I feel it is exceedingly significant that the BBC chose to publish the following "whistleblowing" article, even if they did headline it as "Opinion". Does this mean that we can start to trust the BBC about Climate Change again ? Or is it just a coup in their continued fight against Channel 4 ? The Ofcom Complaint website can be found here (it has been written and reviewed by scientists, and is an authentic rebuttal of the film The Great Global Warming Swindle) :- http://www.ofcomswindlecomplaint.net =x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7517444.stm Monday, 21 July 2008 15:06 UK : Opinion: A reluctant whistle-blower : Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle documentary, broadcast in March 2007, broke Ofcom rules, the UK media regulator has ruled. The controversial programme, which presented the view that climate change was not primarily caused by burning fossil fuels, attracted a range of criticisms from viewers, including a number of leading climate scientists. Dave Rado, who co-ordinated a formal complaint to Ofcom, explains why he felt compelled to challenge the programme's contents. "When I sat down to watch the screening of Martin Durkin's The Great Global Warming Swindle on Channel 4 in March last year, I had no idea how much of an impact it would have on my life. Fifteen months later, after a 176-page complaint involving more than 20 scientists and other distinguished academics, the film's contents have now been scrutinised by the UK media regulator. I was initially wary of doing anything public regarding my involvement with the Ofcom complaint - I'm merely a concerned citizen, and what's important is the quality of the other contributors, who include many of the world's most respected climate scientists. But when I was told that it was possible that the film-maker might try to portray himself as the "David", being ganged up against by the "Goliath" of the scientific establishment, I reconsidered. I'm simply a person, unconnected with any environmental or scientific group, who believes that a public service broadcaster should not be allowed to deceive the public about science - particularly on issues that have profound implications for our future. Natural Sceptic My interest in climate science and my subsequent involvement in this project were sparked several years ago. A friend told me there was a global conspiracy involving nearly all of the world's governments, most of the world's scientists and the media to convince the public that there is a major human influence on climate when they were well aware there was no evidence for this. I am a natural sceptic, and find it hard to take conspiracy theories seriously; but out of respect for my friend I decided to research the issue in depth. After reading hundreds of scientific papers and summaries I was struck by the quite extraordinary amount of evidence - and more importantly, the many completely independent lines of evidence that all point in the same direction - that human greenhouse gas emissions are indeed profoundly changing the climate, and that the problem is going to become extremely serious in the long run unless emissions are cut drastically. Moreover, all of the papers I read disputing this premise used the cherry picking of evidence as a tactic. Many of them recycled long discredited myths, while others used statistically flawed techniques, in an apparent attempt to massage data in order to support their desired conclusions. This also led me to find a number of high profile websites devoted entirely to peddling misinformation about climate - many of them run by, and most of them funded by, lobby groups that campaign against action on climate change. Many of these lobby groups are partly funded by sections of the fossil fuel industry. So my friend was right that there are many people actively engaged in a well-funded attempt to subvert mainstream science and to mislead the public; although he seems to have been mistaken about which side is doing most of the subverting. So by the time I watched Swindle, after all the reading I'd done, I was flabbergasted by both its brazenness and its unprecedented number of deceptions. I hope that in some small way the complaint...provides inspiration to others who would challenge questionable assertions made by certain sections of the media We have a right to expect broadcasters not to set out to mislead us; yet to me, this was exactly what Channel 4 and Wag TV appeared to be doing. Where Channel 4 claimed the film was an attempt to give a minority a voice, I saw it as a systematic attempt to deceive the public, an out and out propaganda piece masquerading as a science documentary. The morning after the broadcast, I posted on the blog of the British Antarctic Survey's scientist William Connolley, saying that I wanted to complain to Ofcom and asking whether any scientists could help me write a comprehensive complaint. Nathan Rive and Brian Jackson responded to my post and became my two co-lead authors. William Connolley also agreed to peer review it. I wrote the same morning to Carl Wunsch, who confirmed to me what I suspected - that he had been duped. There followed a frantic three months, in which most of my spare time was devoted to co-ordinating, editing, recruiting authors and peer reviewers, and managing the peer review process. Humbling experience I was astounded by how many of the world's most distinguished scientists and other academics in relevant fields were willing to devote time to the project. READ THE FINDINGS For example, Bert Bolin, widely regarded as the world's most distinguished climate scientist until his sad death from cancer last December, agreed to peer review some sections. Many other academics of similar standing also made huge and very time-consuming contributions, in some cases giving up several weekends in order to do so. I found this very humbling. The complaint was submitted in early June last year. Much of it related to individuals and organisations having had their views unfairly misrepresented without being given an opportunity to respond in the film. In October, after receiving the sections of our complaint relating to former UK chief scientific adviser Sir David King and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , Channel 4 responded with a very long document that we felt was packed with misinformation. Our response was written and reviewed by as distinguished a group of scientists as the original complaint had been, including one former and one current IPCC Co-Chair. Largely because of Channel 4's tactics - which included trying to have our complaint thrown out - the entire process dragged on for more than a year, a huge waste of public money. The experience has left me feeling that the odds are greatly stacked in the broadcasters' favour. How often would ordinary members of the public have the time, inclination or support from scientists to jump over so many hurdles? And unlike the anti-Al Gore court case, there has been no rich benefactor behind this complaint - just the time and goodwill of a large number of academics who object to their fields of study being misrepresented. In February, I began building a website called Ofcom Swindle Complaint containing our complaint, which I hope will become an educational resource for the public. Given that many of the inaccuracies and misleading arguments in the Swindle are widely used elsewhere, I thought that the detailed response in our complaint, with thousands of links to supporting evidence, should be available to the public in an easily accessible format. I'll continue to improve the website as time goes on. Mixed feelings Now that Ofcom has published its ruling, I'm looking forward to getting back to my life again. While I am very pleased that the regulators upheld our complaint that a number of scientists who contributed to the programme were unfairly treated, I am surprised and disappointed by its accuracy verdict. Ofcom says that it was only able to consider the documentary's accuracy in terms of whether it was misleading enough to cause harm. The issue of whether or not a programme is factually accurate only applies to news media, they explained. Because The Great Global Warming Swindle fell outside of this category, they were not in a position to make a ruling on the accuracy of some of the assertions that the programme presented as fact. If this is the case, then I would argue that Ofcom's remit needs to be revised in order to protect the public when it comes to programmes' accuracy on matters of science. It's been 15 months of major highs and lows. The best parts were working with wonderful people, such as Professors Jim McCarthy and Bert Bolin, who gave their time and expertise. The worst were the deaths of three people who made major contributions before the ruling was published. Bert Bolin was a very special person as well as a great scientist. Also, my co-lead author Brian Jackson died last August. His involvement was immensely valuable to the complaint and he had his whole life before him. And Chris Curtis, one of the world's leading malaria mosquito experts, died in May this year after a brief and unexpected illness. He was an exceptionally compassionate person. I'm very saddened by their deaths and grateful to have known such wonderful, selfless people. I hope that in some small way the complaint honours their memories and provides inspiration to others who would challenge questionable assertions made by certain sections of the media that could result in political or commercial gain." =x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x= |
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Campaign against Climate ChangeUK activists portal |
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More on this story...
