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The Great Global Warming Swindle is a controversial documentary film by British television producer Martin Durkin, which presents arguments that oppose the predominant scientific opinion on climate change (i.e. that human activity is the primary cause of global warming). The film showcases scientists, economists, politicians, writers, and others who are sceptical of the consensus scientific opinion on anthropogenic global warming. Publicity for the programme states that global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times."

The programme's accuracy has been disputed on multiple points and several commentators have criticised it for being one-sided. Critics of the programme claim that the mainstream position on global warming is supported by the scientific academies of the major industrialized nations and other professional scientific bodies. The film disputes the positions of these scientific organizations by interviewing several scientific experts, including those from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and contributors to reports by the IPCC, who disagree with explanations that attribute global warming to human activities.

Channel 4, which screened the documentary on 8 March 2007, described the film as "a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired."

Viewpoints expressed in the film

The film's basic premise is that the current state of knowledge on global warming has numerous scientific flaws, and that vested monetary interests of science and the media discourage the public and the scientific community from acknowledging this. The film explains the publicized scientific consensus as the product of a "global warming activist industry" driven by a desire for research funding. Another target is Western environmentalists who, the film claims, promote expensive solar and wind power over cheap fossil fuels in Africa, holding Africa back from industrialising, explained as "...if solar and wind power are too expensive for America, how can poor Africa afford it?"

Some of the people who are interviewed in the film are environmentalist Patrick Moore, co-founder, but for the past 21 years a critic, of Greenpeace; Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Patrick Michaels, professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia; Nigel Calder, editor of New Scientist from 1962 to 1966; John Christy, professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at University of Alabama; Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute; and Solar Physicist Dr. Piers Corbyn. Carl Wunsch, professor of oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was also interviewed but has since said that he strongly disagrees with the film's conclusions and the way his interview material was used..

Claims made in the film

The film claims that the consensus on climate change is the product of "a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry: created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists; supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding; and propped up by complicit politicians and the media". It uses a series of interviews and graphics to support its arguments that are listed below.

On contradictions in the theory of anthropogenic global warming

• Records of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels since 1940 show a continuing increase, but during this period, global temperature decreased until 1975, and has increased since then (while the axis of the original graph was originally mislabelled, it was corrected so that subsequent shows are now accurate)

• Theories of global temperature increase due to enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations predict that the temperature high in the troposphere should increase at the same rate as it has near the surface, but satellite and weather balloon data as of 2001 did not show this.

• The correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperatures demonstrated by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, while true, shows that carbon dioxide does not precede increases in global temperature, but instead is the opposite - that increases in global temperature produce more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

  

• Carbon dioxide levels increase or decrease due to temperatures increasing or decreasing rather than temperatures following carbon dioxide levels, because as the global climate cools the Earth's oceans absorb carbon dioxide, and as the climate warms the oceans release carbon dioxide
• Due to the large oceanic mass it takes hundreds of years for global temperature changes to register in the mass of the ocean, which is why analysis of the Vostok Station and other ice cores shows that changes in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide follow changes in global temperature, with a lag of 800 years.

• Water vapour makes up 95% of all greenhouse gases and has the largest impact on the planet's temperature. Water vapour in the form of clouds acts to reflect incoming solar heat. The effects of clouds cannot be accurately simulated by scientists attempting to predict future weather patterns and their effects on global warming.

