This is an edited version of my first essay for my course. The essay in full and references can be provided on request.

The TV documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ (2007) seems to have been responsible for a lot of apathy and disinterest in anthropogenic climate change. Widely broadcast around the world on television and on the internet, it altered many people’s perceptions of man-made global warming, despite the widespread rebuttals, like that of Jones et al (2007) of the Australian National Climate Centre who concluded that it “...goes to great lengths to present outdated, incorrect or ambiguous data in such a way as to grossly distort the true understanding of climate change science...”
Indeed, environmental campaigner Jonathan Porritt (2007) wrote in his blog, “It’s down to dorks like Durkin... ...that an almost unbelievable 56% of people in the UK still believe that there’s a major scientific controversy about what’s causing climate change (citing Mori, 2007) ”
In November 2006, Sunday Telegraph reporter Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley published a series of articles, named Apocalypse Cancelled which claimed to lay waste to conventional climate change theory. He accompanied his newspaper articles with a referenced document, purporting to support his position.
In his paper, Monckton praised Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his scepticism of the impact of carbon dioxide on anthropogenic climate change. However, Professor Lindzen’s impartiality in this debate has been called into question by Ross Gelbspan writing in Harper’s in 1995. He reported that Lindzen’s speech ‘Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus’, was underwritten by OPEC and that he received $2,500 a day for his consultancy services to the oil and coal industries.
Monckton was highly critical of the UN’s publication of graphs which failed to show the so-called ‘Mediaeval Warm Period’ in global temperature trends, however Bradley et al (2003) concluded “...although the High Medieval (1100 to 1200 A.D.) was warmer than subsequent centuries, it was not warmer than the late 20th century. Moreover, the warmest Medieval temperatures were not synchronous around the globe.”
In the same paper Bradley et al cite Hughes and Diaz (1994) “...found no clear support for there having been a globally extensive warm epoch in the MWE (Medieval Warm Epoch), or indeed within a longer interval stretching from the 9th to the early 15th century”

Meanwhile, Mann et al (2003) concluded “While relative hemispheric warmth during the 10th , 11th and 12th centuries...(is) evident from reconstructions of hemispheric-mean temperature the specific periods of ...warmth differ from region to region from those for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.”

Hence one can surmise that the medieval warm period would not register on a global average temperature record as any single period of elevated readings.
Monckton is heavily critical of the hockey-stick graph produced by Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) (1998, 1999) and heavily cited by the IPCC in their 2001 report. He draws extensively on the findings of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) who claimed that Mann et al’s (1998,1999) methodology was flawed and was “ primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.”
McIntyre and McKitrick produced two more analyses of the work of Mann et al (1998, 1999)Global-scale temperature patterns over the past six centuries: a comment (2004) and also Hockey sticks, principal components and spurious significance (2005) of which rebuttals have been made on the latter, notably by Huybers (2005) and von Storch and Zorita (2005). In February 2006, writing in Climatic Change, Wahl and Ammann produced Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes reconstruction of Northern hemisphere surface temperatures: Examination of criticisms based on the nature and processing of proxy climate evidence, in which they concluded that “Our results show that the MBH climate reconstruction method applied to the original proxy data is not only reproducible, but also proves robust against important simplifications and modifications...” and also that the accusations of poor data handling “...cannot be upheld, and leaves unchanged the overall MBH result of uniquely high Northern Hemisphere temperatures in the late 20th century.”
Another criticism by Monckton and Durkin is that the 420,000 year temperature and carbon dioxide record from the Vostok ice cores appears to suggest that the temperature rose before carbon dioxide concentrations. This was also a claim made in ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ to indicate that CO2 was not responsible for current elevated temperatures. This oversimplification of climate science is a false dichotomy which attempts to discredit accepted theory. Greenhouse gases are not the only forcing agent which influence climate as Monckton and The Great Global Warming Swindle suggest, but one of many. The assertion that rising CO2 was not responsible for the end of successive ice-ages is true, however that does not have bearing on modern man made global warming.
Accepted theory on the precession of ice ages is known as Milankovitch theory or astronomical theory of climate change and suggests that the earth’s tilt relative to the astronomical plane causes the seasons as we experience them and on a larger time-scale variations in this tilt and the earth’s orbit cause increased glaciation, which in turn causes the precession of ice ages (as more ice forms, more solar radiation is reflected back into space) .
So the driver of glacial and inter-glacial periods can be explained by the earth’s orbit and tilt. As the earth cools, increased amounts of carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans, which has a negative feedback effect and increases cooling. Therefore as the earth warms at the end of a glacial period, increased amounts of carbon dioxide are released from the warmer oceans (because carbon dioxide is less soluble in warmer water), thereby creating a positive feedback and further warming. So we would expect atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to lag behind global temperature levels initially, but the positive feedback effect would drive further warming and thereby drive further release of CO2 from the oceans leading to the observed data.
Monckton indicates that the Antarctic and high altitude Greenland ice sheets have grown in recent decades, which contradicts global warming models which are often suggestive of increased melt in these regions. While this is true, this perhaps suggests a lack of understanding of the complexities of polar weather systems rather than proof of the fallacy of anthropogenic climate change. As Johannessen (2005) suggests, increases in high altitude ice sheet thickness in Greenland are perhaps indicative of a heretofore unknown correlation between Greenland weather patterns and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Johannessen's models suggested that three quarters of the high altitude ice sheet expansion could be explained by weather systems influenced by the NAO and therefore a quarter of the growth could be caused by global warming.
It is not outside the realms of possibility that a proportion of Antarctic ice sheet growth is caused by global warming too. While this could be indicative that sea level rises may not result from increased Antarctic melt, it does not preclude thermal expansion (amongst other drivers) from causing elevated sea levels.
On October fifteenth 2007, The Independent newspaper ran an article entitled 'Climate deniers to send film to British Schools' detailing plans by Viscount Monckton to send copies of The Great Global Warming Swindle in a package with a film of his own making called Apocalypse No!. This package is a rebuttal to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth due to be distributed to British secondary schools by UK government.
The article stated that Monckton does accept that the climate is changing and that at least some of it is due to humans, but he does not accept the catastrophic visions portrayed in Mr Gore's film or by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Lord Monckton wants everyone to “... get a first chance to have both sides of the story and see that there is much greater division in the scientific community about climate change than we are led to believe by politicians.”
In 2007, Mori published ‘Turning-point or tipping-point’, it’s study into public perception of climate change. It found that although there is widespread acceptance of climate change (88%), there is much confusion over it’s causes and effects. 56% of respondents thought there was no clear consensus within the scientific community on anthropogenic climate change, while half thought that humans were not the principle cause of global warming.
58% of those questioned thought that a cleaner atmosphere would be a primary result of efforts to combat climate change. This ideation is possibly a throwback to the environmental campaigns of the seventies and eighties to combat atmospheric pollution.
Also in 2007, Yale University and Gallup released figures from an American poll on global warming. 71% of respondents were convinced that climate change is happening, but more than half thought that there is no scientific consensus. Of those who stated they believed climate change was happening, slightly less than a third thought it was entirely due to natural causes and over half thought that humans are entirely responsible.

