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:
October 25, 2012 at 5:00 am
Isn’t the consensus just a petition but without the signatures?
Steve from Rockwood says:
October 25, 2012 at 5:36 am
In the UK, Maths is considered an art, not a science.
DaveE.
From izen on October 25, 2012 at 9:04 am:
There is not enough knowledge and too much uncertainty to declare rising CO₂ is harmless and beneficial to the environment.
But there is enough knowledge and little enough uncertainty that it can be declared that rising CO₂ is harmful and hurting the environment, so “Cough up the money and do what we say or your grandkids will suffer!”
The state of Climate Science™ according to izen: Good enough for CAGW thuggery, not good enough to be free from it.
D Boehm
“Ridiculous. Then by your own words you yourself cannot understand the subject.”
D Boehm, you are wasting your words. Izen is so entrenched in his ideology that he will tie himself in more knots than Houdini in an attempt to escape the logical dissonance – bar set astronomically high for the Oregon scientists, but no bar at all for the 97%.
If Izen was on the Titanic, and everyone was shouting “she’s going down” he would be replying that in order to make such a statement you would need to make a complete appraisal of all the literature published on marine engineering and then have made a thorough analysis of the construction of the great liner.
Thanks Anthony!
When I couldn’t stomach the ashow anymore, I went to the PBS website, gave them a quick opinion and then informed them that I intended to ask my government representatives to hold PBS accountable, defund them and perhaps prosecute. On Darrell Issa’s site, I asked for an investigation and suggested that some federal goons from the ‘team’ agencies might’ve also been involved. Below is the comment I supplied to PBS and government reps.
Your frontline show ‘Climate of Doubt’ is a travesty. You twisted facts and misrepresented science, but from an overall perspective, PBS has perhaps crossed the boundaries of fraud and slander.
I am copying my Representative (Rob Wittman) and Senators (Mark Warner and Jim Webb) with this comment.
I ask that Congress defund PBS completely until this abuse of PBS airspace is fully investigated, all behind the scenes machinations are exposed, and any legal ramifications fully prosecuted.
This episode of frontline was absolute activist advocacy at it’s worst. Honored and respected scientists were belittled, disgraced, abused and falsely represented at virtually every turn and every scene.
My personal viewpoint was that Doctor Singer was slandered on national Public Broadcasting. Did those twistings of Doctor Singer’s research and findings pass a legal review?
The effort hours and background collusion with CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) activists must’ve been extensive for PBS to have constructed such a fictional soap opera view of climate science. PBS colluded with these activists to besmirch all of science and non-CAGW-deluded scientists and citizens in particular. Such an approach is fraudulent and perhaps criminally willful abuse of what is supposed to be respectful neutrally presented genuine science on a public broadcasting system.
As a definite example of fraud; frontline, along with the CAGW activists tried to use a false survey to bolster their claim of consensus. The so-called 97% fraudulent survey where after careful, multiple siftings managed to find a way to misrepresent a tiny fraction (7% or less) of the scientists surveyed as 97%. Does 97% represent the total surveyed? No, not even close.
What frontline and the activists then performed was a sleight of hand where they ignored a number of petitions coordinated and signed by respected scientists and focused on one particular survey ‘Oregon Petition’. PBS emphasized the loose requirements to sign the petition and then flashed a blurry picture of a sample signature card. Only the signature they purposely blurred to avoid recognition was the signature of the late Doctor Edward Teller who you may better remember as the ‘Father of the hydrogen bomb’ and a proponent of the science behind a viable liquid fluoride thorium reactor. A technology that might finally bring safe nuclear energy to us masses for many years to come.
Another travesty and sleight of hand regarding the same petition are PBS’s shameful representation that
“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”.
If PBS had bothered, (neglected perhaps), to look a little further. There is another signature. One Freeman Dyson had also signed the petition. Freeman Dyson listed his field as mathematics and his level of education as a ‘Bachelor of Arts”. Freeman Dyson is an incredibly gifted theoretical physicist and mathematician whose peers have opined that the Nobel committee have fleeced Dyson.