...More on this story... :-
http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/2197
Reuters : How big can this story get ? Will it reach Australia ?
Reuters : How big can this story get ? And will it reach Australia ?
How big can this Ofcom Swindle ruling get ?
And will it reach Australia where they've recently screened the Swindle on TV (12th July methinks) and got lots of vituperative, unreconstructed "debate" going on ?
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http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL2111984320080721?sp=...
UK watchdog says climate change film broke rules
Mon Jul 21, 2008
By Peter Griffiths
LONDON (Reuters) - A Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made climate change is a fraud broke strict broadcasting rules on impartiality, Britain's media regulator said on Monday.
Ofcom said "The Great Global Warming Swindle" was unfair to several senior scientists and should have given a wider range of views on such a controversial issue.
However, the watchdog cleared the program's makers of the serious charge of "materially misleading" viewers and said the first four of the program's five parts did not breach impartiality rules.
The show, written and directed by film-maker Martin Durkin, was first shown in March 2007 and has been described as a response to Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth".
Durkin's film drew 265 complaints and provoked an intense debate on its central claim -- that the human impact on global warming and climate change has been wildly overstated.
In the documentary the narration said: "Everywhere you are told that man-made climate change is proved beyond doubt. But you are being told lies.
"This is a story of how a theory about climate turned into a political ideology...it is the story of the distortion of a whole area of science."
The program argued that there was "nothing unusual" about current temperatures.
Its approach was starkly at odds with the views of most mainstream scientists. Last month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said global warming was becoming the era's defining issue and would hurt rich and poor.
Many scientists predict rising seas, melting glaciers and more intense storms, droughts and floods as the planet warms.
Complainants said the program was one-sided, misrepresented the facts, contained inaccuracies and distorted the science of climate modeling.
They also said it misled viewers by exaggerating the credentials of some contributors and leaving out key information.
Others complained that the show had unfairly promoted the idea that environmentalists seeking to reverse economic growth had pushed the theory of man-made global warming.
After the watchdog's ruling, Dave King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, said the link between human activity and climate change was "established beyond all reasonable doubt".
"Today, none but the most ill-informed can maintain that human induced climate change is not happening," he said in a statement. Channel 4 had no immediate comment.
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A few thoughts
"And will it reach Australia where they've recently screened the Swindle on TV (12th July methinks) and got lots of vituperative, unreconstructed "debate" going on ? "
That's the point, debate is good (even if it's vituperative) if it gets even a handful of people of their back sides and looking at the data themselves.
"Complainants said the program was one-sided, misrepresented the facts, contained inaccuracies and distorted the science of climate modeling."
The program said it would be one-sided, and they're hardly the only ones "misrepresented the facts".
"After the watchdog's ruling, Dave King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, said the link between human activity and climate change was "established beyond all reasonable doubt".
"Today, none but the most ill-informed can maintain that human induced climate change is not happening," he said in a statement. "
I think that if it could be proven to such a level of confidence the debate would not exist in the first place.
This story's got long legs...
...it's going to run and run :-
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/21/climatechange.carbonem...
Why does Channel 4 seem to be waging a war against the greens?
As Channel 4 is once again fiercely criticised by the TV watchdog for
distorting the views of climate scientists, George Monbiot lays bare
the channel's shameful history of misleading its viewers on global
warming
George Monbiot
The Guardian,
Tuesday July 22, 2008
So here we go again. For the second time, Channel 4 has been fiercely
criticised by the broadcasting regulator for a programme attacking
environmental science. For the second time, the director was Martin
Durkin.
Ten years ago, his series Against Nature was found to have misled his
interviewees about "the content and purpose of the programmes" and
distorted their views "through selective editing". Now Ofcom has ruled
that the programme he made last year — The Great Global Warming
Swindle — treated two scientists and an organisation (the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) unfairly. For the second
time, Channel 4 will have to make an embarrassing primetime statement.
But while the new ruling exposes some of the channel's practices, it
also exposes the limitations of the regulator. The programme was
peppered with distortions and misleading claims. But despite being
presented with a vast dossier of evidence by climate scientists, Ofcom
decided that it could not rule on the matter of accuracy. While news
programmes are expected to be accurate, other factual programmes are
not, and Ofcom "only regulates misleading material where that material
is likely to cause harm or offence."
It decided that The Great Global Warming Swindle had not caused actual
harm to members of the public: merely misleading them does not count.
In fact, it is precisely because "the discussion about the causes of
global warming was to a very great extent settled by the date of
broadcast", meaning that climate change was no longer a matter of
political controversy, that a programme claiming it is all a pack of
lies could slip past the partiality rules. The greater a programme's
defiance of scientific fact, the less likely Ofcom is to rule against
it. This paradoxical judgment allows Channel 4 to keep getting away
with it.
The Great Global Warming Swindle is part of a long-standing pattern.
Channel 4 upsets all sorts of people, and it has every right to do so.
On all other issues it appears to do so in a random fashion, sometimes
attacking people on one side of the debate, sometimes on the other.
But one polemical position has kept recurring over the past 18 years:
a fierce antagonism towards environmentalism. Some of these programmes
have used misrepresentation, distortion or fabrication to sustain
claims that environmental concerns are the fantasies of self-serving
scientists. It is arguable that no organisation in the United Kingdom
has done more to damage the effort to protect the environment.
...
It is against my interests to publish this article. I would like to
continue making programmes for Channel 4. I recognise that what I have
written may jeopardise this work. But these matters are far more
consequential than my own employment. By broadcasting programmes that
appear to manipulate and even fabricate evidence, it has impeded
efforts to forestall the 21st century's greatest threat. For how much
longer will this be allowed to continue? And for how much longer will
Ofcom forbid itself to state that a programme is misleading?
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George Monbiot : Found enough ire for two articles in one week..
Here's the other one :-
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/climatechange.scienc...
Global warming is a brutal truth
Channel 4's dismissal of Ofcom's damning verdict about its flawed programme is the usual professional self-deception
George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk,
Monday July 21, 2008
There is just one party which doesn't seem to care about the controversy created by The Great Global Warming Swindle. That is the company which broadcast it: Channel 4. In fact it seems rather proud of the fuss, and I suspect that Ofcom's damning verdict won't cause its executives a moment's lost sleep. The channel boasts that the programme generated a huge response, and that favourable comments outweighed hostile remarks by six to one.
Though the programme was 90 minutes of nonsense, I find this quite easy to believe. Faced with the overwhelming realities of climate change, people clutch at any reassurance. We want someone to tell us that everything will be alright, that we can carry on enjoying this marvellous feast of fossil fuels without adverse effects.
On almost every other weighty issue, the professional classes appear to be better informed than the rest of the population. On global warming the reverse seems to be true. The only people I have met over the past few years who haven't the faintest idea what man-made climate change is or how it is caused are university graduates. Not long ago, for example, I had to explain to the press officer at the government's department for transport what carbon dioxide is. A few weeks ago the writer Mark Lynas found a counter-intuitive revelation buried in the small print of an ICM survey. The number of people in social classes D and E who thought the government should prioritise the environment over the economy was higher (56%) than the proportion in classes A and B (47%). It is counter-intuitive only because a vast and well-funded denial industry has spent years persuading us that environmentalism is a middle-class caprice. Classes A and B are Channel 4's core audience.
