Welcome. This website contains details of the most comprehensive of the complaints to the UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) regarding Channel 4’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle. The complaint was submitted to Ofcom on June 11, 2007.

This website was created for members of the public who are curious about the claims in the film. It is our hope that visitors to this site will use the objective information presented here to become better acquainted with what is known about our climate and clearer on where uncertainties remain.

Every line of script and every graphic in the film was held up to scrutiny in the complaint, revealing the film to be littered with factual errors and apparently wilful deceptions. The complaint was organised by three concerned citizens and was co-authored and peer reviewed by a group of 20 people. Some of the world’s most respected and experienced climate scientists, including former IPCC chairs and co-chairs, were involved, as were distinguished experts in epidemiology, entomology, economics, the media and renewable energy. For full details of the authors, reviewers and other contributors, please see the cover sheet, the “Acknowledgements” section, and Appendices I and J, on the “Full Complaint” menu.

Many of the misleading and inaccurate arguments present in the film have also been used elsewhere, and ultimately amount to an attack on the science of climate change itself, as well as on the mainstream science community and on the scientific method in general. We hope this website will become a useful educational resource.

The complaint is not an attack on free speech (see “About Ofcom” for more details). It was filed because the complainants believe public service broadcasters have a duty to maintain minimum journalistic standards, and that the public has a right to expect broadcasters, and especially public service broadcasters, not to set out to mislead us. Although billed as a “science documentary”, the film was in fact a slick, and very clever propaganda piece.

For this website, the complaint has been converted into html and broken down by category in order to make it as accessible as possible. Full PDF versions are also available. The menus and navigation bar at the top and bottom of each page are there for easy navigation, as are the icons near the top of each page.

If you are new to the site, a good place to start is the “About” menu. If you are an old-timer, you might want to check the What’s New page under the “About This Site” menu occasionally.

We hope you find the website useful and informative.

Dr Benjamin Santer has written on our Responses to the Ruling page:

Anyone who has children has an investment in the future – an investment in the kind of world we leave behind for our descendants. In order to take informed decisions on “what to do” about the problem of human-induced climate change, and hence on our climatic legacy, we need an informed electorate. The media play a crucial role in this process of disseminating information to the general public. They are a trusted source of information. Given their privileged position, they have a responsibility to “get the science right”, and to get the facts right, particularly on matters of significant national and international concern.

Unfortunately, Channel 4 abdicated their journalistic responsibility to give a fair and balanced picture of the current state of climate science. They presented a completely false picture of a community of climate scientists actively engaged in duping the rest of the world. Channel 4’s Great Global Warming Swindle focused on selling a bizarre conspiracy theory to the British public, rather than on doing the diligent, painstaking reporting that would have been necessary in order to improve public understanding of a complex scientific issue.