Wunsch still a warmist - Wunsch

Professor Carl Wunsch (right) says he was "completely misrepresented" by the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, and "totally misled" by the people who made it.

Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was "grossly distorted" and "as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two." He says his comments in the film were taken out of context and that he would not have agreed to take part if he had known it would argue that man-made global warming was not a serious threat...

(Here's his very visible Mea Culpa to his colleagues for allowing himself to be included, which all but screams, "Don't worry! I'm still one of you!") Now, here's what he said in the film:

Transcript of TGGWS:

Professor Wunsch:
25:43 The ocean is the major reservoir into which carbon dioxide goes when it comes out of the atmosphere or to from which it is re-emitted to the the atmosphere. If you heat the surface of the ocean, it tends to emit carbon dioxide. Similarly, if you cool the ocean surface, the ocean can dissolve more carbon dioxide.

Professor Wunsch:
26:44 - The ocean has a memory of past events ugh running out as far as 10,000 years. So for example, if somebody says oh I'm seeing changes in the North Atlantic, this must mean that the climate system is changing, it may only mean that something happened in a remote part of the ocean decades or hundreds of years ago who's effects are now beginning to show up in the North Atlantic.

Professor Wunsch:
49:22 - The models are so complicated, you can often adjust them is such a way that they do something very exciting.

Professor Wunsch:
50:46 - Even within the scientific community you see, it's a problem.
If I run a complicated model and I do something to it like ugh melt a lot of ice into the ocean and nothing happens, ugh it's not likely to get printed. But if I run the same model, and I adjust it in such a way that something dramatic happens to the ocean circulation like the heat transport turns off, ugh it will be published. People will say this is very exciting. It will even get picked by the media. So there is a bias, there's is a very powerful bias within the media, and within the science community itself, toward results which are ugh dramatizable. If Earth freezes over, that's a much more interesting story than saying well you know it ugh fluctuates around, sometimes the mass flux goes up by 10%, sometimes it goes down by 20%, but eventually it comes back. Well you know, which would you do a story on? That's what it's about.

And here's the email sent to him, inviting his participation:

From: jo locke
Sent: 19 September 2006 16:22
To: Carl Wunsch
Cc: Eliya Arman
Subject: Climate Change Documentary
Dear Professor Wunsch,
Many thanks for taking the time to talk to me this morning. I found it really useful and now have the issues much clearer in my mind.
I wanted to email you to outline the approach we will be taking with our film to clarify our position. We are making a feature length documentary about global warming for Channel Four in the UK. The aim of the film is to examine critically the notion that recent global warming is primarily caused by industrial emissions of CO2. It explores the scientific evidence which jars with this hypothesis and explores alternative theories such as solar induced climate change. Given the seemingly inconclusive nature of the evidence, it examines the background to the apparent consensus on this issue, and highlights the dangers involved, especially to developing nations, of policies aimed at limiting industrial growth.
We would like to do an interview with you to discuss the notion that there is a scientific consensus on the effects of global warming on the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Drift.
It has been widely reported that Britain and Western Europe could soon be plunged into a mini ice age, and we would like to show that it is simply not true that they will shut down. We would like to talk to you about the numerical models and whether they give us a realistic perspective of the impact of climate change on the oceans. We would also like to talk to you about the 'memory' of oceans, and how it can take varying amounts of time for a disturbance to be readable in the North Atlantic.
Fundamentally, we would like to ask you whether scientists have enough information about the complex nature of our climate system.
Do the records go back far enough to identify climate trends, and can we conclusively separate human induced change from natural change?
Our filming schedule is still relatively fluid at the moment, but we hope to be in Boston around the second week of November. Please don't hesitate to contact me or my producer, Eliya Arman, if you have any further questions, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Jo Locke
Assistant Producer
WagTV
2d Leroy House
436 Essex Road
London N1 3QP
t 020 7688 5191 f 020 7688 1702
www.wagtv.com

Decide for yourself whether he represents someone who has been "duped," or a scientist wriggling under the light of the very real New McCarthyism that now affects all so-called "deniers."

Was Wunsch duped? Swindled? Misled? Or is he now simply trying to protect his reputation with his more warmist colleagues? You decide.

UPDATE: As always, Cox and Forkum get straight to the point:

LINKS: Scientists receive death threats for questioning global warming - Newsbusters
Scientists threatened for 'climate denial' - Sunday Telegraph
Soft censorship of global warming film - Bernard Darnton, Section 14
Swindled: Carl Wunsch responds - Real Climate

RELATED: Global Warming, Science, Free Speech, World Politics