Mr Durkin also said a warmer period some hundreds of years ago, referred to as the mediaeval warm period, was even hotter than temperatures today.
Pressed by interviewer Tony Jones on why he did not avail himself of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) graphs available since 1990 – which have shown astronomical rising temperatures and slowing sunspot activity, Mr Durkin said they were unreliable.
“You can’t just get a graph produced by Hubert Lamb on the various statistics and then add another bit of line to it,” Mr Durkin told the program.
“In terms of the error bars of that graph, it is absolutely absurd to quibble on when it finishes in terms of tens of dates.”
Mr Durkin took exception to questions over why he referred, in his program, to temperatures matching sunspot activity “now”, when the graph ended around 1980.
This was despite IPCC reports in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007 showing steady increases in temperatures.
“I’ll tell you exactly why we didn’t use one of those. They were superseded by graphs which eliminated the mediaeval warm period,” he said.
“This is what (his opponents) do. They’ll fix on something which is a moot point.
“Personally, I think it’s perfectly legitimate to refer to the late 20th century as now, just as the IPCC did.”
Read prominent scientists’ concerns about The Great Global Warming Swindle in Open Letter to Martin Durkin
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