David Rose

Credentials

BA, University of Oxford, Modern History (1978 – 1981).¹

Background

David Rose is a British author and journalist who has published a wide range of articles challenging man-made climate change, frequently citing material and reports from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and global warming skeptics such as Judith Curry, and Benny Peiser, of the GWPF.

Rose has repeatedly suggested the disputed theory that there has been a global warming “pause,” and has previously suggested Britain may experience another ice age. Skeptical Science has described Rose as a “leading purveyor of the myth.”² ³ ⁴ ⁵

Davis Rose‘s first job was as a reporter with the London magazine Time Out (1981 – 1984), and his since worked with a range of papers and magazines including The Guardian (which has itself since published critiques of Rose’s articles at the Mail on Sunday), The Observer, and BBC Current affairs TV. Rose became a freelance writer in 2000, later a contributing editor of Vanity Fair in 2002, and in 2008 a special investigations writer for the Mail on Sunday.⁶ ⁷

Writing in the New Statesman, Rose described his work with British intelligence disseminating what he described as “sheer disinformation.” According to Rose, if he was told something by the secret service and it proved to be false, “there would be no comeback, no accountability. I could put up, or shut up.” He also added “To my everlasting regret, I strongly supported the Iraq invasion, in person and in print.”⁸

DeSmog previously reported on David Rose’s “misinformation legacy,” pointing to an article by The Guardian’s George Monbiot who summed up Rose’s errors over time. Monbiot also wrote of Rose’s potential role in the Iraq war, noting that The Observer “was strongly influenced by Rose’s reporting” at the time. “Rose’s articles for the paper uncritically reported the claims made by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Chalabi later admitted that they were incorrect,” Monbiot wrote.⁹ ¹⁰

“Since the Iraq debacle, Rose has latterly been writing articles attacking climate science for the Daily Mail. He has distinguished himself by the same uncritical reliance on dodgy sources that caused his catastrophic mistakes about Iraq,” Monbiot added.

In 2013, Media Matters named Rose’s publication, the Daily Mail “2013 Climate Change Misinformer of the Year” for its stirring up of “faux controversies about climate science.” In 2014, Greenpeace made an official release noting that David Rose is “not a credible source.”¹¹ ¹²

David Rose & the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)

David Rose has described himself as a “Friend” of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a group that has promoted climate science denial and argued against emissions reduction policies:¹³

Stance on Climate Change

January 2015

“[T]here is little doubt that the rapid warming of the 1980s and early 1990s has slowed – although greenhouse gas emissions have surged.

[…] Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Forum, said ‘there has been no statistically significant warming trend since 1997’ – because the entire increase over this period was smaller than the error margin.”¹⁴

November 2013

“The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover. […] The pause means there has been no statistically significant increase in world average surface temperatures since the beginning of 1997, despite the models’ projection of a steeply rising trend.”¹⁵

March 2013

“No, the world ISN’T getting warmer (as you may have noticed). Now we reveal the official data that’s making scientists suddenly change their minds about climate doom. So will eco-funded MPs stop waging a green crusade with your money? Well… what do YOU think?”¹⁶

January 2012

“The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.”¹⁷

July 2011

“[T]he world temperature trend since 1995 has been flat, with no evidence of warming at all.”¹⁸

Key Quotes

November 16, 2017

On Twitter, Rose admited doubt on the “promised shale gas bonanza” in the UK. Rose was responding to a Twitter comment by “Bishop Hill” critical of a recent Financial Post article on Blackpool for failing to mention recent drilling by the shale gas firm Quadrilla:¹⁹

Well, right now the promised shale gas bonanza looks more distant than sustainable power from nuclear fusion, so arguably not. And no one yet knows whether UK shale formations are geologically viable for large scale production – some say probably not.

