| February 4, 2010 |  |
Contrarians Misrepresent Mojib Latif's Research on Short-Term Climate Variation
For years, Environment and Public Works committee staff attached to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and other climate contrarians have been misrepresenting the work of Mojib Latif, a meteorologist and oceanographer at the Leibniz-Institute for Maritime Sciences in Kiel, Germany, despite Latif's repeated attempts to correct their misinterpretations.
Sen. Inhofe's office and others incorrectly state that Latif's work supports their unscientific belief that global temperatures are decreasing. In fact, Latif and his colleagues are analyzing relatively brief natural temperature variations in specific regions, not long-term global climate change. Their work does not contradict the overwhelming scientific consensus that human-caused emissions are driving up the Earth's average temperature.
For example, "Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector," a May 2008 study by Latif, Noel Keenlyside, and others examines short-term climate patterns in the North Atlantic that affect the United States, Great Britain and other densely populated North Atlantic countries. It found that despite long-term global warming trends, natural variations in ocean cycles may contribute to a cooler climate in North America and Europe over the next decade. The paper, however, did not project North Atlantic temperatures over the next 30 years, as erroneous media accounts have claimed.
Latif and his colleagues are studying the natural cycles that lead to ups and downs in temperature over a period of a few years at the local and regional level. Accurately predicting such shifts has been a boon to fishing industries and other businesses that are often affected by such short-term climate shifts. In the Pacific, these ocean cycles are known as the "El Niño Southern Oscillation." Scientists are studying similar ocean cycles in the North Atlantic, which also have significant economic consequences.
In any case, studies on short-term natural climate variation should not be characterized as having any impact on the broad scientific consensus that the Earth's average temperature will rise dangerously over time as heat-trapping emissions from burning oil and coal and destroying forests accumulate in the atmosphere. In the same way winter weather in the United States does not tell us much about climate change, regional natural climate variability is just one small part of our global climate.
Scientists have a firm understanding of long-term natural and human-driven climate changes. Their understanding of short-term climate cycles is not as solid, and Latif and his colleagues are advancing scientific understanding in this field.
Latif, a member of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has reached out to reporters set the record straight. "The natural variation occurs side by side with the manmade warming," he told the Guardian on January 11. "Sometimes it has a cooling effect and can offset this warming and other times it can accelerate it."
Contrarians have ignored Latif's corrections and continue to peddle misinformation about his work to newspapers, radio and television stations, and ideological blogs. On January 10, for example, Sen. Inhofe's office circulated a Daily Mail article that misrepresented Latif's research. Two years ago, in April 2008, Sen. Inhofe's office claimed Latif and others were saying that global warming would "stop."
Unfortunately, some journalists have not adequately fact-checked these unsupportable assertions. During a January 2010 broadcast, CNN's Jack Cafferty repeated these unscientific claims linking Latif's research and cold weather to global climate change. FoxNews.com issued a similar erroneous report.
The disinformation campaign to twist Latif's work is just one of a number of examples in which climate contrarians haven taken peer-reviewed, published articles, misinterpreted them to suit their political agenda, and then ignored the scientists who did the research when they try to correct the record.
Sen. Inhofe is one of the worst offenders. Last year, for example, his office released a list of scientists it claimed "dissent" from the mainstream consensus on global warming. A July 2009 analysis by the Center for Inquiry determined that 80 percent of the scientists on the list had not published peer-reviewed climate research and that there were several signatories who, in fact, support the finding that human activity is driving climate change.
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