• The total concentration of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is just 0.038%, a very minuscule amount. Humans contribute much less than 1 % of that (less than 0.00038%). The documentary states that volcanoes produce significantly more CO₂ per year than humans. While plants and animals produce 150 gigatons of CO₂ each year, dying leaves produce even more CO₂, and that the oceans produce CO₂ in gargantuan levels, human activity produces a mere 6.5 gigatons of CO₂ each year. The film concludes that man-made CO₂ emissions therefore cannot be causing global warming

• Solar activity is currently at an extremely high level , and is directly linked to the cause of global warming and cooling. The mechanism involves cosmic rays as well as heat from the sun aiding cloud formation. Solar activity levels are far more influential to global warming and cooling than any other man-made or natural activity on Earth

• According to Dr. Piers Corbyn a solar physicist with a Masters in Astrophysics, changes in solar activity match changes in global temperatures. His weather predictions are accurate to such a degree than he his company, WeatherAction is able to predict overall seasonal changes in the weather to such a degree that his clients include Coca-Cola, agrochemical giants Monsanto and Hydro Agri, and a number of petrochemical companies and utilities including British Gas Services

• The current warming is nothing unusual and temperatures were even more extrem during the Medieval Warm Period, a time of great prosperity in Europe.

On research findings driven by financial or ideological motives

• There has been an increase in funds available for any research related to global warming "and it is now one of the best funded areas of science."

• Scientists seeking a research grant award have a much more likely chance of successfully obtaining funding if the grant is linked to global warming research.

• It is more likely that vested interests occur among supporters of the proponents of the theory of man-made global warming because hundreds of thousands of jobs in science, media, and government have been created and are subsidized as a result of this theory.

• Scientists who speak out against the theory that global warming is man-made risk persecution, death threats, loss of funding, personal attacks, and damage to their reputations.

• Some supporters of the theory that global warming is man-made do so because it supports their emotional and ideological beliefs against capitalism, economic development, globalization, industrialisation, and the United States.

• The theory that global warming is man-made was promoted by Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a means of promoting nuclear power and reducing the impact of strike action by the National Union of Mineworkers.

• Claims that all skeptics are funded by private industry (such as oil, gas, and coal industries) are false and have no basis in fact.

Disputing a scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic global warming

• The claim that "2,500 top scientists" support the theory of man-made global warming mentioned in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report are false, and that in fact the report includes many politicians, non-scientists, and even dissenters that demanded that their names be removed from the report but were refused.

• The IPCC report deliberately misrepresented the views of scientists who contributed to it through selective editorializing and deletions form their work. For example, when Paul Reiter of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of San Juan, Puerto complained that the IPCC manipulated his statements to deliberately misrepresent his position as supporting global warming as being man-made, the IPCC refused to remove his name until he publicized the incident and threatened legal action

• The concept of man-made global warming is promoted with a ferocity and intensity that is similar to a religious fervor. Skeptics treated as, and labelled as, heretics and equated with holocaust deniers. Retired university professor Tim Ball states in the film that he is one of many scientists that has received death threats because of sceptical statements he has made about global warming.

Killing the African dream of development

• Author and economist James Shikwati says in the programme that environmentalists campaign against Africa using its fossil fuels: "there's somebody keen to kill the African dream. And the African dream is to develop." He describes renewable power as "luxurious experimentation" that might work for rich countries but will never work for Africa: "I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry ... We are being told, 'Don't touch your resources. Don't touch your oil. Don't touch your coal. That is suicide.'"
• An example is given in the film of a Kenyan health clinic which is powered by solar panels which do not provide enough electricity for both the medical refrigerator and the lights at the same time. The programme describes the idea of restricting the world's poorest people to alternative energy sources as "the most morally repugnant aspect of the Global Warming campaign."

Miscellaneous

• A similar scare emerged during the 1970s when scientists predicted global cooling and the imminent onset of a new ice age.

• The negative consequences of the precautionary principle, as applied by supporters of the anthropogenic theory of global warming, are discussed. For example, the World Health Organization estimates that every year, four million children die globally from respiratory diseases due to inhaling smoke from cooking fires. The film says these deaths could be avoided if their parents had access to electrical cooking devices; yet environmentalists are opposed to the construction of large-scale power plants, because of the possible effects of global warming in the future.

