An Inconvenient Truth: When Film Art and Climate Change Clashed in a Swindle
The British Media regulator, Office of Communications or Ofcom has affirmed that a documentary on UK’s Channel 4 last year debunking Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the theory about human influence on climate change was out of touch with reality.
The watchdog this week ruled The Great Global Warming Swindle unfairly portrays several scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that it broke rules in the Broadcasting Code.
Ofcom’s investigation found that the IPCC, the former government chief scientist, Sir David King, and Professor Carl Wunsch, were treated unfairly in the documentary that attempted to use a cast of the world’s top scientists to debunk the global warming theory.
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In particular, the documentary misquoted Sir David and criticized him for comments he did not make about how the survival of humanity would depend on breeding couples moving to the Antarctic if man continued emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The documentary by independent filmmaker Martin Durkin projected Sir David as predicting that by the end of the century atmospheric levels would reach levels not seen for 55 million years.
Dozens of scientists, and hundreds of enraged viewers filed complaints about the film’s accuracy, impartiality and fairness but concerns that the climate problem has been portrayed too definitively as an unfolding catastrophe have been raised many times before - including direct attacks on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth as using scare tactics to advance the global warming issue.
British judge, Michael Burton, last October refused, however, to ban An Inconvenient Truth from secondary schools, but cautioned that “serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush” it contained must be in the guidance notes.
Image courtesy: The Great Global Warming Swindle