— David Rose (@DavidRoseUK) November 16, 2017

November 2016

“Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record,” Rose writes. ” The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Nino – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.”²⁰

September 2013

“The [global warming] pause – which has now been accepted as real by every major climate research centre – is important, because the models’ predictions of ever-increasing global temperatures have made many of the world’s economies divert billions of pounds into ‘green’ measures to counter climate change.”²¹

January 6, 2013

“The stupidest international agreement since the Treaty of Versailles expired at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Fifteen years after its launch, the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change died a miserable failure. Few are likely to mourn.”²²

January 9, 2010

“The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.”²³

Key Actions

December 15, 2020

In an article for The Spectator, Rose criticised the aims of Extinction Rebellion, writing that they “have declared war on modernity.” Rose added:²⁴

“The virus’s leap from animals to humans at a Wuhan wet market has nothing to do with global warming, but XR thinks the pandemic is Gaia’s punishment for our profligate, consumerist lifestyles.”

August 22, 2020

Rose wrote an article for The Daily Mail criticising measures taken by city councils across the country to install cycle lanes and make roads narrower to disincentivise the use of motor vehicles. He argued that these measures were counterintuitive, stating: “the result is that journeys that now take a few minutes will be much longer – and, ironically, considering this is part of a drive to make us more green, they will produce more exhaust emissions.”²⁵

December 29, 2018

David Rose contributed a piece for The Mail on Sunday with the title “Why all you’ve been told about these polar bears could be WRONG.” The story cites anecdotal reports from a single Inuit village on the Western shores of Hudson Bay in Canada to refute the widely held belief that climate change poses an existential threat to the animals.²⁶

Rose was told of increased sightings of the bears and more frequent interactions with villagers, including one fatal attack on an Inuit hunter. After visiting the remote village, Rose concluded that reports of dwindling numbers of polar bears and declining health in remaining animals due to climate change were overstated:

“Activists claim that polar bears are ‘the canary in the coalmine’ that proves how dangerous climate change is, not only to bears but humans. But what if they chose the wrong species? And if the scientists are wrong about the bears, will it be only the Inuit who become more skeptical?”²⁷

However, he also quoted a representative of Polar Bears International (PBI) who presented the prevailing viewpoint held by scientists and conservationists:

“According to PBI’s conservation director, Geoff York, ‘what we’re seeing across the Arctic as sea ice recedes is that more polar bears are spending time on shore… It is creating that perfect storm of potential for human-bear conflict’.”²⁸

Other reporting reinforces the conclusion that polar bears spend more time around human settlements on land due to later freezing and earlier thawing of sea ice, increasing the likelihood of sightings and interactions.²⁹

February 4, 2017

David Rose published a piece in The Mail on Sunday titled “Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data.” In the article, Rose claimed to reveal “astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”³⁰

The article, which was shared in a number of mainstream media outlets including The Times, Fox News, and even referenced in US Congress by Representative Lamar Smith. As DeSmog UK reported, the Mail on Sunday was forced to publish a correction for Rose’s article after the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) ruled that the Mail on Sunday had “failed to take care over the accuracy of the article” and “had then failed to correct these significantly misleading statements.”³¹ ³² ³³ ³⁴

The ruling is now published above the original article at the Mail on Sunday’s website. IPSO said that “the newspaper’s claims that Dr Bates’ testimony had provided ‘irrefutable evidence’ that the paper had been based on ‘misleading, ‘unverified’ data’’, leading – as the headline claimed – to world leaders being ‘duped’ over global warming, and ‘convinced’ to invest billions in climate change, went much further than the concerns which Dr Bates had detailed in his blog or in the interview.”³⁵ ³⁶

The ruling added that the article “did not represent criticisms of the data collection process” but had instead taken as “assertions of fact that the data had been demonstrated conclusively to be wrong and had a significant impact on the decision making of world leaders, with an additional implication this had been part of a wilful attempt to deceive.”³⁷

Bates himself clarified his account, which appears to be different than David Rose’s portrayal. Speaking with E&E News, as reported by The New York Times:³⁸

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates said.³⁹

February 2017

David Rose writes an “exclusive” for the Mail on Sunday making a number of inflammator claims about the background to a scientific paper, published in the journal Science, which updated global temperature data to account for changes in the way ocean temperature measurements were taken.

