[Note: Ofcom is the UK broadcasting regulator]
The other night, BBC News was able to get it’s teeth into a story that combined two of the Corporation’s favourite hate figures. With the publication of Ofcom’s report based on a sixteen-month inquiry into ITV’s documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, they had the chance to attack both climate change sceptics and their most despised rival for audiences.
On the 10pm. News Roger Harrabin assured viewers that the inquiry had been brought about by a ‘deluge’ of complaints although, according to Ofcom, there were only 265 of these from the general public. The audience was estimated at 2.7 million. True, there was also a 176-page complaint from a group coordinated by someone called Dave Rado **, but this involved many of the usual suspects in the climate science community including Sir John Houghton, Robert Watson, Bob Ward, the late Bert Bolin and William Connolly*. Ofcom wisely seems to have kept this separate from the other complaints, as it was clearly more in the way of a lobby group campaign than a reflection of wider public disquiet. They argued that the film had mislead the public.
The BBC then seized on a minor finding in the report that the programme makers had, in one of the five sections of the film, been found guilty on the lesser charge of lack of impartiality, but this was a bad case of clutching at straws. Ever since The Great Global Warming Swindle was first broadcast, the environmental lobby – of which the BBC is undoubtedly part – has been screaming that the film was misleading in the way it represented climate science. Ofcom was unable to find any evidence to support this claim.
The report’s findings are being well reported by Steve McIntyre here, with more to come tomorrow, so I am not going to cover the same ground in detail. Although the BBC trumpeted some minor criticisms of the documentary in the decision section of the report, these seem to be rather in the case of an alleged armed robber who is acquitted on a bank-raid charge, but convicted for the subsidiary offence of parking on a double yellow line near the scene of the crime.
There was no criticism of sections 1-4 of the programme, which considered the scientific controversy about climate change, but Ofcom did find that in the final section, which dealt with public policy, the program should have given voice to a wider spectrum of opinion. At no point does the report find that the makers of the documentary misled the public.
At the same time, Ofcom ruled on three separate complaints, form Sir David King, Professor Carl Wunsch and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; more about these later.
What I want to do today is compare this inquiry with the High Court case last year that found a wealth of misleading information in Al Gore’s global warming propaganda-fest, An Inconvenient Truth. This came about when a School Governor objected to what he considered to be a highly political polemic being used as a teaching aid in UK schools.
At the end of the case, Mr Justice Burton’s snappily written and beautifully clear judgement identified nine instances where the film represents scientific evidence in a misleading way. These included: sea level rise and the risk of catastrophic melting of the polar ice-caps, the correlation of global average temperature to atmospheric CO2, hurricane Katrina, the loss of coral reefs, anthropogenic influence on the Gulf Stream, the danger to polar bears, and the diminishing snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro. In fact the judgement shot down most of the cherished global warming scare stories of that time.
Strangely, the BBC’s coverage of this bombshell focused not on Mr Justice Burton’s unchallengeable findings, but on his punctuation. In referring to the particular instances in the film that he determined were misleading, he enclosed the term ‘error‘ in single quotation marks. This was construed by the BBC to mean that the learned judge did not really consider that they were errors at all, and this was passed off as a vindication of the film and its maker.
So how did a High Court judge, who can hardly be expected to have studied climate science, manage to make an equitable ruling in a case that turned on the validity of complex scientific research papers?
Both sides in the case had called a single scientific expert as a witmess; Professor Bob Carter for the school governor, Dr Peter Stott of the Hadley Centre for the government. The learned judge quite simply identified instances where there was no conflict of evidence between these two witnesses. In other words, misleading passages from the film that Professor Carter had identified and that the man from the Hadley Centre was unable to offer substantiating evidence for.
(Ironically, all this happened just before the Nobel Committee announced that Al Gore would receive their Peace Prize for his contributions to the crusade against climate change.)
Later, realclimate.org, the web’s leading alarmist climate science blog, followed the same line that the BBC had taken, but with a few inimitable embellishments of its own. Firstly, as the plaintiff in this case had been backed by a wealthy businessman, they considered that this had a material bearing on the credibility of the judge’s decision. Next they also argued that the use of the term ‘error’ – in quotation marks – made the judgement meaningless. Then they restated the ‘evidence’ on which the misleading sequences in the film had been based, but failed to mention that Dr Stott had been unable to produce credible supporting evidence. They failed to mention the ingenious way in which Mr Justice Burton had reached his conclusions.
RealClimate’s reiterative debunking technique worked reasonably well for most of the issues, at least if you did not know what had actually happened in court; they simply shouted ever more loudly that Al Gore was right and the judge was wrong. But there was one hitch. A passage in An Inconvenient Truth had clearly stated that the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu had already been evacuated as a result of rising sea levels caused by human induced global warming. This was totally untrue, and demonstratively, so as the island is still inhabited.
