This is an interesting analysis of the laws and behind the scenes posturing related to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and broadcasting rules. Lest anyone ever think that Wikipedian William Connolley limited his political activism to hacking climate related Wikipedia pages, this should dispell that idea. – Anthony
How the broadcasting regulator sidestepped An Inconvenient Truth
This story begins with Ofcom, the public authority that enforces broadcasting legislation in the UK, telling me that Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) is not a ‘factual documentary’, and ends with them deciding that climate change – the subject of the film – is not a matter relating to current public policy. You may well wonder how this could have happened, and it will take some time to explain.
To start with, we need to go back to March 2007, when Channel 4 broadcast a film called The Great Global Warming Swindle (GGWS). This was Martin Durkin’s take on the arguments underlying global warming scepticism and it caused a furore in the environmental movement. In response, a group of warmist scientists and activists, including Sir John Houghton, William Connolly, Joe Smith, and Bob Ward, lodged a 176 page complaint with Ofcom. After sixteen months of deliberation, the regulator published a decision that made a couple of token criticisms of the film, but threw out most of the grounds for complaint. The warmists were very disappointed, but the decision made sense.
There were two sections of the Broadcasting Code, that GGWS risked falling foul of:
Section 2: Harm and Offence
2.2 Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience.Section 5: Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions:
5.11 In addition to the rules above, due impartiality must be preserved on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy by the person providing a service (listed above) in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes. (emphasis added)
5.12 In dealing with matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programmes. Views and facts must not be misrepresented. (emphasis added)
Although Ofcom identified a minor error in one of the graphs used in the film – which was immediately corrected by the filmmakers before future distribution – they had no quarrel where Section 2.2 of the Code was concerned.
Concerning Section 5.11 and 5.12, Ofcom decided that, as it was clear to the audience that the opinions on climate change expressed in the film were those of a minority who took issue with mainstream, viewers had not been misled. They did find that the final section of the film, which explored the policy implications of assuming that anthropogenic global warming is taking place, had breached the Code to the extent of not providing ‘an appropriately wide range of significant views’.
The warmist media and blogoshere were horrified by Ofcom’s failure to slate The Great Global Warming Swindle, but Channel 4 was obviously relieved and launched a damage limitation exercise. In an interview soon after the decision was published, Hamish Mykura of Channel 4 announced that they would broadcast Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth as soon as it became available for television. That really interested me.
If the complaint against The Great Global Warming Swindle was rather flimsy, in spite of it’s great length and the vast team that had been put together to draft it, a devastating indictment of AIT already existed from a quite unimpeachable source; a judgement in the High Court. This established that AIT appeared to present the mainstream views on climate change accurately and impartially, but did not in fact do so, a very different matter from GGWS made no secret of where it stood in the climate debate.
If the film was broadcast without either substantial editing or providing additional output that would balance its propagandist content, then there would be a gross breach of the Broadcasting Code that Ofcom would be unable to ignore. Or so I thought.
Usually, when members of the public complain about a broadcast, they are relying on their interpretation of the programme’s content. In their view the broadcast was misleading, biased, inaccurate, unfair, obscene or offensive in some way, to the extent that it infringed the Broadcasting Code. On the other hand, the broadcaster is likely to argue that their programme was none of these things. Ofcom’s duty, as set out in legislation, is to reach an impartial and objective view of the programme content based on the available evidence, and then decide whether the Broadcasting Code has been complied with. No one would suggest that this is always an easy task, but in the case of AIT it should have been, for the following reason.
In early 2007, when hysteria surrounding the findings of the IPPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report on climate change was at it’s height, the Department of Education and Skills and DEFRA jointly issued a press release announcing that AIT was to be sent to every secondary school in England for use as a teaching aid. Subsequently, a school governor called Stuart Dimmock applied for Judicial Review of this decision in the High Court as he was concerned that the film contravened the terms of the Education Acts 1986 and 1996 (the Education Acts) which quite rightly ban the ‘promotion of partisan political views’ in schools, and also requires that when ‘political issues are brought to the attention of pupils’ then, so far as possible, they must ‘be offered a balanced presentation of opposing views’.