...
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Or .....
The social classes D & E are more likely to believe whatever the media tells them compared to classes A & B, and less likely/able (i mean resource poor here) to go into depth in a topic on their own.
You actually admire this man?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/oct/29/features.environment
Michael McCarthy: Ofcom failed to address key question
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/michael-mccarthy-ofcom...
Michael McCarthy: Ofcom's judgement failed to address the key question... was this programme accurate?
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Forget the headlines for a moment. The essence of a matter often lies in the small print, and the most fascinating aspect of the Ofcom judgement on The Great Global Warming Swindle is that the broadcasting regulator declares itself – quite remarkably, one might think – unable to pronounce on whether the contents of the programme were accurate or not.
You have to plough through screeds of type to page 14 to find it, but there it is, in the third paragraph. Ofcom only takes a view on the accuracy of news programmes – Ofcom's italics. It is not required to set accuracy standards for "other types of programming", which, it says, covers Martin Durkin's documentary.
So what the regulator proceeds to do is make a weird judgement, based on its remit for protecting the public from "offensive and harmful material" – what, freak shows? dog-fighting films? – and find that the Durkin programme did not "materially mislead the audience so as to cause harm or offence".
Sounds at first like a victory for the boys at Channel 4, eh? But never mind the harm and offence, did TGGWS mislead the audience or didn't it? That's the point, and it's the point that Ofcom shies away from answering.
For although the issues of fairness and impartiality are of course very important, the essence of the complaints about the programme from many of Britain's senior scientists was about accuracy. They alleged, in enormous detail, and with reams of backup evidence, that what was stated was, in many cases, simply not true. Ofcom has refused them judgement.
The appeal of Durkin's programme to some people, especially on the right, is understandable. One of its core contentions, that global warming has gone from being a scientific theory to a political ideology, is largely true – let's not kid ourselves – and the allegation that dissent is often not tolerated is true also. But it is a world away from that, to proclaiming that the current scientific theory is falsified; and if you are calling people liars, you need to have accurate information on your own side.
Ofcom has at least performed the service of underlining how the programme misrepresented the views of the chief scientist, treated other scientists unfairly and was in breach of the Broadcasting Code with regard to impartiality. But truth matters most of all, and in failing to pronounce on the vital matter of accuracy, Ofcom has given a classic example of a national standard-setting body failing lamentably to live up to what was expected of it.
[Ends]
Another analysis of the ruling
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5490/
Some fasinating info
Found this in the comments section of one of georges articles
"According to the CSSP Report (Karl et al 2007), there are currently nine authorities currently involved in providing a dataset of monthly global temperature anomalies. They are:
NOAAs National Climate Data Center (NCDC, GHCN-COADS)
NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT2v)
NOAA radiosonde network , (RATPAC)
Hadley Centre Radiosonde Network (HadAT2)
University of Alabama Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (UAH )
Remote Sensing Systems Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (RSS)
National Center for Environmental Protection Reanalysis (NCEP50)
European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis (ERA40)
Eight of these authorities agree that the globe is currently cooling. Only GISS (NASA) disagrees."
Will check this out when i get more time.
New Scientist opinion
Why 'climate swindle' film is dangerous, despite ruling
16:13 22 July 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Michael Le Page, London
Don't believe anything you see in a TV documentary made in the UK.
Documentary makers here have no obligation to be accurate, though factual programmes should present a wide range of views.
That is the implication of a series of rulings by Ofcom, the regulatory body for responsible for upholding broadcast standards in the UK, on complaints made about a British TV documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle.
Channel 4, the television company that commissioned and broadcast the documentary, first shown on 8 March last year, subsequently sold the show to 21 countries and released it on DVD. Numerous clips have been viewed on video-sharing site YouTube.
According to the Ofcom ruling, while all programmes dealing with important issues should be impartial, only news programmes have to be presented with "due accuracy". It doesn't matter if other programmes are misleading as long as they don't cause "harm or offence", and the regulator's interpretation of harm is so narrow that it effectively gives broadcasters a green light to mislead the public.
The "documentary" in question attacked the idea that global warming is caused by human activity.
To achieve this, writer and director Martin Durkin didn't look at the many genuine questions and uncertainties relating to climate change. Instead, he assembled a one-sided package of misrepresentations and fabrications based mainly on inaccurate newspaper reports, opinion pieces and old propaganda disseminated by the oil lobby and its stooges.
Blatant errors
For instance, parts of some of the graphs were actually made up, as the programme makers effectively admitted when they corrected the most blatant errors for later broadcasts.
For me and my colleagues, this shameful piece of television was the final straw that persuaded us to do a special setting out the science behind the many climate myths and misconceptions.
We were not the only ones outraged. Durkin's documentary also prompted many complaints to Ofcom. Dave Rado, a concerned layman, worked with scientists to produce one detailed complaint claiming 137 breaches of the UK's broadcasting regulations. Those involved stress that they are not trying to stifle free speech, but rather to prevent the media from practicing "systematic deception".
Now, more than a year after the broadcast, Ofcom has finally gotten around to ruling on these complaints (pdf). It has upheld some of the claimed breaches.
Upheld complaints
The programme misrepresented the views of David King, then the chief scientific advisor to the UK government, and gave him no opportunity to respond, Ofcom has decided. The programme criticised King for comments he did not make.
Ofcom also partly upheld similar complaints by oceanographer Carl Wunsch and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Channel 4 will have to broadcast summaries of Ofcom's ruling in each of the three cases.
So much for fairness. What about the general issue of factual accuracy? According to Ofcom's broadcasting code: "Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the public".
The code goes on to say that "due impartiality must be preserved on ... major matters relating to current public policy" and "in dealing with matters, an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight".
Ofcom has ruled that the final part of the programme was in breach of the code relating to impartiality and presenting a wide range of views.
The decision is fairly meaningless, however, as it has not imposed any sanction. Channel 4 will not have to broadcast anything relating to this ruling.
Factual failings
What seems extraordinary, though, is that Ofcom has decided Durkin's programme was not in breach of the code when it comes to factual accuracy. So apparently:
• It's OK to fabricate graphics.
• It's OK to state that volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans when in fact humans emit far more.
• It's OK to present scientists as experts in fields they in fact know little about.
• It's OK to present disputed claims as if they were well-established and accepted scientific facts.
• It's OK to claim: "There is no evidence at all from Earth's long climate history that carbon dioxide has ever determined global temperatures", when there is overwhelming evidence going back many decades that CO2 does play a role.
• It's OK to deliberately confuse long-term changes in sea ice cover with the seasonal coming and going of ice.
• It's OK to state that Margaret Thatcher made a speech to scientists at the Royal Society saying: "There's money on the table for you to prove this stuff" (meaning global warming) when she did not say any such thing. The extraordinary idea being that climate change was an issue cooked up by climate scientists in order to get funding.
• It's OK to state that, "The common belief that carbon dioxide is driving climate change is at odds with much of the available scientific data: data from weather balloons and satellites, from ice core surveys, and from the historical temperature records" when this is clearly untrue.
