Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

[Comment 38: The “vineyards in Britain are a good proxy for temperature” argument has been shown to be a myth in many peer reviewed scientific papers, so it is extraordinary that it is still being mentioned. For example, see Realclimate: http://tinyurl.com/f6s6m; or see page 7 of the Jones/Mann report Climate Over Past Millennia http://tinyurl.com/3ck36g; and most especially, the website of the English Wine Producers: http://tinyurl.com/ypa8np – where you can see that there are over 350 vineyards in Britain today, including one in Yorkshire; whereas there were only approximately 90 vineyards in medieval times, almost all of them in monasteries. There are also vineyards in Alaska today – see http://tinyurl.com/ 2g8qog – which proves that the presence or otherwise of vineyards is very far from being a reliable proxy for temperature.

Nevertheless, other proxy evidence does indeed show a period in Medieval Europe of comparable warmth to today. However, this cannot be extended to temperatures on hemispheric or global scales (see Comment 37). In addition, European temperatures over the past millennium can be reproduced by climate models with a combination of known natural factors and human factors such as deforestation; and in the last century or so, with greenhouse gas and sulphate aerosol emissions (Goosse et al 2006, http://tinyurl.com/3bu5du, PDF). The Medieval Warm Period in Europe can therefore be fully explained by current theories of climate, and is not evidence against a recent human influence, as implied by the documentary.

Furthermore, in promoting the benefits of a warmer UK climate as an argument against the concerns over rising global temperatures, the narrator is revealing a bias by neglecting the many negative impacts that will befall the rest of the world. Some temperate countries may benefit in the short term from warmer global temperatures (although in the longer term no country is likely to benefit); but developing countries will disproportionately suffer, both by virtue of their geography, and their poverty (and inability to adapt). See for example the IPCC 2001 report at http://tinyurl.com/394n6f.]

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