditions do retroviruses actually kill T-cells. Indeed, AIDS researchers exploit this fact by using T-cells to grow the HIV virus. Retroviruses were once considered to be a plausible cause of cancer, specifically because they do not kill the cells they infect -- if the cells were killed there could be no cancer.

HIV does not infect enough T-cells to cause AIDS

Following infection by HIV and the response to it by the immune system, very few infected cells remain (typically 1 in 1000) because the body has produced antibodies which have killed the virus particles or made them dormant. T-cells are capable of reproducing at a rate of about 5 % per day, which would result in the quick replacement of any T-cells lost as a result of infection.

Retroviruses have no AIDS-causing gene

Retroviruses have a simple genetic structure. There are three major genes and six minor genes, and all are needed for replication. The retrovirus thus has no gene to cause diseases such as AIDS. There are typically 50 -- 100 retroviruses present in every healthy human body and each is kept under control by the immune system. The HIV retrovirus behaves no differently from other retroviruses and has a very similar genetic structure.

There is no such thing as a slow virus

Viruses cause disease in a matter of weeks after infection, which is a result of the generation time of a virus. Whatever the virus does to the body has to occur during this period. All viruses, including retroviruses such as HIV, behave this way.

HIV is not a new virus

A new epidemic must be the result of a new virus because an old virus would have caused an epidemic long ago. A new virus soon produces an exponential growth in infection and disease. The growth peaks at a high level then falls rapidly near to the original low levels as opportunities for new infections diminish. Antibodies from the virus may persist in the population long after the epidemic has passed because of transfer from mother to child. AIDS cases have increased rapidly since 1980, but HIV infection rates have remained stable and at a low level. Farr's Law indicates that HIV must very old -- in the order of centuries -- and thus cannot be the cause of AIDS.

HIV fails Koch's Postulates

Koch's Postulates states that for a microbe to be responsible for a disease, the following conditions must be met:

1. The virus is found in all cases of the disease
2. The virus can be isolated from an infected host and grown in a pure culture
3. The virus causes the same disease when injected into a new healthy host
4. The virus is found growing again in the newly-diseased host

HIV is not present in 10 - 20% of persons with AIDS. In the cases where HIV is present, there are only small amounts of virus detected and this is usually dormant. HIV can be isolated from an infected host but it requires a large amount of cell tissue and is difficult to reactivate. HIV injected in chimpanzees has not caused AIDS. HIV thus passes postulate number 2 marginally, but fails postulates 1, 3 and 4.

AIDS has remained in its original risk groups

A new epidemic starts in clusters or risk groups but soon spreads exponentially throughout the population. Data from the US indicates that AIDS has remained in its original risk groups. Of the total of AIDS cases, 97 % fall into one of four risk groups: homosexual males (62 %), intravenous drug users (32 %), hemophiliacs (1 %) and blood transfusion patients (2 %).

An epidemic should also have an even distribution amongst the sexes. The male to female ratio for HIV infection is indeed 50:50, but only 10 % of AIDS cases are female.

AIDS is not the same throughout the world

A microbe-related disease should have similar effects throughout the world. This is not the case for AIDS. AIDS in the US is very different from AIDS in Africa:

• The male to female ratio for AIDS cases is 90:10 in the US, but 50:50 in Africa.
• The proportion of AIDS cases in special risk groups is 97 % in the US, but 0 % in Africa - there are no special risk groups in Africa, i.e. the occurrence of the disease is random.
• Of the diseases that constitute AIDS, the proportion caused by microbes is 62 % in the US, but 90 % in Africa.
• In the US, there are 1 million people infected with HIV and about half-a-million have AIDS. In Africa, 14 million people are infected with HIV, but the number with AIDS is also about half-a-million.

AIDS without HIV infection, HIV without AIDS

There are people with AIDS who are not infected with HIV. The diseases that occur in people with AIDS differ according to the risk group. Intravenous drug users get diseases such as Tuberculosis, Wasting Syndrome and Pneumonia. Homosexual males get diseases such as Kaposi's Sarcoma and Cytomegalovirus. However, people in these risk groups who are not infected with HIV also get the same diseases.