• It's OK to claim that an individual called Piers Corbyn produces more accurate weather forecasts than the UK's Met Office when there is no evidence of this at all.
The list could go on and on, but you get the picture. I can't think of any supposedly factual programme on British TV that was less accurate than Durkin's polemic. For Ofcom to rule that it was not factually misleading is extraordinary and sets a disastrous precedent for programmes relating to controversial scientific issues.
'Harm and offence'
The reasoning behind this decision, according to the judgement, is that for non-news programmes the rule on factual accuracy applies only to "content which materially misleads the audience so as to cause harm and offence". It goes on to say that only "actual harm" rather than "potential harm" matters.
In other words, discouraging action to avoid future catastrophes does not count as harm.
On this basis, Ofcom decided that all the falsehoods in the programme relating to the causes of climate change could simply be ignored. The programme will not cause harm by affecting people's behaviour, the judgement claims, because most viewers know the views expressed are not the scientific consensus.
Well, yes, most viewers might know what the consensus is, but an awful lot of them do not accept it. What's more, most viewers would not have been aware how many of the statements in the programme were false.
Poor record
By Ofcom's logic, a programme that presented the long-discredited myths about AIDS not being caused by HIV as being true would not count as causing harm either. Indeed, astonishingly, the ruling makes exactly this comparison.
As for the factual inaccuracies not causing offence, well, I get hopping mad when I see a pack of lies presented as the truth. Does that kind of offence not count? Clearly not.
The other thing I find extraordinary about this case is that Channel 4 is a publicly owned company. Despite its public remit, it has a record of broadcasting similar nonsense.
What's more, with its advertising revenues falling, it is currently campaigning to get its hands on part of the BBC's licence fees. What a horrifying prospect.
In my opinion, if Channel 4 carries on producing programmes like The Great Global Warming Swindle, the sooner it goes bust the better off Britain and the world will be.
[Ends]
Watchdog's verdict on Channel 4 climate film angers scientists
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/22/channel4.ofcom
Watchdog's verdict on Channel 4 climate film angers scientists· Regulator accused of letting makers off hook
· Rules were broken 'but viewers were not misled'
Owen Gibson and David Adam The Guardian, Tuesday July 22, 2008
C4's The Great Global Warming Swindle claimed man-made global warming was a conspiracy. Ofcom said guidelines on impartiality were breached. Photograph: Robert Landau/Corbis
Channel 4 broke rules on impartiality and misrepresented the views of the government's former chief scientist in a controversial documentary that became the focal point of a furious debate over the causes of climate change, the media watchdog has ruled.
Following a 15-month investigation, Ofcom yesterday found that The Great Global Warming Swindle broke its guidelines on impartiality in the concluding part of the 90-minute polemic, which claimed man-made global warming was a conspiracy and a fraud. But despite "certain reservations" on the part of the regulator, Channel 4 was "on balance" cleared of "materially misleading the audience so as to cause harm or offence".
The programme sparked 265 complaints from members of the public, plus a detailed "group complaint" from scientists and concerned individuals that ran to 176 pages and accused Channel 4 of seriously misleading viewers.
As revealed in the Guardian on Saturday, Ofcom found that Sir David King, the government's former chief scientist, had been misrepresented and that the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Carl Wunsch, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had been treated unfairly.
But the media regulator also said that while it had concerns about "aspects of the presentation (and omission) of fact and views within the programme, it did not believe, given the nature of the programme, that this led to the audience being materially misled".
That decision was immediately criticised by scientists, who accused the regulator of letting the broadcaster off the hook "on a technicality".
But Channel 4 seized on the ruling as evidence it was right to broadcast the programme under its remit and remained unrepentant.
Some broadcasting industry insiders believe the complainants misunderstood Ofcom's role and said it was not for the regulator to decide whether or not the claims made within the programme were accurate.
Although news programmes are required to display "due accuracy", offering equal weight to all sides of the debate, there is no such requirement on documentary programmes.
As such, Ofcom could only consider whether or not the programme "materially misleads the audience so as to cause harm or offence".
It said the test of whether or not a programme had caused harm or offence was "necessarily high".
Under its impartiality rules, balance must be afforded to "matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy". Ofcom said that because the case for man-made climate change had been almost universally accepted by governments around the world, the majority of the programme did not fall into that category.
But the final part of the programme, which explored whether developing countries should be forced to reduce their emissions and accused western governments of holding back their growth, did and therefore breached the rules.
Dave Rado, the member of the public who collated the responses of a host of well-respected climate scientists into the "group complaint" that alleged 67 different breaches of the Ofcom code, said he was "disappointed that Channel 4 has been let off on the questionable technicality that the inaccuracies in the programme did not cause harm or offence".
Bob Ward, a former spokesman for the Royal Society, who submitted one of the complaints received by Ofcom, said: "The commissioning and broadcasting of this programme was clearly a calamitous mistake and revealed serious management failures at Channel 4. It is very disappointing that Ofcom has failed to fully uphold the public interest, and the ruling raises very serious doubts about the ability of the broadcasting regulator to recognise the harm caused by misrepresentations of the scientific evidence on climate change."
Ward and Rado are both expected to appeal to Ofcom, claiming that there is evidence the programme has done significant harm to the public's perception of the climate change debate.
Prof John Mitchell, director of climate science at the Met Office, said the programme had "put the message about man-made global warming back by 10 years in the public's mind".
King had been misquoted in the concluding frames of the programme, in which climate change sceptic Prof Fred Singer accused him of saying that by the end of the century "the only habitable place on earth will be the Antarctic. And humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic... it would be hilarious actually if it weren't so sad." But King said his views had been exaggerated. Channel 4 also admitted the reference to "breeding couples" came from a different statement by scientist Sir James Lovelock and that Singer had conflated the two.
"We are pleased that Ofcom has ruled the film did not materially mislead the audience," said Hamish Mykura, the Channel 4 head of documentaries.
"The film acknowledged the majority scientific and journalistic consensus in support of man-made global warming, but legitimately sought to present the viewpoint of the small minority of scientists who do not believe global warming is caused by anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide."
He was unrepentant about the parts of the film that breached the code and the treatment of King and other individuals.
"We appealed these rulings and are disappointed that Ofcom has rejected our arguments and decided to uphold or uphold in part these complaints. However, we note that they do not believe that any unfairness to contributors resulted in the programme misleading the audience."
The programme was subsequently sold to 21 other countries including Australia, where its subject matter caused a similar storm of protest. It was also released on DVD, despite a move by several scientists to block the release.
[Ends]
So what was an Inconvenient Truth ?
if it wasn't 'one sided'......based on a theory, using predictions and quoting them as fact ?
The Channel 4 documentary is as valid as A.I.T. - it just presents an alternative view.....or is that what's really got people's backs up ? The fact that it questioned something !
Interesting site
Hi Randomtox
Just in case you haven't found this site.
www.climateaudit.org/
Very good, they go into considerable detail on the raw data and how it compares to the GISS data. Not to mention one or two of the slightly odd things NASA do with the data.
Lots of information ..but...
There is a great deal of information here; far more than I can read in an hour or so. Thanks for the link Barelysane ; I will trawl my way through it.
