Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

Not only was the excerpt used to make false associations with all other media coverage of the issue; it was also an inaccurate representation of the programme that it edited the sequence from.

Lord Lawson’s reference to intolerance of dissenting voices is at odds with the fact that he contributed to a House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee enquiry that published a sceptical report on climate change timed to coincide with preparations for the 2005 G8 conference. The Report won an enormous body of media coverage (see Google News: http://tinyurl.com/226hx7). The suggestion that media reporting of climate change has been “fantastically apocalyptic” is at odds with the fact that, just considering print news media, the range of journalists considering how people might adapt to, or even profit from, climate change have ranged from gardening and food correspondents to economics and business. In other words, the media are beginning to find ways of exploring the more incremental business of learning to live with climate change.

Moreover, many climate scientists, including IPCC authors, see the IPCC process as producing excessively conservative summaries (see for example the International Herald Tribune: http://tinyurl.com/2ly8ke and the BBC: http://tinyurl.com/2us82e); and yet media coverage of climate science has concentrated almost exclusively on IPCC estimates.

In addition, by showing footage of an anti-capitalist activist in amongst these claims about the press, the film is attempting to associate in the viewers mind anti-capitalism, climate change science and media decision-making in a profoundly misleading manner.]

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

[Comment 14: With regard to the narrator’s statement that Shaviv, Clark and Corbyn are “senior climate scientists”, see Comment 4, page 14, Comment 7, page 15 and Comment 15, below.

Shaviv and Clark’s comments neglect the strong positive correlation between CO₂ and temperature in the palaeoclimate record over multi-millennial time periods.

Continued …