Scientifically unsound claims about global warming are being used to seduce young students and to cajole lawmakers into accepting the legitimacy of regulatory schemes that restrict the use of fossils fuels, according to a new documentary.
The husband-wife team of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney co-produced and directed “Not Evil, Just Wrong” in an effort to highlight the long history of “anti-human propaganda” that reaches back to the scientifically inaccurate claims made about DDT (Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) in Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring.” The same alarmist rhetoric is now being used to rationalize severe limits on carbon dioxide (Co2) emissions that could cripple modern economies, the filmmakers warn.
The documentary will premier 8 p.m. on October 18. The film is available for purchase online where “Cinematic Tea Parties” are already being organized. A special screening was held for supporters at the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) office in Washington D.C. Wednesday night.
“Carbon is the new DDT,” McAleer said in interview.
“Environmentalists are pushing the same kind of anti-human propaganda that triggered the ban on DDT. Millions of children died of malaria because of this ban. The same kind of deception is now being used to target carbon dioxide. Industries that rely on fossil could be shut down and jobs lost thanks to all of the fear mongering and the disinformation that is not justified by science.”
Americans, unlike Europeans, seem more aware and attuned to the growing body of evidence that questions the premise of man-made global warming theories, he added. The documentary features a number of scientists who have identified natural forces, as opposed to human activity, as the primary drivers of climate change. The real threat to future livelihoods come more from global warming policy proposals than do from any actual warming trend, McAleer suggested.
Although the British High Court recently ruled in favor of parents who objected to the distribution of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” in the school system, its message of pending man-made climate catastrophe continues to hold sway with students who are interviewed in“Not Evil, Just Wrong."
John Day, the lawyer for British parents who sued the British Department of Education over Gore’s film, discusses the court ruling in the film and compares actual scientific estimates of climate change contained in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the assertions made in “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“The judge identified nine aspects of `An Inconvenient Truth,’ nine core errors, where Al Gore either misstated the IPCC or prejudicially exaggerated what they found,” Day said. “For example in relation to the sea level rises which is perhaps the starkest error in Al Gore's film arguably. Al Gore is giving an impression that the sea level is going to rise by 20 feet in a very near future. The IPCC talks about 20 feet sea level rises over millennia, over thousands of years, thousands and thousands of years. And sea level rises by a matter of inches by the end of the century. Now that is a very disturbing misstatement of the science.”
Contrary to what students have been taught in British schools, human emission have little or nothing to do with melting glaciers, Syun Ichi Akasofu, founding director of the International Arctic Research Centre at the University of Alaska, concluded in his research.
“We have ice in the Arctic Ocean and it has been receding, but this receding began around 1850, not the just the last 50 years,” he said in the film. “It does happen all the time because of natural phenomenon. So it is very difficult to associate all the changes in the ice to carbon dioxide.”
Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace, also appears in the documentary and comments on the modern environmental movement. He is particularly critical of how the news media has covered and reacted to the concept of global warming.“There’s a real unbalanced situation in the media, always trying to look for the global warming connection,” he said. “The fact that the Antarctic ice sheet, the sea ice around Antarctic is growing rapidly, the fact that the arctic ice is not disappearing the way that we’ve been told, as a matter of fact, it came back even larger last year, and this year it looks like it’s going to be even more extensive, but that doesn’t get reported.”
Moore eventually left Greenpeace in the mid 1980’s because it adopted what he describes as an “anti-human” and an “anti-science” agenda.
“I don’t believe that there is climate catastrophe,” he said. “I don’t use the word chaos or disaster to describe the present changes in climate, which are well within natural variations that have occurred in the past history of the earth.”
“Not Evil, Just Wrong” also focuses attention on the impact global warming polices have had on the most underdeveloped parts of the world. British Lord Nigel Lawson calls out environmentalists for erecting barriers against economic progress where it is needed most.
“The people who are calling for massive carbon dioxide reduction, the Al Gore’s of this world, are in fact the enemies of poverty reduction,” he says in the film.
Industrialized areas of America, such as Vevey, Indiana are particularly vulnerable to European-style regulatory schemes now making their way through Congress, the documentary points out. The community, which is located near the Kentucky border, greatly benefits from the availability of cheap energy sources like coal.
Tim and Tiffany McElhany are among the Vevey residents who take part in the documentary. They explain how the anti-industry policies now under consideration would greatly diminish the standard of living in their community and jeopardize economic opportunities for their children.
In June, the House passed the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill, which could come up for final approval in the fall.
“It would mean the death of American industry,” McElhinney said. “We already have the proof of how disastrous green policies can be to economies. Spain has been held up as the poster child for renewable energy and Obama has talked repeatedly of Spain’s green jobs. Spain has 17.9 percent unemployment, is that what America wants?” Green jobs are a myth - they dont exist. If you tax energy and make it more expensive you make jobs more expensive and decrease employment. Cap and Trade is simply a stimulus bill for Chinese power station workers.”
Colleen Holmes, executive director with Eagle Forum, attended the screening at ATR and expressed concern over the direction of U.S. policy.
"The people who form the backbone of our nation, small business owners and hard working, middle and lower income Americans know this policy will directly affect them by killing jobs and increase their taxes and energy costs, yet the liberal elites ignore their concerns and treat them with contempt," she said. "The film addresses that very well.”
