UPDATE: PBS admits to this as being a mistake, see below – Anthony
Tuesday night as I watched the program, one of the documents on display during the interview with Dr. Fred Singer (who reporter John Hockenberry treated quite poorly with some editing tricks) caught my eye, because I saw it had been altered by post production video techniques.
I recognized the document, because I’d seen it before, but I could not be sure until I was able to compare the video and the original document side by side. I made a note and promised myself I’d revisit it when/if the full video report became available to check.
Late yesterday “Climate of Doubt” was posted on YouTube, and I was able to review it. Turns out I was right; PBS had altered the document electronically to make the name of one of the world’s most distinguished physicists illegible during their broadcast. Here is what I found.
First, here is the YouTube Video of the “Climate of Doubt” report:
I direct your attention to the 19:30 mark where Hockenberry segues from the NAS report to an interview with Dr. Singer.
At 20:12 there’s an abrupt audio edit, with the camera on Hockenberry blurting out “Oregon Petition” which sure looks like Singers statement was cut off. That’s stock in trade of aggressive agenda driven editing to make the point of your video report, but what followed was far more egregious.
At 20:15 Hockenberry narrates with this in voice over:
The 14 year old petition is not exactly an exclusive club, a bachelor of science degree is all it takes to get you on the list. This document skeptics claim counters the scientific consensus on global warming.
While this graphic is displayed in slow zoom:
Note at 20:29 how the signature is electronically blurred, while other text and the writing “PHYSICS” is quite readable.
I’d seen that document before, and last night, I located it:
The signature is that of Dr. Edward Teller, from the signature card he turned in which can be seen on the very top of the Oregon Petition Project web page here. Clearly, Hockenberry was familiar with the project, citing it, and showing web pages linking to it. With that background at his disposal, there’s simply no way he could not have known that this was anybody but Dr. Teller on that card.
For those who don’t know, Dr. Edward Teller, often listed as the “father of the hydrogen bomb” was described in the PBS report “Race for the Superbomb” this way:
Of all the scientists who worked on the U.S. nuclear weapons program none have led more controversial a career than Edward Teller. Described by one Nobel Prize winner in physics as “one of the most thoughtful statesmen of science,” and by another as “a danger to all that’s important,” Teller was recognized by most of his colleagues as being one of the most imaginative and creative physicists alive.
He worked on the Manhattan project, was director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Among the honors he received were the Albert Einstein Award, the Enrico Fermi Award, the Corvin Chain and the National Medal of Science. He was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush less than two months before his death in 2003, and yes, he is a signatory of the Oregon Petition.
Hockenberry simply printed the graphic of the signature card above on a B&W laser printer, did a camera zoom over it, and used the electronic blur effect on the signature in post production.
The question is, why? Why would he need to obscure Dr. Teller’s signature?
Dr. Teller is deceased, so it can’t be to protect his identity or career. It is publicly well known and listed in Wikipedia that he is a signatory, and Dr. Teller has never disputed it as it was widely circulated when he signed on.
I think the key in understanding this is in Hockenberry’s voice over:
The 14 year old petition is not exactly an exclusive club, a bachelor of science degree is all it takes to get you on the list. This document skeptics claim counters the scientific consensus on global warming.
Quite clearly, he’s trying to diminish the impact of the Oregon Petition by making it seem just about anyone could sign on, not only with the way he was editing Dr. Singer’s response, but also with purposeful obfuscation of Dr. Teller’s signature to prevent recognition of it by viewers like you.
You might ask, “why did he use that signature card, and then go to the effort to obfuscate it?”. The answer there lies in finding other usable examples. You see, being in television and radio news myself for 25 years, I’ve seen many situations like this.
Reporters under a deadline need to get story elements “in the bag” and they often don’t have enough time. It sometimes limits their ability to dig deep, and sometimes makes them desperate when deadlines loom. Missing deadlines is a career ender, bending the truth when nobody notices, not so much. And, since there was this petition card document easily available on the front page of the petition website, the reporter could easily make a request to the post production editor to blur the signature and do no additional work himself. I’m betting that is what happened. It freed him to work on other things than additional research, plus when blurred it fit his narrative, which in my opinion was that “skeptics were bad people doing bad things“.
