The following letter of complaint to Ofcom was written by our friend Josie Wexler and is published here with her kind permission. It raises a plethora of objections to Channel 4's 8th March 2007 screening of The Great Global Warming Swindle by documentary-maker Martin Durkin.

I found it depressing watching. I hope Ofcom takes action against Channel 4 over this, for the reasons Josie articulates so well. However, I suspect the screening has already done its damage: it is now being cited triumphantly on the blogs of those in climate-change denial.

From:	Josie Wexler, [...] Sheffield
To:	OFFCOM, Riverside House, 2a Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 9HA http://www.ofcom.org.uk/
Date:	25/03/07

Dear Ofcom,

I am making a formal complaint about the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

This program was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public on a matter of grave importance. I believe it to have been in violation of the Broadcasting code clauses: 5.5, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11, 5.12, 7.1, 7.6, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11 and 7.13.

The director Martin Durkin is well known for his unscrupulous approach as shown by the fact that he has a previous ruling against him for his programme “Against Nature.” And yet despite having had to apologise for broadcasting this Channel 4 have now broadcast another of his programmes on the same subject without warning the public.

The specifics of my complaint are as follows:

Breach of clause 5.5: Man-made climate change is clearly a matter of industrial, political and public policy controversy. The Great Global Warming Swindle failed to show due impartiality towards the science of climate change and failed to represent opposing views. The Great Global Warming Swindle is not part of any series on the science of climate change that I have been able to identify. The commissioning editor claimed on the radio that the programme is part of a series constituted by it and the Dispatches titled “Greenwash” the week before. However these do not address the same subject (the Dispatches concerned the quantity of carbon dioxide we are emitting, not the science of climate change) and so the Dispatches can hardly be said to balance this programme. Please see below for further details.

Breach of clause 5.7: The Great Global Warming Swindle repeatedly misrepresented views and facts. Please see below for details.

Breach of clause 5.8: The career track record of Martin Durkin was at no point explained to viewers nor was he introduced nor did Channel 4 add a caveat to the programme.

Breach of clause 5.9: The programme comprised personal views (presented in the guise of facts) and no balancing views were included.

Breach of clause 5.10: The personal views in The Great Global Warming Swindle were not signalled as such.

Breach of clauses 5.11 and 5.12: Climate change is clearly a matter “of national, and international, importance” and Channel 4 should be heavily censured for failing to apply the Code in this context.

Breach of clause 7.1: The Broadcaster treated the IPCC and many other organisations very unfairly. More details are given below.

Breach of clause 7.6: The programme was edited to unfairly represent Carl Wunch’s contributions. Please see below for details.

Breach of clauses 7.9 and 7.10: Facts, material and otherwise were throughout presented, disregarded and omitted in a way that is unfair to many individual scientists and many organisations. This was quite clearly done deliberately, using such methods as the doctoring of graphs. Please see below.

Breach of clause 7.11: The programme alleged extreme wrongdoing and incompetence on behalf of many individuals and professional bodies. It alleged that the mass of scientists have conspired to deceive the entire international community on climate science as well as making a string of incompetent simple errors. No one accused was given any opportunity to respond.

Breach of clause 7.13: Views of scientists and environmentalists were portrayed throughout in an unfair manner.

Further Details

Regarding clause 7.6: Carl Wunch’s first appearance on the programme was shown in such a way as to suggest that he was arguing that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is not a serious threat because carbon dioxide exists in the oceans in large quantities. Carl Wunch is known not to believe this. He has since stated categorically that he does not believe this, was deceived by the programme makers and that the programme was edited to suggest that he was saying diametrically the opposite to what he was actually saying, which is how dangerous human influence could be as it could lead to the oceans releasing their carbon dioxide, therefore amplifying the man-made warming by causing positive feedback.

In his second appearance he talked about the Thermohaline Circulation (popularly known as the Gulf Stream, but because few members of the public know the other term they would be unlikely to pick up on what he was talking about) and how hypotheses about how it might shut down as a result of global warming may have been exaggerated. (The current mainstream scientific thought on this is that this is unlikely to happen) but this was edited in such a way as to suggest that he was talking about man-made global warming in general. Wunch was again supporting the mainstream scientific consensus, not opposing it.

Regarding clause 7.11: Those that the voiceover baldly accused of being liars includes every major institute that deals with climate related science, and amongst many others it includes the national scientific academies (or equivalent) of the UK, France, Germany, India, China, Brazil, Japan, Russia, Canada, Italy, Sweden, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Caribbean, Indonesia and the United States, and thousands of individuals.

