Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

In addition, it was not pointed out this study was partly funded by the fossil fuel-industry–funded lobby group the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation (http://tinyurl.com/2qgy4j), as well as by the American Petroleum Institute (see the entry on the API on page 145), and by ExxonMobil. This conflict of interest should have been disclosed to the public, especially as recent peer reviewed scientific studies have demonstrated that research funded by corporations with a financial interest in the outcome are much more likely to reach the desired conclusions than are studies which don’t receive such funding (for more details see Appendix C.1.3, page 127).

Finally, it was not disclosed that Dr Soon is linked to numerous lobby groups that are funded by the fossil fuel industry (see the entry on Dr Soon on page 138), creating an additional conflict of interest.]

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

Greenhouse Effect Conspiracy Theory

[Comment 66: The narrator’s rhetorical question only makes sense in the context of the wholly misleading account the programme offers of climate change science. Certainly there has been a marked increase in news media coverage of climate change in Britain since early 2005. Most of this coverage has come to reflect the summary findings of the IPCC, the most ambitious scientific peer review process in history, and an allied increase in the political potency of the issue. In the severely constrained world of print and broadcast news media, climate change science and policy is no longer summarised as a ‘pro versus con’ story concerning climate science, but is now reported in ways that much more accurately reflect the state of both scientific and political debate (see Andreadis and Smith, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/yv2wt3).

Such statements by the narrator are intended to unsettle this development in climate change representations. This would be acceptable and part of normal public and academic debate if the conventions of public and academic debate were observed in the programme’s representations of the science.]

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

[Comment 67: The following narrative is actually a gross distortion of the history of global warming and climatology. A more accurate and scholarly introduction can be found at “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart, Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics (http://tinyurl.com/yvnd7p).]

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