Watch the video from 20:30 to 20:50 and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s the voice over after the next hatchet job on Dr. Singer’s responses:
It a time-honored tactic by the skeptics, authentic looking documents and reports that don’t stand up to independent scrutiny.
I call bullshit on that, especially when the PBS report purposely alters the documents to prevent most viewers unfamiliar with the issue of figuring out they’ve been lied to by the reporter. It’s PBS journalistic ethics that don’t stand up to scrutiny here.
It makes you wonder what else Hockenberry may have purposely altered in post production.
It is clear to me that Hockenberry simply didn’t want viewers to know that such a prominent and world-renowned physicist had signed on saying he had “doubt” about global warming. That would dilute Hockenberry’s message.
This is beyond slimy jounalistic tactics akin to the sort of thing like NBC News rigging gas tanks on pickups trucks with model rocket engines so they will catch fire, viewers couldn’t tell, but experts did, and NBC paid the price.
Mr. Hockenberry should be reprimanded for his purposeful obfuscation and biased journalism tactics and I encourage readers to complain to PBS about this issue to ask it be investigated.
One final note, if you do a Google image search for “Oregon Petition signature card” you find Dr. Teller’s signature card and one other:
Yes, that’s Freeman J. Dyson, theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.
Hockenberry likely couldn’t use that one either without blurring it.
Heartland’s Jim Lakely discusses many other issues with the quality of the reporting in “Climate of Doubt”.
UPDATE: Dr. Roy Spencer has similar complaints about how he was portrayed via editing:
From 0:18 to 0:21 in this trailer for the show “A Climate of Doubt”, I am seen talking about the U.S. government funding only research which supports global warming alarmism:…yet, the viewer of the entire show will come away with the mistaken impression that I was instead talking about skeptics of manmade global warming being funded by shady organizations.
UPDATE: Here are two messages placed side by side from the live chat (today at PBS website) showing that PBS has reacted to my point about Dr. Edward Teller’s signature. Catherine Upin is a co-writer of the program:
No mention as to the rationale of the “late stage production decision” only that it was a mistake.
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izen says:
“The petition has zero scientific content…”
As usual, izen, you are wrong. Here is why:
These are highly educated experts in their respective fields. They are all professionals with degrees in the hard sciences, and thus they have the context, the background, and the understanding to make an informed statement: CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
You just don’t like the fact that your relatively small clique composing the climate alarmist cult has never been able to get anywhere near the same number of signatures as the OISM Petition Project. They have certainly tried. But they failed. That fact by itself proves that your “consensus” is entirely imaginary.
Having failed to get the signatures they needed to prove they have a consensus, your clique falls back instead on the ridiculous “95 of 97” number. Pathetic, no?
Yes.
Tamara,
It looks like $25.00 will do it. I’ll bet they would accept less!
so how about people here writing a letter to the PBS Ombusman, about this? ( I missed the show on TV, watched it last night on the PBS website; so I haven’t written the letter yet . . . ).
I’m sure if they got enough mail, they would do a whole new show with completely fair balance . . . ( . . better post ‘sarc’ just in case . . . 🙂 ).
Frontline committed an appalling violation of journalistic ethics.
“Believe the state authority, doubt the Final Authority, because the state is god and God is a made up authority”….oh the irony, especially through libertarian eyes, speaking of which, why did people pay for this?!
While I completely agree that PBS can always be expected to be a shill CAGW, I think you are inventing a conspiracy where none exists. I wouldn’t want my signature to appear any place where a forger could copy it and attempt to steal my identity and I would not display someone else’s signature for fear of that happening and my being sued for damages.
Grrrrrr. Woof, woof. Then please PBS let us know what the following tells us about the Union of ‘Concerned’ Scientists.
