In March 2007, Channel 4, United Kingdom, aired The Great Global Warming Swindle. The documentary, which boldly alleges that global warming is not caused by human activity and that there is no climate crisis, quickly became an international success; selling in 21 countries and distributed openly via the Internet.
A backlash from global warming alarmists was to be expected. Someone was breaking their strangle-hold on telling the public what to believe. Someone was actually engaging them in public debate, without their permission or editorial control, and doing it well. In contrast to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” (sic), The Great Global Warming Swindle featured interviews with real scientists and provided a more realistic analysis of data to back their claims. The alarmists’ claims that climate change is driven by human activity and that we’re headed for a major crisis were a fraud.
The alarmist camp filed 265 complaints with the UK regulatory agency for communications, Ofcom, plus a 176 page “group complaint” alleging 137 breaches (later reduced to 67) of the Ofcom code. Ofcom launched a 15 month investigation. In recent days, rumors have circulated that Ofcom would rule in favor of alarmists, “censuring” Channel 4, issuing a crushing blow to the further possibility of regulated media debate on the subject in the UK.
In their ruling however, Ofcom stated that Channel 4 was “on balance” and cleared it of “materially misleading the audience so as to cause harm or offence.”
The alarmists began the spin campaign immediately, accusing the regulator of letting the broadcaster off the hook “on a technicality.” Yes indeed, and a rather important technicality at that. People, including regulated broadcasters, have the right to disagree and to present evidence and argument even against the pseudo-religious rants of global warming alarmists. It’s a free speech thing. It makes no difference that the alarmists have invested heavily in their own propaganda campaign, gained the backing of influential politicians by promoting higher taxes, seated a committee at the UN, push their agenda with politically controlled research funding, secure corporate backing with legislative proposals that would increase profits at the expense of consumers, or that it seemed absolute control was within their grasp. In fact, those are all very strong reasons for open public debate.
Many of the blind followers in the alarmist camp will not understand any of the discussion that follows this ruling, including this opinion piece. The Great Global Warming Swindle is not a pseudo-bible for “deniers.” It was and still is, as Channel 4 claims, “a useful contribution to a timely debate.”
Those of us not aiming to secure control for the alarmist camp will, for example, possibly not pay much attention to some parts of Ofcom’s commentary. For example; 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.
If individuals are treated unfairly in a broadcast, then let justice prevail. Individual justice is not unimportant. But let’s be fair and balanced ourselves. These rulings on individual fairness rest on the fact that the program did not provide the opportunity to respond, and that they misquoted. A complaint about stating the fact that the IPCC’s first report in 1990 falsely predicted “climatic disaster” was thrown out. Ofcom said, even without the opportunity for the IPCC to respond, this was “not unreasonable.” Of course it’s not unreasonable. Let me say it again: The Nobel prize-winning IPCC falsely predicted “climate disaster.” It’s an important fact that the public should know. This is what the debate is about. The IPCC was, and still is, wrong.
And what if the alarmists have a nitpick or two to rant about? It doesn’t decide the question that alarmists raise; whether humans are causing catastrophic global warming. It doesn’t settle the critical question answered in Ofcom’s ruling; whether British broadcasters are allowed to challenge global warming alarmist orthodoxy. The primary result of the ruling is extraordinarily important. The debate is allowed. Let’s get it on!
For those wishing to review Ofcom’s adjudication of the complaints: Ofcom Broadcast Bulletin, Issue number 114, 21 July 2008
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C4 Mykura's half-right contradiction on climate change | alexlockwood.net said,
July 22, 2008 at 12:42 pm
alexlockwood said,
I think you’re also falling into the rhetoric trap. We’re not alarmists. The people who submitted the report to Ofcom are not alarmists. We may be raising alarm, but we’re reporting (well, I am) what we believe is in line with the peer-reviewed science. The overwhelming peer-reviewed science of the last 30 years. As James Risbey argues, it’s actually all in line with the science, and to speak moderately may in fact be more out of line.
