The Great Global Warming Swindle?

So there’s a documentary by the British Channel Four which argues that human/CO2 caused Global Warming is a pile of steaming bollocks (smells better than excrement). It can grow to become a kind of counter-Inconvenient Truth, and contribute to reversing the progress the Global Warming movements have so far achieved.

While there are plenty of sites who dispute the science in this documentary (see here, here and here) I would like to take some time to address the ad hominem remarks made in the film. It provides a great deal of focus on what an industry the Global Warming hype is; scientists who support the dominant theory because of the money and jobs it gets them. There is an argument made that the movement is part of a plot to inhibit the development of Third World countries, and that there is a lot of political power to go around in advancing the Global Warming story.

Regarding the argument that supposedly scientists are in it for the money, I’ve made a screenshot of a selection I made on exxonsecrets.org of most of the scientists appearing in the documentary who are making a buck out of being GW deniers (Click to enlarge):

I get that there is a lot of greed to go around. The point seems moot however. Both GW deniers and GW alarmists have plenty of opportunity to make a buck. Somewhere between those two, there must be some proper science. So far, the documentary comes across as far too smeary and self satisfied.

Why is this relevant? I used an interactive visualization to attack one of the pillar arguments of the GGWS documentary. Of course, one must realize that my screenshot itself is an ad hominem argument; simply by associating these scientists with Exxon-Mobile funded institutions implies that these scientists are lying through their teeth for big dollars. In the end, my effort does nothing to discredit their actual scientific arguments. The difference between the documentary and me is that I recognize ad hominem tricks for what they are :p