Who is doing the swindling?

I viewed "The Great Global Warming Swindle" recently. There is a critique of the video by Chris Merchant titled "Scam of the Great Global Warming Swindle." The slide show is available from his home page.

So I plan to offer a critique of the critique. Firstly, while there may be issues with the Swindle documentary it is the first I have seen to oppose the prevailing view. I think its existence is a good thing. It reminds people that the comment about universal consensus is a lie. I don't excuse its errors, I am not of the opinion that something untruthful is useful if it wins persons over to my point of view. Lying for the truth is an oxymoron.

I find it interesting that some of what Merchant complains about is not so much the untruth of what they are saying intrinsically (though he does cover this), rather that their interpretation of things differs from his so they must not quite be telling the truth. But this is the issue, the opponents do disagree with the interpretation. Merchant appears to so believe in global warming he seems to misunderstand what his opponents are trying to say at times and at other times disproves a slight misrepresentation of their position.

His second slide summarises the themes.

Themes from GGWS

• Climate has always changed
• Human emissions of CO₂ are tiny
• CO₂ doesn't drive climate anyway
• Climate change is caused by the sun
• You can 'prove" what you want to prove with models
• The motives of the CC fraternity are suspect

In terms of where I stand I would agree with 5 of them with caveats. With regard to the 3rd I would say I have yet to be convinced that changes in CO₂ are significant enough to drive climate change and they are more likely to be a result of temperature increases than a cause.

I plan to post several responses to his slide show in the near future.