On 3/19/07, PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's certainly entertaining but also far from accurate. A true
> 'swindle' by Channel 4. What worries me is that people will be easily
> misled by this kind of scientific sounding nonsense when the facts are
> quite the contrary.
>
> Too bad
They also misrepresented themselves to those who they interviewed much like
Coral Ridge did to Francis Collins last summer. In short, they have zero
credibility and the swindle is by Wag TV.
http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/responseto_channel4.htm
Partial Response to the London Channel 4 Film "The Great Global Warming
Swindle"
Carl Wunsch 11 March 2007
I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has
a major human-induced component. But I have tried to stay out of the climate
wars because all nuance tends to be lost, and the distinction between what
we know firmly, as scientists, and what we suspect is happening, is so
difficult to maintain in the presence of rhetorical excess.? In the long
run, our credibility as scientists rests on being very careful of, and
protective of, our authority and expertise.
The science of climate change remains incomplete. Some elements are based so
firmly on well-understood principles, or on such clear observational
records, that most scientists would agree that they are almost surely true
(adding CO2 to the atmosphere is dangerous; sea level will continue to
rise,...). Other elements remain more uncertain, but
we as scientists in our roles as informed citizens believe society should be
deeply concerned about their possibility: a mid-western US megadrought in
100 years; melting of a large part of the Greenland ice sheet, among many
other examples.
I am on record in a number of places as complaining about the
over-dramatization and unwarranted extrapolation of scientific facts. Thus
the notion that the Gulf Stream would or could "shut off" or that with
global warming Britain would go into a "new ice age" are either
scientifically impossible or so unlikely as to threaten our credibility as a
scientific discipline if we proclaim their reality. They also are huge
distractions from more immediate and realistic threats. I've focussed more
on the extreme claims in the literature warning of coming catastrophe, both
because I regard the scientists there as more serious, and because I am very
sympathetic to the goals of those who sometimes seem, however, to be
confusing their specific scientific knowledge with their worries about the
future.
When approached by WagTV, on behalf of Channel 4, known to me as one of the
main UK independent broadcasters, I was led to believe that I would be given
an opportunity to explain why I, like some others, find the statements at
both extremes of the global change debate distasteful. I am, after all a
teacher, and this seemed like a good opportunity to explain why, for
example, I thought more attention should be paid to sea level rise, which is
ongoing and unstoppable and carries a real threat of acceleration, than to
the unsupportable claims that the ocean circulation was undergoing shutdown
(Nature, December 2005).
I wanted to explain why observing the ocean was so difficult, and why it is
so tricky to predict with any degree of confidence such important climate
elements as its heat and carbon storage and transports in 10 or 100 years. I
am distrustful of prediction scenarios for details of the ocean circulation
that rely on extremely complicated coupled models that must run
unconstrained by observations for decades to thousands of years. The science
is not sufficiently mature to say which of the many complex elements of such
forecasts are skillful. Nonetheless, and contrary to the impression given in
the film, I firmly believe there is a great deal about the mechanisms of
climate to be learned from models. With effort, all of this ambiguity is
explicable to the public.
In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the
ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where
it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be
dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its
placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide
exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be
very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was making---which
is that global warming is both real and threatening.
Many of us feel an obligation to talk to the media---it's part of our role
as scientists, citizens, and educators. The subjects are complicated, and it
is easy to be misquoted or quoted out context. My experience in the past is
that these things do happen, but usually
inadvertently---most reporters really do want to get it right.
Channel 4 now says they were making a film in a series of "polemics". There
is nothing in the communication we had (much of it on the telephone or with
the film crew on the day they were in Boston) that suggested they were
making a film that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading. I took
them at face value---a great error. I knew I had no control over the actual
content, but it never occurred to me that I was dealing with people who
would deliberately distort my views.
The letter I sent them as soon as I heard about the actual program is below.
As a society, we need to take out insurance against catastrophe in the same
way we take out homeowner's protection against fire. I buy fire insurance,
but I also take the precaution of having the wiring in the house checked,
keeping the heating system up to date, etc., all the while hoping that I
won't need the insurance. Will any of these precautions work? Unexpected
things still happen (lightning strike? plumber's torch igniting the
woodwork?). How large a fire insurance premium is it worth paying? How much
is it worth paying for rewiring the house? $10,000? but? perhaps not
$100,000? Answers, even at this mundane level, are not obvious.
How much is it worth to society to restrain CO2 emissions---will that
guarantee protection against global warming? Is it sensible to subsidize
insurance for people who wish to build in regions strongly susceptible to
coastal flooding? These and others are truly complicated questions where
often the science is not mature enough give definitive answers, much as we
would like to be able to provide them. Scientifically, we can recognize the
reality of the threat, and much of what? society needs to insure against.
Statements of concern do not need to imply that we have all the answers.
Channel 4 had an opportunity to elucidate some of this ambiguity and
complexity. The outcome is sad.
I am often asked about Al Gore and his film. I don't know Gore, but he
strikes me as a very intelligent man who is seriously concerned about what
global change will mean for the world. He is a lawyer/politician, not a
scientist, but he has clearly worked hard to master a very complicated
subject and to convey his worries to the public. Some of the details in the
film make me cringe, but I think the overall thrust is appropriate. To the
extent that he has gotten some things wrong, I mainly fault his scientific
advisers, who should know better, but not Al Gore.
