Whatever your thoughts about global warming, you have to feel a little sorry for Phil Jones.
First, the formerly private e-mails of the former director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England were hacked, leading to the so-called climategate scandal. And now, media everywhere are putting words in Jones's mouth, words that are the exact opposite of those he actually spoke.
In an interview with the BBC last week, Jones said he is "100-per-cent confident the climate has warmed," and "there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
One day later, the United Kingdom's Daily Mail newspaper's headline read: "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995."
The fair and balanced FOX-News.comfollowed that up with a story saying that Jones "dropped a bombshell" in admitting "there has been no global warming over the past 15 years." Similar statements have now been repeated in media and blogs from around the world.
Now, how does "global warming" become "no global warming?" As the Center for Environmental Journalism explains, it's easy: When the media either don't, or choose not to, understand the concept of statistical significance.
Jones was asked specifically whether he agreed "that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming." He replied: "Yes, but only just. I calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. The trend (0.12 C) is positive, but not significant at the 95-per-cent significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level."
0 comments:
Post a Comment