Channel 4's Climate Change Amnesia

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Channel 4 is a British publicly owned television channel. However, unlike the BBC, it doesn’t receive any public funding and instead is funded entirely through advertising.

Like most mainstream media, it has rapidly gone down hill, especially since the pandemic. It is painful to watch Channel 4 news nowadays, as the narrative they are pushing is so blatant, but I still force myself, mainly to get a grasp of what that narrative is (and it coincides with when I’m eating my dinner!).

Other than the news, you can watch some absolute classics such as:

or the unmissable:

and not forgetting:

But rewind less than 20 years and Channel 4 actually aired some interesting programmes.

Take for example this one, “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, first shown in 2007. Whilst it was still controversial at the time, they were still allowed to show an opposing view. Nowadays, this is strictly verboten.

The “documentary, by British television producer Martin Durkin, 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 programme 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 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."

We would be a much more balanced and less polarised society if documentaries challenging the narrative were allowed on mainstream channels. There would then be less stigma when discussing these topics with friends and family. This would mean the truth would be more likely to surface.

Man is arrogant to think he knows everything about the climate and the very worst thing to do is to restrict debate about it. Perhaps a real crisis is around the corner, that we won’t be prepared for, because we have spent all our collective time and energy on a scam crisis which makes us all poorer but the rich richer.