I just received an email from Carl Wunsch, one of the scientists in the program.

He writes that he feels he was the victim of a swindle (how about "The Great Martin Durkin Swindle"?). He spent several hours with the filmmakers discussing how complicated understanding climate change is. It was meant to be part of a balanced discussion. The program makers did not allow him to see the film beforehand.

This is producer Martin Durkin's trademark: mislead the people you interview, and misrepresent their opinions. Anyone who thinks that it is not important who made the program should take this example and think twice about the so-called "evidence" he saw yesterday night.

The following are extracts from an article in the Guardian dated 16 March 2000 about the producer of this programme, Martin Durkin.
The whole article can be read at
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/03/16/modified-truth/

"Channel 4 has hired a charlatan to make its science programmes"

"In October 1998 a television producer named Martin Durkin took a proposal to the BBC’s science series, Horizon. Silicone breast implants, he claimed, far from harming women, were in fact beneficial, reducing the risk of breast cancer. Horizon commissioned a researcher to find out whether or not his assertion was true. After a thorough review, the researcher reported that Mr Durkin had ignored a powerful body of evidence contradicting his claims. Martin Durkin withdrew his proposal. Instead of dropping it, however, he took it to Channel 4 and, astonishingly, sold it to their science series, Equinox."

"Mr Durkin has often been accused of taking liberties with the facts. In 1997 he made a series for Channel 4 called “Against Nature”, which compared environmentalists with Nazis, conspiring against the world’s poor. No one would suggest that green claims should not be subjected to critical examination, but the people he interviewed were lied to about the contents of the programmes and given no chance to respond to the accusations the series made.

The Independent Television Commission handed down one of the most damning verdicts it has ever reached: the programme makers “distorted by selective editing” the views of the interviewees and “misled” them about the “content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.” Channel 4 was forced to make a humiliating prime time apology. After the series was broadcast, I discovered that the assistant producer and several of its interviewees worked for the right-wing libertarian magazine masquerading as “Living Marxism”, which has just been successfully sued by ITN. All the arguments Against Nature made had been rehearsed in LM."

"So what do you do with a director with a record like this, who has brought your channel into disrepute, who has misled both his contributors and his audience? If you are Michael Jackson, the head of Channel 4, you commission him to make more programmes."

"Neither Martin Durkin nor, extraordinarily, Charles Furneaux, the commissioning editor of the science series Equinox, has a science background. They don’t need one, for science on Channel 4 has been reduced to a crude manifesto for corporate libertarianism."

It keeps on amazing me that Channel 4 does not seem to have any social responsability at all...

quote:

Originally posted by Hobbes007:
It keeps on amazing me that Channel 4 does not seem to have any social responsability at all...

Perhaps they should have a public phone-in vote about whether we think its man made or not.
The extra profit they skim off the top...sorry sorry, the proceeds will go towards planting trees in Michael Jacksons country estate.
Arf.

I've been trying to find a source for that story from anywhere other than the mouth of George Monbiot.
I havn't been able to yet, so I shall take it with a pinch of salt.

Although in the end.... I don't really care anyway. I've got better things to do.

Hobbes...
Can you get Carl Wunsch to give us his side of the story?

If someone in the UK writes something that is wrong, he gets a libel case against him. The fact that that did not happen means that Monbiot did not invent facts.

Contrary to this program, where we have 3 or 4 scientists that are working for oil companies and free-market think-thanks, and one scientist who has expressed personally to me that he has been swindled. How many more do I need to contact before it starts becoming fishy for you?

Fletch,

I wrote at the top exactly what he wrote me... I don't know more at the moment.

Can you post the email he sent?

quote:

Originally posted by Hobbes007:
Fletch,

I wrote at the top exactly what he wrote me... I don't know more at the moment.

Cheers.

It's a shame that the only way that the majority of people are informed are from "documentories" such as these.
There really should be a process to confirm the findings of documentories before they are allowed to be broadcast. As a lot of people simply assume that they are 100% accurate.

Of course that's never the case.
It is TV, and hence "entertainment" after all.

While I don't buy what I saw 100%, I still don't buy the official line either.
And While I have a deep mistrust of anything Monbiot comes out with, I'm not going to blindly accept the work of Mr Durkin either.

At least you are doing the right thing... You are making me think.

I started a new threat with a quote from his email. He is going to watch the program and is thinking about complaining to ofcom.

Thanks Fletch. If more people would think for themselves, we could save ourselves an awful lot of mess we get in.

I found the following quote from Carl Wunsch:

"it is essential to remember that the inability to prove human-induced change is not the same thing as a demonstration of its absence. It is probably true that most scientists would assign a very high probability that human-induced change is already strongly present in the climate system, while at the same time agreeing that clear-cut proof is not now available and may not be available for a long-time to come, if ever. Public policy has to be made on the basis of probabilities, not firm proof."

See Carl Wunsch statement on climate change

It is a great pity that this programme was made by Martin Durkin, whose credentials and modus operandi seem to be at least as suspect as those of the IPCC people he criticizes. It is a shame, because many of the points made in the programme are perfectly valid. It is almost enough to persuade one that this so-called debunking was actually a pre-emptive strike by the IPCC to tarnish the credentials of those Good Scientists who lent their support to the rationale of the programme.

Speaking as a very experienced world-ranging geologist, who views the problem from a perspective ranging over 800 million years, I welcome the prospect of global warming and the disappearance of the polar icesheets, but I don't believe this will happen anytime soon, certainly not for several thousand years. Human beings are very adaptable and as a species we shall survive for at least a few thousand years yet. The extinction of species that do not adapt their life-style to geological change is part of the natural order of things. Of all the species that have ever lived, 99% are already extinct.

