climate deniers

This may not be entirely new or surprising information to you, but the English speaking press around the world has been recycling Rose's Mail on Sunday climate denial nonsense for nearly a decade. Now a decision of the Australian Press Council, published today, means that 'it was in the Mail' is no longer an excuse for publishing climate misinformation.

The main headlines from the newly reformed and repentant Telegraph and Mail on the latest IPCC report (AR5 working group 3, on mitigation) were –

Fracking can be part of the solution to global warming, say UN climate change experts

Fracking can help to slow global warming admit UN scientists... and so can nuclear power

So what exactly did the new report (IPCC AR5 WG3 SPM) say about fracking? You’ll never guess.

The Telegraph and the Mail have both told MPs that they think climate change is man-made.

If this is an April Fool’s joke, I’m not amused, but assuming it’s real, job done, that’s the end of mainstream media denial.

Viscount Matthew Ridley, school mate of David Cameron, inheritor of his father’s surname, first name, title, estate and, unbelievably, job as chairman of Northern Rock (how’s modern meritocracy working out for them, I wonder), has written an article called ‘Roll up: cherry pick your results here’.

The Mail on Sunday has withdrawn claims made by journalist David Rose in last weekend’s edition of the newspaper. Rose wrote that IPCC climate scientists had predicted warming of 0.2^oC per decade, but that actual warming was 0.12^oC per decade since 1951. Thus, his original headline read: “World’s top climate scientists confess: global warming is HALF what we said”. Except, the IPCC never claimed 0.2^oC of warming for that period, they claimed a 0.13^oC trend, meaning they were only out by a statistically insignificant 0.01^o. Rose got his numbers wrong, he was exposed across the internet and now he’s been forced to retract the claim. Rose regards himself as the great climate truth-teller, sniffing out all and any errors and omissions in the data before splashing them across the pages of the Mail in his own hyper-ventilating style.

                                                                                                                                                       So we wondered how David Rose would report on the revelation that he got his own climate story wrong....