Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

More importantly, to suggest that because “the world didn’t come to a crunching halt” during the Holocene Maximum, we should not be concerned about the effects of warming on current ecosystems and economies is highly misleading. The ecosystems and economies of today are not the same as those of 7–8000 years ago: the global population is much larger and societies live in built-up environments. For an assessment of how future warming is likely to impact economies and ecosystems during the 21st century, see the IPCC Third Assessment Report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability at http://tinyurl.com/hu7dr.

Moreover, although most climate simulations end in 2100, neither carbon emissions nor global warming will stop then, but will most likely continue for several centuries thereafter; so that temperatures well in excess of those of the mid-Holocene optimum are likely eventually, unless carbon emissions are successfully reduced by a large amount.]

(In breach of Ofcom 5.7)

[Comment 103: While it is true that over very long time periods the ice caps do indeed expand and contract as global temperatures rise and fall, they do not spontaneously expand or contract without any cause: they expand when temperature trends are downwards and they contract when temperature trends are upwards. They are currently contracting very rapidly year on year – see the NSIDC graph at: http://tinyurl.com/2yyjhs – which is what one would expect to happen during warming. Thus the narrator’s statement above is both meaningless and deeply misleading.]

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

[Comment 104: The video played on the programme at this point, illustrating this “huge natural expansion and contraction of the polar sea ice” is deeply misleading. In fact, the variation that the film shows is simply the seasonal cycle: the ice melts and shrinks during the summer, and expands again during the winter (see http://tinyurl.com/yvkbkh [NASA] for a similar video).

The important issue regarding Arctic sea ice levels is the year-on-year changes, not seasonal changes; and although year-on-year changes do show some natural variability, there has been a strong decreasing trend in recent years (see the NASA video at: http://tinyurl.com/ysjyns, and the NSIDC graph at: http://tinyurl.com/2yyjhs).

Continued …