Ind: C4 global warming deniers "swindlers"
- From: mail1606808@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 8 May 2007 00:55:35 -0700
C4 accused of falsifying data in documentary on climate change
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
The Independent (UK)
Published: 08 May 2007
The makers of a Channel 4 documentary which claimed that global
warming is a swindle have been accused of fabricating data by one of
the scientists who participated in the film.
The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast on 8 March and has been
criticised by leading scientists for errors, distortions and
misrepresentations.
The film has also been referred to the regulatory watchdog Ofcom which
is considering a complaint from 37 senior scientists that the
programme breached the broadcasting code on the misrepresentation of
views and facts.
Now even a climate sceptic whose dissenting views were used by the
film- makers to bolster their claims about the "lies" and "swindles"
of global warming has accused the documentary of promulgating
falsehoods.
Eigil Friis-Christensen, director of the Danish National Space Centre,
has issued a statement accusing the film-makers of fabricating data
based on his work looking at the links between solar activity and
global temperatures.
Dr Friiss-Christensen said that a graph he had produced some years ago
showing the link between fluctuations in global temperatures and
changes in solar activity - sunspot cycles - over the past 400 years
had been doctored. The documentary used the graph to pour scorn on the
idea that the global warming in recent decades is the result of man-
made emissions of carbon dioxide. Solar activity, the programme
stated, is the cause of global warming in the late 20th century.
However, Dr Friiss-Christensen has issued a statement with Nathan
Rive, a climate researcher at Imperial College London and the Centre
for Climate Research in Oslo, distancing himself from the C4 graph. He
said there was a gap in the historical record on solar cycles from
about 1610 to 1710 but the film-makers made up this break with
fabricated data that made it appear as if temperatures and solar
cycles had followed one another very closely for the entire 400-year
period.
"We have reason to believe that parts of the graph were made up of
fabricated data that were presented as genuine. The inclusion of the
artificial data is both misleading and pointless," Dr Friis-
Christensen said.
"Secondly, although the commentary during the presentation of the
graph is consistent with the conclusions of the paper from which the
figure originates, it incorrectly rules out a contribution by
anthropogenic [man-made] greenhouse gases to 20th century global
warming," he said.
Dr Friis-Christensen, a physicist, believes that solar cycles play an
important role in climate change and that not enough effort has gone
into addressing the theory. The fabricated data did not, he said, make
any difference to the overall view he takes but he is still critical
of the way the film handled the scientific evidence. Asked by The
Independent whether the documentary was scientifically accurate, Dr
Friiss-Christensen said: "No, I think several points were not
explained in the way that I, as a scientist, would have explained
them ... it is obvious it's not accurate."
The C4 programme also used out-of-date solar cycle data relating to
the past 30 or 40 years which made it appear as if temperatures and
solar activity were rising together when in fact solar activity has
levelled off for the past few decades. "After 1985 we don't see any
rise or shortening of the solar cycles compared to what we saw in the
temperature [record]," Dr Friiss-Christensen said.
Dr Friis-Christensen is the second scientist to appear on the
programme who has criticised the way the film was made. Professor Carl
Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the way
his interview was edited gave the misleading impression that he was
not concerned about rising levels of carbon dioxide - a diametrically
opposite view to his stated position.
Martin Durkin, who wrote and directed the programme, was unavailable
for comment but admitted in an email to Mr Rive that the graph was
wrong. "Thank you for highlighting the error on the 400-year graph. It
is an annoying mistake which all of us missed and is being fixed for
all future transmissions of the film. It doesn't alter our argument,"
Mr Durkin said.
However, the graph and its fabricated data will still be included in
the DVD of the programme which went on sale yesterday. The advertising
for the DVD says: "Everything you've ever been told about global
warming is probably untrue. This film blows the whistle on the biggest
swindle in modern history."
Mr Durkin has already apologised for an error in another graph used in
the film which had to be corrected before the film's second
transmission on the digital channel More 4.
The scientists who have written to Ofcom include Sir John Houghton,
the former chief executive of the Met Office, Lord May of Oxford, a
former government chief scientist and past-president of the Royal
Society, and Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic
Survey in Cambridge. In a letter to Mr Durkin they call for changes to
the programme before the DVD version is released, even though DVDs are
not covered by the Ofcom Broadcasting Code.
"So serious and fundamental are the misrepresentations that the
distribution of the DVD without their removal amounts to nothing more
than an exercise in misleading the public," they say.
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