This is the distinctly chilling justification that RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt and Michaeal Mann (of hockey stick graph fame) offered for Al Gore’s baseless assertion about Tuvalu:
In the movie there is only one line that referred to this: “That’s why the citizens of these pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand”, which is out of context in the passage it’s in, but could be said to only be a little ahead of it’s time.
Overall, our verdict is that the 9 points are not “errors” at all (with possibly one unwise choice of tense on the island evacuation point). [My emphasis]
Next time someone tells me that they have put the goods I paid for in the post, when what they really mean is that they will dispatch them as soon as they find my order and get round to it, I must remember that this is only an ‘unwise choice of tense’, and not a lie. Given that RealClimate is run by a cabal comprising some of the biggest names in climate science, and as this blog is the first port of call for those in the media who want to discover the ‘truth’ about global warming, there is something quite chilling about their pronouncement.
Ofcom’s adjudication on The Great Global Warming Swindle is a far longer, and far less enjoyable to read, than Mr Justice Burton’s judgement, but these are the bare bones of what it says.
The regulators was unable to find anything much wrong with the way in which the first four sections of the film dealt with the scientific evidence that is relied on by many global warming sceptics. This was in spite of the combined efforts of some eminent climate scientists to persuade them that the film was misleading in a 176 page submission that had taken months to prepare. In the fifth, and final, section of the film, Ofcom considered that there was some lack of impartiality in respect of public policy issues. This was not considered to be a serious enough offence to warrant any sanctions against the broadcasters
A complaint from Sir David King, that he was misquoted in the film, was upheld. This involved a claim by Fred Singer that Sir David, a past Chief Government Scientific Adviser to the UK government, had said that by the end of this century, the Antarctic will be the only place on earth that is still cool enough to be habitable. As the production company accepted that this was a true reflection of Sir David’s views because it had been widely reported by the media, including the Independent and the New Statesman, without correction, this seems like pretty rough justice. Evidently Sir David was quite content to let this version of his utterance pass unchallenged in publications that are sympathetic to the alarmist cause, and where they were used to whip up hysteria about global warming. On the other hand, he squeals like a stuck pig when it is repeated in a sceptical documentary.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also had a complaint partly upheld. They claimed that the production company did not give them sufficient time to respond to accusations of political bias made in the film and Ofcom agreed. This finding seems perverse given that the IPCC failed to reply to two out of three of the emails they were sent asking for their views. Even more perverse is the response of the IPCC’s chairman to this great victory over the filmmakers:
“I think this is a vindication of the credibility and standing of the IPCC and the manner in which we function, and clearly brings out the distortion in whatever Channel 4 was trying to project,” said Rajendra Pachauri, the organisation’s chairman.
Dr Pachauri does not dwell on the fact that the IPCC’s complaints about what the film actually said were not upheld.
Then there is the sad case of Professor Carl Wunsch, who complained that he had not been properly informed about the deeply sceptical nature of the film when he was invited to take part. This was upheld, but perhaps it says more about the professor’s care for his reputation than it does about the integrity of the arguments put forward in The Great Global Warming Swindle.
When an ITV executive was interviewed by the BBC’s Newsnight programme about Ofcom’s report, he announced that Channel 4 will be screening Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth when it becomes available for broadcast next year. I wonder how many complaints Ofcom will receive when this happens, and whether they will devote sixteen months to an enquiry? In view of Mr Justice Burton’s judgement, I don’t see how ITV can have a leg to stand on if they are accused of broadcasting a misleading documentary about climate change then.
* Update 25/07/2008. Dave Rado has pointed out to me that Phil Jones and Myles Allen were not named in the complaint to Ofcom that he coordinated. In fact they were signatories to an open letter to Martin Durkin, the producer of The Great global Warming Swindle, complaining that the film had misrepresented and misinterpreted scientific evidence and citing a complaint to Ofcom. I have edited paragraph 2 accordingly.
** Update 09/08/2008. Dave Rado has assured me that he is not an environmental activist and, at his request, I have edited this sentence which originally read ‘ True, there was also a 176-page complaint from a group coordinated by an environmental activist called Dave Rado …’. I apologise for any embarrassment that this may have caused him!
Tony, where on earth did you get the idea that I’m an environmental activist? I am nothing of the sort. Quote your evidence please. And where did you get the names Phil Jones and Myles Allen from? I haven’t heard of either of them before, and I don’t see how they could have contributed to our complaint without our knowledge. The academics who co-authored and more importantly, who peer reviewed our complaint were chosen solely on the criteria that they are generally recognised to be experts in the specific fields they were writing about or reviewing. They included three Fellows of the Royal Society and three former Chairs or Co-Chairs of the IPCC. To characterise Bert Bolin, who is widely regarded as having the most distinguished publication record in the field of atmospheric physics as being an environmental activist is just ridiculous. Why the paranoid knee-jerk reaction, while quoting no evidence to back it up?
