I came across this extremely interesting quote from a letter from Bob Ward *to* Al Gore:

“I note that your inspirational address to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical
Union in San Francisco included a call for research scientists to engage more in the
public debate about climate change. I hope you will continue to support climate
researchers in this way and will speak out in their defence if they are subject to insidious
attempts to intimidate them into silence.”

http://www.researchresearch.com/media/pdf/Gore2685.pdf

I don’t know Bob Ward, but my guess is that he wouldn’t see any similarity between filing a complaint with a governmental regulatory agency regarding Wag TV and Michael Durkin and “…attempts to intimidate them into silence.”

Thanks for your comments. Governments are not the only entities with views on the role of public participation in political debates.

Bob Ward began by stating in his letter that he and his co-signatories:

“object to plans by Wag TV to distribute DVD versions of the programme ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’”

In his comment here he takes a more reasonable position:

“To me, success would be for everybody who is exposed to the misrepresentations in the programme to at least be aware of them.”

If that is indeed success, it is a worthwhile aim that I have no objection to, but it seems that Mr. Ward has succeeded only in redirecting attention from the “Swindle” to his letter, which surely could not have been the goal.

Thanks!

I believe Roger mischaracterizes the show by saying: “The show, which I have not seen, purportedly debunks the science behind climate change.”

I have seen the show and I believe that they are not debunking the science but demonstrating that it is not as settled as some would have us believe. Not really what I would call debunking.

They presented scientists whose opinions are outside the concensus and then suggests like Lomborg that there may be other priorities and that if we go on pretending this issue is the big one we will cause real harm in the third world. Spin it as you must.

I take offense at Sedgemore’s remark: “You can take it that I have little time for Mr Durkin or his junk science film, and there should be no need for me to rehash the arguments against it. . .”

It seems there never is a need to hash let alone rehash the arguments. An appeal to authority is all we ever get.

Could someone direct me to the part of the letter where it specifies the errors in the show? I did not think so, no hashing there, just an appeal to the authority of the people who signed on.

Does anyone (besides me) feel sorry for Professor Wunsch?

Let’s see…from the letter:

“A complaint from one of us (Bob Ward) is currently under consideration by both the broadcaster and Ofcom. It outlines seven major misrepresentations of both facts and views that occur in the programme, and claims a breach of Section 5.7 of the Broadcasting Code.”

So Bob Ward is filing a complaint claiming a breach of government regulations. Presumably, this would result in financial (or even criminal) penalties? That seems pretty chilling of speech.

To quote from the Smothers Brothers:

Dick: “We have the freedom of speech in America.”

Tom: “And you’d better say what you’re supposed to say!”

First, I would encourage Russell Seitz not to continue to spread the entirely false rumour that I was sacked by the Royal Society. It is a shame that he is using Prometheus as a platform for his personal smear campaign against me – or perhaps this is an example of him exercising his cherished right to “freedom of speech”?

Some have tried to characterise the letter as a violation of the right to free speech. It is not. The UK’s Broadcasting Code specifies that “Views and facts must not be misrepresented”. When ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ was broadcast on Channel Four on 8 March, and subsequently repeated on More 4, I believe it violated the Broadcasting Code because it contained major misrepresentations of views and facts. I have submitted a complaint to both the broadcaster and to Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator.

Ofcom and Channel Four have yet to rule on the complaints from me and about 200 other people. However, Wag TV, the programme’s producers are not obliged to reflect that ruling at all in the DVD version of the programme, and indeed it is being marketed partly on the basis that it was broadcast on Channel Four.

It seems to me and the other 36 signatories that viewers are just as likely to be misled by the misrepresentations within the programme regardless of whether it is watched on DVD or on a TV channel. We wrote to ask the programme-maker to remove the misrepresentations before distributing the DVD. He has so far admitted just one of the seven major misrepresentations, but has steadfastly refused to make any changes.

Free speech comes with responsibilities, and in the UK at least there are regulations that are designed to ensure that the media do not knowingly mislead the public. The letter does not complain about the the airing of different opinions on climate change, and I’m not arguing that the programme-maker shouldn’t be able to tell porky pies at dinner parties with his mates from the media. But I do think that programme-makers should take their responsibilities seriously and to consider the public interest.

It remains to be seen whether the confident predictions that the letter will have the opposite effect to that intended will be right. To me, success would be for everybody who is exposed to the misrepresentations in the programme to at least be aware of them.

While Ward’s effort may be naive, it is hardly counter to fundamental principles of democracy to ask an opponent to make sure he has his facts straight, nor is it contemptuous of public opinion to set out specific factual disagreements in the way that he did.

It seems to me that you have clearly let your rhetoric get the better of you.

Regards,

Tom

I fully agree with that statement but let’s have it apply even-handedly and get rid of the double standards. Let’s in fact properly and independently review this will-of-the-wisp “evidence” for CO2-based AGW, most of which seems to rely on exactly such major misinterpretations. I don’t even know what to conclude about the computer modeling because that is not even considered as evidence by IPCC. In 21 years of computer modeling, 15 of which writing my own Finite Element software I’ve never before come across anyone who freely admits that they are guessing most of the inputs but fully expect the outputs to be 100 percent accurate. It’s beyond conceit and is borderline lunacy. And there are 300+ of these guesswork models aping each other. Let’s reduce it to just one open-source model and let the community take over.

I’m sure I’m less agnostic than you about AGW, and more trusting of climate models, but by and large, I do not feel we are speaking a different language on the subject.

Roger: no doubting that this was, strategically, a dumb idea of Bob Ward’s, but I am genuinely concerned that the public, when it comes to climate change, actually knows and understands much, much less than many of us tend to assume. In the UK at the moment, climate change discussion is everywhere in the media, and yet the same misunderstanding and confusion gets repeated almost endlessly when the public is asked to express an opinion. In a war situation, does one allow propaganda to undermine the confidence of the public? Is not the task of presenting truth and exposing deceit, such as the CC ‘debate’ entails, not a type of warfare?

As with many other scientific controversies, I am basically an agnostic on AGW. I accept that the IPCC consensus is the only game in town. Nevertheless, I am a curious person with a probing mind regarding contradictory evidence, dodgy statistics and scientific spin doctors. I am more incredulous when it comes to predictions of doom and gloom and have little convidence in computers that try to model the future. A broader perspective of my current thinking can be found in this interview:
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/LTT-interviewNo06.pdf

I hope this answers you question.