| February 15, 2010 |  |
Phil Jones Did Not Say the Earth is Cooling
Britain's Sunday Mail Again Twists the Words of a Scientist
Climate science contrarians, including former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, are twisting a statement by Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, made during a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interview.
When asked, "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming?," Jones answered, "Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95 percent significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."
Contrarians claim that Jones said the Earth is not warming. In fact, Jones answered a very narrow question about how much temperatures have increased during the past 14 years, and only the past 14 years. Over this very short time period, human-induced warming has caused the planet to remain quite hot compared to its average for the past century. But with only 14 years of data, it is hard to detect a high level of significance for any trend.
By contrast, data collected over the past 100-plus years show an unmistakable warming trend. Later in the interview, Jones said, "I'm 100 percent confident that the climate has warmed." On the question of whether or not humans are contributing to that warming, Jones added, "I would go along with [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Chapter 9: There's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
The main source for this recent misrepresentation is a Sunday Mail article. Previously, the Sunday Mail misrepresented the work of meteorologist Mojib Latif to falsely claim that Earth was going to cool. (The Sunday Mail's editorial staff is separate from the Daily Mail, although both are owned by the
Climate contrarians do not have good scientific arguments or data on which to base their claims. The only real "significant trend" here is that they often twist the words of scientists to make their fallacious points.
According to a backgrounder on global temperatures by the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Over the last century, global average temperature has increased by more than 1°F (0.6°C). While the record shows significant regional differences in warming, the long-term global upward trend is unambiguous.
"Over the last 25 years, Earth's global average temperature has been increasing at more than twice the rate of the last century," the backgrounder continues. "In fact, nine of the warmest years on record have occurred in just the last 10 years. This warming has been accompanied by a decrease in very cold days and nights and an increase in extremely hot days and warm nights. Additionally, the oceans reached their highest recorded temperature in the summer of 2009. Oceans have absorbed much more heat from global warming than the air at the Earth's surface because water is much better at retaining heat."
The past decade was the hottest on record. Still, scientists are looking into the role that short-term ocean cycles, sunspot cycles and other factors can play in dampening the pace of warming over the past 10 years.
The Union of Concerned Scientists puts rigorous, independent science to work to solve our planet's most pressing problems. Joining with citizens across the country, we combine technical analysis and effective advocacy to create innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future.