In summary, Rose’s story claimed a “whistleblower”, retired National Oceanic and Atmsopheric Administration scientist John Bates, had revealed that the paper, led by his former superior Tom Karl, had been rushed, used flawed data and had been politically motivated. Further, the story claimed that this single paper had “strongly influenced” that climate negotiations in Paris in late 2015. Rose’s story was based heavily on a guest blog post, written by Bates, on the blog of contrarian scientist Judith Curry.

Scientists and other journalists discovered several major flaws in the story. Climate Home spoke to several UN climate negotiators, who explained the Karl paper had no influence on the Paris talks. A factcheck at Carbon Brief by Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather showed how Rose had ignored other scientific articles which had confirmed the work done by Karl et al. The claim that the Karl paper was “rushed” was refuted by the editor of Science, who revealed that in fact that paper had taken longer than usual to go through peer review at the journal.

December 12, 2016

David Rose went on ”GWPF TV” to speak with climate science denier David Whitehouse on “the hostile and irrational reactions to his article on the drop in global temperatures since the El Nino ‘spike’ in early 2016.” Video below.⁴⁰

December 11, 2016

Writing at The Mail on Sunday, David Rose cited a Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) report written by Conservative MP Peter Lilley titled “The Cost of The Climate Change Act” (PDF), claiming that as evidence that “the radical shift to ‘green’ renewable energy will have cost the economy £319 billion by 2030 – three times the annual NHS budget for England.” Peter Lilley is a member of the GWPF’s Board of Trustees and one of only five members to vote against the bill.⁴¹ ⁴² ⁴³

Carbon Brief noted that Rose was the first to cover the report in Mail on Sunday, while it was subsequently picked up by a Telegraph editorial, then by Matt Ridley (member of GWPF’s Advisory Board) in theTimes, and finally by the far-right website Breitbart, where James Delingpole used it to argue that climate policy was “pointless.”⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷

November 26, 2016

David Rose wrote an article titled “Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions” in The Mail on Sunday.⁴⁸

“Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record,” Rose writes. ” The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Nino – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.”⁴⁹

Rose quotes climate change denier Judith Curry to support his claim that there is a slowdown in global warming. He also points to David Whitehouse of Nigel Lawson‘s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) to support that claim.⁵⁰

Seven scientists analyzed the article at Climate Feedback, and concluded the article was a “textbook case of cherry picking,” ignoring limitations on the data it comments on. “This is akin to claiming that sea level rise has ended because high tide in one area has ebbed” the summary adds.⁵¹

“Overall the article is made highly misleading by omitting critical information and cherry-picking one particular dataset and time period. It also incorrectly interprets comments from climate scientists,” Ed Hawkins, Principal Research Fellow at National Centre for Atmospheric Science writes.⁵²

David Rose’s article was mentioned in the far-right website Breitbart where noted climate change denier and journalist James Delingpole wrote that it was evidence that global temperatures had plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of the year.” Delingpole added that “the news has been greeted with an eerie silence by the world’s alarmist community.”⁵³

Daily KoS reported that Lamar Smith, Chairman of the US House Science Committee, eventually posted a link to the Breitbart article on Twitter. “David Rose’s story doesn’t actually link to the ‘evidence’ he pretends to give and that “evidence” isn’t real,” the Daily KoS‘s Walter Einenkel writes.⁵⁴

October 17, 2016

David Rose attended the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s (GWPF) annual lecture at the Royal Society in London. The GWPF’s lecture was controversial given it was hosted at the Royal Society in London, which had reportedly been under internal pressure to cancel the booking.⁵⁵ ⁵⁶

Rose can be seen sitting next to James Delingpole, a prolific journalist at the far-right news site Breitbart who has repeatedly cited David Rose in his own articles. See screenshots below [1:39], second row on the left, and third person over, and more clearly at [34:38].

