U.K. network rebuked over global warming film - International Herald Tribune



U.K. network rebuked over global warming film
By Andrew C. Revkin
Published: July 21, 2008

The British television watchdog agency has rebuked the country's Channel 4 for "unfair treatment" of several scientists and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in "The Great Global Warming Swindle," a controversial documentary that aired last year and had been seen around the world on the Internet and DVD.

But the agency, the Office of Communication, concluded in a report issued Monday that the program, while containing "intemperate" characterizations of the dominant scientific view that humans are the main force warming the planet, "did not materially mislead the audience so as to cause harm or offense."

The 72-minute documentary, written and directed by an independent filmmaker, Martin Durkin, focuses on a small group of scientists who hold widely varying views on the causes and consequences of recent global warming, but who all reject the idea that human-caused warming poses big dangers.

Since its release, the program has been widely circulated by opponents of restrictions on greenhouse gases and sharply attacked by scientific groups.

Criticism has been particularly sharp over the film's assertions that the depiction of consensus on human-caused warming is a willful deception. One particularly jarring line of narration is: "Everywhere you are told that man-made climate change is proved beyond doubt. But you are being told lies."


While criticizing such statements, the regulatory body said the documentary was adequately framed as a polemic. Given the large quantity of television focused on the dominant scientific conclusions about global warming, the agency said the program had a place on television. The station will be required to broadcast the results of the inquiry, which was triggered by several hundred complaints from scientists and viewers.

This conclusion was welcomed by the television channel but sharply criticized by several scientists, including Carl Wunsch, an ocean and climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wunsch appeared in the documentary and later said his comments were taken out of context and made him appear to question the seriousness of human-driven warming.

While the report upheld Wunsch's complaint that he was treated unfairly, he said the program clearly misled the public in harmful ways. "'Swindle' raises the noise level and politicizes an extremely complicated science problem without enlightening anyone," he said in an e-mail message. "A film claiming to be a science documentary that is really a nonscientific political tract is poisonous."

Executives at Channel 4 embraced the findings and defended their right to show the film.

Hamish Mykura, head of documentaries for the station, said, using the acronym for the watchdog, "Ofcom's ruling explicitly recognizes Channel 4's right to show the program and the paramount importance of broadcasters being able to challenge orthodoxies and explore controversial subject matter."
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I only saw the Gore film about a year ago. Aware of the controversy ( I shared an office in Brussels with Graham Booth, who is a real sceptic on this subject), I looked at this carefully. I put the dvd on hold I think 14 times, to check some of Gore's statements. (I have a diploma in Environmental Policy, so I have quite a library on the subject). In every case that I checked, Gore was correct.

I remember Graham Booth's article in the SW press when he questioned how scientists can know the average temperature of the Earth when most measuring stations are on land but most of the Earth is water.

Actually, temperature is measured by satellite, using Infra-Red Line Scan (IRLS) technology. It is incredibly accurate, and is not even new technology (I worked with IRLS in the RAF in the late 70s and early 80s).

When I questioned Booth about this, he simply repeated over and over "I've seen the evidence". I asked him to show me the evidence he had seen, I really do want to see it, but I just got the mantra over and over...

Booth then lost his rag and asked me if I knew anything about astronomy. I don't, although I am sure it is a fascinating subject, and I do hope to educate myself in this area when I have time - possibly in my retirement, if I ever have that luxury! Booth has a CSE in the subject, and he feels this makes him an expert in climate change. With all due respect, the two subjects are barely, if at all, related.

This is not intended to be an attack on Graham Booth, who is an absolute gentleman, and who is completely dedicated to the cause of British independence. Nobody has put more of his personal resources into UKIP (and remember I shared an office with him and so I can vouch for this) than Graham Booth. I think that if the rank and file of UKIP knew exactly how much he has done for the party then there would be calls for his canonisation. He hides his light under a very big bush.... But I do disagree with him on this subject.

On the subject of climate change he is so wrong.

I stand up for UKIP relentlessly, but on this subject I am embarrassed by my peers, who point at the party and laugh.

10 years ago I argued that Britain desperately needed a new political party: I still believe that. I thought UKIP was the answer to my prayers, and I was one of those argueing for a broader raft of policies. Now I feel that (Farage's) UKIP has let me down.

I am uncomfortable about the links between certain MEPs and UKIP staff, and organisations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and its EU manifestation the European Enterprise Institute (set up to avoid the US requirement to declare exactly who sponsors such lobbying groups). And by the way, if any of those involved try to come at me over this posting, your names will be on this forum tout suite.

These organisations peddle untruths and psuedo-science on behalf of the oil industry. This is exactly what UKIP stands against, but (F)UKIP throws its lot in with these dodgy groups. To what end, we might well ask.

This is not the UKIP we all pounded the streets for. This is not the UKIP we passionately argued for, sold to our friends and family, and it is certainly not the UKIP we relied upon to save our Independence.

When I arrived in Brussels in September 2004 I noticed straight away that I was almost alone amongst the new recruits... Everybody else, brought in by Farage, came directly from the Conservative Party. We are paying for that now.
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Excellent informed, informative and articulate posts gc.
That's no say that I agree on every point, but I think this forum would be much the better if we all aspired to such standards.
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Sorry but what standards are those? I hear Graham Booth is being criticised for making a claim without evidence by someone who is making the counter claim without evidence. To go on about who has degrees in what is rather like the problem we currently have with climate scientists and their list of endorsements. A proper scientist goes by evidence and not who is saying it and it is exactly this point where it turns from science into politics.