Re. your extraordinary misrepresentation of the AIT ruling, see http://tinyurl.com/559sn4.
Dave
Dave,
I would be grateful if you would re-post your link to tinyurl.com as this seems to be broken – error 404.
Tony,
You write that:
In fact, Ofcom state specifically that:
(my emphasis)
The key bit is the bit about “harm or offence”. Ofcom are quite sensibly saying that a polemical programme can be as misleading as it likes, as long as it doesn’t cause harm or offence – a hurdle so high that it allows all sorts of things to slip through. All OPfcom did was decide that it wasn’t misleading in a way that might cause harm or offence. Quite a different thing from its not being misleading at all.
To be fair to Ofcom, this is all they should have done – they are not a scientific fact-finding panel.
Also, to be fair to the complainants, they achieved what they wanted by complaining publically so that it became well known that climate scientists disagreed with the programme’s conclusions. I doubt if any of them expected much from Ofcom.
Cheers,
Nick
http://tinyurl.com/559sn4 (the full stop was the problem)
TonyN: Thanks Dave, my last comment crossed with yours.
Re: #3, Nick,
The paragraph that you have selected from the Ofcom report, when quoted in isolation, will no doubt be a great comfort to those who are disappointed by the way that inquiry went, however it is only one very small part of quite a complex adjudication. Had Ofcom found any evidence that the film-makers had attempted to mislead the public over the science, then they would have found against them on the terms that you have emphasised.
This did not happen, and with good reason. GGWS did not set out to persuade viewers that the film’s sceptical view of the evidence for AGW is the only one possible, but only that there are perfectly rational arguments and evidence that allow a different opinions to be formed. Unfortunately the global warming debate has become so polarised, acrimonious and contaminated by polices that it is no longer possible for many people to accept that views other than their own can be validated by evidence.
To see an example of the way that this mindset can lead to gross distortion of what has actually happened, you should read at least the last section (headed ‘vindication’) of this article . It shows that leading figures in the climate debate, including Pachauri, Houghton, Watson and Parry are now making quite ludicrous claims about the outcome of the inquiry. These are all people who have had a crucial influence on the way that people think about climate change, and these outbursts can only bring their professional judgement into question.
I hope that you are not condoning this kind of conduct when you say:
Better still, read the whole article and also the other three articles at this site which analyse this matter in far greater detail than I have done here.
If Dave Rado is still around, I hope that he will correct the link in #1 as I would very much like to see what it says and then respond to his comment.
Yes, the . messes things up. And it is “its”
But the tinyurl page quotes partly:
When do the producers of AIT admit Thompson’s thermometer is an edited copy? Or that the polar bears were from a movie? Or any of the other stuff like intimating AGW caused Katrina?
‘error’ is in single quotes because it includes errors, exaggerations, misrepresentations and non-consensus points used to support such.
Or as the judge said:
And
Or
That’s huge compared to attributing a quote to somebody based upon a news story naming the person, not specifying a deadline to the IPCC (but giving them more than the required time to answer), or failing to specifically state exactly what and how they were going to use an interview from somebody that should have known better (and for example, Michael Moore has done far worse, taking shots out of context, ambushing interview subjects in public places, failing to disclose the subject of the documentary et al). All in all, this was a defeat.
Dave: If you weren’t before, you working on this project makes you an environmental activist. And Wunsch was not “duped” he was told it was an anti-consensus polemic. And I’m always wary of any argument that includes
The fossil fuel industry puts more money into those “pro-AGW” groups that would lead to them making money on the schemes and technologies they know are coming to counter your incorrect conclusion that
I suppose you didn’t read any papers on PDO or ENSO if you came to that conclusion, nor any on the shoddy basically hidden way the anomaly is generated, nor on what a puny fluctuating +/- .4 C trend over 130 years really means, nor on the conflicting results from the satellites versus the basicially un-physical models.
Yeah, I know, but the glaciers are melting. So?
You’re crazy if you think .0001 more carbon dioxide in 150+ years has much of an effect compared to 6,000,000,000 more people and the results of them in numbers, their cities, their farms, their livestock, and their cars/trains/planes/busses/trucks/ships.
Unless you’re suggesting we kill everyone but a billion people and go back to late 1800 technology, you’re out of luck. Regardless of what Ofcom, Justice Burton, the IPCC, you or I think, say, ruled or have said.
Interesting logic: the complaint must be biased, you say, because it was organised by “an environmental activist called Dave Rado”. When I ask for your evidence for claiming that I’m “an environmental activist”, you say that I must be one because I organised the complaint. If you are going to resort to that sort of tortured, circular logic, there’s clearly no point in debating with you further, as I have a life to live.
