OfCom — a victory for common sense

Martin Durkin’s Channel 4 film “The Great Global Warming Swindle” caused an explosion of shock and venom from the high priests of climate alarmism.  We can see how far we have strayed from proper science when merely to present an alternative view is to be shunned as a heretic.  A range of interested parties — including the IPCC — complained about the film to OfCom.  And after a year-long investigation, OfCom has reported.
 
They have some technical criticisms of the Channel 4 film.  It was not balanced, they say.  Of course it wasn’t.  In the face of almost universal climate hysteria, Channel 4 had the courage to set out the opposing view.  One of the scientists interviewed, Dr. Carl Wunsch, said he had been misled about the nature of the programme, which he expected to be a balanced discussion. “What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance” , he said.  Yet of course the media are full of out-and-out propaganda for climate alarmism.  All the Channel 4 film sought to do was, in a small way, to redress the balance and give a little airtime to the other side.
 
OfCom’s key finding, though, after their minor technical criticisms, is devastating.  The film “Did not mislead audiences so as to cause harm or offence”.  But the main thrust of the complainants was that Channel 4 had misled audiences.  The OfCom verdict amounts almost to an endorsement of the film.
 
This is by no means the first time that an authoritative public body has found against climate alarmism.  Back in October 2007, Stuart Dimmock, a lorry driver and a Kent school governor, challenged the showing of Al Gore’s disaster movie “An Inconvenient Truth” in the High Court, and Judge Michael Burton ruled that Al Gore’s film contained at least nine substantive scientific errors.  He ruled that guidance notes drawing attention to these errors should be distributed to schools showing the film.
 
So well done OfCom.  The alarmists think they can shout down every voice of dissent.  They constantly insist that they represent the overwhelming consensus of scientists — and indeed of all decent and sensible people.  But they do not.  They are wrong.  And increasingly the public are waking up to the fact the climate hysteria is about centralising power and raising taxes, not about saving the planet.