Climate Film Draws a Rebuke

nytimes.com/2008/07/22/science/earth/22clim.html

By ANDREW C. REVKIN July 22,

2008

A controversial British documentary called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” unfairly
portrays several scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Britain’s
television watchdog agency ruled on Monday.

The agency, the Office of Communication, issued a report rebuking Channel 4 in Britain,
which broadcast “Swindle” last year. But the report said the film, while “intemperate” in its
characterizations of the dominant scientific view that humans are the main force in
warming the planet, “did not materially mislead the audience so as to cause harm or
offense.”

The documentary, from the independent filmmaker Martin Durkin, has been seen
worldwide on DVD and the Internet. It focuses on a small group of scientists who reject the
idea that human-caused warming poses big dangers.

CONTROVERSIAL Scene from ​The Great Global Warming Swindle.​

Since its release, the film has been widely circulated by opponents of restrictions on
greenhouse gases and attacked by scientific groups and campaigners seeking action to curb
such emissions. Criticism has been particularly sharp over the film’s assertions that the
depiction of consensus on human-caused warming is a willful deception. In one particularly
jarring line, a narrator says: “Everywhere you are told that man-made climate change is
proved beyond doubt. But you are being told lies.”

While criticizing such statements, the agency said that “Swindle” was adequately framed as a
polemic and that so many programs had focused on the dominant scientific views of global
warming that the film had a place on television. Channel 4 must broadcast the results of the
inquiry, which was prompted by complaints from scientists and viewers.

This conclusion was criticized by several scientists, including Carl Wunsch, an ocean and
climate expert at M.I.T. Dr. Wunsch appeared in the film and later said his comments were
taken out of context and made him appear to question the seriousness of human-driven
warming.

The report upheld his complaint that he was treated unfairly, but he said the agency did not
go far enough because the film clearly misled the public in harmful ways. “ ‘Swindle’ raises
the noise level and politicizes an extremely complicated science problem without

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enlightening anyone,” he said in an e-mail message. “A film claiming to be a science
documentary that is really a nonscientific political tract is poisonous.”

Mr. Durkin was on vacation and not available for comment, his office said. Executives at
Channel 4 said they accepted the findings and defended their right to show the film.

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