Dave
And take note the AIT is okay to show if it has a Guidance Note. On which is said:
Notice number 36, where he single quotes ‘errors’ about the existing Guidance Notes themselves also, and complains in 1) that:
So I hardly see the ruling as any vindication it’s all correct, but it is careful to state that there are places where he ‘may be’ incorrect and allowing hardcopy guidance notes suitable enough to guide the conversation to let the student determine on their own what is correct or not (and not just ‘accept it at face value’). So it’s not that they aren’t errors, just that they may or may not be. And the viewer should know where the pitfalls are to determine for themselves if it’s BS or not.
An then there’s this on single quotes:
Cross post.
I’m just explaining why he called you an environmental activist; because of working on this for 15 months and having environmental activists help you do it, over a documentary clearly meant to be a polemic, one wonders why all the work. (Did you get upset with AIT?)
Perhaps it would be better to describe this effort as one which could be construed as environmental activism rather than you as one. Since I certainly wouldn’t call those who challenged AIT anti-environmental activists.
But then again many anti-carbon- dioxide blogs and news stories do that all the time. Fossil industry funded, neo-con rapid anti-environmentalists trying to stop us from saving the planet!
You rather did it too in your op/ed by bringing up the non-sequiter of who funds whom. Which point you didn’t address, you hand-waved it away by commenting on circular logic.
Or are you just being funded by the anti-fossil fuel industry? :)
I’ll take you at your word you’re not an environmental activist in your reasoning behind the complaint, but you produced something that certainly would have been useful to those that are environmental activists. If Ofcom hadn’t basically dismissed the complaint and refused to get into the policy debate. As they should have; imagine the FCC in the US getting into this political debate on energy policy (that some would call environmentally focused; I don’t, it’s about money and control, in the energy arena mainly).
Although the US Supreme Court seems to have some ideas on AGW they expressed in the MA v. EPA case on vehicle emissions.
Like with AIT; TGGWS may be misleading, it may or may not be correct, they didn’t put in enough balance in part 5 and they have to broadcast that (much like the AIT case and the Judges requirement for an updated hardcopy Guidance Note to go with showing it). TGGWS is obvious on the face of it they are a counter view; a non-mainstream, one-sided skeptic view, which they point out enough in the show, in case the name itself isn’t enough to tell you what it is. Which I hardly think is difficult to figure out, but some people are dense I guess.
So, I don’t care if you are one or not. I wouldn’t have called you one. But:
1. Whatever you are or are not, it is certainly within the realm of possibility the motivation has an environmental element of some sort, regardless if you’re aware of it or not. Some might conjecture on that and come to the conclusion you are.
2. You shouldn’t be surprised in this debate if some people peg you as an environmental activist.
3. You willingly entered the debate when you filed the complaint with Ofcom and wrote your op/ed. Your choice of phrases wasn’t the best, perhaps.
BTW, I’ve never seen either of those “documentary” programmes and never will. I am just distilling what the decisions day, not opinioning on them; I see “both sides” as miscategorizing the decisions and their ramifications. Just like those that focus on the 5:4 decsions of MA v. EPA or Gore v. Florida from the 5 or the 4 “side”, and not realize not every decision from every agency has the scope to decide anything but what they have the power to decide upon.
And in this case, TGGWS was clear enough in its presentation of what it is to not be harmful. With a proper note given to students watching AIT, the students will have it clear enough in presentation to not be harmful.
Big woop.
Dave,
I’m a bit puzzled. There was no suggestion in my article that your complaint was biased. And I have at no time said that you must be an environmental activist because you organised the complaint. Are you sure that you posted your #8 on the right blog?
As it happens, I was just about to respond to your #1, and will do so in a few minutes when I’ve checked a couple of references.
Re: #1, Dave
Taking your points one at a time:
Perhaps you didn’t feel it creeping up on you during the fifteen months you spent coordinating the 176-page complaint :-) More seriously, I can’t imagine how you can expect to be perceived in any other way. But if you wish, I am quite willing to edit what I said and add a note explaining why I have done so. Just say the word.
Thanks for bring this to my attention; I’ve made a correction in paragraph 2 and added an explanatory note at the end of the post about how this mistake crept in. But I am at a loss to know how you can have read ‘ hundreds of scientific papers and summaries ‘ relating to global warming without having come across these two leading figures.
I did not say that Bolin was an environmental activist and am aware of both his academic record and his reputation for integrity. He was, of course, the founding chairman of the IPCC too.
See the last part of my #5 response to Nick. The section of Mr Justice Burton’s judgement that you have quoted is about as damning as the judiciary get without tearing off their wigs and jumping up and down on the bench screaming.
How else do you parse “the explanation in AIT at best is materially incomplete”?
Anyway.
Tony: I just read your post responding, but I thought I’d put this up anyway.
