[Vision2020] "Global Warming Swindle" Film Distorts MIT ScientistOn Global Warming

[lfalen]

Ted
Thanks for the referencee, I'll read them

Roger
-----Original message-----
From: "Ted Moffett" starbliss at gmail.com
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:53:25 -0700
To: "Vision 2020" vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] "Global Warming Swindle" Film Distorts MIT ScientistOn Global Warming

> 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
> 
>