David Rose and James Delingpole at GWPF Conference

Another notable audience member was Baroness Neville-Rolfe, Commercial Secretary to the Treasury. Such an audience suggests the event provided an opportunity for Rose to rub shoulders with, members of the press, the government, and with GWPF.

April 25, 2015

David Rose reported on a “international panel of scientists,” convened by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and led by former Tory Chancellor Lord Lawson to “launch a major inquiry to discover whether official world temperature records have exaggerated the extent of global warming.”⁵⁷

Rose wrote in the Mail on Sunday that the panel “will focus on thousands of ‘adjustments’ that have been made to temperature records kept at individual weather stations around the world.
Sceptics have argued that the effect of such adjustments – made when instruments are replaced or recalibrated, or heat-producing buildings are erected close to weather station sites – has skewed the records.”⁵⁸

The GWPF project was billed as “The International Temperature Data Review Project” and claimed that “the global surface temperature records have been the subject of considerable and ongoing controversy” due to so-called “adjustments” causing data to exhibit “a much larger warming trend than the raw data.”⁵⁹

The panel consisted of the following people:⁶⁰

Terence Kealey (chairman)
Petr Chylek
Richard McNider
Roman Mureika
Roger A Pielke Sr
William van Wijngaarden

January 17, 2015

Discussing whether 2014 was the warmest year on record, David Rose attempted to discredit the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), claiming they were only 38 percent sure that was the case. Rose goes on to promote the debunked viewpoint of an ongoing global warming “pause”:⁶¹ ⁶²

“Climate sceptics insisted that the new figures showed the warming ‘pause’ had continued,” Rose quoted Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Forum. Whitehouse said “there has been no statistically significant warming trend since 1997’ – because the entire increase over this period was smaller than the error margin.”

October 25, 2014

Writing at the Mail on Sunday, David Rose claims to have exposed the “‘Green Blob’ financed by a shadowy group of hugely wealthy foreign donors is driving Britain towards economically ruinous eco targets.”⁶³

Rose then goes on to lament the supposedly small budgets of climate change denial groups like the Global Warming Policy Forum. The Global Warming Policy Forum is an extension of The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), conducting activities outside of the nonprofit Foundation’s abilities as an “educational charity.” According to Rose, the Forum “has an annual budget of £300,000 and employs just three people.”⁶⁴

Rose quotes GWPF’s director Benny Peiser: “At the end of the day, someone will have to be held accountable for us committing economic suicide. We are the only organisation that does what we do – against hundreds on the other side, all saying the same thing.”⁶⁵

August 30, 2014

David Rose writes that, seven years after warnings by Al Gore, “The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.”⁶⁶

Rose quotes climate change contrarian scientist Judith Curry who said ‘The Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed.’ Curry also claimed that the majority of sea ice decline was due to “natural variability.”⁶⁷

Rose does admit that “few scientists doubt that carbon-dioxide emissions cause global warming, and that this has caused Arctic ice to decline,” however goes on to suggest that there is “much uncertainty about the speed of melting and how much of it is due to human activity.”⁶⁸

David Rose authored a similar article on the Antarctic in July, 2014, again quoting Judith Curry: “We do not have a quantitative, predictive understanding of the rise in Antarctic sea ice extent,” she said. Curry also repeated the debunked myth of a 16-year global warming “pause”:⁶⁹

“Prof Curry also revealed that because of the ‘pause’, in which world average temperatures have not risen for more than 16 years, the Arctic ice decline has been ‘touted’ by many as the most important evidence for continued global warming,” Rose wrote.⁷⁰

May 17, 2014

David Rose contends that “Ground-breaking climate research” that had found that global warming due to greenhouse gases was “significantly exaggerated” was “controversially ‘covered up’”⁷¹