No one who has seen AIT could seriously suggest that it is anything other than a ‘partisan’ film, and that it does not even attempt to offer ‘a balanced presentation of opposing views’. So to this extent, the judgement handed down by Mr Justice Burton in October 2007 was not surprising. He found that showing the film in schools must be a breach of the Education Acts unless Guidance Notes were issued to teachers to ensured that pupils were made aware of the purpose of the film, and that it contained misleading information about the scientific evidence for man-made global warming. In reaching this decision it was necessary for Mr Justice Burton to consider the film’s content in some detail, and his findings were clearly set out in his judgement. These were unambiguous and damning.
Read the rest at Harmless Sky:
How the broadcasting regulator sidestepped An Inconvenient Truth
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M White said: “4.8 trillion pounds. I don’t know how deep the rest of the western world is in hock, but the “de-carbonisation” of the western world will really hurt.”
First, I’m sorry to say that the BBC Channel 4 film clip “has been blocked for showing in my country [USA] on copyright grounds.” Indeed? Who owns the copyright in my country? Seems like the BBC should have that right, but I find no copy available here.
As for national debt, I was surprised to hear that British debt is so high. That’s in the same ballpark as USA debt ($13 trillion, soon to be $14 trillion) , measured against GDP and population, even after our disastrous 50% increase in debt since 2006.
I would love to see Martin Durkin’s analysis. National debt and jobs have become the top economic issues in the USA.
Here are the year 2000 figures on GDP/GNP.
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/gnp.html
One focus point in the über hobnob hippie’s movie was the rising sea level due to melting ice and glaciers right.
Due to melting ice is debunked.
Yes I know glaciers are mostly made up of ice but the alarmist apparently don’t. However, I remember reading about glaciers half a year ago or so and surfed to that organization’s site that counts glaciers and apparently they have counted more ‘an a hundred frakking thousand glaciers, but they’ve only cataloged about 5% or some such and not all of them 5% is melting since one part is growing and another part is static.
So when the movie tries to scare with the whole ice and glacier melt catastrophe it’s really a non issue since the ice melt is debunked and they can only prove less then 5% of the glaciers are melting which is quite natural an good what with we’d really have a frakking huge problem if them glaciers didn’t melt at all.
What’s really ironic though is that the climate hippie communists themselves even, that are supposed to be all that with nature and what not, don’t seem to grasp or understand that the world is actually that big to be able to house more than a hundred thousand glaciers or that they know next to nothing about almost non of them even with satellites.
It was none other than Al Gore who hosted the 1989 Club of Rome meeting in Washington DC, only a year or so before the First Global Revolution was published indicating ‘global warming’ was a serious crisis. Here is an exact quote…..
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
From: http://earthlinggb.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/the-little-righteous-lib-dems-the-duped-holier-than-thou-crew/
tonyb says:
November 13, 2010 at 10:05 am
Henry Galt
The link you referenced goes to the South Devon sea wall which my house overlooks. The sea level has not changed at all in the 150 years since the wall was built.
This was one of the things that first turned me “sceptic”.
I’ve kept a boat on the River Dart in Devon in recent years and noticed that many of the seawall and wharf levels are exactly as they have been for centuries. In fact the crusaders sailed from a creek called Warfleet in Dartmouth around 1000 years ago and the Mayflower dropped by for running repairs on their way to the good old US of A. If you study the old stonework and where they positioned the old steps, mooring rings etc – it’s quite obvious that they’re within inches of where they were centuries ago.
I also keep a little boat on an island in the Eastern mediterranean where I refuel at a 150 year old stone wharf where the high water level clearly sits where it always has.
Bob Carter here in Oz just alerted us (thurs 11 Nov 2010) in an article in the ‘Australian’ newspaper titled “Inconvenient Nonsense Infiltrates the Classroom”. Apparently he says Gore’s film is to be included in the new English curriculum in a “bid to teach students on environmental sustainability across all subjects”. Carter provides a scathing commentary on this proposal and it has also caused some readers to be outraged. Carter says at least its not being included in the science subjects.
He also points to a recent forum broadcast by the ABC radio with some environmental journalists. “Stellar contributions made by the journalists involved included the notions that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that dangerous human-cause global warming is happening, and that there is no real debate about climate change.” Those questioning CC orthodox where referred to as denialists, fruitcakes, clowns and fools who had “invaded the ABC” according to to those in the forum. Giving them airtime was said to “attack the essence of journalism”. Carter laments “if the persons invovlved in the forum were Australia’s top environmental journalists, then God help us all.”