My principle arguement (gripe) remains the same regardless of data though, and it's summed up thus
'Why can't the MMGW supporters accept that MMGW is a *theory* which has been *modelled*. As such it is subject to the same flaws as any other theory and most computer models that I've worked with (some pretty advanced GIS ones) have some fairly fundamental flaws whch should be acknowledged.'
Instead there seems to be a 'if you're not with us, you're against us. And if you're against us, we ain't listening and we'll do our damndest to get anyone who disagrees with us to fall in line with our views'.
It sounds like, and across like, a propaganda machine ! The MMGW lobby don't present a rational body, which would garner respect from the wider populace; they just tell people they need to read more, better educate themselves, accept that they don't understand the complex statistics. This in turn pushes people away from even considering a discussion on the subject. So both sides retrench and dig their heels in.
The MMGW lobby need to appreciate that they are advocating a MAJOR change to people's lives..really major.....and the way to do this is by constructive discussion. They are at a big disadvantage - the modern way of life is well entrenched - and people like it ! They like their cars, their foreign holidays etc. Telling them to change their lives because of some statistics and modelling is not enough. They need reasoned argument; and that is not happening.
As someone else posted following Jo's email to the BBC demanding they change the web page article - she set the work of the MMGW lobby back years in one step - simply because of an arrogant, self-righteous approach.
The MMGW lobby need to accept that their theory *might* be wrong ! The earth has warmed in the past and cooled in the past. Some of the data they have quoted has been massaged as much as any data claiming the opposite. They produce a film (An Inconvenient Truth) pushing their argument, yet react aggressively against a film that questions it (they still have yet to counter the rather inconvenient fact that the snows on Kilimanjaro are not disappeasring because of global warming, they are disappearing because of deforestation of the mountains lower slopes, leading to less humid air, leading to less snow. )
The real danger - as I've said before - is 'what if the MMGW lobby are *right* ?!!!! What if the earth *is* on the brink of disaster ? The real disaster will be that they did not recognise that there are many ways to get your point across. Simply banging on about it and telling anyone who wants to discuss the information that they are wrong or ill-informed is not the way to do this. They may win the argument about statistics...but they'll have lost the war as by then it will probably be too late !
Random
Agree completely
That's certainly how i feel about the whole issue
Martin Durkin's response in the independant
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/to-greens-i-was-worse-than-a-chi...
The fuss over Swindle is a bit like Fatal Attraction: every time I think it's over, up pops Glenn Close, looking rather like George Monbiot of The Guardian in a wig, and takes another swipe at me with a kitchen knife.
The latest dramatic episode is Ofcom's adjudication on the many complaints about the film.
Swindle went out more than a year ago and ordinary viewers loved it: the duty log was swamped with calls, 6:1 in support. Evidently many of them thought this global warming stuff was baloney, and were rather relieved that someone had stood up and said as much.
The BBC's environmental journalists were embarrassed. Why hadn't Roger Harrabin and his crew raised any of the issues I had covered in Swindle? Take the famous Ice Core data. This was the jewel in the crown of global warming theory. Al Gore said it proved a link between carbon dioxide and temperature. He failed to mention that in the data the connection was clearly the wrong way round – temperature driving CO2 levels, not the other way round.
Harrabin had to go on to Newsnight and put some of these obvious points to Gore in person. Big Al squirmed and evaded and, according to Harrabin, later accused him of being a "traitor"'.
As it happens, I have made a number of science documentaries debunking irrational scare stories, and the greens have had a whack at me before – scares are the oxygen of the green movement. And I know from experience how illiberal these liberals are. But even I have been stunned by the sustained ferocity of their response to Swindle.
Besides a vitriolic campaign in the press, the instrument of their fury has been Ofcom. A swift internet campaign rallied the troops. Hundreds of complaints were sent off, many using the same phrases and displaying a surprisingly good knowledge of the Ofcom code.
Every line in the film was subjected to scorn. The contributors were all in the pay of baby-strangling capitalists. As for me? I was a member of the special steering committee of the World Congress of Science Producers. I had recently won an award from the British Medical Association for making the best science documentary of the year. But now I was "worse than a child abuser".
One complaint stood out. It ran to 200 pages and was orchestrated by three "concerned citizens". It claimed to be peer-reviewed, which it wasn't. But it was backed by the great and good of the global warming brigade.
Our response was long and detailed: 300 pages, not counting supporting science papers etc. What has been the result?
To heighten the dramatic effect, let's compare Gore's beloved Inconvenient Truth with Swindle. The veracity of Al's film was tested in the High Court, when a lorry driver from Kent baulked at the prospect of his taxes being spent on disseminating it to British schools.
The verdict was a blow to the greens. Mr Justice Burton cited at least nine significant "errors" in Gore's film. Using words such as "alarmism" and "exaggeration", the judge said the film couldn't be sent out to schools without a health warning.
Harrabin wrote a piece admitting he had thought the film was a bit off when he first saw it. Did he indeed? So why didn't he tell the rest of us? What do we pay him for? And how about all those "scientists" who, to their eternal shame, lined up to heap praise on the film?
Now let's look at Swindle. The global warmers made buckets of complaints to Ofcom that the science was wrong, that the film contained hundreds of factual errors, falsifications and misrepresentations. It was, in short, unscientific and scurrilous.
How many of these complaints did Ofcom uphold? Not one.
So what did the regulator say? Well apparently we could have been a bit clearer with an oceanographer we interviewed about what the final film would look like. We gave the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nine working days to respond to our allegations; apparently we should have given it 10. And we didn't give a right to reply to the UK's chief scientific adviser, David King, who did not appear in the film but whose entertaining views on global warming were alluded to. These were such insignificant infringements of its code that Ofcom has not asked Channel 4 to apologise to anyone.
How was all this reported? In Australia, The Herald Sun ran the headline, "Great Global Warming Swindle Cleared". Its columnist, Andrew Bolt, wrote: "This witch-hunt against The Great Global Warming Swindle has failed utterly to discredit it, discrediting instead the accusers." The Sydney Morning Herald declared, "Lonely Voice of Dissent Declared Valid", adding: "There is something odd about the ferocious amount of energy expended suppressing any dissent from orthodoxy on climate change. If their case is so good, why try so fervently to extinguish other points of view?"
Over here, it was a different story. The greens were furious Ofcom hadn't played ball, but tried their best to spin the decision. According to Newsnight, Channel 4 had had "its fingers burnt". Suddenly the report was said to be "damning".
The most surreal response came from the head of the IPCC: "We are pleased to note Ofcom has vindicated the IPCC's claim against Channel 4 in spirit and in substance."
Meanwhile, in the "liberal" press, the attacks continue. Some bloke called Leo Hickman said the film was "toxic" and George Monbiot emerged from his bath- tub again slashing and slashing. The film, he reminded us, was a "cruel deception" and, he asked innocently: "Why is Channel 4 waging war against the greens?"
Sadly I missed all this. I was taking my family round the US in a gas-guzzling Winnebago. My reading matter was Milton Friedman, who writes: "It is entirely appropriate people should bear a cost – if only of unpopularity and criticism – for speaking freely. However, the cost should be reasonable and not disproportionate. There should not be, in the words of a famous Supreme Court decision, 'a chilling effect' on free speech."
