Even the layperson can spot certain trends associated with global warming. For example, I note that this Friday sees the publication of another report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. In line with current trends, I confidently predict that the climate change denial industry will then leap into action, once more sowing seeds of doubt upon the fertile ground of public opinion.

If the recent spasm that attended the last IPCC report in February is any guide, I’d say we have plenty to worry about when it comes to global warming. I say this, not because of the details of the IPCC reports, nor because of the arguments of the soi-disant sceptics. But when one considers the deep pockets of the corporations funding climate change denial, and then looks at what they’re getting for their money, the credibility of their position, already wafer-thin, melts like the last traces of polar ice.

Take the recent Channel 4 programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle. Medialens has already documented the numerous falsehoods made in the programme (and the director’s colourful responses to criticism) here and here. Pottymouthed director Martin Durkin is not only strongly linked to the right wing libertarian Living Marxism happy factory (as Medialens notes), but has a long history of making crap “science” programmes for C4, and earning a fat file of upheld complaints at the Independent Television Commission (now Ofcom) for his trouble.

Let’s say I organise a public meeting where people have an opportunity to debate a topic, ooh I don’t know, let’s say whether the earth is flat. And let’s say that the only people who will come along in support of the flat-earth position are either a) only going because I’m paying them to do so, b) not experts on the topic, or c) both. Anybody attending that meeting would regard the proposition that the earth is flat as being pretty weak before any of my paid speakers had uttered a word, by dint of their credentials and the basis on which they had turned up.

And so it is with the C4 programme, and indeed much of the denial industry. Of 13 “experts” featured in the programme, seven are funded by ExxonMobil, and a further four are, respectively, Piers Corbyn, a self-styled “maverick” meteorologist; Philip Stott, a retired professor of biogeography with no professional qualifications in the field of climate change; Nigel Calder, 76, whose sole claim to relevance appears to be his editorship of New Scientist during the 1960s; and Patrick Moore (no relation), a former Greenpeace grandee who nowadays plies his trade on behalf of the logging and nuclear power industries. Needless to say, Corbyn and Stott are lionised by the LMers at SpikedOnline.

If this is the best Big Oil and its billions can come up with, I’d start looking for somewhere to live on higher ground, but quick.