Carter later notes why “are we so willing to tolerate the abuse of educational indoctrination of out children and the deliberate limitation on the scope of media discussions they will be exposed to as adults? If allowed in Australian schools at all, (Gores film) belongs not alongside Jane Austen and Tim Winton, nor with Charles Darwin and Richard Feynman, but with the works of authors such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells in the science-fiction section of the library.”
re post by:
I wasn’t aware of that gem from Gore’s film… in addition to your points Russell, I’d like to add that from a science standpoint it’s utterly ludicrous. AGW doesn’t even rise out of the realm of hypothesis to the status of a theory – nowhere near.
From the public standpoint, ‘theory v. fact’ may make sense, but its just more dumbing down of the population by using terms incorrectly, in a film that claims to be the ultimate presentation of ‘real science.’
It’s a crying shame.
re post by: M White says: November 13, 2010 at 9:16 am
What is the actual title of the film? The copyright blocks by country are because of reciprocal agreements between nations.
Red-Green Schadenfreude: The Dog Did It.
Rating: PG.
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01004/solar-web_jpeg_1004502cl-3.jpg
“An event designed to showcase a new era of renewable energy vehicles was brought to a sudden halt when one of the automobiles collided with a bicycle.”
““It’s like a dog running off the curb right in front of you. You can’t stop.””
Dog saved by CO2 indulgences:
“Greenhouse gas emissions created by the race, from flights by participants or shipping cars, are being offset through investments in renewable energy projects.”
…-
“Vancouver cyclist hurt after colliding with solar-powered car”
“The Zero Emissions Race, which kicked off nearly three months ago in Switzerland, was in Vancouver on Friday for the lone Canadian leg of its tour.
Don Chandler, spokesman for the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association, said things were rolling right along until a cyclist rode off the sidewalk and into the renewable-energy vehicle’s path.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/vancouver-cyclist-hurt-after-colliding-with-solar-powered-car/article1797709/
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi
walt man:
Even with the length of my post there were aspects of the saga that I did not include, among them Ofcom’s attempts to draw parallels between AIT and TGGWS. This is not possible. One film was clearly an attempt to give opposition to the orthodox view on AGW a voice. The other was an exercise in proclaiming the orthodox view while, as Mr Justice Burton said, departing from the mainstream view as represented by the IPCC’s AR4.
The only thing that the two films have in common is that they are both about climate change, a point that Ofcom was unable or unwilling to grasp.
The article ends with a call for money but does not give a way to donate. Can anyone tell me how to leave money to help pursue legal action?
Channel 4/M.Durkin:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/britains-trillion-pound-horror-story/4od
How to win a discussion with supporters of AGW:
Ask them “what is the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere at the moment”.
1. about 40%
2. about 4%
3. about 0.4 %
4. about 0.04 %
Most of them say 4%.
When you tell them the answer they admit that they have not looked at the science at all.
Then ask them about the percentage of methane (0.00017%) and nitrous oxide (0.000003%)!
I’d say it belongs in the propaganda section, not science fiction since the purpose of the film’s
liesexaggerationsdistortionserrors was toindoctrinatesway viewer opinions to support a political viewpoint.Just sayin’.
M.Durkin Channel 4 Documentary states that Britian’s public sector is bigger than the private sector. Some 56% of GDP is provided by the state through taxation and borrowing. Hence a debt of £4.8 trillion ($7.3 trillion) when you take pension requirements into account. The UK government is in a downward spiral unless it unburdens society of the the state dramatically and introduce a flat rate of tax, no VAT, capital gains etc. The Peoples Republic of China has half as less government interference than the UK.
Last one out of Britian please turn off the lights.
The last of my ancestors to immigrate to the United States emigrated from England 170 years ago. They brought the whole family of three generations. They did so to escape the confiscatory policies that was impoverishing the family without an opportunity to participate in the policymaking. Now their descendants participate in the policymaking. and they just participated in delivering a setbacck on November 2nd to the people attempting to bring the liberty destroying disease from the Old World.