Summarizing: PBS has put extensive work, and I assume significant public funds, in crafting and producing a frontline show that is an affront to science, scientists and perhaps has crossed legal boundaries to reach their preconceived messages.
Please Senators: Mark Warner and Jim Webb and Representative Rob Wittman; initiate or support efforts to remove this kind of shameful and harmful advocacy PBS. Stop all funding to PBS and seek investigation into their efforts to make such horrid science.
Respectfully,
for privacy
cc Rob Wittman
Mark Warner
Jim Webb
Darrell Issa
PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler
Welcome to the real world of skepticism. You should have taken the blue pill. Prepare to be further shocked! GK
@Izen
“To claim otherwise reveals a deep absence of knowledge about the basic epistemology of science.”
What is so plentiful in climate alarmism is eschatology, not epistemology. I can tell from your contributions you do not really believe the arguments you are putting forth, you are just repeating arguments you heard elsewhere and hope someone else will prove.
Izen, you should not rely for seeing on the eyes of another, nor hear through another man’s ears. Open the books and start reading for you have a lot to learn.
A petition is a time-honoured mechanism for getting a distilled opinion that represents a consensus in the group on (usually) a single issue. Yes, a consensus: agreement in detail on the motion proposed. Some of the most brilliant minds in the history of modern science considered and then signed the document agreeing with the proposition. If it gave it any additional weight at all, I would sign it. It is correct to do so.
So catch up! You don’t have to be of the Lettered to know that a turd smells. CAGW is a turd of a proposition and it is right to point it out when your wallet is being picked clean. To have PBS fake and twist interviews and charge the public to cover the cost of doing so is a violation of every reasonable expectation of a public broadcaster. That they are shameless about it merely underscores the point.
This is precisely the kind of hard hitting, substantive information that generates the respect WUWT has earned. I also can’t wait for the release of that new study showing half of the global warming in the USA is artificial.
/
izen says:
“Good science can establish a scientific theory, a body of knowledge so well supported by observational evidence and logical inference that it would be unreasonable to doubt it, but only religion and mathematics can claim to establish ‘Truth’.”
Oh, logical inference. Well, what kind of logic do we talk about here. Boolean logic is an axiomatic system; a body formed by the values true and false; and we have bigger bodies than that, the body of the natural numbers and the one of the real numbers. From their logical inferences the climate scientists proceed to set up global circulation models that use the real numbers; in other words, they now try to simulate a chaotic system, the world’s climate, with an iterative simulation of limited precision.
Now, the definition of chaos is this: The deviation of the state of the chaotic system from the state of a limited resolution simulation of the system grows exponentially over time.
In other words; any attempt to foresee the climate of the year 2100 is doomed to fail, as we know from experience that even the weather in 10 days cannot be forecast in the general case.
Izen, what do you say about this refutation of the warmunist (I like that) science that I just LOGICALLY INFERRED.
John@EF says:
October 25, 2012 at 11:13 am
This is precisely the kind of hard hitting, substantive information that generates the respect WUWT has earned. I also can’t wait for the release of that new study showing half of the global warming in the USA is artificial.
Really? The reaction from Warmists would indicate they’d rather see it buried.
Which division of Trolls “R Us” sent you?
{Grant Brown, DPhil (Oxon) says:
October 25, 2012 at 8:55 am
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.}
Most people are unaware that at this moment, a PBS governed fund holds over $400,000,000.00 in reserve.
PBS is no better than a “People’s Republic of America” state propaganda organ.
Mitt is right. Defund PBS now !
Free people should not have to put up with state-run media propaganda forced down their throats.
“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.”