July 22, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Roger F. Gay said,
BTW: I noticed that one of your articles is linked to the front page of Men’s News Daily today. Have you become a right-wingnut libertarian blogger for that men are walking wallets thing?
July 22, 2008 at 3:14 pm
alexlockwood said,
For me, the most convincing science is the loss of the ice shelves and winter ice on Antarctica and the loss of species diversity, for example in places such as Costa Rica, and the progressively early migration and nesting patterns of animals as witnessed. Animals, plants and ice shelves also don’t know anything about consensus, and they are changing at a rate that is in line with the scientific hypotheses that our climate is warming at a rate that is well above natural variation and in line with the extra greenhouse gases, including methane from rice paddies and cattle as well as CO2, that we’ve been pumping up there since the early 1800s.
July 22, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Zorik said,
Science is portrayed as a search for truth but like anything else it is about status, power, and money.
July 23, 2008 at 1:32 am
Roger F. Gay said,
July 23, 2008 at 2:23 am
Roger F. Gay said,
“The decrease in aerosols probably accounts for at least half of the warming over Europe in the last 30 years,” says Rolf Philipona, a co-author of the study at MeteoSwiss, Switzerland’s national weather service.
The latest climate models are built on the assumption that aerosols have their biggest influence by seeding natural clouds, which reflect sunlight. However, the team found that radiation dropped only slightly on cloudy days, suggesting that the main impact of aerosols is to block sunlight directly.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926634.800-cleaner-ski%20es-explain-surprise-rate-of-warming.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=specr%20t17_head_Clean%20air%20is%20hot%20air
July 23, 2008 at 2:35 am
Roger F. Gay said,
July 23, 2008 at 2:45 am
Zorik said,
Further, all inputs that could effect the climate should be properly represented in the model.
It just can’t be done. The job is impossible. The climate is too complex. There are too many variables and too many unknows. Computer models of global warming are a joke.
July 23, 2008 at 11:05 am
chefchick48 said,
July 23, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Roger F. Gay said,
OK - let those who are concerned about that focus attention on the issue rather than hiding behind the Big Lie politics of anthropomorphic global warming. There are issues of fact to be discussed (although I should preempt personal attacks by stating emphatically that I’m not being paid by Big Oil as part of a conspiracy in favor of overpopulation).
OPEC says there is no oil shortage for one, and states that projected need can easily be met for the next century. The coal industry can’t push hard enough in their efforts to increase use of their product. France switched fully to Nuclear - but other nations fell short of that goal, stopped by the same political movement that pushes the AGW scare and higher taxes on fossil fuels.
July 24, 2008 at 7:01 am
Roger F. Gay said,
And it’s been running long enough to show that the predictions are consistently wrong. The IPCC has been forced to abandon the prediction of catastrophic global warming already - even in view of the max value in the range predicted. Scientists are questioning even that - whether there is any basis for a prediction that it will continue to warm for the next century - and finally scrutinizing the presumption of cause and effect between CO2 and temperature.
Short-term correlation: Correlation does not prove causality - and when the correlation doesn’t hold - the hypothesis clearly has a serious problem.
July 24, 2008 at 7:10 am
Walter Schneider said,
You said: “…the most convincing science is the loss of the ice shelves and winter ice on Antarctica…”
Let’s hope that you did not use the “science” presented through Al Gore’s misuse of “spectacular footage of a glacier apparently calving off enormous slabs of ice into the sea - footage that is often shown on television to accompany stories of about “global warming.” However, the glacier in question is one that is known to be advancing - and to be doing so more rapidly and more often than previously. It is in southern Argentina where its snout crosses and eventually dams. Lake Argentino. Water builds up behind the ice dam and eventually bursts it, causing the spectacular collapse of ice into the lake that is so misleadingly used as the iconic image of the effect of “global warming” on glaciers….” (35 Inconvenient Truths: The Errors in Al Gore’s Movie, by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley - former science adviser of Margret Thatcher: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html )
I can’t blame you for having become convinced through years of intensive propaganda that “man-made” global warming is a real threat to the Globe. However, keep in mind what Hitler said about the requirements that must be met to make propaganda successful: http://bruderheim-rea.ca/deregulation.htm#Propaganda
It will be a good thing if you have a look at all of what Lord Monckton states in his excellent debunking of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”
July 28, 2008 at 11:56 am
alexlockwood said,
Hello there. No, I wasn’t basing my views on Gore’s film. Rather on some of the scienctific reports that I’ve read in my reseaarch as I’m writing a book chapter and articles on media and climate change. For example:
Payne et al, 2004: Recent dramatic thinning of largest West Antarctic ice stream triggered by oceans, in Geophysical Research Letters, 31:1.23401
and
Thomas R et al, 2004: Accelerated sea-level rise from West Antarctica. Science 306, 255-8.