The IPCC is not the "sinister bunch" that Durkin tries to make them look.

In fact, this week's New Scientist reports that the IPCC scientific report has been severely watered down by political editing, rather than it being the result of a big political conspiracy.

I am not sure that your geological perspective is very valid in this situation. The warming we are seeing now is very unlike anything that happened in the last 800 million years. Furthermore, I don't really subscribe to this dim view that because in the past most species used to die out, we just have to prepare for the same..

The elusive and camera-shy Martin Durkin makes a cameo appearance. Apart from the widely slated documentaries already mentioned, his cv includes work like the comedy "Whats up docker" and the 2005 mini series: "Dr Tatiana's sex guide to all creation."
I cannot understand how C4's science programme directors could let someone with such a flaky track record loose on an important matter that requires serious scientific debate.
It merely serves as a general warning to all academics that they should beware of C4 programme directors whose motto apparently is 'Set a thief to catch a thief.'

Hobbes007,

Carl Wunsch is presumably responding to emails mainly complaining about the programme, a programme which he has yet had the chance to see for himself.

Can you paste the contents of your email to him here? Thanks.

In the mean time Carl Wunsch has seen the program. Since he is in contact with both Channel 4 and WagTV, he has asked not to quote from his last email. However, my original email to him, and his first and second reply are quoted below:


"Yesterday evening I watched "The Great Global Warming Swindle" by Martin Ruskin. I have
to admit that the program has left me deeply disturbed, not because it tried to highlight the uncertainties surrounding theories of man-made global warming, which would have been
commendable, but because it presented those uncertainties as a "scientific truth" that is
being repressed by the mainstream of climate scientists to protect their own vested interests.

In particular, I am puzzled by the difference of tone of the program with the closing paragraph
of your article on the Royal Society website. I would therefore like to ask you if you feel that
your views have been fairly represented by this particular program?

If not, I would like to urge you to act by contacting the program makers, Channel 4
(www.channel4.com) or the UK television regulator (www.ofcom.org.uk) to lodge a complaint.

It is possible that such activism may not be something you like, but I have a strong feeling
that scientists have a social responsibility to ensure that no one takes a perfectly valid
scientific objection to a particular theory and turns it into a politcal point to further his own obscure agenda. Allowing this to happen damages both our ongoing effort to avert a potential crisis and people's respect for science in the long run."

And his reply:

"From the batch of emails I received this morning, I was the victim
of a swindle. I spent several hours with the filmmakers discussing
how complicated understanding climate change is. It was meant to
be part of a balanced discussion. I will try and follow
your suggestoins, but they didn't let me see the film."

And his second email:

"I just got off the telephone with someone named Martin Durkin
who has promised to get me, by Monday, a dvd of the program. If it
doesn't actually appear, I will take up your offer. Durkin of course
insists that my views were in no way distorted, which from the
unanimous opinions I've been getting from people who saw it, is
simply untrue. But I've got to see it for myself before taking
this any further. Channel 4 obviously hopes to sell the program
abroad.

In the meantime, if anyone asks, I hope you'll say that I do
believe that global warming is a very serious threat and any
implication to the contrary borders on the libelous (as I
think it implies great stupidity or willful blindness or both)."

Thanks for the 'email' from Wunsch. Assuming that it is authentic, there is nothing it what you have quoted that is suggested that his views have been distorted. He believes that global warming is a very serious threat. Nothing in the program lead us to believe otherwise. The issue is not that of global warming but the cause of it and on it Wunsch is not sure and this is exactly what the program wants us to think about- that the science of GW is problematic and there are other plausible theories about GW that does not include carbon as part of the causal mechanism

If it only was so simple... the program did not just want to question the uncertainties in the GW science. The language and tone used was to willfully discredit the whole theory of man-made global warming, not just show the points of contention.

I have been trying to post a list with all the 'experts' involved, so that you can check out their credentials and claims for yourself. However, due to the amount of links in the post it needs approval of a moderator, and there doesn't seem to be one around at this time of day.

Hobbes007 - Thanks for posting your email.

I look forward to reading of his considered response here, should it appear and we can better judge his views on the programme.

I will quote some of your own words to show what I think is the problem here. You say' the program did not just want to question..... 'the language and tone used was to wilfully dicredit the whole theory...

You don't make any allowance for the fact that this was prime time TV and certain amount of sensalisation is required for this kind of TV. You seem to believe that scientific theories can be discredited in such a fashion and does not stand on its own merit.

You are imposing certain agentive function on the director that is certainly borne out your own biases. What the program has certainly done is to start a debate and this can only be a good thing. We should be doubly careful when any theory include human agency (and man made GW certainly does) and its natural to encounter increased scepticism and the thing to do is not to get hyper about it

With sich lingo you definitely must be a social scientist :-).

I don't agree that the sensationalist factor that is needed in present day television means that anyone can say whatever he wants to. I suggest you don't give up after one little stupid fact in my other post has turned out to be wrong, and that you keep on reading about the background of the so-called experts in the program. A debate is fine, but a debate based on flimsy grounds is no debate at all!

Here are the FACTS

The case for a "greenhouse problem" is made by environmentalists, news anchormen , and special interests who make inaccurate and misleading statements about global warming and climate change. Even though people may be skeptical of such rhetoric initially, after awhile people start believing it must be true because we hear it so often.

The earths atmosphere is approximately made of the following gases :-

Nitrogen 78%
Oxygen 21%
Argon 0.93%
Carbon Dioxide 0.04%

The largest contributing factor to THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT is WATER VAPOUR. 100% natural effect NOT MAN MADE.

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's green