Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

[Comment 113: This allegation that that IPCC Working Group II reports do not consider any of the peer reviewed literature by any genuine specialists in any of the fields that it covers is clearly false: in the chapter on Human Health in the Third Assessment Report, the reference list runs to nearly 7 pages of citations of peer reviewed scientific papers by specialists, and three of the references are to Paul Reiter’s own work (see IPCC TAR WG 2 p.483, http://tinyurl.com/35gb3m).

The chapter discusses the possibility that recent increases in highland malaria might have been caused by global warming and concludes on p.465 that “there are insufficient historical data on malaria distribution and activity to determine the role of warming, if any, in the recent resurgence of malaria in the highlands of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia” (see http://tinyurl.com/2xmwx4). Thus the conclusions in the IPCC report are cautious and the criticisms Reiter makes here are factually incorrect.

Reiter must be well aware of the above, as it is all in the public domain, so the above statement by him was an apparent attempt to mislead the public.

In addition, see the statement by former IPCC co-Chair Professor James McCarthy at http://tinyurl.com/yqyego (PDF), describing how the IPCC processes actually work. It is difficult to see how the film’s position on the IPCC processes can credibly be maintained in the light of this document; and the fact that the IPCC was not given a chance to respond to the very serious allegations made against it by Reiter in the Channel 4 programme is a clear breach of Section 7 of the Ofcom Code.]

(In breach of the 2003 Communications Act Section 265, Ofcom 5.7, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11)

[Cut to zoomed in on-screen display of Wall Street Journal article.]