In the year that has passed since the film was broadcast, I have discovered what that "chilling effect" is. It is when a programme maker needs to risk his career in order to make a particular film. It is when a commissioning editor or a broadcaster is genuinely fearful of straying into certain areas.
The main Ofcom complainant noted: "This is Not an Attack on Free Speech". So rather than try to shut me up, bully and vilify, why don't they engage in an honest discussion about the science?
I'll tell you why. Because the theory of global warming is crumbling round their ears. For the past decade now, world temperatures have been static or slightly declining – and that's according to the IPCC. I don't remember their silly models predicting that 10 years ago.
I no longer give a stuff whether left-liberal types agree with my views on global warming. However, I do expect every last one of them who claims to value the freedom to speak one's mind, to defend my right to air them.
My letter to Hamish
The Great Global Warming Swindle : The Ofcom Ruling
To: Hamish Mykura
Head of Documentaries
Channel 4
23rd July 2008
Hamish,
I read with disdain your "Right to Reply" in The Guardian today :-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/22/channel4.ofcom
at the bottom of the page which contained an excellent letter from
Mark Dowd of Operation Noah :-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/23/channel4.climatechange
Your attitude regarding the Ofcom ruling on the film "The Great Global
Warming Swindle" is triumphalist, but baseless, in my view.
You are not exonerated in my view. You and Channel 4 will continue to
expect complaints and demands for correction, I'm sure.
The New Scientist magazine, which is written and edited by and for
scientists, has expressed the expert, scientific view, as summarised
by Michael Le Page, that the film contained "blatant errors" :-
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14379-why-climate-swindle-film-is-...
"Why 'climate swindle' film is dangerous, despite ruling"
Producing and broadasting a film full of such "factual failings", with
contributions from people whose opinions have been discredited, was
apparently an act of propaganda on the part of the filmmaker, Martin
Durkin, as exposed more than adequately by George Monbiot :-
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/07/21/distortions-falsehoods-fabric...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/21/climatechange.carbonem...
It is not "blog gossip" nor "gross exaggeration" to claim that some of
the people that were interviewed in the film are documented as not
being transparent, or are allegedly inaccurate, about their training,
experience, paymasters, financial supporters, ideology or rank.
Much as you seem to rail against "broadcasters or newspapers that
simply hector and campaign", you seem to have failed to understand
that you appear to have been set up by a known and experienced group
of what some may call "muckrakers", and that complaints are fully in
order.
Some of the people interviewed in the film are Americans, and they
have full rights under the Constitution of the United States to free
speech, which liberty they use with impunity to utter scathing
opinions as if they were facts.
Their free speech is not science, but doubt and scorn are excellent
ways to make a living, so they carry on regardless.
Such people as Frederick Singer, Roy Spencer, Tim Ball, Bob Carter,
Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, John Christy and Tim Patterson are
members of a small and diminishing circuit of, some would say,
"offensively nauseating, overcooked after-dinner speakers".
They give exasperatingly inaccurate presentations, from my
perspective, and I consider them maddening irritants. I could say they
act like wreckers, as they seemingly seek to sow discord, and incite
mistrust.
I have attempted to transcribe the film here, trusting that no
copyright has been breached, with added notes on inaccuracies :-
http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1843
In addition, here are several other ongoing conversations regarding the film :-
http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820
http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/2204
A recent paper in "Environmental Politics" Vol. 17, No. 3, June 2008,
349–385, called "The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks
and environmental scepticism" by Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap and
Mark Freeman, gives the following abstract :-
"Environmental scepticism denies the seriousness of environmental
problems, and self-professed 'sceptics' claim to be unbiased analysts
combating 'junk science'. This study quantitatively analyses 141
English-language environmentally sceptical books published between
1972 and 2005. We find that over 92 per cent of these books, most
published in the US since 1992, are linked to conservative think tanks
(CTTs). Further, we analyse CTTs involved with environmental issues
and find that 90 per cent of them espouse environmental scepticism. We
conclude that scepticism is a tactic of an elite-driven
counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism, and that the
successful use of this tactic has contributed to the weakening of US
commitment to environmental protection."
You have been playing with people whose agenda is allegedly warped.
Unfortunately, The Great Global Warming Swindle film has influenced a
great many people, leading them down a blind alley of scepticism. I
have had the ungrateful, unthanked task of needing to explain to
scores of people that the film was not only perhaps biased, it was
quite probably unfactual in certain aspects.
According to your figures, the film was watched by 5% of the British
population. This may not seem like a large number to you, but given
the way that activism on environment has been undermined, that's a
large number.
These self-selecting environmentally-aware people watched the film,
some of them totally unprepared to counter the "myths" that were
propagated. Many of them not up to date with Climate Change science,
who could not spot the flaws and fallacies.
For many, it would "be the first time some encountered a viewpoint
within the mainstream media that went against the prevailing
scientific consensus supporting the theory of man-made global warming"
as you say.
From my viewpoint, this film had a cynical agenda, and many of the
participants have been described to me as "deluded pensioners". In my
humble opinion these people should not be permitted to air their
apparently jaded views and decades-old "fabrications" during
primetime.
I think you really should not have shown this film. I think you should
not have paid for it. I'm not trying to "stamp out dissenting voices",
I'm trying to do damage limitation.
You are a Channel 4 Executive. You are not a Climate Scientist, or, as
far as I can tell, a scientist of any kind (forgive me if I'm wrong
here), but really, since you're not a climatologist, nor a
geophysicist, nor even a gas chemist, what can you possibly know about
the science behind Global Warming, and how can you make an accurate
judgement on the views of others ?
In the Guardian Podcast of yesterday :-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audio/2008/jul/22/monbiot.channel4
George Monbiot said about Channel 4, "They're not entitled to
fabricate, and distort and to mislead."
The Royal Society have this to say about the film :-
http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=7901
"'The Great Global Warming Swindle' was itself a swindle"
I couldn't say fairer myself.
Mine,
Ms J. Abbess
jo.abbess@gmail.com
+44 77 17 22 13 96
PS
If George Monbiot's not doing any more work for Channel 4 from now on,
and you won't DARE take any more unfair (but not misleading) material
from Martin Durkin, maybe you will need to find a new source of
environmental programming ?
Would you care to cast an eye over my new, brave, scientifically
accurate documentary proposal ?
It's working title is :-
"Drought, Deluge and Drinking Water, Already : How, already, Climate
Change is already making everything so much worse, already."
My arms reach out to pan the scene : first we'll take a sweep over
Australia, and the USA and parts of Southern Europe, the Middle East,
North Africa and Central Asia, pointing to galloping desertification,
reduction in meltwater watercourses.
We'll talk about the competition for scarcer water resources, changes
in agriculture, how rivers are running dry, how storm surge takes
productive land away permanently in river deltas, how overrain takes
away topsoil.
And without so much as taking an aeroplane flight, we'll then move on
to reportage and footage from around the globe, already in TV science
and environment archives, to show the spread of crop failures,
humanitarian disaster, infrastructural breakdown.
And then we'll talk about freak weather events such as superstorms,
hurricanes, typhoons, flooding, which just add the final gloss to the
cake.
