Complaint to Ofcom Regarding The Great Global Warming Swindle

2. Complete Transcript and Rebuttal

Page 107

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This is especially the case for climate change, because reduction in emissions will only reduce climate change significantly in 30 years plus, usually considered to be 50-100 years. Given that there is credible evidence that climate change is occurring and that it is largely caused by mankinds emissions, the precautionary principle says that we should act now, because of the large risks involved. See the Stern Review, Executive Summary, p1, The benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs (http://tinyurl.com/vgzxv).

The program is also incorrect here in that much of the debate on mitigation is about how to square fossil fuel use with climate change. Hence the emphasis on carbon capture and storage technologies because of the acknowledged impossibility of asking China, India et al to stop using coal. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are not fundamentally opposed to carbon capture technology for this reason, although both stress the importance of implementing serious measures immediately in order to reduce emissions, rather than waiting for future technologies to come online (see http://tinyurl.com/ywtxwl [Greenpeace] and http://tinyurl.com/37g53x, PDF [Friends of the Earth]).

In addition, to dismiss the concept of the precautionary principle is, in effect, to dismiss the entire concept of taking out insurance. All sensible governments, businesses and individuals take out insurance against small but potentially very serious risks, such as fires. Home and car owners have to take out insurance by law. For the film to imply otherwise is a serous misrepresentation of the facts.

Finally, as discussed in Comment 40, page 33, the idea that anyone is suggesting that we should not use technology is a fallacy, and is apparently intentionally misleading.]

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

[Cut to scene in small mud hut somewhere in Kenya]

[Narrator]

Anne Mougella is about to cook a meal for her children. She is one of the two billion people – a third of the worlds population – who have no access to electricity. Instead they must burn wood or dried animal dung in their homes. The indoor smoke this creates is the deadliest form of pollution in the world. According to the World Health Organisation, 4 million children under the age of five die each year from respiratory diseases caused by indoor smoke; and many millions of women die early from cancer and lung disease, for the same reason.

[Comment 126: The four million children figure appears to have been made up by the film-maker – the World Health Organisation fact sheet gives a total figure of 1.6 million people per year: http://tinyurl.com/258364.

Continued …


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Comment 126: WHO figures on respiratory diseases]

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Page 107 of 176

Final Revision

Last updated: 11 Jun 2007