Extracts from Ofcom Complaint, by Category: Misrepresentation of People’s Views

Misrepresentations of the Views of Most Climatologists

[Because no individual climatologists were named in this section of the film, it was considered by the Standards Division of Ofcom, and not by the Fairness Division.]

[Comment 35: The narrator is trying to make the public believe that previous warming and cooling periods have been overlooked by climatologists; and they are therefore mistaken in their theory of greenhouse warming. Yet the entire field of palaeoclimatology is a study of historical climates. The documentary makers actually make reference to these historical climate studies in discussing ice-core data, so they must be aware that climatologists are aware that the climate is always changing. For the narrator to try to mislead viewers in this way is a clear breach of the Broadcasting Code.]

(In breach of the 2003 Communications Act Section 265, Ofcom 5.4, 5.5, 5.7, 5.11, 5.12, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.6, 7.9, 7.14)

[Comment 77: The implied idea that the world’s climatologists, many of whom are based in the US and are financed by US government funds, are motivated by a view of the US as being “great Satan”, is a logical fallacy as well as being a slander.]

(In breach of Ofcom 5.7, 5.10, 7.11)

[Comment 82: The great majority of the diverse research communities that have been drawn to research climate change have had no direct engagement with either media or politics: indeed many have sought to clearly mark out the distance between their research and popular and political debate. This has been seen as a factor in delaying widespread public understanding and engagement with climate change as an issue (see Smith 2005, http://tinyurl.com/2cm7qt).

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