Extracts from Ofcom Complaint, by Category: Falsification/Manipulation

The graph it was based on was Figure 12 of the paper, Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, which is at http://tinyurl.com/28gzs3. [Note: When this complaint was submitted, we linked to http://tinyurl.com/2ca6q. However that web page now loads a new version of the paper in question, that has been completely rewritten since our complaint was submitted. The current link is to an archived copy in PDF format of the paper as it was on 21 March 2007.] This paper, which concluded that “industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet”, had formed part of the heavily-criticized “Oregon Petition”, a bulk mailing to thousands of scientists to petition against the Kyoto Protocol (see Science magazine: http://tinyurl.com/2s2rho, and the Center for Media and Democracy: http://tinyurl.com/qxxcq).

However, the original Robinson et al graph ended in the mid-1980s. The documentary re-labelled the time axis to give the incorrect impression that the graph extended to the present day, thus leaving out the past 20 years of unprecedented global warming while apparently intentionally deceiving viewers into thinking that this period had been included.

In the repeat (shown on More 4, March 12, 2007) the time axis had been corrected, and the arrows and attribution to NASA removed, although no other attribution was given:

However, the graph remained highly misleading, since it still did not show the temperature rise over the past 20 years, despite the unchanged and false narration claiming that “most of the rise [in temperature in the 20th century] occurred before 1940”, and despite the narration continuing to claim that there had been 40 years of cooling, when even its own revised graph only showed 25 years of cooling.

Continued …