You did say the complaint was “coordinated by an environmental activist called Dave Rado, but this involved many of the usual suspects” that rather seems like you’re accusing him of being biased. Which of course, he is: Everyone in this debate is biased; I’m certainly biased to my conclusion that we just don’t know if it’s warming, and if it is, what’s causing it. And that we can’t establish an empirical cause/effect relationship between anything, not even my conclusion that it would be from the “Population / Technology Cycle”
If planetary total energy levels are even going up in the first place.
But I agree with him, I don’t see why you called him an environmental activist. There’s tons of reasons one would get upset at something that goes against your conclusions enough to organize something like this, and of course a bunch of other warmistas would hop on it or help.
If Dave has come to the conclusion (which in my opinion is incorrect, but that’s just my opinion) that .0001 more carbon dioxide has caused the anomaly trend to go up +.7 C and that this will continue, and that it is dangerous, and he used reference to the typical party line about ‘being funded by the environment hating {energy company here}’ the alarmists use, doesn’t mean he’s an environmentalist. It just means the standard non-sequiter arguments and anecdotal evidence that gets used, he just picked up during the brainwashing that led to the conclusion carbon dioxide causing dangerous warming, much like the brainwashing which would lead one to conclude that warming has been disproven, and the link to greenhouse gases has been disproven. Or my brainwashing that nothing’s been proven or disproven but that population/technology would be the most likely cause of a rise in the energy budget.
Nothing wrong with that, both the alarmists and deniers do that, it’s how religious wars work. (or whatever you want to call it)
:)
Just as I’m sure whomever brought suit against AIT isn’t an anti-environmental activist. Or that speaking fees or research grants from energy companies make scientists come up with a hypothesis that casts doubt that it’s warming (anomaly trend or not; in other words, that energy levels have moved up) or a hypothesis that casts doubt that human produced greenhouse gases may not be as responsible as thought and that it’s {something else}.
Assuredly anyone looking at this with an open mind knows that companies fund whomever is already doing such work, or is working in some field they’re interested in.
Or they’ve been hired or funded for some nefarious reason, like the company making more money, from say, carbon trading or sequestration or new energy technologies so they can sell more, cut their bottom line, or meet federal regulations. You know, evil stuff like the quest for knowledge or profits or to satisfy requirements.
I suppose we are meant to believe {big oil} would never higher a geologist to do a study because they’re trying to find more oil in the ground, or extract it more efficiently; it would have to be because they want to disprove global warming. Sheesh.
In the end, what’s wrong with saying “we don’t know” and spending our time and money fostering world food production, disease abatement, anti-poverty economic initiatives, more fair government systems, protecting the environment and developing lower-cost renewable resources and more efficient technologies?
On this particular scientific issue, it just happens that most environmentalists support the findings of mainstream scientific research – albeit many of them exagerate some of those findings at times. Having said that, the media does far more exaggerating than environmentalists do, because sensationalism sells newspapers. The media also sensationalise on the other extreme for similar reasons, which gives the public the completely wrong impression that climate scientists are divided into two camps of extremists, which almost all are not.
On other issues environmentalists don’t support the findings of mainstream science (e.g. on GM). I support science in preference to any “ism” (environmentalism or any other) always.
I object to any film that grossly distorts the truth, especially when it appears to do so in the hope of influencing public policy (in any direction).
AIT is many orders of magnitude more accurate and less misleading than Swindle, as you’ll realise if you read our complaint in full with anything approaching an open mind. The fact that there is a misinformation campaign being carried out in order to misrepresent the findings of mainstream science, and that it is being carried out in order to influence policy, is well documented, objective fact and is documented in our complaint, with a huge number of supporting links to primary source documents (not to “internet gossip” as some like to pretend).
Your accusation that I’ve been brainwashed is patronising hogwash.
The fact that some companies that consider it to be in their commercial interest to fund this campaign is unsurprising. The reason it’s important is simply because without that funding it would have been far less effective.
If I’m an activist at all then I’m an activist for science not to be distorted by people who are mostly not scientists, for policy reasons.
Your argument about the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is scientifically illiterate. By the same token, similar percentages of arsenic in your bloodstream would not be dangerous (in fact they would kill you in a few seconds).
Instead of spending your time debating a scientific issue that you don’t appear to have researched scientifically in any depth, why don’t you spend more time learning about the science? A good place to start is Spencer Weart’s history of the scientific research that has taken place into the greenhouse effect and climate change, going back to the 19th century, which will give you a much better idea of how we know what we know and where the uncertainties remain. Weart’s work is widely recognised as the most authoritative treatment of the subject, and is at http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
Dave
OOOps, hire
Phil Jones and Myles Allen? I’ll get to your response to me (which I’ve just seen) later.
Perhaps a glance about the open letter to Martin Durkin might ring a bell. You know, Bob Ward and all. The guy that peer reviewed part of your complaint?
Or maybe a glance at your own page.
