Most DealBook Comments Ever?

John Doerr's tears elicited the kind of responses one would expect: disbelieving, cynical, accusatory, sympathetic and everything in between. There have probably never been as many comments on DealBook.

One reader pointed others towards The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary that was shown on the UK Channel 4 last week.

What is powerful about this provocative program is the way TGGWS unearths how the public feels about climate change. People start discussing this stuff over the internet, and it is obvious many people harbor serious doubts. If you watch even a few minutes of this film, you'll see why and how, because it is fairly well made (with groovy background music...) Unsurprisingly, many viewers responded positively; some even saying that just as they had been convinced of global warming, they were right back to square one after having watched TGGWS. Here's one reader quote from a British news site, in response to TGGWS:

"Good. The sooner all this global warming hyper nonsense is consigned to the dustbin, the better off we'll all be. I've been telling people, for many years, to ignore the scaremongers. There never was any convincing evidence that CO2 produced global warming - and there's still none. More and more evidence, however, points firmly to the Sun as the cause of episodes of warming and cooling."

— Posted by Peter Warlow, Brentwood, UK

fter seeing a film like this, you start to ask questions: who made this film? Why? Why is a UK government channel showing it? Who paid for it and who received the proceeds?

1) The director of the film Martin Durkin doesn't have the greatest reputation. The Guardian's George Monbiot wrote about his films back in 2000, after Mr Durkin filmed a number of questionable documentaries, including one that claimed silicone breast implants protect women from breast cancer.

2) Professor Carl Wunsch of MIT, interviewed in TGGWS, is considering making a formal complaint against Channel 4, because his views on climate change in the film were misrepresented. Professor Wunsch believes human activity causes climate change, but his interview was edited such that he appears sceptical. Said professor Wunsch, "If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled."

You could argue that the greater issue this raises is the inadequacy of science education that renders many of us frankly incapable of making sound critical judgments regarding the natural sciences.

Becoming hysterical helps nobody; Greenland won't melt next year. But even if fossil fuel combustion caused no environmental effects whatsoever (and it does, in addition to CO2 emissions), we would still have to find alternative fuel sources because oil resources are limited. Someone is still going to have to figure out what those sources are, and someone is still going to have to risk their money to fund the R&D.

90 percent of the world's transportation systems run on oil. Nobody contests the Hubbert peak oil theory, according to which the world will eventually run out of oil. People complain about gasoline prices, but they don't see the connection: increasing demand for a finite, declining resource leads to higher prices! Simple. Eventually the cost will be very high, and sometime later, we will need to rely on other fuels. John Doerr has more than a fair right to feel badly; who cares if he hopes to make a few dozen million dollars more? If one of his companies actually strikes gold and popularizes a new affordable, clean fuel to power all our cars, Doerr, in my view, is more than deserving of the cut he makes -- much more, one could argue, than the CEO of Shell that received a 6% pay raise (from €3.5 to €3.7 million) for overseeing the company's most profitable year ever, according to today's WSJ.