Dickie Attenborough kicked it off when, during an address to the UN, he stated that, “The collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizons if no urgent action is taken against global warming.”

Spotting a useful bandwagon from a mile away, our own Mary Robinson hopped on it with her own statement. “David Attenborough’s climate change speech ‘has echoed around the world,” the ex-Nodding President said. “We must take action with much more ambition to be on track for a carbon-neutral world. That’s why what David Attenborough said is important. The situation is potentially catastrophic, but it is doable. People need to take steps in their own lives. They need to get cross if governments are not doing enough,” she added. Undoubtedly she will soon be off again, jumping onto a huge four engined jet to fly half way around the world, (leaving a trail of CO2), to attend another lavish conference on man-made Global Warming.

Then I came across this Channel 4 documentary, by British television producer Martin Durkin, which 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’.

I urge all of my readers to take an hour out of their busy evening to see and hear the other side of the Climate Change story as presented by this film.

Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a very common, naturally occurring molecule that contains two oxygen atoms and one carbon atom. In everyday conditions on Earth, carbon dioxide is a commonly occurring gas that is all around us. It is colourless, odourless, is naturally present in Earth’s atmosphere and is an important part of Earth’s carbon cycle. All humans and animals exhale carbon dioxide when they breathe, and plants absorb it during a process called photosynthesis in order to grow. It is not toxic, poses no great danger to man and indeed if it were in short supply or even absent, the planet would die. Carbon dioxide is essential to all of us.

The thoughtful scientists on the above Channel 4 documentary present the real facts about CO2 and this Earth. Firstly, the feared greenhouse gases represent only a tiny portion of all of the World’s gases. Then 95% of the feared greenhouse gases are simply evaporation from the oceans. The other 5% of greenhouse gases contain as little as 2% carbon dioxide. Of that little 2%, man-made CO2 is in the minority. Only .117% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is directly attributable to human technology. That’s less than one per cent of the existing CO2.

So, is there really a problem? To this unprofessional eye, the weather is unsettled these last few years and the seasons are less distinct. But weather is not climate. However, if as the film contends, man-made CO2 is far too small to have any effect on climate, then what could? To quote another source, “It is ten times as likely that atmospheric CO2 is coming from natural sources, namely the warming ocean surface, as it is likely that it is coming from anthropogenic sources.” The changes in CO2 track ocean surface temperature, not global carbon emissions. Burning fossil fuels is not increasing atmospheric CO2. Recovery from the Little Ice Age, driven by the sun, is causing the oceans to release CO2. It is temperature driving CO2 release, not the other way around. Just as it has always been. As the sun gets quiet in the next few years, sea surface temperature will begin to fall, and the rise in CO2 will cease. If the sun stays quiet for 30 or 40 years, ocean surface temperatures will fall far enough to reverse the CO2 rise, the globe will enter a new little ice age, and things will get really interesting.” It is a web site really worth visiting if Climate Change is of interest to you.

But back to the fiery nuclear ball in the sky. “Sunspots have all but vanished in recent years.” Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago — and it signaled a solar event known as a “Maunder Minimum,” along with the start of what we now call the “Little Ice Age.”Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada’s National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a “stethoscope for the sun,” Tapping says, if the pattern doesn’t change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.

If you look, there are plenty of climate sceptics, of which, here’s a selection:

1) Global Warming Scam Exposed

2) ‘Global warming the greatest scam in history’ claims founder of Weather Channel

3) The Stunning Statistical Fraud Behind The Global Warming Scare

4) The Global Warming Scam by Vincent Gray

The above is just a small sample of the alternative view.

At this point I will end this article but I will write the second part of it shortly as I believe it is important that this topic be debated even more. It is not sufficient to state, as the IPCC is doing, that the science is irrefutable. That is not how true science works. It is however, how dishonest politics works and with the amount of money poring into fighting climate change measured in Trillions, we’d need to be sure it is actually a real problem first.