Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitude and patterns of long term variability and the time-evolving pattern of forcing by, and response to, changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and land surface change. Nevertheless, the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernable influence on global climate.

This carefully worded paragraph expresses very well the scientific uncertainty that at the time still prevailed about human induced climate change. No catastrophes were described. It was also agreed by the Working Group that the outcome of the discussions, in particular the statements made by the Principle Lead Authors of the chapter at the session, should be reflected in the modifications of the report to include the gist of the discussions at the session and in order to ascertain consistency between the Summary for Policy Makers and the bulk report presented to the session by the Lead Authors’ team. It was also agreed that any objections that might arise before the IPCC Plenary Session in Rome (three weeks later) should be brought forward at that later time. No such later requests for change were made and the Summary for Policy Makers had therefore been unanimously agreed.

I readily verify that the description of the course of events in 1996 is correct but wishes also to draw the attention to another initiative taken by Professor Seitz in April 1998 in the form of a Petition that was circulated widely across the US with the aim to prevent the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The project was supported by an eight pages review of the “global warming” issue that had been prepared by four researchers at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and it was claimed that the petition had been signed by about 15,000 scientists. None of the authors had previously published anything dealing with the climate change issue, nor had the article appeared in any peer-reviewed journal. It was, however, printed with a lay-out that was identical to the one used in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), presumably with the intension to enhance its credibility amongst potential supporters. The Academy took, however, the extraordinary step of disassociating itself from the initiative of one of its former presidents, expressing the view that the article “does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy”. A closer look at the endless list of names also revealed that few of those that had signed were working in the field of climatology and hardly anyone, as far as I know, was a leading scientist in the field. Actually, a large majority was laymen and had very little knowledge about the issue at stake. This indeed shows the lack of trustworthiness of the George Marshall Institute and its head Professor Fredrick Seitz.