

Daily Mail manipulates graph to suggest stagnant global warming - jaap_w
http://sargasso.nl/daily-mail-manipulates-graph-to-suggest-stopped-global-warming/

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EliRivers
For readers outside the UK, it is worth knowing a little context about the
Daily Mail. The Daily Mail is a newspaper in the loosest sense of the word. It
is essentially a propaganda rag, flattering its readership by provoking their
emotions on topics such as women in the workplace (which is a bad thing and
gives them cancer), women not in the workplace (which is a bad thing and gives
them cancer), the causes of cancer [1], immigrants, taxes and house prices.
Bizarrely, for a publication with such a high female readership, it's
remarkably misogynistic.

Typical readers are middle-aged to the elderly, who do not like having their
assumptions challenged and find catharsis in the simplicity of the world as
presented by the Daily Mail. The phrase "Daily Mail reader" has become
shorthand for someone demonstrating characteristics such as ignorance,
extremely simple viewpoints on complex situations, and bigotry poorly veiled
under spurious numerical data or contextless "factoids".

[1] <http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/>

~~~
gadders
And context for the comment above: It is very common to sneer at Daily Mail
readers as a way of demonstrating your own right-on, progressive credentials.

Daily Mail readers are largely right-wing, but that doesn't by definition make
them wrong.

~~~
jiggy2011
I don't know if it's as simple as a left vs right wing thing. The telegraph
for example is relatively right wing and does not seem to attract the same
sort of ire.

~~~
gadders
That is true, but then the Daily Mirror is a left-wing tabloid and doesn't get
so much opprobrium, even though (as the news today tells us) they were also
guilty of phone-hacking.

~~~
josephlord
But nobody reads it (relative to the Daily Mail and The Sun) and it just
doesn't seem to matter in terms of the political debate. That is why it
doesn't get so much opprobrium - it just doesn't matter.

The Daily Mail and The Sun can mount massive campaigns, ruin careers of
politicians and swing large amounts of votes (or at least that is the
perception). All the Mirror readers vote Labour whatever they say (not
necessarily true but perception amongst politicians).

August readership - Daily Mirror 1.1M, Daily Mail 1.9M, Sun 2.5M Source:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2012/sep/20/abcs-
natio...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2012/sep/20/abcs-national-
newspapers)

------
ars
Um, the real graph looks just as stagnant as the Daily Mail one.

The difference between them is barely even there.

Is anyone actually looking at the graphs on the blog, or are you just reading
the title?

~~~
__alexs
This. Very odd.

The real problem is that they are showing a tiny period of time. Global
warming levels out a bit now and then and then keeps on going. e.g.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly_1880-2010_\(Fig.A\).gif)
around 1965-1975 it didn't really go up much. And a graph of 1935-1945 might
make you think we'd conquered global warming forever and that we could all get
on with building the global socialist utopia or whatever. Sadly long term
trends in complex systems aren't nearly that easy to form conclusions about.

~~~
mercurial
Yes. Although it wouldn't surprise me that the _Daily Mail_ altered the
figures, it doesn't change much of anything to the overall shape of the graph.
Therefore it's probably safe to attribute to stupidity rather than malice.

The article is absolutely missing the point.

~~~
Steeph
Did you read the first couple of links in the article? On the day the original
publication from DM came, we already debunked it, pointing to the longer time
period: <http://sargasso.nl/tweespalt-opwarming-plateau-of-niet/> (in Dutch
sorry).

And we refer to others who did similar things.

But this specific article is about adjusting the data before presenting it.
The first point (missing 8 months) is "understandable". The second point,
changing the data at the beginning and end of the graph, is lying on purpose.
That's unacceptable. Even though these are small adjustments (about 0,03
degrees), they are done in purpose and to reach a goal (make more people
doubt).

~~~
mercurial
I must confess I did not (especially as I don't read Dutch). But I still fail
to see how a change of 0.03 degree should be a deliberate attempt at
misleading people. I assume that the _Daily Mail_ staff, while not necessarily
embarassed by ethics, have at least a modicum of common sense.

~~~
Steeph
It's done at both side of the graph, so it makes 0.06 :-) But that's not the
point. It's the principle. If you present a graph based on actual data
(verified by many scientist) and you change the data however slightly to fit
your point of view, that's malice. Why do it otherwise?

Maybe not enough for this though:
[http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=Nzg5Nw=...](http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=Nzg5Nw==)

------
james1507
But the UK Met Office agrees with the Mail article author.

'We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming
in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius
since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade.'

And they correctly note -

'However, we do suggest that measurements over the longer-term are more
representative of the trend in climate due to the influence of natural
variability over shorter timescales.'

[http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-
in-...](http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-
media-14-october-2012/)

~~~
SagelyGuru
Man made global warming is a PR invention carefully engineered to create more
taxation, trading profits in 'indulgences', and to revive the public support
for the nuclear industry.

Even if they persuaded you, you got to admit that these three things are the
main tangible results and that they are happening.

The support for the nuclear industry was seriously flagging exactly at the
time when the 'global warming' suddenly started getting pushed by certain
prominent VIPs and the main stream media. Now many new nuclear reactors are
planned, despite Fukushima. This would never have been accepted before 'global
warming'.

If you are not convinced, look for example into the background of Sir John
Bebbington (made into the UK's chief scientific advisor) and his
pronouncements on Fukushima: 'No question, absolutely no danger whatsoever. No
comparison with Chernobyl.... etc.'. Made at the time when the reactors were
exploding and melting, one after another.

0.03 C per decade means that this trend would have to continue unbroken for a
thousand years to achieve a noticeable warming of 3C. Use your common sense,
please?

~~~
intended
Yes, I mean the global scientific consensus and the historical data showing a
constant climb is in reality a matter of using common sense correctly, and has
nothing to do with the underlying matter being far too complex for a PHD
thesis or 1 line correlations between single individuals.

Its tiring to have to go through old posts and historical data to tease apart
the points and show why scientists in the field of weather and climate have
reached a consensus that climate change is real.

As for you particular assertion that its a PR push - please realize that
flagging support for the nuclear industry amongst the public at large remains
and is largely independent of global warming fears.

I mean, we are pushing solar, wind and renewable power around the world more
than we ever have, and a LOT more than nuclear.

Heck just look at the boom/bust in silicon prices a while back, the constant
efforts to reach grid parity through silicon, and the massive solar farms that
are being put up.

------
djhworld
I don't think it's any surprise that the Daily Mail has used its agenda to
mislead its readers.

~~~
Oxxide
Not at all.

------
metatronscube
I sometimes feel that papers or news/media outlets that do this should end up
getting fined huge amounts and made to run public apologies (full page or TV)
because its such a dangerous topic to mislead people on. That said, its no
surprise its coming from the Daily mail.

~~~
tehwalrus
It depresses me that Apple have to do something like that over the Samsung
lawsuit, but the newspapers can lie to our faces every day and get away with
it. That said, I don't read newspapers anymore for this exact reason.

------
motters
I wrote a program to plot temperature data a while ago, although it's from the
GHCN rather than the HadCRUT4 data set.

<https://code.google.com/p/tempgraph/>

The square gridding method which they appear to have used in HadCRUT4
introduces problems with singularities, but even with a better gridding method
the anomaly results are broadly in line with the conventional view about
global warming.

------
Fletch137
It seems that there is not much difference between the gossip magazines and
the newspapers any more.