A paper by Professor Lennart Bengtsson of Reading University had been rejected by a number of journals. According to Rose, “The rejection sparked accusations that scientists had crossed an important line by censoring findings that were not helpful to their views.”⁷²

One of the journals had rejected the paper because “reviewers questioned the paper’s methods,” Rose wrote. Professor Bengtsson, 79, was a former member of the council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).⁷³

Bengtsson said he was accused by former friends and colleagues of “crossing into the deniers’ camp” when he joined the GWPF, a reaction which Rose described as “a pressure so great he had feared for his health.”⁷⁴

November 2013

Pointing to a paper by climate change denier Judith Curry, David Rose writes in the Mail on Sunday that “The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover.”⁷⁵

“The pause means there has been no statistically significant increase in world average surface temperatures since the beginning of 1997, despite the models’ projection of a steeply rising trend,” Rose writes.⁷⁶

March 30, 2013

When the Committee on Climate Change claimed that David Rose had “misunderstood” the value of computer models, and refuted Rose’s claim that “there has been no statistically significant increase for more than 16 years,” Rose countered that it was an “astonishing attack” and that his original reporting was “backed up by a scientifically researched graph.” Rose points to statements from climate change deniers Andrew Montford, and David Whitehouse of the GWPF for defense.⁷⁷

March 16, 2013

David Rose published an article titled “The Great Green Con no. 1: The hard proof that finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along” in the Mail on Sunday. In the article, Rose claims to present “irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed.”⁷⁸

The Committee on Climate Change reviewed Rose’s claims, among which include the agreement between observed temperatures and model predictions, the so-called “pause” in temperature rise, and climate sensitivity. Below is a portion of their response:⁷⁹

“We conclude that the approach to global and UK emissions reductions underpinning the Climate Change Act remains appropriate despite the assertions in the article. Nonetheless, as ever, it will continue to be important to monitor developments in climate science closely and draw out any policy implications.

Of the four scientists quoted in the Mail article, three (Myles Allen, James Annan and Piers Forster) have since publicly criticised it. The chart used appears to have been copied from the blog of a fifth climate scientist, Ed Hawkins, who has also taken issue with the article’s interpretation of it.

A chart of observed global temperatures against climate model outputs is the main evidence provided in the article. It claims that the chart “blows apart the scientific basis” for reducing emissions. This is simply incorrect, and reveals a misunderstanding of what the chart shows – a pattern of observed temperature over the last sixty years within the range of model outputs”⁸⁰

September 14, 2013

Claiming to have obtained a leaked final draft of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, David Rose contends that “over the past 15 years, recorded world temperatures have increased at only a quarter of the rate of IPCC claimed when it published its last assessment in 2007.”⁸¹

He goes on to state that the IPCC “recognise the global warming ‘pause’ first reported by The Mail on Sunday last year is real – and concede that their computer models did not predict it.”⁸²

Rose quotes Judith Curry, who said “The consensus-seeking process used by the IPCC creates and amplifies biases in the science. It should be abandoned in favour of a more traditional review that presents arguments for and against – which would better support scientific progress, and be more useful for policy makers.”⁸³

He also goes on to quote climate change denier Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation who described the leaked IPCC report as a “staggering concoction of confusion, speculation and sheer ignorance.”⁸⁴

February 24, 2013

Included in an article claiming that certain MPs were unduly benefiting from green energy companies, David Rose lists a number of debunked “myths” regarding climate change, reproduced in full below. Note that the “myths” and “truths” Rose lists are largely inverted when compared to the view of mainstream climate change science:⁸⁵

“EXPLODING THE MYTHS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE”
MYTH The world is continually getting warmer.
TRUTH Official Met Office data shows no statistically significant global temperature rise since January 1997. The fact was confirmed last week by Raj Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Many scientists say this means forecasts of how much warmer the world will be by 2100 must be revised downwards. Pachauri disagreed: for him to be convinced, the ‘pause’ would have to last 30 years.

