[troutman]

UPDATE: Despite Doubling Down, Climate Change Article Still Very Misleading

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro...th_errors.html

Over the weekend, The Mail on Sunday posted a highly misleading article on climate change. In it, author David Rose made a number of errors, some fundamental, downplaying the reality of climate change. I, along with many others, pointed out the numerous mistakes made, including his comparing two numbers that are not at all comparable, as well as a grossly inaccurate misquote of a climate scientist, making it seem he was saying something he really wasn’t.

On Tuesday, Sep. 17, the Mail "corrected" the article. Except not really. The headline, which had originally said “World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just HALF what we said” was changed to “World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought - and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong”.

This of course has caused some ripples among the people who keep track of climate change denial nonsense. It’s actually a rather masterful use of distraction: It has some truth in it, but doesn’t tell you the biggest thing you need to know to understand the real situation. And it’s important to note that none of the other really obvious errors in the article were changed.

But for the moment, though, this works in the favor of deniers, who claim that temperatures are dropping and the Earth is cooling. That's not the case. It's just the temporary downward swing of the ocean cycle masking the long-term upward trend of land temperatures.

These folks may call themselves skeptics, but they’re nothing of the sort.