You don’t even need a degree to be on the ‘Union of Concerned Scientists (who babble on about global warming). You don’t even need to be a human dog, all you need is a wet nose, lots of hair, bark and hold a valid credit card. Woof, grrrrrr, I say. 😉
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/07/friday-funny-the-newest-member-of-the-union-of-concerned-scientists/
Steve from Rockwood says: October 25, 2012 at 5:36 am
I noticed on Freeman Dyson’s petition card he had scratched Ph.D, M.S., B.S. and wrote “BA Mathematics”.
Not yet age of 18 he joined the operational research section at RAF Bomber Command, where he remained for the rest of World War II.
BA in mathematics from the University of Cambridge and a Fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge is probably worth two PhDs from some backwater university.
Not exactly “shocked, shocked” to find out that PBS is slanted in their reporting or altering documents for political purposes, considering how they are ignoring the Libyan fiasco that resulted in the deaths of four Americans while there was a live feed of info on what was going on and 7 hours where we may have been able to send in some help of some kind and did nothing! The, of course, the administration lied about it. No news there, I guess.
All very well but what does he know, he’s only got a BA according to the card?
Sarc
You can have 3 PHDs and still be wrong.
If the science is so overwhelming and the science is on your side then why do you need to blurr and falsify? Because deep down you know the science is dubious at best and most probaly false. It’s called living in denial. Hailing Gleick.
I knew I was right. (Actually, I just suspected I was.)
I commented on another thread that I knew one of our noted physicists, Freeman Dyson did not have a PhD and suspected he never got a BSc.
Having only seen two interviews of Dr. Mann, he came over as a spoiled, petulant child. If I wanted to create a favourable impression of alarmists, I’d have left it on the cutting room floor too.
DaveE.
I watched about 25 minutes or so of the Frontline program, but found it unwatchable and turned it off. It was just a rehash of the same childish stunts the climate alarmists have been pulling for well over 10 years now. Mainly, they always want to keep the argument to be about whether the climate temperature is changing or not and to cast opponents to their alarmist claims as persons who deny that the “global climate temperature is changing”. This is just scam-artist-type trickery which, unfortunately, too many people get sucked into. Every reasonably cognizant person understands that the world’s average temperature is always changing. It is either increasing or decreasing, but there is NO science that shows it has ever stayed the same for more than maybe some hundreds of years or so. Once they get someone to argue that “The global temperature is not changing”, then they can cast that person as a boob of some sort.
What they REFUSE to seriously discuss or argue is the real issue,about whether human carbon dioxide emissions are causing an unnatural increase in the global climate temperature. This is because, despite billions of dollars of research funding and a guaranteed Noble prize for anyone who discovers the elusive evidence, there is still not a single shred of empirical scientific evidence that supports the hypotheses that the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide has any measurable affect on the global climate temperature. This Frontline program was just another propaganda piece from the alarmist to keep the “useful idiots” unaware of what the real argument is about.
.
He likely thought Eddy Teller was the Physical Education teacher at the local elementary school
Don’t worry about Big Bird. Merchandising for Sesame Street alone would fund its continued operations without the government subsidy Romney plans to axe. Big Bird is another Democrat red herring.
Of course the 9,000 PHD holders of the Oregon Petition could be wrong just as the 97% of climate scientists (77 climate scientists) could be wrong. At the end of the day consensus does not matter in science. What matters is if you are right or wrong.
@- D Böehm
“These are highly educated experts in their respective fields. They are all professionals with degrees in the hard sciences, and thus they have the context, the background, and the understanding to make an informed statement: CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.”
Still wrong.
They may all be professionals with degrees in the hard sciences, but that certainly does not give them the context, the background, and the understanding to make an informed statement that rising CO2 is harmless and beneficial to the environment. For one thing there isn’t sufficient knowledge of all the possible interactions between rising CO2 and the environment to be able to make such a definite statement. Uncertainty prevents any such conclusion.
But then of the many millions who are eligible to sign this petition the few thousand that did were NOT endorsing a statement that rising CO2 is beneficial and harmless. That seems to be an invention of your own making. The Oregon petition asks signatories to endorse,
“…there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in carbon dioxide production produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
That does not preclude rising CO2 also having damaging effects upon the natural plant and animal environments. Corn does not thrive in hot droughts.
