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Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

2. Complete Transcript and Rebuttal

[Prof Richard Lindzen]

We’re all competing for funds; and if your field is the focus of concern, you have that much less work rationalising why your field should be funded.

2.9 “Climate Models are Inaccurate”

[Narrator]

By the 1990s, tens of billions of dollars of government funding in the US, UK and elsewhere were being diverted into research related to global warming.

[Comment 86: Because it uses vague wording (“by the 1990s”, “elsewhere”, “related to”) we are unable to verify the exact amount of funding per year they are referring to, but we know that money going towards research in global warming pales in comparison with that which goes into research on military technology or health – see Comment 116, page 97.]

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

[Narrator]	A large portion of those funds went into building computer models to forecast what the climate will be in the future. But how accurate are those models? Dr Roy Spencer is Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre. He has been awarded medals for exceptional scientific achievement from both NASA and the American Meteorological Society.
[Dr Roy Spencer]	Climate models are only as good as the assumptions that go into them, and they have hundreds of assumptions, all it takes is one assumption to be wrong, for the forecast to be way off.

[Comment 87: Spencer is correct that the models involve many assumptions, but these are made in the light of existing scientific knowledge (not at random). Moreover, not all assumptions have a big effect on the results, and there are techniques (sensitivity testing) for systematically testing which assumptions matter a lot, and which don’t matter so much. To say that “all it takes is one assumption to be wrong, for the forecast to be way off.” is therefore a considerable (and misleading) overstatement of the extent of the problem.]

(In breach of Ofcom 5.7)

[Narrator]

Climate forecasts are not new, but in the past, scientists were more modest about their ability to predict the weather. Any attempt at forecasting changes of climate, meet scepticism from the men who model the weather by computer.

[Comment 88: This statement by the narrator is highly misleading. Climatology (the study of climate, see Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/2twres) and meteorology (the study of weather, see Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/zcnfd) are two related but in practice rather different scientific disciplines.

Climatology involves the study of long-term processes, whereas meteorology is the study of shorter term weather processes and forecasting. The public is much more familiar with weather forecasts – and their uncertainty – than with climatology.

Continued …

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Section 2.9 / Comment 86: Misleading claims about amount of funding for global warming research / Comment 87: Misrepresentation of assumptions in climate modelling / Comment 88: Confusion of climate with weather]


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