[Buddy]

Channel 4 Now Ashamed of its Experts http://www.desmogblog.com/channel-4-...of-its-experts

After a DeSmogBlog post yesterday complained about academic misrepresentation in the promotional material for a UK television show (The Great Global Warming Swindle), Channel 4 went back into its website and removed all reference to the "experts" that it plans to quote in the program, due to air March 8 at 9 .m.

In its promotional material, Channel 4 was advertising one of its experts, Dr. Tim Ball, as a “Climatologist and Prof Emeritus of Geography at the University of Winnipeg.” In fact, Dr. Ball retired from a short, unspectacular academic career in 1995. He neither earned – nor was he given – the honour of an Emeritus professorship, and the University of Winnipeg has, on at least one previous occasion, specifically requested that he stop presenting himself as such.

Far from being a working scientist or credible expert, Dr. Ball has associated himself in the last decade with a series of energy industry front groups (the Friends of Science, the Natural Resource Stewardship Project ) that fight against any policy that would address climate change.

Even the Calgary Herald, the leading newspaper in the Canadian oil capital of Calgary, has said that Ball is “viewed as a paid promoter of the agenda of the oil and gas industry rather than as a practicing scientist.”

But the locations that Channel 4 still mentions suggest that the other “experts” will include at least a cross-section of other people who are known more for taking money from the energy industry than they are for scientific research.

So who is trying to swindle who? Who is most likely to be mis-representing the truth?