I’ve been accused on this blog of being mean to climate deniers – of calling them “deniers” when they fancy themselves “skeptics”.  Well, what else do we call people who ignore and even distort evidence that doesn’t support their prejudice? I can think of words that are a lot worse than “denier”, but changing our terminology to suit deniers is like calling a thief a businessman just because that’s how he sees himself.

The latest example of denial (as opposed to legitimate skepticism) came in the UK’s Sunday Daily Mail, in a distortive piece that reads like the stuff you see on late-night infomercials – you know, the ones that offer fool-proof market timing mechanisms that will MAKE YOU RICH?

The piece in question is called Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again): Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years, and it’s been mailed to me by more than a dozen readers, despite being so full of fallacies that I don’t know where to begin.

Trouble is, I’m tired of debunking the same lies over and over again – it’s like picking weeds – but this time I don’t have to, because the Met Office itself posted a blog that shines the bright light of transparency onto this piece of distortive reporting:

Today the Mail on Sunday published a story written by David Rose entitled “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about”.

This article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.

Despite the Met Office having spoken to David Rose ahead of the publication of the story, he has chosen to not fully include the answers we gave him to questions around decadal projections produced by the Met Office or his belief that we have seen no warming since 1997.

For clarity I have included our full response to David Rose below:A spokesman for the Met Office said:

“The ten year projection remains groundbreaking science. The complete period for the original projection is not over yet and these projections are regularly updated to take account of the most recent data.“The projections are probabilistic in nature, and no individual forecast should be taken in isolation. Instead, several decades of data will be needed to assess the robustness of the projections.“However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850. Depending on which temperature records you use, 2010 was the warmest year on record  for NOAA NCDC and NASA GISS, and the second warmest on record in HadCRUT3.”

Furthermore despite criticism of a paper published by the Met Office he chose not to ask us to respond to his misconceptions. The study in question, supported by many others, provides an insight into the sensitivity of our climate to changes in the output of the sun.

It confirmed that although solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years this will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases. The study found that the expected decrease in solar activity would only most likely cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08 °C. This compares to an expected warming of about 2.5 °C over the same period due to greenhouse gases (according to the IPCC’s B2 scenario for greenhouse gas emissions that does not involve efforts to mitigate emissions).  In addition the study also showed that if solar output reduced below that seen in the Maunder Minimum – a period between 1645 and 1715 when solar activity was at its lowest observed level – the global temperature reduction would be 0.13C.

If the Met Office response sounds as much like gobbledygook as the Daily Mail’s piece, you’re not alone, and you may even be a legitimate skeptic.  That’s someone who really wants to know the answers, but hasn’t had the time to get up to speed.  If so, I have two books for you:  Spencer Weart’s The Discovery of Global Warming, and John Reisman’s  Exposing the Climate Hoax: It’s ALL About The Economy (the latter of which I reviewed last week, and which quite clearly addresses the fallacy that the Mail article employs – namely, selecting a short time frame within a long-term trend*).

Climate change is not simple, but understanding it is everyone’s business.  To get that understanding, however, you’ll have to do a bit of homework.