But even to determine whether the much weaker Oregon petition statement is accurate would require a very extensive study of the relevant research literature and the development of sufficient understanding of the biology of plants with the ecology of food production to even begin the asses whether this statement is supportable.
I doubt that the majority of the people signing this petition had madesuch an effort to educate themselves. But if they had they would soon discover that among the body of research into the effects of rising CO2 on the natural plant and animal environments there was a significant propotion that refuted the claim. Certainly I would seriously doubt that many active published researchers into the effects of rising CO2 on animals and plants would be prepared to support the Oregon petition claim, and I am sure that none would accept your stronger claim that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
If you want to find out what the human race knows about a scientific subject the best way is to look at the published research. If something is well established it {eventually} gets into the university textbooks. Consulting a petition that can be signed by any US citizen with a degree {around ten million?} promoted by a business selling home schooling kits does not usually get considered as a comparably reliable method of determining the extent or limits of human knowledge.
The Oregon petiton is raised only by partisan commentators of two sorts. Those so bIinkered by their partisan dogma {motivated rejection of science} that they are unable to see the flaws in the petition and the inadequacy of relying on such a PR technique to confer scientific validity on any idea.
And those who raise the Oregon petition as an example of the egregious inadequacy and delusional duplicity of the methods used by those rejecting the mainstream science to try and bolster their position. From this partisan perspective it is prima facia evidence of the idiocy of the person using it to bolster their position.
What is bullshit is how they treat Dr. Willie Soon. That SOB hockenberry was right in front of Dr. Soon they even filmed and took a photo of him next to Singer. Why did they not talk to Willie? What are they afraid of? They take a cheapshot at Willie…FOIA him like crazy…and constantly denigrate him. Do they really want us to believe that Dr. Soon is some kind of rich guy making money off of his science? BS! The people getting rich are these mediocre math modelers making shit up all the time…with our tax money. Hockenberry and Kerry’s argument about the skeptic side having more money is complete bullshit!
I tried to comment on the Frontline program a couple of days ago, and I know my comment got through because I got a message saying my comment was under moderation. But many more recent comments have gotten posted, but not mine. I actually am shocked that PBS censored my comment, I’d expect that from Gavin Schmidt, but not from PBS.
So I’ll post my comment here:
Link to program:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/
Comment:
“My wife and I had looked forward to this program, but after watching it, we felt it was far short of Frontline’s usual degree of both hard inquiry and complete examination of issues. The program certainly succeeded in showing how hard various interests tried, and succeeded, in derailing cap and trade legislation, and we give credit where credit is due. But observers of the program would never know that there are legitimate issues, having to do with:
1. historical temperature records — how much can temperatures vary naturally, in the very recent past (by historical standards)?
2. the rate of warming, satellite vs. land based records — how much are we actually warming?
3. the rate of sea level rise
4. what actually was Climategate, and what does it tell us about those in charge of the IPCC process?
5. what the US can do vs. what the developing world is actually doing
6. what actually can be done, today, to help, that might get international cooperation?
1. Historical temperature perspectives first. Several new research papers now confirm results from earlier papers, showing that the Medieval Warm Period about 1,000 years ago was just as warm as today. If natural temperature variability can produce temperatures as high as today’s, in the very recent past, it doesn’t say that we aren’t warming the planet, but it suggests that we need to be able to separate out how much warming is due to our emissions (which include not just CO2, but also black carbon and others) from natural variability. Here is one of the new papers, by a mainstream scientist, Jan Esper, and others:
http://www.wsl.ch/fe/landschaftsdynamik/dendroclimatology/Publikationen/Esper_etal.2012_GPC
2. Rate of temperature change. To listen to Frontline, you would have no idea that real scientists disagree about important aspects of climate change. You were correct to “out” Fred Singer as a professional skeptic on many topics, but John Christy is not such a person. You missed the opportunity to talk to many “skeptics” who are very good at what they do in showing fault lines in the work of prominent campaigners for immediate and costly action, for instance, Steve McIntyre. Christy and Roy Spencer are responsible for creating the ability of satellites to measure worldwide temperatures. The satellite record of temperature increase is about 1/3 less than the land based record, which is always undergoing adjustments of various sorts, and which is subject to the artificial warming due to the “heat island effect.” The satellite record is even further below predictions of climate models. The satellite record avoids those issues, and Frontline ignored the satellite records. The two different satellite records, going back now about 30 years, show warming of about 1.35 to 1.40 degrees C per century, well below model predictions.