There are people who are infected with HIV but are healthy and do not have AIDS. In the US, there are 1 million people infected with HIV, but only about half-a-million people with AIDS. In Africa, 97 % of those infected with HIV do not have AIDS. World-wide, 95 % of those infected with HIV do not have AIDS.

The real causes of AIDS

It is normal scientific protocol that critics of a hypothesis are not required to provide an alternative hypothesis. The onus is on the proponents of a hypothesis to respond to the problems that critics have identified with it. Nevertheless, critics of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis have supplied explanations for the condition known as AIDS.

Recreational drugs

Intravenous drug users and homosexual men account for 94 % of all AIDS cases in the US.

Intravenous drug users inject themselves with recreational drugs such as heroin and cocaine. The damaging effects on the human body from the use of these drugs have been known for many decades. Effects such as Wasting Syndrome occur in drug users whether or not they are infected with HIV. Recreational drugs are known to suppress the immune system by depleting CD4 T-cells. There is a strong correlation between the incidence of AIDS and drug use.

Some homosexual men are intravenous drug users and will get the same damaging effects as other drug users. Other drugs, more specifically used by homosexual men, are nitrite inhalants ("poppers") which are used as an aphrodisiac. These drugs also have known damaging effects on the body, such as Kaposi's Sarcoma. Amyl and butyl nitrite (the active ingredients of the inhalants) are known to suppress the immune system.

About 3 % of AIDS cases in the US are from two other risk groups, blood transfusion patients and hemophiliacs, which are not associated with the use of recreational drugs. Blood transfusions are given to patients with life-threatening conditions and approximately 50 % of patients die within the first year after the transfusion. Blood transfusion is known to suppress the immune system, whether or not the patients are infected with HIV. Hemophiliacs are given of injections of Factor VIII, a blood-clotting agent. Factor VIII is produced from the blood donations of thousands of people. Factor VIII contains foreign proteins that are known to cause suppression of the immune system, and can contain viruses such as HIV. Many hemophiliacs became infected with HIV before the routine testing of blood donations began. Almost 75 % of hemophiliacs have become infected with HIV since the AIDS epidemic began. Despite this, the life span of hemophiliacs has increased by 15 years over the same period. Hemophiliacs infected with HIV had a low death rate until HIV testing began in 1985, which led to them taking anti-viral drugs.

Clinical drugs

The use of anti-viral drugs to treat people infected with HIV began in 1987 after AZT was approved for use. AZT was originally designed for the treatment of leukemia. AZT was not approved for this purpose after animal trials revealed very severe damage to non-cancerous cells. AZT is a DNA chain terminator class of drug which is designed to prevent DNA synthesis and thus kill reproducing cells. It randomly attacks cells throughout the body, including those in the bone marrow, which is where white blood cells are produced. Thus, suppression of the immune system is an inevitable consequence of taking AZT. The case for the use of AZT for AIDS patients was supported by an observation that the T-cell count in patients increased after receiving AZT. However, an initial increase in the T-cell count is observed when any toxin is introduced into the body. After AZT, other DNA chain terminator drugs were produced, such as ddI, ddC, D4T and 3TC.

Another class of drugs later used to treated people infected with HIV was the protease inhibitor. Examples of this class are Saquinavir, Ritonavir and Indinavir. Protease inhibitors are designed to prevent a virus detaching itself from a cell, thus preventing it from reproducing. Protease inhibitors are extremely effective at preventing the production of infectious virus in the laboratory. However, there is no evidence that AIDS patients have benefited from protease inhibitors, which further supports the view that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. In high doses these drugs have damaging effects on body tissue, affecting liver function and digestion, and causing blood clotting and kidney stones. Protease inhibitors will thus contribute to the mortality of AIDS patients.

Malnutrition and poor sanitation

Of the people infected with HIV in Africa, only 3% have AIDS. There are no special risk groups for infection and men and women are affected equally. About 90 % of the diseases are caused by microbes. The diseases that are caught, such as dysentery, have known causes such as malnutrition and poor sanitation, and were present in Africa long before the AIDS epidemic began.