In general, good scientists (unlike lawyers) are meant to keep in mind at
all times that conceivably they are wrong. There is a very wide spectrum of
scientific knowledge ranging from the almost certain, e.g. that the sun will
indeed rise tomorrow, or that no physical object can move faster than the
speed of light; to inferences that seem very plausible but for which one can
more readily imagine ways in which they might prove incorrect (e.g., that
melting of the Greenland ice cap means that sea level will rise); to
fiercely disputed ideas (e.g., that variations in the North Atlantic
circulation directly control the climate of the northern hemisphere). Most
of us draw conclusions that seem to us the most compelling, but try hard to
maintain an open mind about counter arguments or new observations that could
prove us wrong. Reducing the extremely complicated discussion of future
climate change to the cartoon level we see on both extremes is somewhat like
making public policy on the basis of a Batman movie.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Mr. Steven Green
Head of Production
Wag TV
2D Leroy House
436 Essex Road
London N1 3QP
10 March 2007
Dear Mr. Green:
I am writing to record what I told you on the telephone yesterday about
your Channel 4 film "The Global Warming Swindle." Fundamentally,
I am the one who was swindled---please read the email below that
was sent to me (and re-sent by you). Based upon this email and
subsequent telephone conversations, and discussions with
the Director, Martin Durkin, I thought I was being asked
to appear in a film that would discuss in a balanced way
the complicated elements of understanding of climate change---
in the best traditions of British television. Is there any indication
in the email evident to an outsider that the product would be
so tendentious, so unbalanced?
I was approached, as explained to me on the telephone, because
I was known to have been unhappy with some of the more excitable
climate-change? stories in the British media, most conspicuously the notion
that the Gulf
Stream could disappear, among others. When a journalist approaches me
suggesting a "critical approach" to a technical subject, as the email
states, my inference is that we
are to discuss which elements are contentious, why they are contentious,
and what the arguments are on all sides. To a scientist, "critical" does
not mean a hatchet job---it means a thorough-going examination of
the science. The scientific subjects described in the email,
and in the previous and subsequent telephone conversations, are complicated,
worthy of exploration, debate, and an educational effort with the
public. Hence my willingness to participate. Had the words "polemic", or
"swindle" appeared in these preliminary discussions, I would have
instantly declined to be involved.
I spent hours in the interview describing
many of the problems of understanding the ocean in climate change,
and the ways in which some of the more dramatic elements get
exaggerated in the media relative to more realistic, potentially
truly catastrophic issues, such as
the implications of the oncoming sea level rise. As I made clear, both in
the
preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that
global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious
discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that.
What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which
there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why
many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely
accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples,
it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one:
a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only
a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to
infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning
meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases
are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director
not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that
piece of disinformation.
An example where my own discussion was grossly distorted by context:
I am? shown explaining that a warming ocean could expel more
carbon dioxide than it absorbs -- thus exacerbating the greenhouse
gas buildup in the atmosphere and hence worrisome.? It
was used in the film, through its context, to imply
that CO2 is all natural, coming from the ocean, and that
therefore the human element is irrelevant. This use of my remarks, which
are literally what I said, comes close to fraud.
I have some experience in dealing with TV and print reporters
and do understand something of the ways in which one can be
misquoted, quoted out of context, or otherwise misinterpreted. Some
of that is inevitable in the press of time or space or in discussions of
complicated issues. Never before, however, have I had
an experience like this one. My appearance in the "Global Warming
Swindle" is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation
has been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable position in which to be.
At a minimum, I ask that the film should never be seen again publicly
with my participation included. Channel 4 surely owes an apology to
its viewers, and perhaps WAGTV owes something to Channel 4. I will be
taking advice as to whether I should proceed to make some more formal
protest.
Sincerely,
Carl Wunsch
Cecil and Ida Green Professor of
?? Physical Oceanography
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
cc: Hamish Mykura, Channel 4
(Hard copy to follow)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%5
From: jo locke
Sent: 19 September 2006 16:22
To: Carl Wunsch
Cc: Eliya Arman
Subject: Climate Change Documentary
Dear Professor Wunsch,
Many thanks for taking the time to talk to me this morning. I found it
really useful and now have the issues much clearer in my mind.
I wanted to email you to outline the approach we will be taking with our
film to clarify our position. We are making a feature length documentary
about global warming for Channel Four in the UK. The aim of the film is
to examine critically the notion that recent global warming is primarily
caused by industrial emissions of CO2.? It explores the scientific
evidence which jars with this hypothesis and explores alternative
theories such as solar induced climate change. Given the seemingly
inconclusive nature of the evidence, it examines the background to the
apparent consensus on this issue, and highlights the dangers involved,
especially to developing nations, of policies aimed at limiting
industrial growth.
We would like to do an interview with you to discuss the notion that
there is a scientific consensus on the effects of global warming on the
Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Drift.
It has been widely reported that Britain and Western Europe could soon
be plunged into a mini ice age, and we would like to show that it is
simply not true that they will shut down. We would like to talk to you
about the numerical models and whether they give us a realistic
perspective of the impact of climate change on the oceans. We would also
like to talk to you about the 'memory' of oceans, and how it can take
varying amounts of time for a disturbance to be readable in the North
Atlantic. Fundamentally, we would like to ask you whether scientists
have enough information about the complex nature of our climate system.
Do the records go back far enough to identify climate trends, and can we
conclusively separate human induced change from natural change?
Our filming schedule is still relatively fluid at the moment, but we
hope to be in Boston around the second week of November. Please don't
hesitate to contact me or my producer, Eliya Arman, if you have any
further questions, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Jo Locke
Assistant Producer
WagTV
2d Leroy House
436 Essex Road
London N1 3QP
t 020 7688 5191 f 020 7688 1702
www.wagtv.com <http://www.wagtv.com/>
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Received on Mon Mar 19 19:32:38 2007
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