It'll all be SO MUCH FUN. I CAN'T WAIT to tell you all about it. And
about my new book : "Climate Doom and Economic Gloom : The Energy
Elephant In The Darkening Room."
Some people never learn
Jo, for instance. I don't actually have to say anything, it's been said many times before.
Déjà vu ... haven't I heard this rant before ?
"I'm not trying to "stamp out dissenting voices,
Yes you are Jo ! That’s exactly what you are trying to do ! And also - 'damage limitation' ...to what ? Your theories ? So any criticism of your theories is 'damage' ? What a strange 'science' you practice ! I'd call any criticism or response 'feedback' and review it objectively; whereas you seem to put your fingers in your ears and start screaming.
You talk about an elephant in the room.....maybe the room has a mirror Jo. Because I'm going to do now what I have begun to do with most MMGW 'discussions' - read the first bit, the moment it turns into a 'holier than thou rant' you know what I do ? I chuck it in the bin ! Your rhetoric and unscientific approach to this issue, combined with an inability discuss things rationally and accept that the theory might be wrong, is actually getting people to close their ears and minds.
Maybe YOU are the elephant in the room Jo......because you are running the real risk that IF the theories surrounding MMGW are correct, you'll have done so much 'damage' in the process of 'research', 'education' and 'rational discussion', that people will not feel engaged or that the findings are scientifcally valid (they don't at the moment!) so they refuse to listen. So you may well be able to say 'Ah ha ! See ! I was right" ... but by then we'll all be dead. Not a great ending to an argument is it ?
Random
Another interesting site
http://www.inteliorg.com/
especially if you start following some of the links around.
Little nuggets of information about just how flawed the IPCCs process is. How the climate feedback systems used in the computer models just aren't happening in the real world. How the "skeptics" are being kept quite, but significantly growing in number in the scientific community. The list goes on and on.
The plot thickens
Thanks Barelysane....very interesting site. It presents an alternative view; which is a good thing !
Random
Because sharing is caring
From www.climate-resistance.org
"Every day in the UK, £millions are spent on making sure that national and local government departments do not produce too much CO2. Business, schools and hospitals have to make sure they are complying with regulations that require them to reduce their environmental impact - rather than doing business, teaching, and making people well. Commuters across the country face increasing fuel taxes and rising costs of public and private transport. Children are taught to fear for the security of their future, and their parents are scolded for the selfish act of reproducing in the face of over-population. House-builders are forced to meet new ‘environmental standards’, and architects design homes not for their intended occupants’ comfort and quality of life, but to make sure that their living standards are not ‘unsustainable’. Across the media, countless programs, news items, articles, and lifestyle guides instruct us on how we can - and must - change the way we live our lives in a constant barrage of environmental propaganda. Politicians battle about what percentage cuts of CO2 emissions by when will save the planet, and whether the carrot or the stick is the best way to induce behavioural change. NGOs and supra-national organisations dictate policy to democratic governments. ‘Environmental psychologists’ theorise as to what it is about ‘human nature’ which prevents us from obeying environmental diktats. Climate change is the defining issue of our time - not because of incontrovertible scientific fact, but because it has become the organising principle of public and private life.
A mere 90 minutes of programming on Channel 4, nearly a year and half ago, challenged this orthodoxy’s influence. And those behind the orthodoxy have been spitting feathers ever since. It has raised more green bile than almost any other commentary, and has become the scapegoat for the environmental movement’s failure to connect with the public. Accordingly, the environmentalists’ fragile claim to legitimacy means that its first response is to spit invective at its detractors, the second is to run to the censor. What it has not tried is to engage in debate. To do so would be to appear to concede that, in fact, the debate is not over, the science is not ‘in’, and there are various approaches that can be taken in response to climate change, regardless of whether or not humans are causing it.
“It’s not fair!” scream the complaints to OFCOM, that just 90 minutes of program have been so influential, amidst, literally, months of airtime given over to proclaiming that we are doomed, that we face imminent destruction, that unless we change our lifestyles, millions, maybe billions of people will die from plague, pestilence, drought and famine. Never mind that these prophecies themselves lack a scientific basis; you can say whatever you like about the future, just so long as you don’t make the claim that it is not dominated by catastrophe. The most lurid imaginations can project into the future to paint the kind of picture that would have Hieronymus Bosch screaming for mercy, without ever risking OFCOM’s censure. You can make stuff up, providing it will contribute to the legitimacy of this new form of authoritarianism.
The OFCOM ruling on Martin Durkin’s polemic, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was published yesterday. Its findings are that there were problems; that comments attributed to David King - the UK’s chief scientific advisor at the time - were not made by him, even though they were; that the IPCC had not been given sufficient time to respond to comments made about it, even though it had been; and that Professor Carl Wunsch had been misled as to the nature of the program, even though he hadn’t (and isn’t that what investigative journalists are supposed to do?). On the matter of misleading the public, Ofcom found that it had not been offended, harmed, nor materially misled. A mixed review, then, saying, in summary, that Channel 4 were right to broadcast the polemic, but should have paid more attention to the rights of the injured parties. You’d have thought that would be the end of it. But now Ofcom itself is facing criticism from the eco-inquisition, and their decision is to be appealed by Bob Ward, former communications director of the UK’s Royal Society, on the basis that inaccuracies in the program were harmful to the public. Here he is on BBC Radio 4’s PM show:
Eddie Mair: What got you so cross?
Bob Ward: Well, what’s made me angry is the suggestion by Channel 4 that they have been found by the OFCOM ruling not to have misled the audience. And that is not what the ruling says. The ruling says that there were clearly inaccuracies in the programme and that these were admitted by Channel 4, many of them, but, in the opinion of OFCOM, these did not cause harm or offence to the public. Now, I’m afraid that there is no real justification in the ruling that OFCOM have tested whether it caused harm and offence, and actually, there’s quite a lot of evidence out there that it has caused harm, because people have changed their views, I think, about whether greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change.
EM: And you think that’s down to one programme?
BW: Well, it’s certainly contributed to it, and as Hamish Mykura [Channel 4 Commissioning Editor] was saying, he believes that it’s acted as a lightning rod. It certainly, I mean, people I’ve talked to professionally within the insurance industry with whom I work, some of them have been swayed, and that’s quite damaging. So, as a result, I think it’s certainly true that I and many of the other complainants are now going to appeal against the OFCOM decision on the grounds that there is clear evidence of harm.
EM: Do you think perhaps that some of the complaints that went to OFCOM were too detailed and too technical?
BW: Well, OFCOM did say that they are not there to rule on scientific accuracy, so it’s certainly been a challenge, which is why it’s taken them 16 months to rule. But it’s disappointing that they have reached the conclusions that they have - that although they recognise there are inaccuracies, it didn’t cause harm. They don’t appear to have investigated whether there is harm and how you would justify this. In fact, the OFCOM process is not very transparent itself; it’s not clear how they went about assessing the accuracy of these claims.
EM: Isn’t it true though - and this came over in the interview on The World At One - that while Channel Four obviously broadcast this programme, it intends to broadcast Al Gore’s documentary when it becomes available for television, so a range of views are being represented?
