An Honest Climate Debate

Not Evil Just Wrong reviewed

by Bob Carter
Quadrant Online
October 12, 2009

“Watch this film, and use the knowledge that you will gain to lobby your Senator to vote against the Australian emissions trading bill.”

Bob Carter

This documentary film is an examination of the human effects of environmental alarmism, with especial reference to the still hypothetical “problem” of human-caused global warming. The film is not so much about the science of climate change as it is about explaining the sociology and politics of what is now perhaps the world’s greatest-ever scare campaign.

Not Evil, Just Wrong examines the issue by interweaving three story lines throughout: first, that of an Ugandan woman who loses her son to malaria; second, the story of workers in a small American town whose employment and wealth is largely generated from the location there of a coal-fired power station, with mines nearby, both of which potentially face closure; and third, the story of the post-Vice Presidential career of Mr Al Gore, and his failure to answer the heartfelt concerns of a young US woman regarding the damage that his policies, if implemented, will wreak on ordinary Americans.

One of the greatest strengths of the film is the archival film footage that the producers have unearthed of some of the key players in the drama. For instance, it is fascinating to see Paul Erlich in grainy black and white asserting back in the 1970s that the world had “no chance of reaching the year 2000”. And Mr Gore lambasting his audience with such gems as “We live in an age of fear” because “global warming caused by burning fossil fuels is going to destroy us and our planet”.

Sensibly, at this point the narrator injects a note of reality with the remark “But is this threat real, and how costly to humanity are the proposed solutions?” The rest of the film addresses these questions.

New interview footage also plays an important part in the film. Besides being interested in hearing what they had to say, the voyeur in me was fascinated to see the background work or home setting of such legendary figures as NASA’s James Hansen (an orderly but paper-stuffed-full office), former U.K. Chancellor Sir Nigel Lawson (immaculate home study surroundings), and doyen of US atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen (filmed amidst a chaos of books and papers like a squirrel amongst leaf litter).

In what has proved to be a sensational publicity coup for the film, footage of Stanford University’s Stephen Schneider, filmed with his agreement, was withdrawn after legal threats from the University. So, though we see archival footage of Professor Schneider, for his present views – and an explanation as to why why he shifted from being an “ice-age-cometh” alarmist in the 1970s to an “earth-will-be-burned-to-a-cinder” alarmist in the 1990s and beyond – we have to listen to an actor read his words against a blackened screen. Even those most trusting of academic authority must at this point surely be inclined to ask “just what has Professor Schneider got to hide?”

Read the rest here