Dear Ecologgers (Heaves a Sigh).
I have seen the GGWS at my University, which turns out to be the University of Winnipeg, located in friendly Manitoba, Canada. As it turns out, my august institution makes an appearance in this "documentary". At several points, you will see a fellow called Tim Ball, who is one of Canada's self-styled global warming nay-sayers. The caption that appears beneath his talking head is "Tim Ball, Department of Climatology, University of Winnipeg". Now, you may use this caption as an indicator of the veracity of the rest of the documentary, since (1) there is NO "department of Climatology" at the University of Winnipeg, (2) Tim Ball has not been a professor there for a rather long time, and (3) when he was a professor there he is on record as telling students that there was no such thing as the greenhouse effect (I have this straight from the horse's mouth). The documentary is similarly populated with "experts" who probably had there credentials checked to the same standard as those of Mr Ball, who, incidentally, published a grand total of 6 papers in a long career, none of which dealt with the subject of human-induced climate change. The Director, Martin Durkin, is notorious for his controversial and poorly researched contrarian positions. Among his previous works, he produced a program in which he claimed that ilicone breast implants, were beneficial to the women who used them, reducing the risk of breast cancer!! The miracel is that such programs ever get televised, a sad testament to the decline in critical thinking these days. As for the University of Winnipeg; we are not Harvard or Oxford by a long shot, but I and my colleagues do object to having our name used in badly researched diatribes masquerading as serious documentaries. For a critique of the GGWS by the eminent climatologist Sir John Houghton, see http://www.jri.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=83 All the Best, Andy Park (University of Winnipeg) ----- End forwarded message -----