Reception and criticism

The show attracted 2.5 million viewers and an audience share of 11.5%. Though there have been 144 complaints to Ofcom, as of March 19, 2007, Channel 4 revealed that it had received 758 calls and emails about the programme, with those in favour outnumbering complaints by six to one. The channel subsequently announced that it would be hosting a debate about the global warming issue to be broadcast in April.

Reactions from scientists

The IPCC was one of the main targets of the documentary. In response to the programme's broadcast, John T. Houghton (former co-chair IPCC Scientific Assessment working group 1988-2002) assessed some of its main assertions and conclusions. According to Houghton, three of these were true, seven were not true, and one was possibly true. Houghton rejected claims that observed changes in global average temperature are within the range of natural climate variability or explicable by solar influences; that the troposphere is warming less than the surface; that volcanic eruptions emit more carbon dioxide than fossil fuel burning; that climate models are too complex and uncertain to provide useful projections of climate change; and that IPCC processes were biased. Houghton acknowledges that ice core samples show CO₂ driven by temperature, but then writes, "this correlation has been presented as the main evidence for global warming by the IPCC – NOT TRUE. For instance, I often show that diagram in my lectures on climate change but always make the point that it gives no proof of global warming due to increased carbon dioxide." Overall Houghton described the programme as "a mixture of truth, half truths and falsehood".

Climate scientists William Connolley and Gavin Schmidt write in the RealClimate blog that the programme selectively used data that was sometimes decades old in making its arguments, altered graphs to make it appear that older observations had been made more recently, and used older scientific studies when more recent research would have disagreed with the film's conclusions.

The British Antarctic Survey released a "Statement" about the The Great Global Warming Swindle. It is highly critical of the programme, singling out the use of a graph with the incorrect time axis, and also the statements made about solar activity: "A comparison of the distorted and undistorted contemporary data reveal that the plot of solar activity bears no resemblance to the temperature curve, especially in the last 20 years." Comparing scientific methods with Channel 4's editorial standards, the statement says: "Any scientist found to have falsified data in the manner of the Channel 4 programme would be guilty of serious professional misconduct." It uses the feedback argument to explain temperatures rising before CO₂. On the issue of volcanic CO₂ emissions, it says:

A second issue was the claim that human emissions of CO2 are small compared to natural emissions from volcanoes. This is untrue: current annual emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production are estimated to be around 100 times greater than average annual volcanic emissions of CO2. That large volcanoes cannot significantly perturb the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is apparent from the ice core and atmospheric record of CO2 concentrations, which shows a steady rise during the industrial period, with no unusual changes after large eruptions.

Alan Thorpe, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading and Chief Executive of the UK Natural Environment Research Council, commented on the film in New Scientist. He wrote, "First, let's deal with the main thesis: that the presence or absence of cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere is a better explanation for temperature variation than the concentration of CO₂ and other gases. This is not a new assertion and it is patently wrong: there is no credible evidence that cosmic rays play a significant role...Let scepticism reign, but let's not play games with the evidence."

The Royal Society has issued a press release in reaction to the movie. In it, Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, shortly restates the predominant scientific opinion on climate change and adds:

"Scientists will continue to monitor the global climate and the factors which influence it. It is important that all legitimate potential scientific explanations continue to be considered and investigated. Debate will continue, and the Royal Society has just hosted a two day discussion meeting attended by over 300 scientists, but it must not be at the expense of action. Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future.

Armand Leroi, while acknowledging that "I am no climate scientist" in an e-mail to Durkin dated March 9, 2007, raised concerns with Durkin about his use of Friis-Christensen's 1991 paper on time-series correlations between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures since 1860. In the years since its publication this work has been criticised, for example in a series of papers by Peter Laut.

Carl Wunsch controversy

Carl Wunsch, one of the scientists featured in the programme, has said that he was "completely misrepresented" in the film and had been "totally misled" when he agreed to be interviewed. He called the film "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two." Wunsch was reported to have threatened legal action and to have lodged a complaint with Ofcom, the UK broadcast regulator. Filmmaker Durkin responded, "Carl Wunsch was most certainly not 'duped' into appearing in the film, as is perfectly clear from our correspondence with him. Nor are his comments taken out of context. His interview, as used in the programme, perfectly accurately represents what he said."