Bob Ward peer reviewed one section of our complaint and also submitted a complaint of his own (see http://tinyurl.com/2n6j3n). He points out that five out of the seven major inaccuracies that he originally reported to Ofcom still remain in the international DVD version – see http://tinyurl.com/6k3q3g [climateofdenial.net].
You don’t know who they are. Right.
Dave, you should get over to Climate Audit more often.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?cat=52
http://www.climateaudit.org/?cat=49
I’m sure you don’t know where that is either.
Oh, you mean like this?
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/266.htm#721
Been there, done that.
Did you think I’m disagreeing that
Nope. Totally agree.
But how exactly is a documentary being quite clear it’s forwarding arguments that are not mainstream and are alternative ideas or possibilities “grossly distorting the truth”? Just because you don’t agree with the opinions or the conclusions doesn’t make them wrong, or wrong for bringing them up.
And how is AIT accurate showing CGI scenes of ice from a disaster movie, showing Dr. Thompsons thermometer as vindication of the “Hockey Stick” (I hate that term by the way) when in fact that’s what it is, isolated misleading shots of polar bears, and impressions of impending doom over things that take millenia to develop? Perhaps you’re unaware the dinosaurs lived in 5000 ppmv of co2, 90 F warmer temps with less variation, on a planet with no ice caps and seas 800 feet higher. Oh, and about 50% more oxygen. It wasn’t even the same place 65 MYA that it is now and the thunder lizards didn’t seem to mind it. Going from 300 to 400 ppmv is a non-event. And comparing it to the same amount of arsenic is perplexing to me. Plants do not breathe arsenic, humans don’t exhale arsenic, the human bloodstream volume is not the atmosphere volume. It’s a really bad analogy.
The fact that carbon dioxide and the other GHG absorb IR from the ground and reflect some of it back (basically) is not under dispute. All else is opinion based upon incomplete information, which doesn’t make it wrong, just contentious. The problem is, scientifically, the role of the hydrosphere is largely ignored. And the population of the Earth and the urbanization and industrialization and food sources that goes along with it have to be taken into account.
If you think you’re arguing with a “denier” you’re wrong.
Primary sources that tend to suggest that so and so is likely, or this and that seems to suggest, and every indication of blah blah blah whatever is happening. As far as a misinformation campain, yep, and it’s called Global Warming, making a claim that the evidence proves something one way or the other. I’ve waded through a lot of the TAR and the 4AR. And it’s not cut and dried as some wrongly claim.
It’s as deluded as those claiming that organisms don’t modify their environment. Or that there is evidence that AGW isn’t happening. Or no evidence at all that it is.
Have I said there isn’t climate change or anthropogenic global warming or that there’s no way it could be? Of course there’s a greenhouse effect, humans change their climate, there are increasing levels of GHG from humans, carbon dioxide absorbs longwave infrared and there are signs energy levels are increasing.
Do you really believe that if the bulk of whatever warming there is (supposedly evidenced in the proxy of the air/water sampled global mean temperature anomaly trend) was directly attributable to carbon dioxide levels rising 100 ppmv over 150+ years, that a dent can be made in them with 7 billion people around? I don’t think so. Sorry.
I don’t need to see either AIT or TGGWS because they’re both garbage, I’m sure. The Ofcom ruling (which I’ve read in full) as well as the full text of the Wegman report, the full text of the Barton panel, the ruling of the judge over AIT, and the US Supreme Court decision (Majority and Minority) on MA v. EPA is enough for me to know this is a holy war over “propaganda” in the court of public opinion. Which is what both of those are, AIT and TGGWS. Your problem is that you think your complaint to a broadcast regulator is more important than their decision? In my opinion, you asked the wrong people for a scientific exposition on the show.
What you’re objecting to is opinion over the conclusions about the science, not science itself. Scientists don’t do things for “policy reasons”. Policy people do that. So your argument on that is specious, to say the least. I’ll listen to a policy analyst about that, or a politician about the implementation of the policies. Do you really think this subject is about science?
And of course you’ve been “brainwashed”, we all have. This is opinion; politics, not science. Science has empirical evidence behind it, is duplicatable and is objective. I fail to see how that’s patronizing to you. If it is, then I’m quite fairly patronizing all parties involved, including myself.
I see, so you regard falsifying graphs, or showing graphs from 40 years ago and pretending they’re up to date ones, or mislabelling the dates on graphs, or misquoting reports, or showing a film clip of sea ice melting in the summer and reforming in the winter and claiming that one is showing a film clip of year on year variations in sea ice, I could quote over a hundred other examples, are all just expressing opinions. Interesting definition of “opinion”.