Regarding clause 5.7: “Views and facts must not be misrepresented”; 5.11: “due impartiality must be preserved” etc. and clauses 5.5, 5.9, 5.10, 5.12, 7.1, 7.9, 7.10 and 7.13

1. In order to support its argument the programme voiceover stated that volcanoes emit more Carbon Dioxide every year than is released from anthropogenic sources. This is false by a factor of over a hundred. The appearance of this remarkably naive blunder indicates how the voiceover has simply recycled propaganda from a small selection of web sites. This is not a minor detail because accepting it would involve big changes to another branch of Earth Science concerned with the carbon cycle.
   The voiceover further stated that the oceans are the biggest source of carbon dioxide. The oceans absorb more carbon dioxide than they give out.
2. Regarding some of the graphs shown in the programme in order of appearance:
   • Graphs 1 and 2 — Temperature over 1000 years and temperature over 10000 years: These are old graphs from 1990 and the programme used them to argue that the climate was warmer than it is today during the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene Climatic Optimum. These graphs have since been corrected in light of new research and the up to date data shows the opposite. Up to date graphs are easily available.
   • Graph 3 — World temperature over 120 years: This graph was a doctored version of a graph presented in a publication of the “petition project”, from a very controversial organisation although it was falsely captioned in the programme as being from NASA. The version shown in the programme had had the X-axis stretched. This is scientific fraud.
   • Graph 4 — Temperature and solar activity: This graph stopped in 1980. It is the data from 1980 onwards that contradicts the contention of the programme. This data is readily available and so stopping the graph in 1980 can be seen as a deliberate fraud.
3. The programme voiceover stated that since 1940 the temperature has fallen for four decades and risen for three. This is false. The evidence presented for it in the programme was their faked graph. (Graph 3)
4. The programme falsely identified at least one of the interviewees. Tim Ball was captioned as a Professor at the Dept of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg. Ball taught Geography at the University of Winnipeg until he left in 1996. He has not been affiliated to any University since, and he was not offered an “Emeritus” title. As far as I have been able to discover the University of Winnipeg does not have a department of Climatology. It has been suggested that several more of the interviewees were falsely captioned but I have not had time to look into this matter.
5. The voiceover stated that it would describe how global warming theory came about and then presented material suggesting that it was started in the 1970s. Nobel Prize winning scientist Svante Arrhenius brought out the first quantitative estimates of man-made global warming in 1895.
6. The Programme misrepresented the views of scientists and others in ways including the following:
   • It was stated that climate scientists ignore solar changes. The solar changes are a major part of the mainstream theory.
   • The period of cooling between 1940 and 1970 was presented as being unaccounted for by the mainstream theory. The mainstream scientific community has long ago explained this as being the result of aerosols. This was not mentioned. (The cooling was also exaggerated through the use of a doctored graph as detailed above)
   • It was stated in the programme that parts of the troposphere are not warming at the rate that the mainstream theory suggests they should. It was not mentioned that the mainstream scientific community consider this issue resolved as the data it was based on was found to be faulty. John Christie, interviewed on the subject in the programme, himself authored a paper agreeing that his findings (the initial data) were incorrect. This was not mentioned.
   • The programme presented the time lag between warming and CO2 rise thousands of years in the past as being unaccounted for by the mainstream theory. Again, the scientific community has long ago accounted for this. This was not mentioned.
   • The voiceover stated that “all models assume that the main cause of Global warming is CO2” In fact much of the last 10 or 15 years of international scientific research have been devoted to the “Attribution Problem” which involves sharing out the causes to solar, CO2, spontaneous etc. through constructing models involving all or some of these. The programme simply denied the existence of all this research, replacing it with the word “assume”.
   • Nigel Calder stated in the programme that mainstream scientific opinion in the 1970s was that there was going to be a new Ice Age. Nigel Calder was one of the main journalists responsible for creating this scare and it was never mainstream amongst scientists. His role was not mentioned and no balancing voices were included.
7. The Program was imbalanced and distorting in many ways including the following:
   • All the interviewees (with the exception of Carl Wunch who was discussed earlier) are very well known as the main members of a small group campaigning against a scientific consensus of thousands. The minority of them who have ever published in the area of climate science have all been at the centre of great controversy, their views and findings considered discredited or demonstrably false amongst the scientific community at large. Several work for organisations that have received large sums of money from fuel companies known to be funding organisations to campaign against and misrepresent the scientific consensus. (With regard to this funding please see for example The Royal Society’s recent letter to ExxonMobil regarding its funding of bodies who are misrepresenting climate science.) None of this was signalled to the audience.
   • Paul Reiter was shown saying that he knows many scientists who resigned from the IPCC. What was not mentioned is that no scientist resigned or even complained about anything that occurred in the IPCC Working Group I, which is the part dealing with the science of what is causing global warming. There were some disputes within Working Group 2, which deals with the likely impacts. However this was presented in the programme as if it concerned the IPCC’s conclusion about what is causing global warming, the part dealt with by Group I.
   • The programme stated that those attempting to cut anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are attempting to try to prevent Africa from developing. The Kyoto agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions exempts developing nations. This was not mentioned.