3. Sea level rose about 1 foot last century, and currently, for as long as we have satellite records for sea level rise (about 2 decades), is still rising at about a foot a century. See:http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
It made sense to me for the N Carolina legislators to not rush through planning for over 3 feet of sea level rise, by building that into their building code. If the IPCC is right about 3 feet of sea level rise, then in a few years, we should see it ramp up. If that happens, then we can legislate differently.
4. Climategate. Let’s simply say that among the many things the Climategate emails revealed, was that the people who developed the now debunked “hockey stick” of climate temperatures did everything they could to prevent publication of papers with contrary evidence to the hockey stick, and failing that, made sure they weren’t considered by the IPCC. (See #1 above for part of the debunking, since the “hockey stick” said that there were 900 years of relatively constant, lowish temperatures until temperature started skyrocketing at the beginning of the 20th C). They could prevent the IPCC consideration of other papers and viewpoints because the hockey stick authors were also in charge of reviewing all the temperature issues for the IPCC. It is as if oil executives were in charge of evaluating the Gulf oil spill. This procedure is bound to fail, if your goal is an even handed review.
On point 5, did you know that China burns nine times as much coal than does the US? And is growing its coal use rapidly? Suppose the US were to burn no coal whatsoever, driving up electricity prices and depressing job creation — what difference would it make? Wouldn’t it make more sense to not harm our economy and jobs at the present time, and hold off on drastic steps until our unemployment rate is low?
So turning to point 6, there are some things we can do, in cooperation with China and India (also ramping up its coal use). We can agree to reduce black carbon emissions, which also warm the planet. It is much cheaper, and quicker, to do that, and in so doing, we are also helping people live longer.
Wouldn’t it have been nice if Frontline had lived up to its usual standards?
izen says:
“They may all be professionals with degrees in the hard sciences, but that certainly does not give them the context, the background, and the understanding to make an informed statement that rising CO2 is harmless and beneficial to the environment.”
Ridiculous. Then by your own words you yourself cannot understand the subject.
But as usual, you are engaging in misdirection. The question under discussion concerns your so-called “consensus” claim. Your easily refuted belief is that the climate alarmist clique has the consensus. But I have shown that to be bunkum.
You true believers have no scientific evidence showing that human CO2 emissions have any effect on temperature, and as a result of that lack of evidence most scientists and engineers are in agreement with the OISM statement that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. You inhabit your own little bubble, which is impervious to facts and reason. But as we see, other readers can and do make up their minds about your “consensus” nonsense.
Wake me when/if you can get 31,000 engineers and scientists to sign a statement saying that CO2 is not good for the biosphere, and that it causes global harm. Until then, you lose the “consensus” argument.
“Yes, that’s Freeman J. Dyson, theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.”
Yeah, but by his own admission he only has a bachelor’s degree. And he’s probably never been given a certificate of participation for a Nobel Peace prize, either!
🙂
Anyone else notice that there’s an alarmist arguing that consensus is all on one thread and another one arguing that consensus means nothing on this thread?
PBS stands for Propaganda Broadcasting Shills. It is long past time to defund them. Let Soros pick up their tab, not the taxpayers.
I LOVE the idea of challenging the true believers to a com-petition. Signing petitions, of course, is tangential to the scientific enterprise, but I think the Oregon petition should be repeated and up-sized to allow signatories from around the world. Heck, there should also be a corollary petition available for scientists who are persuaded by CAGW argument.
Rob Crawford says:
Bwuahhhahahahhaha!