The Mail on Sunday has withdrawn claims made by journalist David Rose in last weekend’s edition of the newspaper.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 0.2oC per decade, but that actual warming was 0.12oC 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 0.2oC of warming for that period, they claimed a 0.13oC trend, meaning they were only out by a statistically insignificant 0.01o. 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....
David Rose Exposes David Rose's Prose Lows
- Updated article reveals the Mail has retracted claim that ‘World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is HALF what we said’
- Journalist accepts his articles may have exaggerated
- Journalist HUMILIATED and in retreat
By David Rose
The author of a newspaper article
claiming climate scientists were drastically wrong
was in fact himself drastically wrong, I can today exclusively reveal about myself.
The Mail on Sunday today exposes the misrepresentations and miscalculations that lie at the heart of claims by the Mail on Sunday – the leading source of exaggeration and falsehood cited worldwide to undermine climate science and defend the fossil fuel industry.
An investigation into my article has now forced me to update my own work. In a five-hour crisis meeting I forced myself to make the extraordinary concession that observed temperatures have been increasing at a rate bearing no resemblance to claims I made when I published my last assessment three days ago
Back then, my headline said observed warming over the 15 years from 1990-2005 had taken place at a rate of just 'HALF’ that predicted by the IPCC in 2007, on the basis of my interpretation of the IPPC's 2007 report which I can now reveal to be wildly inaccurate.
My new updated article acknowledges the observed change in the IPCC’s figures was actually a tiny revision from 0.13o to 0.12o of warming per decade, a change of just one per cent of one degree.
Asked to comment on my revelations, I refused to speak to myself, and instead called ANOTHER crisis meeting, at which I met with myself in my kitchen and discussed the damage my articles had done to my credibility.
Emerging from the meeting alone, in a bold show of defiance I announced to myself that I would change my previous article to now say: ‘World’s top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought’.
Further downgrades are planned and by the end of this week global warming is expected to be one sixteenth of what I said, or even less.
This additional humiliation comes at a time when the Mail on Sunday is still reeling from the discovery that my previous piece massively overstated the level of Arctic sea ice.
I was unable to reach myself for comment.
CORRECTION
In 2007 the IPCC claimed 0.13o of warming per decade, since 1951. In the original version of this blog post this was incorrectly stated as 'the IPCC predicted 0.13o'. The text has been amended to clarify which periods are covered by which claims. h/t Richard Betts
