Thursday, March 15, 2007

Martin Durkin to Climate Change Scientists: "You're a big daft c**k"

The "Great Global Warming Swindle" debate took a highly amusing twist today with the leak of an email exchange between the executive producer Martin Durkin and two of the British scientists who questioned the accuracy of the story.

This article also points out the problems with the Channel 4 show that have been previous covered in the post

Debunking the "Great Global Warming Swindle".

Not too much economics in this post but the amusing nature of the insults is enough to qualify as a blog post. This is the full Timesonline acticle. Apologies for the swear words included in this article.

C4’s debate on global warming boils over

Two eminent British scientists who questioned the accuracy of a Channel 4 programme that claimed global warming was an unfounded conspiracy theory have received an expletive-filled tirade from the programme maker.

In an e-mail exchange leaked to The Times, Martin Durkin, the executive producer of The Great Global Warming Swindle, responded to the concerns of Dr Armand Leroi, from Imperial College, and Simon Singh, the respected scientific author, by telling them to “go and f*** yourself”.

The tirade has caused Dr Leroi to withdraw his cooperation from another Channel 4 project with Mr Durkin on race, The Times has learnt.

The programme, broadcast by Channel 4 last Thursday, featured a number of scientists who disputed the consensus on the causes of global warming.

Dr Leroi was particularly concerned about a segment that featured a correlation between solar activity and global temperatures, which was based on a 1991 paper in the journal Science by Eigil Friis-Chris-tensen. He was surprised that the programme failed to mention that while these findings look convincing superficially, they have been revealed as flawed by subsequent research by Peter Laut.

Dr Leroi e-mailed Mr Durkin about his use of data, concluding: “To put this bluntly: the data that you showed in your programme were . . . wrong in several different ways.” He copied Mr Singh into the exchange.

Mr Durkin replied to both later that morning, saying: “You’re a big daft cock.” Less than an hour later, Mr Singh, who has worked for the BBC, intervened to urge Mr Durkin to engage in serious debate. He wrote: “I suspect that you will have upset many people (if Armand is right), so it would be great if you could engage in the debate rather than just resorting to one-line replies. That way we could figure out what went wrong/ right and how do things better/ even better in the future.” Mr Durkin replied nine minutes later: “The BBC is now a force for bigotry and intolerance . . . Since 1940 we have had four decades of cooling, three of warming, and the last decade when temperature has been doing nothing.

“Why have we not heard this in the hours and hours of shit programming on global warming shoved down our throats by the BBC?

“Never mind an irresponsible bit of film-making. Go and f*** yourself.”

Last night Dr Leroi said that he was amazed at the rudeness of Mr Durkin’s reply.

“It was rather a shocking response,” Dr Leroi said. “It was my intention to make a film with Martin Durkin and [the production company] Wag, but that is something I am seriously reconsidering now. I am no climate scientist, but I was very concerned at the way that flaws in these data were brushed over.”

He said that the global warming film had glossed over flaws in data that it used to make its case, and that it was critical that a documentary about a subject as controversial as race and biology did not make similar mistakes.

“As the subject of our proposed film was race, it is such a sensitive topic that it requires great care and great balance. That he has shown so little respect for scientific consensus and such little nuance is a cause for great concern. I cannot imagine it will go ahead now.”

The film would have addressed Dr Leroi’s thesis that race is a biologically meaning-ful and medically valuable concept, a view that is highly controversial among scientists.

Last night Mr Durkin apologised for his langauge. “As far as I was concerned these were private e-mails. They arrived when I was quite tired having just finished the programme in time for transmission,” he said.

“Needless, to say, I regret the use of intemperate language. It is so unlike me. I am very eager to have all the science properly debated with scientists qualified in the right areas and have asked Channel 4 if they will stage a live debate on this subject.”

