Martin Durkin is an English television producer and managing director for WAGtv (Channel 4) in Great Britain. He is a man with a reputation for controversy, hated by many on the left both for the bubbles he pops and for the way he goes about it.His latest production may have taken his critics over the edge, seeing that it is a 90-minute filmwhich effectively challenges the left's latest craze, global warming.
The film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, just had an encore presentation on Channel 4 last night and Durkin's debunkers have gone into a frenzy. You can read their criticism plenty of places around the web today but I'd suggest balancing their extreme reactions by reading Brendan O'Neill over on Spiked who gives Durkin a fairer hearing...
...Its title a knowing, punk-rebellious nod to the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, The Great Global Warming Swindle featured scientists questioning whether global warming is manmade. Some of them argued that the Sun - directly, or through its effect on cosmic rays - causes global warming. Others claimed that CO2 levels are influenced by changes in temperature rather than the other way around. If this were the case, it would turn on its head every fundamental assumption underpinning not just the green movement but also national and international politics, a whole new genre of global warming literature and research, and much of the newly greened education system in Britain: those assumptions being that a rise in CO2 is causing the Earth to warm, that man is responsible for that rise in CO2, and thus we must rein man in. No wonder many seem miffed by Durkin’s film.
Whatever viewers may have thought about the new theories put forward in Swindle to explain global warming (personally, I found the replacement of the widespread, all-encompassing manmade theory with an all-encompassing cosmic ray theory – sort of ‘It’s the Sun wot done it!’ – a little unconvincing), there’s no denying that the film poked some very big holes in the global warming consensus...
...And yet some have branded Channel 4 as irresponsible for showing a 90-minute critical film which Durkin says he struggled for 10 years to have commissioned.
‘It shows that environmentalists and journalists can be utterly intolerant’, he says. ‘They simply will not tolerate any dissenting view. Straight away they try to take it down. You can see that in the kind of language they use – they say “the jury is in” on global warming, or “the science is done and dusted”, or you’re a “denier” if you question the consensus. This is not about having a debate but about shutting down debate.’
Indeed, many of Durkin’s critics have responded to The Great Global Warming Swindle by trying to slur Durkin and the participants in the film. Or they have gone running to the Office of Communications (Ofcom) to demand that it rap Durkin’s knuckles – a bit like overgrown school sissies squealing to teacher about the boy they don’t like in the hope that teacher will give him a jolly good thrashing...
Lucianne.com has posted the link to the Google page where you can watch the film in its entirety. I did so last night and found the film of great interest. There's no doubt that Durkin's production has made him the leading "anti-Al Gore" and even though The Great Global Warming Swindle doesn't (and shouldn't) end the debate, the film has it all over Gore's puffed-up power point presentation -- Gore's Oscar notwithstanding.
Imagine. Shoot a poorly crafted, poorly argued film on global warming and win an Academy Award. Shoot a challenging, fast-paced film which actually gets closer to the real scientific questions and get blasted to bits. It's all in the conclusions.
By the way, if you find the Google page down (either because of overuse or perhaps because of green-leaning gremlins), you can also watch The Great Global Warming Swindle on You Tube right here.
John Malek, my old friend and pro-life colleague, realizing I hadn't read through Lucianne.com this weekend (a rare but still inexcusable lapse) was the one who alerted me to the Durkin film. I'm glad he did and I think you will be too.