-----Original Message----- From: Armand Leroi [mailto:a.leroi@imperial.ac.uk] Sent: 09 March 2007 02:38 To: Martin Durkin; lbolch@channel4.co.uk Cc: simonsingh@msn.com; ben@badscience.net Subject: The Global Warming Swindle Dear Martin, I thought that your programme made some good points (the politics of the IPCC) and some bad points (anthropogenic global warming is a conspiracy to keep Africa underdeveloped). But what fascinated me were your scientific claims, in particular, your display of Friis-Christensen's time-series correlations between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures since 1860. The correlation was, indeed, amazing -- the two variables track each other perfectly! Maybe you're right: maybe it's all just the sun. So, I looked up the paper. It was published in 1991 -- in SCIENCE -- and you can't get better than that. ( SCIENCE 254: 698-700). So looked to see who had cited it -- and promptly came across a series of papers by Peter Laut who argues that Friis-Christensen's data are wrong. And by that I mean bogus. Now, I am no climate scientist -- but I can read these graphs; there's nothing complicated about them. And what Laut has to say is shocking and convincing (see attached summary article but there's also a much longer, and much more damning, technical article). He says that Friis-Christensen repeatedly engaged in "unacceptable handling of observational data". To put this bluntly: the data that you showed in your programme were wrong -- and may have been deliberately faked, for they were wrong in several different ways. And if you correct the data, the correlation in recent years goes away. Fascinatingly, Laut points out that Friis-Christensen's data, far from having been suppressed, have received widespread media coverage (and they've been cited over 300 times in the scientific literature). Indeed, in 2001, Friis-Christensen and colleagues were the subject of a Danish TV doc in "The Climate Conflict", which presented them as an "ingenious mavericks who...now fight a scientific establishment represented by the IPCC." Gosh. Sounds familiar. There is much more that could be said about your programme -- such as the gross caricature that it gave of a scientific community which, contra your film, continually debates the various causes of global warming -- but, as I said, I am not a climate scientist. But it does show -- what abundant experience has already taught me -- that, left to their own devices, TV producers simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth. I am very disappointed. I am copying this to Lou Bolch. And to Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre, and Olivia Judson -- fellow connoisseurs of this sort of thing. Best Armand -----Original Message----- From: Martin Durkin [mailto:mdurkin@wagtv.com] Sent: 09 March 2007 09:53 To: Armand Leroi; lbolch@channel4.co.uk Cc: simonsingh@msn.com; ben@badscience.net Subject: RE: The Global Warming Swindle You're a big daft cock -----Original Message----- From: Simon Singh [mailto: simonsingh@msn.com] Sent: 09 March 2007 10:48 To: Martin Durkin Cc: ben@badscience.net; 'Armand Leroi'; lbolch@channel4.co.uk Subject: RE: The Global Warming Swindle Dear Martin, I have not paid the same attention to your programme as Armand has done, but from what I did see it did indeed seeem to be an irresponsible piece of film-making. If you can send me a copy of the programme then I will examine it in more detail and give you a more considered response - my address is below - thanks. 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 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. Best Regards, Simon. Ps. Armand, I think you missed Olivia Judson off your (cc) list.