BW: That’s true. And one doesn’t object to a range of views. But there has to be a responsibility among broadcasters not to broadcast factually inaccurate information. That must be against the public interest. And I just don’t accept that broadcasting a programme like this, which was inaccurate about a subject as important as climate change, does not harm the public interest. And that unfortunately is what OFCOM said.
We have argued before that what emerges from the hand-wringing about the few moments of broadcasting that challenge environmentalism is not the exposure of the conspiratorial network of ‘well-funded denialists that environmentalists and the likes of David King and Bob Ward want us to believe exists. Indeed, such shrill hectoring better serves to show the environmental movement in its true colours. The fact that Environmentalists have been unable to laugh off or ignore what they regard as inaccurate tosh speaks volumes about the confidence in their own flimsy arguments. Without the argumentative ammunition to make their case politically, they need to make it into a morality tale. Environmentalists need Durkin and the Swindle like a pantomime needs a villain. They’ve written him into the script. If he didn’t exist, they’d have to invent him.
The Swindle has been made a scapegoat by pollsters Ipsos Mori, Bob Ward and his former boss Bob May, George Monbiot and many others desperate to explain the failure of Environmentalism to capture public hearts and minds. One has to wonder, then, what they hope to achieve by raising the profile of the film. The history of censorship shows that the more noise you make about something you regard as an abomination, the more interesting you make it, and the further you undermine your own position. The reaction to the Swindle has, since we began the blog, led us to look more closely at the activities of the Royal Society, and Bob Ward and co themselves. It turns out that his own position is not so spotless.
In June last year, we recorded Bob May, erstwhile president of the Royal Society, lying to an audience in Oxford about the Swindle’s director, Martin Durkin. May told the audience that Durkin was responsible for a three part series denying the link between HIV and AIDS, and that this form of climate scepticism was equivalent to denying the link between passive smoking and lung disease. Where were Bob Ward’s complaints about mispresentation and calls for accuracy? It’s hard to believe that May would have made such an error of fact in public, when he publicly demands that we ‘respect the facts‘. All the more ironic is that in counseling us to ‘respect the facts’, he should made several further errors of fact, not least in his translation of ‘Nullius in Verba’, but also in his statement of fact that ‘15–40 per cent of species potentially facing extinction after only 2°C of warming’, omitting the fact that this is aworst-case scenario predicted by just a single study. Again, where was Bob Ward and his calls for accuracy? He was busy penning inaccuracies of his own, perhaps. In his open letter to Martin Durkin’s Wag TV, one of Five major misrepresentations of the scientific evidence in the film concerned Durkin’s suggestion that the global temperature slump in the 1950s and ’60s, which was concurrent with rising emissions of greenhouse gases, was problematic for orthodox global warming arguments. Ward asserted that it is established that this is the result of white aerosols masking the greenhouse effect, and yet mainstream climate scientists we spoke to described the evidence for that as flimsy, and said that the debate continues. Another of the ‘five misrepresentations’ concerned Durkin’s argument that solar activity is a major driver of rising temperatures. The science has long been settled, said Ward. So why did the Royal Society find it necessary to publish new research based on a new dataset to demonstrate that the sun was not responsible for global warming after all? And just to make sure we got the message, they even launched the research with the strapline ‘the truth about global warming!‘
All this is not to suggest that the weight of evidence points to the sun rather than anthropogenic CO2 as the culprit. We are more concerned with the double standards employed by the Royal Society and its associates, a body that should surely be standing back from the squabbling and providing cool, calm information about the science in all its glorious complexity. A body that deals in a currency of facts needs to be especially careful about how it wields them. Like a body that bangs on about the dodgy financial interests of ‘deniers’ looks rather silly when its own dealings are on the grubby side of squeaky clean.
So, 16 months after the event, we have a report that says Durkin might have stretched the facts a tad, might have been a bit less than entirely honest with his contributors, might not have been quite as balanced as he could have been. And we are supposed to be surprised? It’s a TV programme. We could have got the same answer from a taxi driver as from a shiny report from an unelected quango. Meanwhile a browse through the pretty pie charts in OFCOM’s carbon audit suggests that the number of plastic coffee cups and notepaper used by OFCOM over those 16 months might have had a bigger negative impact on the planet than any seeds of doubt cast by Durkin’s film. If you think that’s a trivial point, then read George Monbiot’s recent comment on the silly affair, where he asks ‘why does Channel 4 seem to be waging a war against the greens?’.
This ‘War against the Greens’ consists of Durkin’s Swindle, his 2000 film about GM technology (an issue which Monbiot cannot claim the scientific establishment in the form of the Royal Society was with him on) and three-part series in 1997 called Against Nature, and a film by a different producer in 1990. And… errr… that’s it. That’s the extent of this ‘war’. Channel 4 broadcasts 24 hours a day, and has done for most of the past 18 years. Of nearly 160,000 hours of programming, this ‘war’ makes up around five hours; just 300 minutes. Monbiot continues:
It is arguable that no organisation in the United Kingdom has done more to damage the effort to protect the environment
If he’s right, then he’s got absolutely nothing to worry about.
Sceptics and critics of Environmentalism have been portrayed as cranks, weirdos and outsiders. You can make your own mind up about the truth of that. What the reaction to them shows, however, is a deep-seated anxiety which is totally disproportionate to reality. Monbiot and Ward’s paranoid hystrionics about the audacity of Channel 4 and Martin Durkin is nothing short of sheer lunacy. Their hypocrisy and unfounded outrage is breath-taking to an extent that it’s hard to actually conceive of an historical, or even pathological precedent. You would have to be seriously off your rocker to imagine that 5 hours of broadcasting over the course of two decades constituted a war, let alone even a mild threat. The real war - if there is a war, some might dare to suggest that it is simply debate about policy in a democratic society - is a war against journalistic freedom to present Greens such as George Monbiot and Bob Ward as the utter lunatics they really are. Fortunately it doesn’t take documentary films to show this; they do it all by themselves. You don’t need to portray Monbiot as a sinister purveyor of authoritarian misanthrophopy; you can just read his column."
Very valid points
raised in this article. Interesting that they're the same as the views of some of the posters on this forum !
I'm pleased that someone is trying to make the debate balanced...because that's what needed !
Thanks for posting Barelysane !
Finally
Found a site that gives links to both sides of the debate
http://climatedebatedaily.com/
Couple of more interesting articles
The writer is a AGW "believer" and makes some very interesting points.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg30
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg8
Lomborg slow on biofuels
It is good to have people like Lomborg about to point out out inconsistencies. But he's very slow. In the first article referenced above, he points out the problems with biofuels, about 2 years later than Monbiot.
The article wasn't on biofuels
It was a commentary on a few thing, plus there's no timestamp on the article that i could find (maybe you need an acc with them to view it, or i'm just blind).
But your comment in itself raises a very interesting point, if someone could work out in 2004 (i went through monbiot webpage) why have so many governments blasted ahead with it for the last 4 years. Being a cynic (in the general sense), my thoughts are that climate change is now very big buisness and highly politicised, making the truth of things either inconvienient or irrelevant. A shame really, because what this topic needs is calm, rational science and discussion. Instead we have intrest groups, too many of which are out to make money or score political points, which has a detrimental effect on all other related areas.