More on Daily Mailgate

Honestly, the breadth and depth of the Daily Mail fiasco, and what it tells us about media in general, is almost hard to imagine happening except in some wretched piece of fiction.

Now another UK paper, The Guardian, has taken the astonishing step of actually interviewing Mojib Latif, the scientist who had bizarre conclusions stuffed into his mouth by the Daily Mail. The Guardian better be careful–they’re committing Real Journalism here, and we certainly can’t have that.

Leading climate scientist challenges Mail on Sunday’s use of his research:

A leading scientist has hit out at misleading newspaper reports that linked his research to claims that the current cold weather undermines the scientific case for manmade global warming.

Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, said he “cannot understand” reports that used his research to question the scientific consensus on climate change.

He told the Guardian: “It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming.”

He added: “There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases.”

A report in the Mail on Sunday said that Latif’s results “challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs” and “undermine the standard climate computer models”. Monday’s Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph repeated the claims.

The reports attempted to link the Arctic weather that has enveloped the UK with research published by Latif’s team in the journal Nature in 2008. The research said that natural fluctuations in ocean temperature could have a bigger impact on global temperature than expected. In particular, the study concluded that cooling in the oceans could offset global warming, with the average temperature over the decades 2000-2010 and 2005-2015 predicted to be no higher than the average for 1994-2004. Despite clarifications from the scientists at the time, who stressed that the research did not challenge the predicted long-term warming trend, the study was widely misreported as signalling a switch from global warming to global cooling.

…

Latif said his research suggested that up to half the warming seen over the 20th century was down to this natural ocean effect, but said that was consistent with the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “No climate specialist would ever say that 100% of the warming we have seen is down to greenhouse gas emissions.”

The recent articles are not the first to misrepresent his research, Latif said. “There are numerous newspapers, radio stations and television channels all trying to get our attention. Some overstate and some want to downplay the problem as a way to get that attention,” he said. “We are trying to discuss in the media a highly complex issue. Nobody would discuss the problem of [Einstein's theory of] relativity in the media. But because we all experience the weather, we all believe that we can assess the global warming problem.”

As bad as the Daily Mail acted in this instance, the far more important issue is what will the fallout be from this event. The deniers, being the sorts of people they are, will no doubt continue to spin and abuse the original report until the sun burns out, and some newcomers to the discussion will no doubt believe it and them, making it that little bit tougher for us collectively to find the political will to take action. Translation: The inherent ratchet of this fabricated debate has just clicked a notch in the wrong direction. And by “wrong” I mean “wrong if you want what’s in the best interest of humanity”.