On Mar 14, 6:02 pm, Signal wrote:
http://news.independent.co.uk/enviro...e/article23559...

The real global warming swindle

A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a
conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the
film was riddled with distortions and errors. By Steve Connor
Published: 14 March 2007

A Channel 4 documentary that claimed global warming is a swindle was
itself flawed with major errors which seriously undermine the
programme's credibility, according to an investigation by The
Independent.

The Great Global Warming Swindle, was based on graphs that were
distorted, mislabelled or just plain wrong. The graphs were
nevertheless used to attack the credibility and honesty of climate
scientists.

A graph central to the programme's thesis, purporting to show
variations in global temperatures over the past century, claimed to
show that global warming was not linked with industrial emissions of
carbon dioxide. Yet the graph was not what it seemed.

Other graphs used out-of-date information or data that was shown some
years ago to be wrong. Yet the programme makers claimed the graphs
demonstrated that orthodox climate science was a conspiratorial "lie"
foisted on the public.

Channel 4 yesterday distanced itself from the programme, referring
this newspaper's inquiries to a public relations consultant working on
behalf of Wag TV, the production company behind the documentary.

Martin Durkin, who wrote and directed the film, admitted yesterday
that one of the graphs contained serious errors but he said they were
corrected in time for the second transmission of the programme
following inquiries by The Independent.

Mr Durkin has already been criticised by one scientist who took part
in the programme over alleged misrepresentation of his views on the
climate.

The main arguments made in Mr Durkin's film were that climate change
had little if anything to do with man-made carbon dioxide and that
global warming can instead be linked directly with solar activity -
sun spots.

One of the principal supports for his thesis came in the form of a
graph labelled "World Temp - 120 years", which claimed to show rises
and falls in average global temperatures between 1880 and 2000.

Mr Durkin's film argued that most global warming over the past century
occurred between 1900 and 1940 and that there was a period of cooling
between 1940 and 1975 when the post-war economic boom was under way.
This showed, he said, that global warming had little to do with
industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.

The programme-makers labelled the source of the world temperature data
as "Nasa" but when we inquired about where we could find this
information, we received an email through Wag TV's PR consultant
saying that the graph was drawn from a 1998 diagram published in an
obscure journal called Medical Sentinel. The authors of the paper are
well-known climate sceptics who were funded by the Oregon Institute of
Science and Medicine and the George C Marshall Institute, a right-wing
Washington think-tank.

However, there are no diagrams in the paper that accurately compare
with the C4 graph. The nearest comparison is a diagram of "terrestrial
northern hemisphere" temperatures - which refers only to data gathered
by weather stations in the top one third of the globe.

However, further inquiries revealed that the C4 graph was based on a
diagram in another paper produced as part of a "petition project" by
the same group of climate sceptics. This diagram was itself based on
long out-of-date information on terrestrial temperatures compiled by
Nasa scientists.

However, crucially, the axis along the bottom of the graph has been
distorted in the C4 version of the graph, which made it look like the
information was up-to-date when in fact the data ended in the early
1980s.

Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis
along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. "There was a fluff
there," he said.

If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the Nasa website he could have got
the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount
of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather
stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and
1940 - although that would have undermined his argument.

"The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the
simplest line we could find," Mr Durkin said.

The programme failed to point out that scientists had now explained
the period of "global cooling" between 1940 and 1970. It was caused by
industrial emissions of sulphate pollutants, which tend to reflect
sunlight. Subsequent clean-air laws have cleared up some of this
pollution, revealing the true scale of global warming - a point that
the film failed to mention.

Other graphs used in the film contained known errors, notably the
graph of sunspot activity. Mr Durkin used data on solar cycle lengths
which were first published in 1991 despite a corrected version being
available - but again the corrected version would not have supported
his argument. Mr Durkin also used a schematic graph of temperatures
over the past 1,000 years that was at least 16 years old, which gave
the impression that today's temperatures are cooler than during the
medieval warm period. If he had used a more recent, and widely
available, composite graph it would have shown average temperatures
far exceed the past 1,000 years.

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S i g n a l @ l i n e o n e . n e t




Well all I can say is that my trusty old HH Lamb's "Climate, History
and the Modern World" published in 1982 long before "GW Band Wagons
Roll"; states quite clearly that gobal temperatures dropped markedly
from the late 40's to the late 80's. The Independant is obviously
very narked that their GW hot air balloon has been burst. They are
incapable of telling the truth.