US broadcaster Fox’s news anchors outright deny the science of anthropogenic climate change, which could have a detrimental effect on US confidence in the consensus on man-made global warming (although as the Gallup poll [2007] shows, many Americans seem to be making their own decisions, despite such negative broadcasting). The channel is staunchly right-wing in it’s coverage and editorial style and follows US conservative environmental policy doggedly. They play to the heart-strings of Americans who do not wish to see a detrimental change to their way of life. The right of every American to drive huge gas-guzzling trucks and have whatever they want whenever they want it, is almost synonymous with the right to bear arms. They champion the American way as a template for the rest of the world and don't seem to want to surrender any of the freedoms (or luxuries) to which they have become accustomed.
Such coverage introduces more doubt into the public debate and keeps people arguing over whether anthropogenic climate change exists. Therefore no political consensus is reached and individuals, corporations and governments are absolved from having to take evasive action, which might otherwise cause them to have to change their standard of living. There is also the possibility that such argument would create a lack of concern for the impacts of climate change or even for the ability of humanity to effectuate change (for good), which could easily lead to greater and more catastrophic climate change than we necessarily have to tolerate.
Of course, debate is necessary with such a far-reaching and consequential issue, such as anthropogenic climate change, but one-sided and biased reporting can just create more confusion, which can ultimately negatively influence public trust in scientific data from the IPCC and others.
The mainstream media and governments themselves seem to be intent on politicising the science of anthropogenic climate change, which rather than winning public support, can have a detrimental effect on public opinion.
As I have shown, many of the myths employed by climate change sceptics do not stand up under basic scientific scrutiny, but are perhaps convincing enough in their apparent simplicity and just that little bit too complicated for the 'average Joe Bloggs' to question their validity.
It is a matter of grave concern that Lord Monckton will soon be directly influencing British secondary school children with his brand of climate change scepticism. His 'evidence' is severely lacking in substance, though he more than makes up for that with complicated babble, which may just convince our children that he makes a fair point and there really is nothing to worry about.
It would be beneficial to produce more educational tools to teach our school children the true science of anthropogenic climate change.
Having said this, there does appear to be hope that people both here and in the US recognise that climate change is taking place and are willing to make a concerted effort to combat it. It may well be, that further and sustained extreme weather events are needed to convince people of the very real threat that climate change presents, but a public consensus on man made global warming must come soon if we are to make any headway in effectuating positive changes. Although I would not wish for such events to take place, as there effects would undoubtedly result in suffering for many it may be the only way to convince those people who are currently on the fence.

UPDATE: The possibility of this happening before 2030 took a blow this week with the publishing of a paper in Science, which suggested that the effects of GW, in the Northern hemisphere particularly, could be softened by reduced ocean currents until then, but then would closely follow established IPCC predictions. Throughout the course of my studies, it has become apparent that unless a concerted effort is made to reduce emissions dramatically by 2020, we will essentially be closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. If the true effects of GW are downplayed until 2030, then the deniers will have all the ammunition they need to continue to create doubt in people's minds, resulting in no action being taken to combat it's effects until it really is too late.