On 4 Apr 07, at 14:00, Bob Ward wrote:

> There has also been extensive discussion about the 'scientific  
> howlers' in the programme on www.relaclimate.org.
>
> However, what I found most enlightening was the exchange of e-mail  
> messages with Martin Durkin, the programme's producer, which can be  
> found at: http://ocean.mit.edu/%7Ecwunsch/papersonline/ 
> durkinemails. But be warned, it includes foul and abusive language  
> (from Durkin)!
>
>
> Bob Ward
> Director, Global Science Networks


Durkin's documentary played on a number of weaknesses in the  
arguments put forward by political environmentalists, and this  
single, prime-time TV programme has almost certainly damaged the  
reputation of science and scientists as a whole.

The sad fact is that no matter how much scientists complain about the  
errors of fact propagated by climate change deniers, the message will  
always be drowned out by those who play the mass media to greatest  
effect. And here we have hyperbolic left-environmentalists on the one  
hand, and the Martin Durkins of this world on the other.

The email exchange referred to by Bob Ward is interesting, and not  
just because of Durkin's interesting choice of vocabulary. Armand  
Leroi was in my view right to challenge Durkin on the bad science  
contained in his documentary, but he went about it in quite the wrong  
way.

In that rather one-sided email correspondence, Leroi raised the issue  
of Eigil Friis-Christensen and Henrik Svensmark's work on cosmic rays  
and cloud cover, and repeated Peter Laut's claims that Friis- 
Christensen and Svensmark's data were fabricated, or at least  
unacceptably handled.

Declaration of interest: Eigil Friis-Christensen was my boss between  
2000 and 2003. While employed by the Danish National Space Centre, I  
worked in magnetospheric and auroral physics rather than climate  
change, but I took a keen interest in the work of Friis-Christensen  
and Svensmark, and discussed with them data analysis issues  
pertaining to solar modulation of cosmic rays, and terrestrial cloud  
cover.

There are legitimate criticisms to be made of Friis-Christensen and  
Svensmark, but I have no doubt as to their scientific integrity. The  
analysis of geophysical time series is often problematic, and I'm not  
convinced by the correlation detected by Friis-Christensen and  
Svensmark. But these highly able physicists are asking the right  
questions, and continue to work on the problem. There is even a CERN  
experiment in the works to test the core hypothesis.

What we do not need is environmentalists and other climate scientists  
calling Friis-Christensen et al. climate change deniers, and shouting  
them down in an attempt to cut off legitimate scientific debate.

The evidence so far points to solar-terrestrial influences playing a  
minor role, but a lot more work is required before we can adequately  
quantify such influences on weather and climate. One of the problems  
here is funding, what with atmospheric physics and chemistry being  
classed as geosciences, and space physics as astronomy. Despite its  
relative proximity to the Earth's surface, there remains to this day  
a relatively little explored part of the Earth's upper atmosphere  
dubbed the 'ignorosphere'.

For the anthropogenic climate change denier Durkin to co-opt Friis- 
Christensen was quite clever, but Durkin fell completely flat on his  
face in giving airtime to Piers Corbyn. This scientific snakeoil  
salesman claims that terrestrial weather can be forecast from sunspot  
behaviour, but refuses to justify the claim in scientific terms.  
Through his company Weather Action, Corbyn makes a living from  
selling 'weather forecasts' to people with more money than sense.

When I was a Research Fellow in upper atmosphere physics at  
Southampton University, I supervised along with Henry Rishbeth – who  
is one of the world's preeminent space scientists – a number of BSc  
Honours project students. One of our projects was a statistical study  
of Met Office data and Weather Action forecasts. Needless to say,  
there was no significant correlation found between the datasets, and  
our mistake was to set the students such an unchallenging task.

Also interesting in the debate surrounding Durkin's documentary is  
Simon Singh's contribution. As well as intervening in the email  
exchange between Leroi and Durkin, Singh had published recently on  
the Spiked website an article criticising Durkin and his documentary.  
Which is most interesting, as Singh is a trustee of Sense about  
Science – a front for the Revolutionary Communist Party/LM/Institute  
of Ideas/Spiked Online, with which Durkin is associated.

Why does the scientific community continue to tolerate highly  
partisan political activists and scientifically-illiterate media  
workers controlling the public debate about science? And I'm not just  
talking about climate change.

Francis

--
Dr Francis Sedgemore
Freelance journalist and science writer
tlf: +44.7840191336; web: http://skysong.eu

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