MYTH Global warming is already causing extreme weather.
TRUTH If anything, weather has become less, not more extreme in the past 50 years. Professor Roger Pielke Jr of Colorado University – no climate sceptic – last week said that the past seven years had been the longest period ever recorded without a Category 3 or stronger hurricane hitting America, and that drought has decreased since the mid-20th Century. The IPCC admits there is no evidence that global warming has caused more storms in the tropics.

MYTH If we don’t take swift, drastic action to cut CO2 emissions, the world will soon become uninhabitable
TRUTH The ‘pause’ in rising temperatures, along with new research into the decline in the sun’s output and other natural factors, is leading many scientists to lower estimates of how fast carbon dioxide warms the world. Until now, the IPCC has suggested that doubling CO2 causes a worrying increase of 3.5C, but many experts say it is about 1.7C. The computer models still say the world will be at least 2C warmer by the end of the century, but they failed to predict the pause.

MYTH We’ve got to do our bit, even if it hurts. If we cut emissions, the rest of the world will follow.
TRUTH The fiasco of the 2009 UN climate conference in Copenhagen proved that China, India, Brazil and other fast-growing nations are simply not prepared to make any binding commitments to reduce their emissions. However, by cutting our own ever more deeply, all we do is increase the already rocketing price of our energy and so drive jobs abroad – while making almost no difference to world CO2 levels.

MYTH The faster we cut carbon in our power generation, the more prosperous we will be.
TRUTH We face declining energy capacity, while the Government targets on 2030 emissions would mean few firms will be willing to invest in the one proven type of power source – gas – that can fill the gap relatively cheaply. Instead of ‘green growth’, we face years of impoverished stagnation, while industry flees Britain and our sky-high energy prices.

MYTH The Arctic is going to be ice-free in summer in a few years.
TRUTH Although last summer saw a return to the relatively low levels of ice seen in 2007, the growth of Arctic winter ice this year is the fastest on record. Canadian archaeologists have been finding evidence the ice cover shrank to half its current extent during a warm period 7,000 years ago – but never vanished entirely.

October 13, 2012

David Rose wrote in the Mail on Sunday, that voicing the debunked myth that “The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago.” Rose claimed that new data proved a global warming “plateau” or “pause.” While Rose notes that Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia disagreed, he goes on to cite climate change denier Judith Curry for support.⁸⁶ ⁸⁷

CarbonBrief noted that there was a huge response following Rose’s post, and went on to analyze a number of his claims. They note that Rose had also posted a followup, making “no acknowledgement of his previous mistakes.” The Met Office had responded to Rose’s claim that the report had been released “without fanfare or publicity” by them:⁸⁸

“…the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit,” The Met office’s blog wrote.⁸⁹

CarbonBrief notes that while Rose clarifies in his now article that the original graph did not come from the Met Office, he still describes his graph as a “a new official world temperature graph” despite being what CarbonBrief describes as “clearly a Mail on Sunday graphic.”⁹⁰

Despite this, other news outlets proceeded to write as if the report had been released from the Met Office, with article headlines like “Global Climate Warming Stopped 15 Years Ago, UK Met Office Admits.”⁹¹

Rose wrote a similar claim in an earlier September 28 article, where he said “The global warming ‘pause’ has now lasted for almost 17 years and shows no sign of ending – despite the unexplained failure of climate scientists’ computer models to predict it.” In that article, he also claimed that data direct form the MET Office “shows the lack of a warming trend.”⁹²

October 30, 2011

David Rose featured an interview with climate change denier Judith Curry in his column at the Mail on Sunday. Rose discusses a study published by former climate change skeptic Richard Muller, who Curry goes on to accuse of misleading the public. She said that the affair had to be compared to the so-called “Climategate” scandal.⁹³

Rose cites a graph from an upcoming report by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) as evidence that “the [warming] trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.”⁹⁴

“This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,” Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’⁹⁵