Conclusion

There is nothing wrong with Channel Four airing an alternative point of view. However Channel Four has not aired an alternative point of view, it has made a deliberate attempt to mislead which is made up of a slick mixture of imbalance, distortion and outright lies to which nobody has been given the chance to respond. Objecting to the propagation of falsehoods can hardly be considered censorship. It equally does no favours to any genuine sceptical arguments that there might be, or anyone interested in truth, to present a mass of misinformation and fraudulent material in this fashion. Doing so is especially serious given the gravity of the subject. I therefore urge you to take this matter extremely seriously.

Yours Faithfully
Josie Wexler

The following people wish to add their names in support of the content of this complaint:
[full address details removed here to rotect privacy]

• Dr James Boswell, Sheffield
• Helena Davenport, Sheffield

Broadcasting Code clauses referred to:

5.5 Due impartiality on matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy must be preserved on the part of any person providing a service (listed above). This may be achieved within a programme or over a series of programmes taken as a whole.

Meaning of “series of programmes taken as a whole“:

This means more than one programme in the same service, editorially linked, dealing with the same or related issues within an appropriate period and aimed at a like audience. A series can include, for example, a strand, or two programmes (such as a drama and a debate about the drama) or a ‘cluster’ or ‘season’ of programmes on the same subject.

5.7 Views and facts must not be misrepresented. Views must also be presented with due weight over appropriate timeframes.

5.8 Any personal interest of a reporter or presenter, which would call into question the due impartiality of the programme, must be made clear to the audience.

5.9 Presenters and reporters (with the exception of news presenters and reporters in news programmes), presenters of “personal view” or “authored” programmes or items, and chairs of discussion programmes may express their own views on matters of political or industrial controversy or matters relating to current public policy. However alternative viewpoints must be adequately represented either in the programme, or in a series of programmes taken as a whole. Additionally, presenters must not use the advantage of regular appearances to promote their views in a way that compromises the requirement for due impartiality. Presenter phone-ins must encourage and must not exclude alternative views.

5.10 A personal view or authored programme or item must be clearly signalled to the audience at the outset. This is a minimum requirement and may not be sufficient in all circumstances. (Personality phone-in hosts on radio are exempted from this provision unless their personal view status is unclear.)

Meaning of “personal view” and “authored”:

“Personal view” programmes are programmes presenting a particular view or perspective. Personal view programmes can range from the outright expression of highly partial views, for example by a person who is a member of a lobby group and is campaigning on the subject, to the considered “authored” opinion of a journalist, commentator or academic, with professional expertise or a specialism in an area which enables her or him to express opinions which are not necessarily mainstream.

Matters of major political or industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy

5.11 In addition to the rules above, due impartiality must be preserved on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy by the person providing a service (listed above) in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes.

Meaning of “matters of major political or industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy”:

These will vary according to events but are generally matters of political or industrial controversy or matters of current public policy which are of national, and often international, importance, or are of similar significance within a smaller broadcast area.

5.12 In dealing with matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes. Views and facts must not be misrepresented.

7.1 Broadcasters must avoid unjust or unfair treatment of individuals or organisations in programmes.

7.6 When a programme is edited, contributions should be represented fairly.

7.9 Before broadcasting a factual programme, including programmes examining past events, broadcasters should take reasonable care to satisfy themselves that:
material facts have not been presented, disregarded or omitted in a way that is unfair to an individual or organisation; and
anyone whose omission could be unfair to an individual or organisation has been offered an opportunity to contribute.

7.10 Programmes — such as dramas and factually-based dramas — should not portray facts, events, individuals or organisations in a way which is unfair to an individual or organisation.

7.11 If a programme alleges wrongdoing or incompetence or makes other significant allegations, those concerned should normally be given an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond.

7.13 Where it is appropriate to represent the views of a person or organisation that is not participating in the programme, this must be done in a fair manner.

[ends]

Further reading

These resources aren't offered as proof positive of the inadequacies of the Great Global Warming Swindle — but just in case you felt you needed even just a little bit of a balancing argument after watching the ducumentary ;)

• Carl Wunsch: I should never have trusted Channel 4 (The Independant Newspaper)
• Channel 4’s Problem with Science (George Monbiot)
• The real global warming swindle — "A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors" (The Independant Newspaper)
• NASA: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (Detail: Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change)
• Global Temperature Record, compiled jointly by the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit and the UK Met. Office Hadley Centre
• Ecologist response to Channel 4's Great 'Global Warming Swindle'
• The Great Channel Four Swindle (climatedenial.org)