Oh, Hockenberry! The percentage of scientists with a Ph.D. who signed the Oregon Petition is much greater than the number of scientists with a Ph.D. who responded to that lame 3 question email survey that was used to invent the 97% consensus number. And the number of scientists who voluntarily supported the statement of the Oregon Petition denying (ha ha ha) that human activity was having a deleterious effect on the earth’s ecology was over 10 times that of those who responded to the email questionnaire. These two surveys, one of sought opinion, the other of volunteered opinion, show that of American scientists who make any effort to show what they believe on the subject, the majority overwhelmingly do not believe the claim of the warmists. I pointed this out to those folks (at Truth Market?) offering $5000 for proof of this as proof of this but I still haven’t gotten the check.
@- Allen
” Signing petitions, of course, is tangential to the scientific enterprise, …”
Yes.
Petitions are political theatre, not a means of determining the extent of human knowledge on a subject.
” …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.”
All the scientific research on the effect of rising CO2 on the climate and plant biology is signed, right back to Tyndall. That body of knowledge that human society has amassed over the last century is a rather more powerfull argument for the validity of its conclusion in the theory of AGW than signatures on a petition, a purely political action. The use of a petition to try and cast doubt on scientific conclusions reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the scientific consensus and how valid theories are established in science.
It does not derive from the beliefs of scientists.
It is a property of the consilience of the evidence.
izen says:
“Petitions are political theatre, not a means of determining the extent of human knowledge on a subject.”
Couldn’t agree more. So then, why does your side always bring up the 95/97 argument?
[BTW, your comment on Tyndall is simply hand-waving bluster.]
Bruce Cobb says:
October 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
…
Really? The reaction from Warmists would indicate they’d rather see it buried.
Which division of Trolls “R Us” sent you?
==============
Nonsense. I’d like that report released as soon as possible. That’s a great video, BTW. It could re-issued in the 180, tho’.
My original comment was about the frequent and increasing focus on the trivial.
They’re motive is protecting their investments in “green” energy stock. The entire conspiracy needs a grand jury looking into it. Seems like Rico are applicable? What a racket.
When Hockenberry cast his documentary as skeptics vs. … whom? Us? Scientists? Warmists? – he adopted the language of the AGW climatologists. Hockenberry took the position of the defense that the Climategate e-mails were not revealed by an anonymous whistle-blower, but by hacking and theft. Who would do that, John, and why? He who controls the vocabulary wins the argument.
Frontline made its program a contest between two wrong-headed positions. The skeptics on the right, portrayed as kooks. Meanwhile the AGW conjecture hovered in the background as assumedly valid science. That AGW is politics and not science is transparent even to scientifically illiterate journalists and most of the public.
Hockenberry not only obliterated Edward Teller’s name, the only example, to disparage all 31 thousand contesting the consensus, but JH omitted notable climate insiders who challenge AGW, including Lindzen, Spencer, the Pielkes, and Christy.
The problem can’t be skeptics vs. science because skepticism is a virtue among scientists. AGW climatologists and their peer-reviewed journals overtly reject that virtue, confessing they are challenged scientists.
AGW is obviously not science because it pretends to rely on a consensus, and a manufactured consensus at that. Notwithstanding the law according to Daubert v. Merrell Dow, science is never decided by vote. Notwithstanding Popper, it is pragmatic. It’s about models with predictive power. It’s about the creation of new models by a lone scientist who upsets a consensus somewhere, published or not. The mere fact that the AGW climatologists rely on their consensus disqualifies their work as science and inflames public suspicions.
AGW is a failed conjecture. It is statistically impotent, and scientifically wrong. Earth’s climate responds to solar variability, dominated by the dynamic feedback of cloud albedo, and the heat capacity of the oceans. It is a thermodynamic system, represented by global macroparameters, not regional variables, and it is never in equilibrium. Science doesn’t demand that any model emulate real world processes. But in failing to account for so much of physics (beyond the understanding of American Physical Society executives), of system science (feedback, mass balance, equilibrium, cross-correlation), and of causation, and for its internal contradictions, AGW fails to represent climate.
