Bookmarks
Key
Download PDF

Extracts from Ofcom Complaint, by Category: Falsification/Manipulation

3. Falsification/Manipulation of Film Footage

[Prof Syun-Ichi Akasofu]	There are reports from time to time of a big chunk of ice broke, break away from the Antarctic continent. Those must have been happening all the time, but because now we have a satellite that can detect those, that’s why they become news.
[Narrator]	This data from NASA’s meteorological satellites shows the huge natural expansion and contraction of the polar sea ice taking place in the 1990s.

[Comment 104: The video played on the programme at this point, illustrating this “huge natural expansion and contraction of the polar sea ice” is deeply misleading. In fact, the variation that the film shows is simply the seasonal cycle: the ice melts and shrinks during the summer, and expands again during the winter (see http://tinyurl.com/yvkbkh [NASA] for a similar video).

The important issue regarding Arctic sea ice levels is the year-on-year changes, not seasonal changes; and although year-on-year changes do show some natural variability, there has been a strong decreasing trend in recent years (see the NASA video at: http://tinyurl.com/ysjyns, and the NSIDC graph at: http://tinyurl.com/2yyjhs).

Pretending that they were showing a film of year on year changes when they were actually showing a film of seasonal expansion and contraction amounts to deliberate deception.]

(In breach of the 2003 Communications Act Section 265, Ofcom 5.4, 5.5, 5.7, 5.11, 5.12)

[Bookmarks on this page: Click any of the following links to go to that bookmark. You can then copy and paste the bookmark’s url from your address bar, and send it to someone as a link straight to that bookmark:
Section 3 / Comment 104: Confusing the seasons with year on year trends]


Page 13 of 16	Final Revision	Last updated: 11 Jun 2007