Complaint to Ofcom Regarding The Great Global Warming Swindle

2. Complete Transcript and Rebuttal

Page 75

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For example, in December in the Northern Hemisphere, we may not know for sure what the temperature will be tomorrow (weather). But we do know that the temperature will almost certainly be higher in July than it is in December (climate); and that it will almost certainly be higher in Kenya than in Alaska (climate).

See a further discussion on why the climate can be predicted at Realclimate: http://tinyurl.com/oet3t.

It is inconceivable that the narrator was unaware of the difference between weather and climate; so by exploiting the fact that this difference is not well known amongst the general public, the narrator was clearly setting out to mislead the programmes viewers about the ability to predict climate.]

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

[Cut to film clip from 1974 BBC documentary The Weather Machine]

In making decisions that affect people, a bad prediction as to what the climate of the future will be can be far worse than none at all. Im afraid that our understanding of the complex weather machine is not yet good enough to make a reliable statement of the future.

[Comment 89: This statement is apparently intentionally highly misleading; partly because it confuses weather with climate (see Comment 88); and partly because it is referring to 1974. Sophisticated climate models were only developed in the late 1980s, so they did not exist in 1974. Moreover, they have improved dramatically in both sophistication and accuracy since then, through both improved fundamental understanding and increased computing power, as an outcome of the increased investment in climate research that is subsequently criticised by the Channel 4 programme (see section 2.13, page 97).]

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

[Narrator]

All models assume that man-made CO2 is the main cause of climate change, rather than the Sun or the clouds.

[Comment 90: In fact, models do not assume this. The main factors influencing the climate are inputs in the models, and the predictions for different combinations of the factors are compared to observations. This is the basis of attribution and detection studies (http://tinyurl.com/34a883 [NOAA]) which has been subject to much research in recent years. The models show (http://tinyurl.com/2v4x2t [IPCC]) that the global warming over the past few decades cannot be explained by natural factors alone, although they also show that natural factors are important (http://tinyurl.com/2f8vam [Global Warming Art]).

Continued …


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Comment 89: Failure to mention advances in science since 1974 / Comment 90: False claims about what models assume]

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Page 75 of 176

Final Revision

Last updated: 11 Jun 2007