Wunsch wrote in a letter dated March 15 2007 that he believes climate change is "real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component". He also says he had thought he was contributing to a programme which sought to counterbalance "over-dramatisation and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts". He raised objections as to how his interview material was used:

"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous - because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening."

On March 11, 2007, The Independent covered the Carl Wunch controversy, and asked Channel 4 to respond to what it described as "a serious challenge to its own credibility". A Channel 4 spokesman said:

"The film was a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired. If one of the contributors has concerns about his contribution we will look into that."

Wunsch has said that he has received a legal letter from the production company, Wag TV, threatening to sue him for defamation unless he agrees to make a public statement that he was neither misrepresented nor misled.

Reaction in the British media

The documentary received substantial coverage in the British press, both before and after its broadcast.

George Monbiot writing for The Guardian before the programme was shown, discussed the arguments for and against the "hockey-stick graph" used in An Inconvenient Truth, claiming that the criticism of it has been "debunked". He also highlighted Durkin's previous documentary Against Nature, where the Independent Television Commission found that four complainants had been "misled" and their views were "distorted by selective editing". After the film was shown, Monbiot wrote another article arguing the documentary was based upon already debunked science. He accused Channel 4 of being more interested in generating controversy than in producing credible science programmes. Robin McKie, science editor of The Guardian, attacked the documentary for opting "for dishonest rhetoric when a little effort could have produced an important contribution to a critical social problem".

Dominic Lawson writing in The Independent was favourable toward the show. He echoed many of the show's claims and recommended that viewers tune in. He largely focused his attention on the knee-jerk reactions of the environmental community, first at Durkin's earlier production, Against Nature, and now at Swindle. He characterized the opponents of the film as being quick to leap to ad hominem attacks against the author and vocal primarily about his qualifications and political affiliations rather than the merits of his factual claims. Lawson summarized examples from the production of how dissenting scientists are pushed into the background and effectively censored by organizations such as the IPCC. The scientific theory posed by these dissenting scientists, according to Lawson, is "striking."

Geoffrey Lean, The Independent's environment editor, was critical of the programme. He noted that Dominic Lawson is the son and brother-in-law, respectively, of two prominent global warming sceptics (Nigel Lawson, who is featured in the programme, and Christopher Monckton), implying that Lawson was not a neutral observer. The Independent mostly disagreed with three of the film's major claims, for example stating: "recent solar increases are too small to have produced the present warming, and have been much less important than greenhouse gases since about 1850". In a later Independent article, Steve Connor heavily attacked the programme, saying that the programme makers had selectively used data which was sometimes decades old, and introduced other serious errors of their own:

"Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. 'There was a fluff there,' he said. If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the NASA website he could have got the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and 1940—although that would have undermined his argument. 'The original NASA data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find,' Mr Durkin said."

The online magazine Spiked published an interview with the film's director, Martin Durkin. In the interview, Durkin complains about how OfCom censures "seriously controversial work", saying that the end result is "phoney controversialism on TV but not much real controversialism". Spiked describes the programme's "all-encompassing cosmic ray theory" as "a little unconvincing", but says that "the film poked some very big holes in the global warming consensus", and argues "we could do with more anti-conformist films from ‘mavericks’ like Durkin".

The Times science editor Mark Henderson listed a number of points where, he said, "Channel 4 got it wrong over climate change". In this section he highlights the feedback argument for the ice core data, the measurement error explanation for temperatures in the troposphere, and the sulphate cooling argument for mid 20th century cooling.