Re. Phil Jones and Myles Allen, apologies for not checking who they were before posting my first post, but I took your characterisation of them as environmental activists at face value, whereas I have now checked and they are clearly respected climate scientists with outstanding publication records in the peer reviewed literature (something that cannot be said about all but a couple of the contributors to Swindle). I am familiar with climateprediction.net and have even read some papers they have contributed to (most of which only quote surnames, so I didn’t make the connection); but had forgotten their names, and your characterisation of them made me think they must be Greenpeace activists or similar.
Re: #14, Dave
You might ask yourself where the media get their stories and also whether the public statements by Pachauri, Houghton, Watson and Parry that were quoted in this article are accurate representations of the findings of the Ofcom inquiry.
Which is another way of saying that the environmental movement is selective in their acceptance of scientific evidence, just like climate sceptics.
But Ofcom did not find that this was the case, in spite of the best efforts of the scientific experts which you coordinated.
A few page numbers would be a helpful.
I think you missed the emoticon that indicated that my remark was light-hearted.
It’s not clear which campaign you are referring to here. Do you mean companies like the ones referred to here (which include BP and Shell) who are supporting The Climate Group, which now has Tony Blair as its star advocate?
My article does not contain any argument about CO2 in the atmosphere; it simply reports a high court decision on the way AIT dealt with this matter.
Advice is always appreciated, but would I be correct in assuming that you consider anyone who challenges the orthodox view on climate change is scientifically illiterate? So far as Weart is concerned, I visited his site some years ago when I was looking for an objective history of climate science. Sadly, I did not find one there.
Re: #18: My article was about the forensic examination of two films dealing with climate change. In one, serious faults were found in the way that scientific evidence was being presented to the public, and in the other no serious faults were found in spite of the 176-page complaint submitted by your expert panel. As I have not expressed a view on the matters that you mention, I am at a loss to know how you can be aware of what they are.
Re: #19: Would you please re-read the sentence in my article that you are referring to. The only person I described as an environmental activist was you, and I have offered to edit this. Just say the word and I will do so.
Sam,
Maybe I’m a lone voice in the wilderness here, but when you write that,
I can’t rconcile that with what Ofcom actually said, which was that “Ofcom had to ascertain – not whether the programme was accurate – but whether it materially misled the audience with the result that harm and/or offence was likely to be caused”. That final qualification makes a lot of difference. Ofcom did not say there were no serious faults.
Cheers,
Nick.
Dave Rado #19
Fair enough.
Dave Rado #18
I don’t disagree. AIT and TGGWS both exagerate, mislabel, misdirect, use hyperbole and propaganda techniques, and make unsupportable conclusions. That both present their opinions of importance of things lop-sided to make their case (the court decision and regulatory decision show that, I think) is hardly surprising. And not something I’m worried about. Mainly because I can’t really do anything about it. As I knew and as you’ve found out.
It’s clear from press spin and Internet arguments that this isn’t anything other than a battle over public opinion. So the science being right in spot a and wrong in spot b really isn’t important.
I regard considering there is a proven direct causal relationship of carbon dioxide making temperature levels higher as opinion. As for considering the anomaly trend proxy as representative of energy levels. Or that models prove anything. All opinion.
However, to be clear, I don’t disagree these and other things do tend to show things are indeed warming. But they’re not proof.
Myself, I’m just not excited about a swing in the anomaly trend from -.4 to +.4 in 130 years; or in other words, that a change of 3% under to 3% over a nominal estimate of a global average mean temperature is anything other than measurement error, the ways ~6 billion more people affect their environment, the change in instruments from mercury thermometers and buckets to digial thermometers and engine intakes, or simply part of a long term fluctuation of the climate. It’s probably more like pollution; it’s cleaner now, we just have better ways of monitoring it and tighter standards.
I understand you’re considerably more concerned about the matter, but asking a communication regulator to decide upon the science behind things (or in other words, to opine upon the conclusions) is simply a bit much. I’m surprised you’re suprised.
19 Dave:
Fair enough, meaning about not recognizing the names of Jones and Allen.
20 TonyN:
I think most of the comments you’re referring to were Dave responding to me, not what you wrote. Like brainwash (meaning pushed to a conclusion by what is read and seen and how it’s processed by the person) or your comments on #18 and #19
As far as your comment on Weart, I haven’t been to the site, but “objective” and “climate science” don’t go together. :)
21 Nick:
I didn’t say that, TonyN did. :)
But I agree with you; the Ofcom decision didn’t vindicate the science one way or the other. Just that folks watching it should be able to determine what was correct, what was incorrect, and what was exagerated. And the balance, notification period, and disclosure were insufficient. Or in other words, Ofcom made decisions according to their rules and the scope of their power. Just as the court did about AIT.
The issues Ofcom decided upon, TGGWS rectified. As AIT did with a modified handout used when showing the film to schoolchildren. My opinion is that AIT didn’t do as good of a job, but…..
As I’ve been saying, this isn’t about science, it’s about opinion. Which is why the cases went like they went in the venues they were decided.