CO2 is a benign, beneficial gas, and a lagging proxy for global average temperature. The kooks win.
The word “mistake” is another whose meaning is being destroyed by misuse.
The “mistake” was getting caught.
To address the topic of the thread, the deliberate blurring of the signature of the graphic used in the program of the Oregon petition, could be construed as intended to be derogatory or to avoid conferring some credibility.
But hypothesis involving malicious intentionality are correlated with the motivated rejection of science… {grin}
There is an issue with the fact it is Dr Edward Teller as the featured signature on the Oregon petition publicly available graphic image. As others have commented he is a controversial figure. Perhaps that is why the Organization behind the Oregon petition chose him. It seems unlikely they do not have signatures of more contemporary climate scientists. Surely Lindzen, Spencer or another of the handful of those expert and involved in the field have signed and might carry more weight. Perhaps Teller is the scientist with the highest public recognition (who has signed) with the general public.
The reason for Dr Tellers notority with the scientific community is because he held minority political views amongst scientists and openly declared his political ideology drove his research.
Someone who researches how to initiate a fusion reaction not because of his curiosity about nature, or because he fell in love with the beauty of the mathematical descriptions of the physics, but because he believed his side should have a bigger and better bomb to use as a military threat against his ideological opponents.
Given the predominately liberal bias amongst scientists {to match that of Nature?!} and the preference for high minded curiosity as the declared driving force behind the endeavours of scientists it is not surprising to find Dr Teller rather low in those scientific names that would raise admiration with a scientifically literate audience.
Perhaps the program makers were just trying to spare the Oregon institute any further blushes.
REPLY: Perhaps you are just an idiot unable to see when bias has replaced factual reporting. They admitted the mistake. – Anthony
[snip – waaayy off topic, way to much ranting, way to much everything – tone it down – Anthony]
D Böehm
” So then, why does your side always bring up the 95/97 argument?”
I doubt this issue is binary with just two sides….
[BTW, your comment on Tyndall is simply hand-waving bluster.]
Okay, but it was simple hand-waving bluster intended to covey that the signature that a scientists attaches to a piece of peer reviewed published research carries a little more weight than a signature attached to a petition.
izen says:
October 25, 2012 at 1:16 pm
“To address the topic of the thread,”
Still waiting, Izen. Let’s ponder some logical inferences, shall we? How do you defend attempts at simulating Earth’s climate to the year 2100? You’re a convinced warmist; you must have a scientific reason for that. What is it? I demonstrated that the GCM’s can’t do the job. It’s your turn.
Sorry Anthony. I appreciate your necessary independent work. Snip whatever is inappropriate for this #1 internet science blog.
If there is any doubt in the WUWT and logical scientific community, that you and the general public are being psychologically manipulated, to coerce belief in a specific agenda, this WUWT article should serve as proof of fact.
We need to know what meaning is being used in scientific papers and news articles when the words “Climate Change” are used.
Re-Brand to, “Climate Changes”, “Climate Changing”, “Human Induced Climate Change” or “Natural Climate Change”, NOT just the words “Climate Change”, or an accepted convention that sane people can understand, to be more scientifically accurate terminology, please.
October 25, 2012 at 5:52 am | ScepticalTom says:
I have an MSc. and am able to sign the Oregon Petition. I have absolutely no scientific expertise in climate science – therefore my expert opinion is completely invalid, yet I am able to sign the Oregon Petition.
——————————–
Anthony’s dog is a member of The Union of Concerned Scientists … ROTFLMAO
I see a lot of team players here, such as Izen. Mr. Izen, since the Oregon Petition allows for such a general field of scientists to sign it, perhaps you could make a very similar petition and have scientists who support the 300% positive feedback theory sign it. However, my guess is that you are furious because you know that skeptics now outnumber alarmists.