Janet Daley writing for The Daily Telegraph headlined her column; "The Green Lobby Must Not Stifle The Debate" noting that "Among those who attempted to prevent the film being shown at all was the Liberal Democrat spokesman on the environment, Chris Huhne, who, without having seen the programme, wrote to Channel 4 executives advising them in the gravest terms to reconsider their decision to broadcast it".

The Daily Telegraph later apologised for the remarks in Daley's column, saying they were happy to accept that "Mr Huhne's letter was not an attempt to prevent the film being shown or suppress debate on the issue", following a letter from Huhne. He had written: "Janet Daley is simply wrong to state that I wrote to Channel 4 'advising them in the gravest terms to reconsider their decision to broadcast' Martin Durkin’s The Great Global Warming Swindle. I wrote asking for Channel 4’s comments on the fact – not in dispute – that the last time Mr Durkin ventured onto this territory he suffered serious complaints for sloppy journalism – upheld by the Independent Television Commission - and had to apologise."

Other reaction

UK Secretary of State for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, David Miliband presented a rebuttal of the main points of the film on his blog and stated "There will always be people with conspiracy theories trying to down the scientific consensus, and that is part of scientific and democratic debate, but the science of climate change looks like fact to me."

The documentary has not yet been broadcast in America. On March 9, 2007, Paul Joseph Watson (a British reporter who works for American radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones) argued that criticism of the film by Zoe Williams had relied upon ad hominems instead of disputing the arguments. He wrote, "The establishment left has already attempted to savage the documentary, but The Guardian's Zoe Williams cannot address the evidence, instead attacking the messenger by discrediting one participant from Winnipeg University, and selectively ignoring the roster of other experts which included MIT and Princeton professors".

Steven Milloy, who runs the Web site Junkscience.com, endorsed the documentary on March 18, 2007.

The program has been discussed extensively in Australia, including favourable mentions in an editorial in The Australian , an opinion column by Andrew Bolt and the Counterpoint radio program presented by Michael Duffy . The Australian stated that “Global warming extremists will never be satisfied” and endorsed the film’s claims regarding warming in the upper troposphere.. Duffy noted the program’s claims regarding Margaret Thatcher. In response, writing in the Australian Financial Review, John Quiggin criticised the program for putting forward “conspiracy theories” and asked “What has possessed a supposedly serious newspaper like The Australian, and a respected commentator like Duffy, to embrace such bizarre ideas? The answer, it seems, is that the global warming debate is viewed through the prism of the long-running Culture Wars”

Durkin's response to his critics

On March 17, 2007, The Daily Telegraph published a response by Durkin to what he calls the "feeble" attacks of his critics. In it, he rejects any criticism of the close correlation between solar variation and temperature change, saying that Friis-Christensen stands by his work. He accepts that the time axis of one graph was incorrectly labelled when the programme was first transmitted, but says that this does not change his conclusions. Regarding the Carl Wunsch controversy (see above) he repeats that Wunsch was not duped into taking part in the programme.

Durkin goes on to reject his opponents' position that the cooling period observed post Second World War was caused by sulphate aerosol cooling: "Thanks to China and the rest, SO₂ levels are far, far higher now than they were back then. Why isn't it perishing cold?" He concludes by saying that the "global warming alarm" is "wrong, wrong, wrong".

Durkin commenting at a Cannes film festival press conference on April 17, 2007, noted "My name is absolute mud on the Internet; it's really vicious," adding "There is no good scientific basis for it but the theory continues to hold sway because so many people have built their careers and reputations on it"

Contributors to the programme

The film includes appearances from the following individuals:

• Syun-Ichi Akasofu - Professor and Director, International Arctic Research Center
• Tim Ball - Head of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (misattributed as Professor from the Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg. Ball left his faculty position in the Department of Geography in 1996; the University of Winnipeg has never had a Department of Climatology.)
• Nigel Calder - Former Editor, New Scientist
• John Christy - Professor, Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville and Lead Author, IPCC
• Ian Clark - Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
• Piers Corbyn - Weather Forecaster, Weather Action
• Paul Driessen - Author: Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death
• Eigil Friis-Christensen - Director, Danish National Space Center and Adjunct Professor, University of Copenhagen
• Nigel Lawson - Former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Richard Lindzen - Professor, Department of Meteorology, M.I.T.
• Patrick Michaels - Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
• Patrick Moore - Co-founder, Greenpeace
• Paul Reiter - Professor, Department of Medical Entomology, Pasteur Institute, Paris
• Nir Shaviv - Professor, Institute of Physics, University of Jerusalem
• James Shikwati - Economist, Author, and CEO of The African Executive
• Frederick Singer - Professor Emeritus, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (misattributed in the film as Former Director, U.S. National Weather Service. From 1962-64 he was Director of the National Weather Satellite Service.)
• Roy Spencer - Weather Satellite Team Leader, NASA
• Philip Stott - Professor Emeritus, Department of Biogeography, University of London
• Carl Wunsch - Professor, Department of Oceanography, M.I.T. (who has since repudiated the programme)

Related programmes and films

Against Nature: An earlier controversial Channel 4 programme made by Martin Durkin which was also critical of the environmental movement and was charged by the Independent Television Commission of the UK for misrepresenting and distorting the views of interviewees by selective editing.

An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore's film in which he argues that humans are causing global warming.

The Greenhouse Conspiracy: An earlier Channel 4 documentary broadcast on 12 August 1990, as part of the Equinox series, in which similar claims were made. Three of the people interviewed (Lindzen, Michaels and Spencer) were also interviewed in the The Great Global Warming Swindle.

See also

• Global warming controversy
• Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
• Attribution of recent climate change
• The role of cosmic rays in cloud formation
• The role of water vapor
• The solar variation theory and global warming

External links

• Presentation at Channel 4
• Article showing graphs resembling those shown in the programme
• Scientists threatened for 'climate denial'
• Dangers of crying "wolf" on climate change

Notes

α. For more on troposphere temperature measurements, see the 2006 U.S. Climate Change Science Program report "Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere:Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences". The Executive Summary says, "Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected."

b. For more on the radiative effects of clouds, see any edition of John Houghton's book, The Physics of Atmospheres. In the chapter on clouds, the textbook says, "In section 6.3... it was mentioned that clouds interfere with the transfer of radiation in the atmosphere in two ways. Firstly, they reflect a certain proportion of solar radiation back to space, so reducing the total energy available to the system. Secondly, they act as blankets to thermal radiation from the earth's surface in a similar way to greenhouse gases. By absorbing thermal radiation emitted by the earth's surface below, and by themselves emitting thermal radiation, they act to reduce the heat loss to space from the surface."

c. For more on human contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, see Global Biogeochemical Cycles. At the end of chapter 11 on the global carbon cycle, Holmen summarizes the global carbon cycle in Fig. 11-24 as described in the text. Vulcanism is stated to contribute 0.1 PgC/year to the atmosphere, while fossil fuel burning and deforestation contribute 6-7 PgC/year. Though plants and animals respire 60 PgC/year, and litterfall releases an additional 60 PgC/year, the biosphere also assimilates 120 PgC/year. The ocean releases 80 PgC/year to the atmosphere, but it also uptakes 80 PgC/year. A similar figure can be found online at NASA's Earth Observatory website, where carbon fluxes are expressed in Gt. Note that 1 Pg is approximately equal to 1 Gt. The most up-to-date infromation from NASA indicates that the air-sea carbon flux exchange is currently more on the order of 90 GtC/year (90 GtC/year released by the ocean to the atmosphere, and 92 GtC/year absorbed by the ocean from the atmosphere).

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39. Houghton, J., The Physics of Atmospheres, p. 88. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
40. Holmen, K., "The Global Carbon Cycle," in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Eds. Butcher and Wolfe, Fig. 11-24 on p. 259. Academic Press Limited, 1992.

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