Where Channel 4 got it wrong over climate change

Claim: Ice core data shows that carbon dioxide levels rise after temperatures go up, not before

Fact: This is correct, but climate scientists have a good explanation. There is a substantial feedback effect – initial small rises in temperature lead to substantial release of carbon dioxide from natural reservoirs in the oceans, which then produce much steeper warming later on

Claim: Temperatures in the troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere, have not risen as predicted by the models

Fact: This was once the case, but it has been resolved now that initial measurement errors have been corrected

Claim: Temperatures rose for the first part of the century, then cooled for three decades before warming again. There is no link to carbon dioxide

Fact: Temperatures did follow this pattern, but again there is a good explanation. The mid-century effect fall came about chiefly because of sulphate aerosols – particles that have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. These are no longer produced so heavily by industry because of environmental regulations to combat other problems such as acid rain

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'm so sorry to have thought that funny. after just having watched the terrible piece of propaganda and then seeing the director cuss just makes all that bad energy i built up while watching turn to giggles. thank you. i can sleep now.

Ones and Zeros on the Interweb said...

I was so disturbed by the claim that there was a correlation between high sunspot activity and warm periods that I spent hours searching out the data and examining it. I could not see any connection between the high and low sunspot periods and temperature variations, although the trend lines for rising temperature and sunspot activity are both rising. In the low sunspot years which follow one another in groups of five on an eleven year cycle, there was no cooling evident. The same was true of high sunspot years and a lack of correlation with warming.

Maybe I am missing something.

BibleRationale said...

It's funny how it's only considered propaganda when it's based soley on science and not political anti industialization politics. Does that make sense to anyone else? And im sure any of you people using Durkin's emails against him have never made snide remarks to someone trying to discount your years of hardwork.

runlevel0 said...

Durkin is the Profet, he has the benefit of The Truth, thus.
Everybody saying something against him shall be consifered heretic.

Amen, Hail to the Nobel Prize of Journalism, Martin The Great Durkin.

Anonymous said...

"Fact: Temperatures did follow this pattern, but again there is a good explanation. The mid-century effect fall came about chiefly because of sulphate aerosols – particles that have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. These are no longer produced so heavily by industry because of environmental regulations to combat other problems such as acid rain"

This alone demonstrates that AGW is ridiculous. Why aren't we trying to furiously generate sulphate aerosols, if they have such a rapid and pronounced cooling effect?

Anonymous said...

Oh, come on. Do you really think man can steal the blame from things as significant as volcanoes, the sun and the earth's natural cycles?
These things pump out far more energy than man burning fossil fuels or tinkering with chemicals. Let's get a perspective here.

Anonymous said...

70% of the earth is water and 30% land. The population of the entire world can be put into a country the size of Australia with plenty of room to spare. When hydropnics are using CO2 to promote growth and all creatures exude this as well as methane, also emitted by the smallest of creatures, includong bacteria, do these "Scientists" really believe mankind can have such a profound influence on the weather?
Get a grip!!!

Anonymous said...

"The population of the entire world can be put into a country the size of Australia with plenty of room to spare."

Australia has a lack of water? Or that's at least what the media says, who knows who or what data to believe! (I'd like to add these days, but it seems any time in history is the same.)

Heraclitus said...

"scientists who disputed the consensus on the causes of global warming."

This tells a lot about how non scientific is the base on which AGW stands.

_______________


Fact?: This is correct, but climate scientists have a good explanation. There is a substantial feedback effect – initial small rises in temperature lead to substantial release of carbon dioxide from natural reservoirs in the oceans, which then produce much steeper warming later on.

Oh boy, I'd love to know who came out with such a logical fallacy, any sophomore in astrophysics, not even in climatology, can find the logical fallacy here: what you are describing would be called a "positive feedback", if this is the case, then the second steeper warming would cause an immense release of CO2 that would cause even steeper warming and so on till point of saturation. The point of saturation or equilibrium in general would be at very high temperatures and we have an example in Venus. It's either heat controlling the quantity of CO2 solved into water (adiabatic properties) or it's CO2 (the quantity we have the measurement in earth history) that provokes heat. Both are impossible to coexist.
Since we are talking about temperatures and CO2 quantities that are well far away that saturation point the positive theory is impossible here. You just put the cause in front of the effect then retracted it and put it after: we're still laughing here for that! WoW!

______________


Fact?: This was once the case, but it has been resolved now that initial measurement errors have been corrected


Sounds like expunged.



Boy you are permanently on the blackboard of funny articles in the Climatology Department of the Università degli Studi di Firenze.

Go back to school!

Heraclitus said...

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2948/

Anonymous said...

Martin Durkin view is not impartial, he is 'sponsored' by fossil fuel companies!
DER!