These two reports quoted above a some of the 928 peer-reviewed articles that Nancy Oreskes identified as all supporting the opinion that humans are causing accelerated climate change through the emissions of greenhouse gases. Not only CO2, but importantly methane from rice fields, meat eating etc.
Also from the major, long-form books and reports. Mainly the IPCC 4th AR, but also Mark Lynas’s High Tide and Six Degrees and other titles. Fred Pearce’s With Speed and Violence. I’ve read nothing from people such as Lawrence Solomon with anywhere near the factual basis or constrictuve argument to convince me otherwise. I worked with Mark’s dad, who went visiting all the glaciers and islands that Mark then revisted 20 years later to see the effects of rising sea levels and a warming world. His stories and first hand evidence affected me.
I’m well aware that Gore’s film is polemic. I know the media tend to turn hypothesis into certainties in the quest for news value and drama. I give these ‘thin’ trust. They move me, but don’t convince me. Not any more, although I will admit to having been convinced by them at one point.
What I give ‘thick’ trust to is both those very personal and deeply researched stories, from Mark Lynas and his father, and the distant but far rearching consensus activities such as the IPCC’s report.
Yes, there are problems with the IPCC and the Kyoto protocol as examples of a ‘global discourse’ that doesn’t allow for other answers or means of addressing the problem.
Yes, there is also a problem with putting too much emphasisis on scientific certainty. Your Republican party has raised the level of ‘acceptable’ certainty way too high, and so bred inaction, which you must, surely, at some level, realise is harming you, both economically and societally? Bush et al have screwed up, and you’re economy is going to pay for missing out on the challenge.
You should read Nissani, 1999, or why not the pages of the free-market Economist, which is anti-government and pro-market on everything except climate change, because they see it as the biggest market failure of all time; and yet with the biggest market opportunities of all time.. that’s why Honda and Toyota are making profits as they turn to clean energy, while GM and Ford are posting losses.
I’m an academic that looks at things sceptically, although not sceptically enough, sometimes, granted, because I do believe we have to act now and quickly. The more I read, however, the more I am convinced that even if climate change does not bring about apocalypse, it will bring about massive change whether you like it or not, and we can either roll with it and do the best for world society, or we can wait until it’s too late to do anything to protect what we’ve got today, right now. Any costs you may feel you are losing (in money, in freedom) will be made up for by the fact that a lower-carbon future is a better place to live for nature and for humans.
July 28, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Roger F. Gay said,
Calling Gore’s film polemic is being overly nice - way far overly nice - to the point that such a description shows bias.
Note also that even the IPCC has been forced to scale back its tale of doom, so there’s really not much to worry about even in their sky-is-falling fantasy. There is no scientific evidence that humans caused the warming in the late 20th century and no reason whatsoever to presume that warming will continue all through the 21st. If it does get warmer, it’s unlikely there will be any catastrophic effects and we can’t do anything to change that even if there are.
The CO2 thing isn’t about the science of climate change, it’s about the politics of taking control of the means of production and everything else. It’s about controlling energy. It’s about building vast pork barrel empires and people like Al Gore taking a private share by political force.
August 5, 2008 at 10:54 pm