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22 July 2008 Blog Home : July 2008 : Permalink

The Great Glabal Warming Swindle not a Swindle

As reported at The Register and the Torygraph, UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom (the FCC equivalent) has decided that Channel 4's controversial program The Great Global Warming Swindle was not itself a swindle that would mislead the public. A detailed analysis of the decision at ClimateAudit spells out the verdict ans notes, as have others, that the BBC (and the Grauniad and no doubt others) insist on grasping at straws to deny the fact that Ofcom did not hold up their main demands.

The main demand being apparently to burn the C4 program producers etc. at the stake as HERETICS! On the other hand the related Torygraph's opinion piece also points out that Ofcom could (and arguably should) have been more robust in its dismissal:

The programme was actually polemical and since when are polemics supposed to be impartial?

Yet for daring to suggest that there is no proven link between human activity and global warming (not least because there has been a marked atmospheric cooling in recent years), the programme makers were deluged with protests in what looked suspiciously like an orchestrated operation by the true believers. One complaint was 188 pages long and alleged 137 breaches of the Broadcasting Code.

Yet while Ofcom ruled that its rules on partiality had been broken, it also concluded that that this did not lead to viewers being “materially misled”.

In other words, the programme makers had sought to debunk a cherished theory by challenging an orthodox view, yet did so in a way that did not mislead the viewer. So what exactly is the problem?

The subsequent comparison with the Goracle's Inconvenient Truthyness is well noted. It seems some people believe polemics are only permitted on one side of the argument. This is not healthy for science or policymaking.