There are facts. We know what the anomaly trend is doing. We know that water vapour, carbon dioxide, metane and CFCs react to longwave infrared. We know water changes phase. We know there’s a lapse rate (wet, dry and environmental) and how atmospheric pressure lessens the higher you go. We know oxygen and nitrogen react kinetically, and that all the gases interact. We know the short wave infrared, visible light and ultraviolet capture around 30% of the insolation and the ground absorbs the rest. And that sunlight and these and other factors create weather, and that weather over time is climate.
Then there is opinion; how much to trust this, how much of an effect that has, what is more sure than others, and so on.
[…] recent Channel4/Ofcom/Global Warming Swindle brought to stark attention either a) that Ofcom is strong and got it right or b) that the current regulatory rules for broadcast (and for th PCC, print and online) […]
Sam Urbinto commented that scientists don’t do things for policy reasons – this is a rather simplistic view of how science operates (no criticism intended as most people have little insight into the policy world). The IPCC (supposedly 1500 climate experts) writes a Summary for Policy Makers – and any comparison of that with the reports of the Technical Working Groups would show that scientists do many things for policy ‘reasons’ – primarily, they simplify their conclusions (policy makers like single causes with no caveats) often to the point of scientific nonsense – for example ‘It is very likely that the observed warming is anthropogenic in origin’ replaces the truth – which is: the anthropogenic signal cannot yet be discerned above the natural causes of variability at above the 95% confidence limit normally required to confirm a scientific hypothesis. It is far more important to determine the percentage contribution of human emissions than to simply identify the presence of a signal – but on that you may get a consensus. Whereas no consensus exists on the actual strength of that signal which is where considerably more uncertainty exists – well documented in the science literature, but which the ‘scientists’ at IPCC fail to present to the policy makers in a summary form, for obvious policy reasons of their own.
At a risk of taking more space than is polite – I tried to add something I wrote to the organisation responsible for the full page advert in the Independent and Guardian on ‘100 months to tipping point’ – but my piece is too long to include –
Is there anyone out there interested in financing a counter-page (though doubtful it would be taken) to be signed by 20-30 climate specialists? I will send the piece gladly by email – and post it on my website (www.ethos-uk.com).
Here are some extracts-
‘It is a shame that so much effort is devoted by all your organisations to pressing for actions – the consequences of which you have not explored – particularly upon the environment and the most vulnerable peoples that you wish to protect.
I am not part of this supposed scientific consensus. I do not think there will be a tipping point in 100 months – at least, not one that has anything to do with carbon dioxide.
I earnestly recommend that you spend some of your resources critically reviewing the science that you so willingly accept (in what other situation would a group of radical organisations dedicated to planetary wellbeing accept the findings of very dodgy inter-governmental panels and science institutes (when did they ever take the lead on any other major pollution or development issues?).
The IPCC system is deeply flawed. I suggest you review the following areas (and not dismiss them because IPCC apologists tell you there is no need to look):
* the most up to date analysis of ocean cycles
* the science of how the ocean surface is warmed by the sun and what happens to the warm water from the tropics as it winds its way north and south
* how the 1980-2000 warming period coincided with a 4% drop in cloud cover (largely as a result of the Pacific decadal oscillation)
* review all the satellite data for cloud cover, enhanced SW radiation flux to the surface – and compare this in watts/sq m to the computed carbon dioxide LW effect
* review the albedo data (Big Bear Solar Observatory) – showing a major shift in 2001 toward more reflection and hence future cooling
* the predicted drop in global temperatures in 2007 (predicted by solar scientist – T. Landscheidt in the peer-reviewed environmental science literature)
* the potential for a solar Maunder Minimum (and how NASA has consistently failed to predict solar cycle behaviour)
* the loss of heat content in the oceans and how this undermines the models of future warming
* the views of Arctic specialists who can explain the melt-down in relation to ocean cycles (the PDO and NAO), cloud patterns and changing atmospheric winds – all far too fast for CO2 and not predicted by the models
* the 85% of the Antarctic land mass that has not warmed in the last century and why the 15% jutting into the southern ocean has
* the expected reversal of the Arctic weather systems has begun and Alaska is cooling down (now that the north Pacific has lost its stored heat of the last 30 years)
* the potential for the North Atlantic to lose its accumulated heat once the NAO shifts – coupled with the other oscillations, this will lead to a colder Europe within the next two years – and is already evident in shifts in the jetstream
* the latest research linking jetstream shifts to atmospheric conditions modulated by the sun’s electro-magnetic flux
* the impenetrable models that deal with the assumed power of CO2 to warm the atmosphere (not actually observed where the models most expect it) and how they deal with the fact that CO2 has a logarithmic relation to temperature (i.e. extra ppms may have virtually no effect when the curve gets beyond its own ‘tipping point’)