Wikipedia editors recently voted to ban the Daily Mail tabloid as a source for their website after deeming it “generally unreliable.” To put the severity of this decision in context, Wikipedia still allows references to Russia Today and Fox News, both of which display a clear bias toward the ruling parties of their respective countries.
It thus may seem like a remarkable decision for Wikipedia to ban the Daily Mail, but fake news stories by David Rose in two consecutive editions of the Mail on Sunday – which echoed throughout the international conservative media – provide perfect examples of why the decision was justified and wise.
Debunked David Rose doubles down, goes full Trump
On February 5th, Rose ran a story alleging scandalous behavior by NOAA scientists in a 2015 paper. The story was based on an interview with retired NOAA scientist John Bates, who was not involved in the study. However, in follow-up interviews with real science journalists, Bates clarified that he was in no way disputing the quality or accuracy of the data, even going as far as to make this damning comment:
I knew people would misuse this. But you can’t control other people.
Most importantly, the scientific integrity of the NOAA data is indisputable. The organization’s global temperature data is nearly identical to that of other scientific groups like NASA, the Hadley Centre, and Berkeley Earth.
Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath)NOAA's new record is around the middle of the pack w.r.t. other independent groups. Their old record was running a bit cold. @DavidRoseUK pic.twitter.com/Grc8W1KJfx
February 5, 2017
In fact, a recent paper led by Zeke Hausfather confirmed the accuracy of the new NOAA dataset, and Hausfather noted that the group’s new version mostly adjusted temperature estimates in the early 20th century – and decreased the overall warming.
Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath)Just a quick reminder to folks that the NOAA "adjustments" have relatively little impact on our understanding of recent warming. pic.twitter.com/nnXCUrzrQB
February 8, 2017
David Rose’s sensationalist story claiming that “world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data” was entirely without scientific merit. It was a giant nothingburger, or as NASA GISS director Gavin Schmidt called it, “a NOAA-thing burger.”
So after a week full of rebuking and debunking from climate science experts and real science journalists, and after Rose’s own source walked back his criticisms and explicitly said there was “no data tampering, no data changing, nothing malicious,” how did Rose respond? Like any good propagandist, he doubled down.
In his follow-up piece, Rose’s “smoking gun” is that NOAA published its updated ocean temperature data 5 months later than it could have, to coincide with the 2015 global temperature data paper that incorporated it. This is a smoking gun because ... well, it’s not. It’s another pedantic critique trying desperately to make a mountain out of less than a molehill. The few quasi-scientific points in Rose’s new piece are patently false.
Rose’s reaction to the critiques of his first piece are quite reminiscent of Donald Trump’s responses to being called out for spreading misinformation. Both continue to deny the facts. Both brag about the size of their hands, or rally audiences, or Facebook shares (they’re yuge). Both attack the readership of those have debunked them, like the “failing New York Times” or Ars Technica.
Both claim that other people agree with them. Important people – the best people – like in Rose’s case, Lamar Smith. The same Lamar Smith who said that listening to Donald Trump “might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.”
Climate misinformation is the Mail norm
This is far from the first time David Rose and the Mail have published nonscience. For example, in 2013 he wrote that because there was more sea ice in the Arctic that summer than the previous year, this was somehow indicative of “global COOLING!”. In reality, about three-quarters of the summer Arctic sea ice has disappeared in less than four decades due to rapid global warming.
In 2014, as Arctic sea ice continued its death spiral, along with disappearing glaciers and ice sheets around the world in a year that would soon become the hottest on record, Rose tried to distract his readers by focusing their attention on Antarctic sea ice. Why is Antarctic sea ice important? For no reason, except it’s bucked the disappearing trend of all the rest of the Earth’s ice. Global warming is actually one reason – melting of Antarctic land ice has freshened and cooled the ocean surface, allowing for more sea ice to form. But David Rose isn’t interested in the physical mechanisms, he’s just interested in giving his readers the impression that something about this global warming stuff just doesn’t seem right.
This past November, Rose tried to blame the record-shattering hot global temperatures of 2016 on El Niño in a piece that the climate scientists at Climate Feedback gave a “very low” scientific credibility score of -1.9. The lowest possible score is -2.0. The scientists described Rose’s article as “incredibly misleading,” “flawed to perfection,” “deceptive,” and “completely bogus.” One expressed dismay that they couldn’t rate its credibility worse than “very low.” When it comes to getting science wrong, David Rose goes to 11.
This past week, climate scientists Richard Betts, Tamsin Edwards, Doug McNeall, and Ed Hawkins revisited another Rose article from 2013 called ‘The Great Green Con.” In it, he showed a graph of climate model temperature projections against observations. The measured data fell within the model range, but toward the lower end. Rose declared in the Mail on Sunday:
The graph shows in incontrovertible detail how the speed of global warming has been massively overestimated … The eco-debate was, in effect, hijacked by false data.
Betts, Edwards, McNeall, and Hawkins updated Rose’s graph with the latest temperature data. It now looks like this:
Richard Betts (@richardabetts)Hi @DavidRoseUK we updated your graph - hope it helps make your next article OK for Wikipedia :) @ed_hawkins @flimsin @dougmcneall #fixedit pic.twitter.com/g1PZZBiHQ2
February 9, 2017
I doubt Rose will revisit his article and now declare that global warming has been massively accurately estimated. But that’s precisely the point, and the problem.
Propaganda disregards facts in favor of promoting an agenda
The intent of propaganda is to mislead people in order to advance a particular agenda. Undermining and delaying climate policies is one such agenda promoted by the Mail on Sunday and other conservative media outlets. This is quite clear in Rose’s writing, as he rails against the supposed high costs of those policies from ‘green cons.’
Fake science journalists in biased media outlets keep writing false and misleading pieces about climate change. They don’t learn from their mistakes, despite being constantly debunked by climate scientists, because that would require caring about facts and truth. Doubt is their product, and they peddle it well. When they’re caught, they just double down on the misinformation.
But that’s not news; it’s propaganda. And that’s why Wikipedia deemed the Daily Mail an unreliable source. With writers like David Rose, the ruling was well earned. As Gavin Schmidt put it:
Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin)I agree w/@DavidRoseUK!
February 12, 2017
"We cannot allow such a vital issue for our future to be mired in half truths & deceptions"
So don't read the Mail…
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