The Daily Mail’s story by David Rose, claiming that climate scientist Phil Jones “admitted” there has been no global warming since 1995, is completely false.

Journalism at its most irresponsible. There really ought to be a law. At least there ought to be consequences.

The BBC interviews Phil Jones:

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

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% 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.

The Daily Mail headline:

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

Right.

but the text is more reasonable, if also, well, wrong:

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

As is common, the most egregious behavior is by the anonymous headline writer. The journalist, Jonathan Petre, can claim innocence, except for the peculiar use of the word “blip” showing a mind boggling lack of understanding of statistics for someone reporting on science, but at least an attempt at fairness.

The Daily Mail is known as the “Daily Fail” for a reason, and this is the reason. They lie about and distort stories on climate change frequently. This is just the latest example.

UPDATE at 2/14/10 9:46:37 am:

Tim Lambert points out that the usual right wing bloggers swallowed the lie hook, line, and sinker, and are busily parroting it all over the Internet: Daily Mail caught in another lie.

A few of the bloggers who eagerly took the bait: Tim Blair (of course), Glenn Reynolds, and Ann Althouse.