Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

A total of 129 breaches fell into this category, although we have grouped related breaches; and for the purposes of this complaint we consider them to collectively constitute 32 serious breaches: see Appendix A.2,page 118 for details.

Grouping of Breaches which, Considered Individually, May be “Minor” but which, when Considered as a Group, are Serious Breaches

There are three categories of breach in which, if each code transgression in these categories were to be considered in isolation, they might be considered too minor to justify their inclusion in this complaint: yet each breach is misleading and together they create an overall misleading picture.

We are therefore treating these categories as being three serious breaches, rather than a much larger number of more minor ones.

A full analysis of which “Comment numbers” (transgressions) fall into which of these three categories can be found in Appendix A.3, page 121.

Lack of Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest

The programme presented three of its interviewees stating that they have never received funding from oil companies (see Comment 118, page 98) – and attempted to mislead the viewer into believing that the programme was therefore free from lobby-group bias. In fact ten of its interviewees have been funded directly or indirectly by the fossil fuel industry, or work with fossil fuel industry-funded lobby groups that actively campaign against policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – including Tim Ball, who denied in the programme that he had ever received such funding. Five of these ten have received direct funding from the fossil fuel industry to lobby on its behalf. This information is all in the public domain, and the details are documented here in Appendix C: page 126.

In addition, the narrator attempted to mislead viewers into believing that the only funding Patrick Michaels has received from the fossil fuel industry was a research grant from the coal industry; and also that one would have to be a “climate campaigner” in order to object to the industry funding he has received (see Comment 119, page 99). In fact he has received direct funding from six fossil fuel organisations to lobby on their behalf and is involved with twelve lobby groups that campaign against policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (see Appendix C.11, page 136).

It was also not mentioned that there is considerable peer-reviewed evidence that studies funded by corporations that have a financial interest in the their outcome are much more likely to reach the desired conclusions than those which aren’t (see Appendix C.1.3, page 127); so the assertion by the programme that only extremist activists could object to the fact that some of his climate research has been funded by the fossil fuel industry was misleading.