“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.

The article doesn’t record Durkin’s response to this point, but he does admit to an error in the temperature graph.

“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.

The correction doesn’t make it onto the first cut of the DVD.

Elsewhere, Durkin has admitted that the claim made in the documentary that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans is also false (corrected on the DVD).

The admission appears in a subscription-only article in the Scotsman, conveniently available for free over here (though possibly not for long).
http://www.citizens1st.com/story.asp?idstr=105983100

One of the authors of the work comparing solar variation with temperature (Friis-Christensen) appears to have given his name to an open letter that basically accuses Durkin of fraud.
http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html

Summary: The documentary showed a graph of solar cycle length going back 400 years, sourced to work by Friis-Christensen. This period includes the “Maunder Minimum”; in the 17th century, solar activity was so low that Friis-Christensen didn’t attempt to calculate solar cycle length, so there was a gap in the original data.

Durkin, or one of his cheeky researchers, appears to have filled that gap in. Easily done, if you know what the answer is already.

Amusingly, they fudged the figures so that the solar graph *precisely matches* the temperature graph. As even the laziest science student knows (in fact, particularly the lazy ones), if you’re going to fake your data, you need to introduce some spurious noise to avoid suspicion.

If you after reading these two hundred entries you have still have no idea of what Durkin is accused of you are rather spectacularly clueless I’m afraid.

If anyone is at all interested why your comments are completely, absolutely, demonstrably wrong they could consider what some actual climate scientists have to say about the stock myths peddled by denialists like yourself:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11

If you want to dispute this JohnA – perhaps you’d like to come over to the forum – the link is above…

The bottom two records are the climate change records produced in the IPCC Second AR and the “Hockey Stick” produced in the TAR. The Hockey Stick has been thoroughly debunked as “bad science” and bad statistics by multiple independent investigators. There are not a few scientists who claim that the “Hockey Stick” may well be a scientific fraud. It certainly has no legitimacy as a reconstruction of past climate when key statistical metrics show that it has no statistical significance.

Personally I regard the “Hockey Stick” as a key indicator of “Real Climate Change Denial” since its purpose appears to be to reduce natural climate change to a minimum while purporting to show a climate recketing out of control since the end of the 19th Century – it is a false picture of past climate but a totem for environmentalists.

So I have no idea what Durkin is meant to be accused of

George Monbiot takes exception to this.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/04/01/correspondence-with-hamish-mykura/

badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2024&start=210

pv

since the graphs we are talking about are posted there it’s a rather more sensible place to continue discussion..

http://badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2024&start=210

“weltanschauung”?

especially as it’s one your hero Comrade Furedi likes to use when he’s attacking Environmentalists as ‘religiously motivated’.

http://www.novo-magazin.de/86/novo8612.htm

http://badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2024&start=210

Dean constantly defers the argument.

or are the questions about your politics too embarrassing for you?

Incidentally there are a number of very reasonable questions others have for you on Ben’s forum.

I’m assuming your tactic is to:

1. hide…

See you at:

http://badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2024&start=210

if you have a better explanation…

There is no science in posts 2 and 4.

By believing that arguing the consensus position shifts the burden of proof away from him, Dean thinks he can defer the scientific argument by redefining the debate as he pleases.

So for example, criticism of the methodology in Mann et al’s climate reconstruction is reduced in Dean’s mind to “anthropogenic CO2 is not causing global warming”.

Since, allegedly, the weight of scientific opinion is in his favour (but because he has no scientific argument, this is only political, not scientific weight – it has no explanatory power) he forces the challenger to defend the imagined proposition (that anthropogenic CO2 is not causing global warming) by repetition, and by dominating the conversation to the exclusion of any nuance, and more importantly, forcing the conversation away from the challenge. Dean is defending the faith.

This happens because Dean has no grasp of science, and can only think in binary terms. He doesn’t understand that anthropogenic CO2 can have caused global temperatures to rise, and that Mann et al’s reconstruction can be flawed at the same time. For him, any method is correct if the theory it loosely supports is correct. So any criticism of any attempt to demonstrate an AGW hypothesis is taken as an argument that humans are not causing climate change. For him, this is all about ends, not about means, and Dean cannot consider the two arguments e.g. – i) ‘climate change is not anthropogenic’, and ii) ‘Mann’s reconstruction is flawed’ – as distinct, and not logically linked.

So Dean’s practice is to:

1. Hide behind the consensus to defer having to enter the scientific debate
2. Force sceptical opinion to defend the false negative proposition
3. Dominate the conversation to the exclusion of any other dialogue
4. Falsely polarise the debate, robbing it of nuance and the potential to shed any light on what’s going on

This is argument by brute ignorance – rather than shed any light on the matter, it suits Dean more to piss all over it… Better to not let it be had than risk having it convince anyone. But Dean is not unique. This is the mode of the political environmental movement.

Once the certainties of AGW theory are openly challenged, the political project is undermined, and nobody is more aware of this than shrill environmental activists and journalists. Dean and Steve Connor shoot themselves in the foot when they overstate the science for moral capital, and deny the opportunity of rational discussion by screaming about crypto-marxist-trotskyites, for as soon as it is shown that science doesn’t provide the certainty they claim, the whole argument crumbles. People like Dean therefore have to exert a great deal of energy destroying any possibility of debate – it’s not in their interests to have people question them.

But let’s be fair to people like Dean. The consequence of things not being as certain as they say they are is their loss of weltanschauung– a crisis of faith (and employment). It’s natural they should want to defend their interests, however lunatic they may be.

I’m happy to take your word for it mikep – although you are a bit of an oddball – most people that push the denialist viewpoint are from the extreme left or right. Durkin is a fine example as a member of the ‘Living Marxism’ who pushes an extreme right ‘Libertarian’ agenda on the potty theory that this will hasten the demise of capitalism. You may wish to ignore this on the basis that you want to be fair to the chap – but he demonstrably distorts scientific data, and the words of scientists to make his point, think you’re being more than a little naive – I don’t believe that Durkin deserves the ‘benefit of the doubt’ ( but then you Lib Dems have alway been a bit soft on serial offenders).

But I wouldn’t want to discourage you from voting Lib-Dem – they were the first mainstream party to accept the reality of climate change – and constantly press for the most radical measures to tackle it…

.. and sorry tanveer – your post is content-free – and if you want to see where I’d discussed science check posts #2 and #4. Seems that we’ve gone 200 posts without anyone discussing that.

Since no-one else is reading this – I’ll leave you to chat between yourselves…