Bob Ward takes to task David Rose, author of an article in The Mail on Sunday that makes inaccurate and misleading claims about the science of climate change

Ward, Bob

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9/24/2014Another campaign that makes inaccurate and misleadingclaims about the science of climate change has beenthoroughly discreditedblogs.lse.ac.uk /politicsandpolicy/another-campaign-that-makes-inaccurate-and-misleading-claims-about-the-science-of-climate-change-has-been-thoroughly-discredited/Bob Ward takes to task David Rose, author of an article in The Mail on Sunday that makes inaccurate andmisleading claims about the science of climate change.On 31 August, The Mail on Sunday published the latest in a series of articles on ‘The Great GreenCon’, under the headline: ‘Exposed: Myth of Arctic Meltdown’. The series, written by David Rose,has been commissioned by Geordie Greig and Gerard Greaves, respectively editor and deputyeditor of the newspaper, to persuade readers to oppose government policies to reduce emissionsof greenhouse gases.Rose has not let facts get in the way of this campaign aim, consistently making inaccurate and misleading claimsabout the science of climate change, using any means he deems necessary. For instance, a previous article falselysuggested that the scientific community in the 1970s had promoted the idea that the Earth was in danger of animminent Ice Age. Greenpeace revealed that Rose had used a fake cover of Time magazine as proof. Last year,he produced an article that wrongly asserted Arctic sea ice extent had “recovered” by 60 per cent in one year, but hewas forced into an embarrassing admission afterwards that it was based on a typographic error which appearedfleetingly on the website of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).His latest attack on the science of climate change focuses on the Arctic sea ice extent measured on 25 August 2014,which Rose highlighted was higher than on the corresponding date in 2012 and 2013. But his article failed tomention that the figure for 25 August 2012 was the lowest ever recorded on that date since satellite measurementsbegan in 1979. And as the NSIDC noted, even though the figure for August 2014 was only the seventh lowest onrecord, it was still consistent with a strong downward trend since 1979, with sea ice extent decreasing at a rate of10.3 per cent per year.However, Rose’s article was accompanied by a graph which only showed the data from 2004 to 2014, under theheadline ‘How melt has slowed over 10 years’. As the NSIDC data shows, this was a false claim. But the article wenteven further, quoting Professor Judith Curry who stated: “The Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed”.This was an extraordinary prediction, based solely on the fact that the sea ice extent on 25 August 2014 was slightlyless than it was on 25 August 2013, which in turn was less than it was on 25 August 2012. Essentially, the “reversal”of the downward trend was defined by the data points for 2013 and 2014.The apparent basis for Professor Curry’s claim was a paper published late last year which she co-authored with DrMarcia Wyatt for the journal Climate Dynamics. It predicted that a “rebound” in Arctic sea ice would occur after 2006as part of a “stadium wave signal”.In the press release issued by Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, which accompanied the publication of thepaper, Dr Wyatt said that “the sea ice minimum observed in 2012, followed by an increase of sea ice in 2013, issuggestive of consistency with the timing of evolution of the stadium-wave signal”. However, the paper was heavilycriticised by other researchers who concluded that the “stadium wave signal” is an artefact of the methods used byDr Wyatt and Professor Curry.And this week, the NSIDC has delivered a decisive blow to Professor Curry’s claim in The Mail on Sunday that thedata for 2013 and 2014 show a reversal in the decline in Arctic sea ice extent. It announced that the annual sea ice1/2minimum recorded in September 2014 is lower than in 2013. Based on Professor Curry’s questionable logic ofmaking predictions based on year to year variations in Arctic sea ice, the conclusion is that there was a reboundbetween 2012 and 2013, but this ended in 2014 with the resumption of the decreasing trend.It is not yet clear if Professor Curry will retract her comments in the face of the new data, or whether The Mail onSunday will publish a correction. But it is yet another humiliation for David Rose and his editors whose campaign onclimate change has again been thoroughly discredited.Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, nor of theLondon School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting. Featured image credit: NasaGoddard Space Flight Centre CC BY 2.0About the AuthorBob Ward is policy and communications director at the ESRC Centre for Climate ChangeEconomics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and theEnvironment at London School of Economics and Political Science. 2/2

Another campaign that makes inaccurate and misleading claims about the science of climate change has been thoroughly discredited

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