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 Es lamentable que una televisión pública mezcle información científica con opinión, falacias fáciles de resolver por estudiantes de primero de carrera con datos científicos. Es más lamentable aún cuando los repetidores de las falacias que niegan el cambio climático actúan cuando el IPCC presenta sus conclusiones en Valencia.
TeleMadrid ha decidido emitir “The Global Warming Swindle"” un documental que intenta negar en la clásica batería de falacias negacionistas del cambio climático (“el clima no se puede preveer”, “el CO2 no pinta casi nada”, “el ser humano no es el causante del aumento de CO2”, “el cambio climático es de origen natural”, “no existe el calentamiento global”).
Ya he tratado algunas falacias del documental, pero la gente de Real Climate lo deja algo más claro: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/07/friday-roundup/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled-carl-wunsch-responds/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/
Todo eso no sirve de nada, para los negacionistas es indiferente lo que se publique en las revistas indexadas, en el Geophysical Research Letters o que los papeles del IPCC estén sometidos al más extricto “Peer-Review” que es como la ciencia elabora el consenso, para ellos un video que puede refutar un estudiante de primero de carrera de geografía o física, una sarta de hechos no demostrables, de argumentos que ya están falseados, de errores y de tergiversaciones sirven más que cualquier papel científico.
Pero a veces no es necesaria una batería de argumentos científicos, esta vez me conformaré con reproducir la carta que Carl Wunch, uno de los científicos que supuestamente niegan el cambio climático envió al director de Channel 4, quejándose del documental, el uso de falacias, errores y la manipulación de sus declaraciones. Cuando los mismos expertos que según el documental niegan el cambio climático denuncian la manipulación del documental, habla claramente de la falta de veracidad y honestidad de este.
Mr. Steven Green
Head of Production
Wag TV
2D Leroy House
436 Essex Road
London N1 3QP
10 March 2007
Dear Mr. Green:
I am writing to record what I told you on the telephone yesterday about
your Channel 4 film "The Global Warming Swindle." Fundamentally,
I am the one who was swindled---please read the email below that
was sent to me (and re-sent by you). Based upon this email and
subsequent telephone conversations, and discussions with
the Director, Martin Durkin, I thought I was being asked
to appear in a film that would discuss in a balanced way
the complicated elements of understanding of climate change---
in the best traditions of British television. Is there any indication
in the email evident to an outsider that the product would be
so tendentious, so unbalanced?
I was approached, as explained to me on the telephone, because
I was known to have been unhappy with some of the more excitable
climate-change stories in the
British media, most conspicuously the notion that the Gulf
Stream could disappear, among others.
When a journalist approaches me suggesting a "critical approach" to a
technical subject, as the email states, my inference is that we
are to discuss which elements are contentious, why they are contentious,
and what the arguments are on all sides. To a scientist, "critical" does
not mean a hatchet job---it means a thorough-going examination of
the science. The scientific subjects described in the email,
and in the previous and subsequent telephone conversations, are complicated,
worthy of exploration, debate, and an educational effort with the
public. Hence my willingness to participate. Had the words "polemic", or
"swindle" appeared in these preliminary discussions, I would have
instantly declined to be involved.
I spent hours in the interview describing
many of the problems of understanding the ocean in climate change,
and the ways in which some of the more dramatic elements get
exaggerated in the media relative to more realistic, potentially
truly catastrophic issues, such as
the implications of the oncoming sea level rise. As I made clear, both in the
preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that
global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious
discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that.
What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which
there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why
many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely
accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples,
it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one:
a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only
a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to
infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning
meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases
are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director
not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that
piece of disinformation.
An example where my own discussion was grossly distorted by context:
I am shown explaining that a warming ocean could expel more
carbon dioxide than it absorbs -- thus exacerbating the greenhouse
gas buildup in the atmosphere and hence worrisome. It
was used in the film, through its context, to imply
that CO2 is all natural, coming from the ocean, and that
therefore the human element is irrelevant. This use of my remarks, which
are literally what I said, comes close to fraud.
I have some experience in dealing with TV and print reporters
and do understand something of the ways in which one can be
misquoted, quoted out of context, or otherwise misinterpreted. Some
of that is inevitable in the press of time or space or in discussions of
complicated issues. Never before, however, have I had
an experience like this one. My appearance in the "Global Warming
Swindle" is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation
has been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable position in which to be.
At a minimum, I ask that the film should never be seen again publicly
with my participation included. Channel 4 surely owes an apology to
its viewers, and perhaps WAGTV owes something to Channel 4. I will be
taking advice as to whether I should proceed to make some more formal protest.
Sincerely,
Carl Wunsch
Cecil and Ida Green Professor of
Physical Oceanography
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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