The main issue is the claim global warming is caused by manmade CO2 emissions, not the temperature of the surface at any given time. I have seen the data and I'm still to be remotely convinced there is any real evidence. I also don't trust that IPCC computer model, in fact in all probability that was a deliberate scam. You see if there was sufficient evidence they would not need to scam it and I'm talking about incorrect mathematics used in the statistical processing of the data so that it skews results, indeed doing the opposite to what is correct from a statistical point of view. Remember also the greenhouse effect due to manmade CO2 is only 0.12% of the total greenhouse effect. Now how does that lead to catastrophe and a thermal runaway condition, bearing in mind CO2 has varied widely over the planet's history? How can these scientists be so sure?
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Originally Posted by Baron von Lotsov:
I have seen the data

Fantastic. Show it to me. Indeed, share it with us all.

Do not send links to blogs. Do not send us links to websites sponsored by Exxon etc. I studied this subject for years, and at last BlV you are going to show me the evidence you "have seen". Booth never did that, all eyes are on you.....
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You are asking me to prove a negative but I'm not the one making the claim. It is customary in science to prove a claim and not to make a claim and say 'I bet you can't prove that wrong' and so by default it must be true.

The evidence has already been covered in detail in this section anyway and the amount of material is massive. $50 billion has been wasted on hyping it and we are expected to prove all of that wrong. No, it's a waste of time. The graphs of temperature do not show a trend, the warming and cooling of this earth is chaotic, just like the weather. Its variations in the solar radiation that causes this variation because the sun is a highly unstable nuclear reaction. It cannot be predicted to any accuracy, although it has cycles, and this is because the temperature is about 20 million degrees and the reaction is under the surface and 93 million miles away.

So I can't prove what is going on and I can't predict it. All I have seen is circumstantial evidence, some is for the argument and some is against. The computer model is a fraud and can be discounted. What do we have left? OK one physicist did a one dimensional model which proves thermal run away can not happen due to the boundary conditions of some differential equation he came up with. Have you seen that? It does model the historical data to a high degree of accuracy with regard to what it deals with, namely invariant physical conditions.
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Originally Posted by :
Sir David's rhetoric on climate change contrasts sharply, however, with the policies which he pursued while in office. In particular, he actively supported a UK government policy to restrict public access to information about the climate and climate change, including restrictions on the distribution of observed climate data, climate analysis data, climate reanalysis data, computer models of the climate and results from computer model simulations of the climate. These restrictions continue to this day (as of July 2008). The US, on the other hand, adopts a policy under which information on climate is freely available to the public. The UK's policies on climate change continue to severely restrict the ability of UK industry to understand the effects of climate and adapt to them, and UK industry typically has to rely on whatever information, data and models can be obtained from the US. Sir David has never explained the contradiction between his rhetoric and the policies he pursued in practice.

David King (scientist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Is he trying to hide something?
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BVL,
Your link to wiki didn’t seem to work for me but I persevered & found your source from:-
David King (scientist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Immediately before your extract is displayed this text:-

Originally Posted by :
In his role of scientific advisor to the UK government he was outspoken on the subject of climate change, saying:
I see climate change as the greatest challenges facing Britain and the World in the 21st century [2]
and
climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today - more serious even than the threat of terrorism [3][4]
He strongly supports the work of the IPCC, saying in 2004 that the 2001 synthesis report is the best current statement on the state of play of the science of climate change, and that really does represent 1,000 scientists [5]

He has criticised the United States government for what he sees as its failures in climate change policy, saying it is: failing to take up the challenge of global warming [6].

It is noticeable, to me at least, that the extract I have quoted refers several times to specific instances where David King has made the specific statements whereas your extract is devoid of specific statements.

That is not to say that DK may have sent out confusing messages – but he was in a politically subservient role for along time. However, to imply some sort of New World Order conspiracy over this is, as I and others have said repeatedly, a poor reflection on your own analytical abilities. It just doesn’t make sense.

I repeat again:-

The overwhelming independent, peer-reviewed science on all subjects allied to Climate Change show with a very high probability that the ‘Earth’ is warming unusually quickly over the last 20-30 years. Furthermore, it is accepted by the vast majority of scientists & politicans that Human activities, & NOT natural variation, is the underlying cause of this unusually fast warming. Within those ‘human’ activities, the release to the atmosphere of CO2 by the burning of fossil fuels is the major factor.

Despite the efforts of a handful of scientifically qualified people, (but not ‘climatologists’ or significantly related), to undermine small sections of the research provided by others, (again in the forlorn hope that if found to be true, it will undermine everything), day by day, week on week etc. more independent research is published which supports ‘AGW’.
I really feel your talents would be better directed at persuading our politicians to re-invest heavily in science education in schools and hypothecate any taxes raised in a ‘green’ sense to support UK university alternative enrgy research.

(gc – I will reply to your excellent post later. I also think you should put this in the UKIP sub-forum)

Added in edit:- my wiki link also doesn't work. You will have to search for David King in wiki and then choose the one with scientist after.
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Wikipedia is always useful, but it is unreliable and if that is the source of BLV's "data" then I think my point is proven.
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Originally Posted by gc:
...I knew anything about astronomy. I don't, although I am sure it is a fascinating subject, and I do hope to educate myself in this area when I have time - possibly in my retirement, if I ever have that luxury!..... climate change. With all due respect, the two subjects are barely, if at all, related.

Astronomy and climate change - barely if at all related
I despair of people who make such assertions
If you study Astronomy it is bound to lead you to look at how bodies effect each other e.g. The Sun on The Earth.
There are the effects of gravity and radiation, other bodies in the universe also have an effect on The Earth's climate.
For a person to post serious arguments about climate change and make the statement that astronomy and climate change "are barely if at all related" proves I believe that they do not know as much about the subject as they imply
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