Megan McArdle displays a staggering ignorance of current climate change science. In particular, there are three things at issue.

First is the citation of this article, which claims that Mojab Latif (a climate scientist who is part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) believes that global warming is going to hit a “pause.”

The article itself, though, is a misinterpretation of Latif’s research, which simply suggests that there may be a small (1 degree or so) cooling trend within the overall rising temperature trend over the next century. You can read a good explanation of how this science has gotten misinterpreted here. Latif himself expects the next decade to include an overall warming trend–not a cooling one as the article suggests.

That I can forgive McArdle for, as the article is really badly written. However, given that a lot of science journalism is bad, it behooves people to hang on to a few science writers worthy of trust, or, barring that, investigate the science themselves before going half-cocked on commentary.

The second problem I have with McArdle’s post is this:

‘Twas but a few months ago when I was reading the climate change community writing that the recent cooling trend had been a fluke, and that we were scheduled to return to record warm temperatures . . . why, this very winter!

I’m not sure who in the “climate change community” is complaining about a cooling trend, given that 2000-2009 was the hottest decade on record with 2009 being one of the hottest years on record. Additionally, the warming trend of the past few decades is still going strong.

As for predicting a particularly warm winter, I did a quick Google search but I can’t find any climate scientists in the literature claiming that the 2009-2010 winter was going to be particularly warm in Europe or North America. So who on earth was saying this stuff?

Not scientists, as far as I can tell.

Third, the paragraph quoted above then leads to:

Oops.

The link takes you to pictures of the particularly cold weather being experienced in Britain by readers of the Telegraph.

As though a cold winter is supposed to prove something…. ?

Had McArdle bothered to keep reading the Telegraph, she might have come across this article:

But despite this extreme weather, scientists say that the current cold snap does not mean that climate change is going into reverse. In fact, the surprise with which we have greeted the extreme conditions only reinforces how our climate has changed over the years.

A study by the Met Office which went back 350 years shows that such extreme weather now only occurs every 20 years.

Back in the pre-industrial days of Charles Dickens, it was a much more regular occurrence - hitting the country on average every five years or so.

During that time global temperatures has risen by 1.7 F (0.8 C), studies have shown.

“Even though this is quite a cold winter by recent standards it is still perfectly consistent with predictions for global warming,” said Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at Department of Physics, University of Oxford.

“If it wasn’t for global warming this cold snap would happen much more regularly. What is interesting is that we are now surprised by this kind of weather. I doubt we would have been in the 1950s because it was much more common.

Climate change is all about temperature trends. Focusing on small variabilities forms a part of the “awful statistics” that McArdle likes to talk about. The fact is that the overall temperature trend is up. But that does not mean that every day of every week of this year will be a record-setting high.

[And as a side note, although the current weather in North American and Britain is perfectly consistent with normal variability, its worth noting that there is some evidence that some parts of North America and Great Britain are expected to have lower than average temperatures in the 22nd century as a consequence of warmer than average global temperatures .]

The bottom line is that McArdle’s ridiculously ignorant and snarky post exemplifies the worst anti-science posts that tend to generate around the problem of climate change. Look, I don’t have a problem with people who want to look at data and criticize aspects of climate science. Analyzing data and trying to prove/disprove hypotheses is what science is all about. But trying to disprove climate change through the twin prisms of snark and ignorance is simply inexcusable.

Frankly, I would love to live in a world where pumping tons of CO2 into atmosphere didn’t lead to radical climate changes, alkalintity changes in the ocean, decreased nutrient content of food and acidosis in mammals. It’s great to be able to do what you want with no fear of consequence, which is why people love playing Grand Theft Auto.

The thing is, though, we don’t live in a consequence-free world.

Update: Mojab Latif addresses the misinterpretation of his research himself.

Update 2: Please see my note about the unwarranted hyperbolic tone of this post.

Image Credit: Grant MacDonald