[Vision2020] "Global Warming Swindle" Film Distorts MIT Scientist On Global Warming

Ted Moffett starbliss at gmail.com
Thu Mar 22 00:53:25 PDT 2007


All:

A little bit of research goes a long ways...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled-carl-wunsch-responds

http://puddle.mit.edu/~cwunsch/

http://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/person.asp?position=Faculty&who=wunsch

>From the first web site above:

When approached by WAGTV, on behalf of Channel 4, known to me as one of the
main UK independent broadcasters, I was led to believe that I would be given
an opportunity to explain why I, like some others, find the statements at
both extremes of the global change debate distasteful. I am, after all a
teacher, and this seemed like a good opportunity to explain why, for
example, I thought more attention should be paid to sea level rise, which is
ongoing and unstoppable and carries a real threat of acceleration, than to
the unsupportable claims that the ocean circulation was undergoing shutdown
(Nature, December 2005).

I wanted to explain why observing the ocean was so difficult, and why it is
so tricky to predict with any degree of confidence such important climate
elements as its heat and carbon storage and transports in 10 or 100 years. I
am distrustful of prediction scenarios for details of the ocean circulation
that rely on extremely complicated coupled models that run out for decades
to thousands of years. The science is not sufficiently mature to say which
of the many complex elements of such forecasts are skillful. Nonetheless,
and contrary to the impression given in the film, I firmly believe there is
a great deal to be learned from models. With effort, all of this is
explicable in terms the public can understand.

In the part of the "Swindle" film where I am describing the fact that the
ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where
it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be
dangerous---because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its
placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide
exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be
very important --- diametrically opposite to the point I was making ---
which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different
ways, some unexpected.

Many of us feel an obligation to talk to the media---it's part of our role
as scientists, citizens, and educators. The subjects are complicated, and it
is easy to be misquoted or quoted out context. My experience in the past is
that these things do happen, but usually inadvertently --- most reporters
really do want to get it right.
Channel 4 now says they were making a film in a series of "polemics". There
is nothing in the communication we had (much of it on the telephone or with
the film crew on the day they were in Boston) that suggested they were
making a film that was one-sided, anti-educational, and misleading. I took
them at face value---clearly a great error. I knew I had no control over the
actual content, but it never occurred to me that I was dealing with people
who already had a reputation for distortion and exaggeration.
-----
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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