<div>Amazing how the profession of journalism does such an execrable job on accurate science reporting. And how often the work of climate scientists is distorted by those with an agenda to refute the science supporting the claim that the current warming climate is primarily due to human impacts. It took but a couple of minutes to discover that the Daily Mail article presented to Vision2020 titled "The Mimi Ice Age Starts Here" is a hack piece of bad science reporting:</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/climate-change-global-warming-mojib-latif">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/climate-change-global-warming-mojib-latif</a></div>
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<h1>Leading climate scientist challenges Mail on Sunday's use of his research</h1>
<p id="stand-first" class="stand-first-alone">Mojib Latif denies his research supports theory that current cold weather undermines scientific consensus on global warming</p>
<li class="byline"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/davidadam"><strong><font color="#005689">David Adam</font></strong></a>, environment correspondent </li>
<li class="publication"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/"><font color="#005689">guardian.co.uk</font></a>, Monday 11 January 2010 16.47 GMT </li>
<li class="history"><a id="historylink-byline" class="rollover historylink" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/climate-change-global-warming-mojib-latif#history-byline"><font color="#005689">Article history</font></a></li>
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<p>A leading scientist has hit out at misleading newspaper reports that linked his research to claims that the current cold <a title="More from guardian.co.uk on Weather" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/weather"><font color="#005689">weather</font></a> undermines the scientific case for manmade global warming.</p>
<p>Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, said he "cannot understand" reports that used his research to question the scientific consensus on <a title="More from guardian.co.uk on Climate change" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change"><font color="#005689">climate change</font></a>.</p>
<p>He told the Guardian: "It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be global warming."</p>
<p>He added: "There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases."</p>
<p>A report in the <a title="Mail on Sunday said that Latifs results challenge some of the global warming orthodoxys most deeply cherished beliefs" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html"><font color="#005689">Mail on Sunday said that Latif's results "challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy's most deeply cherished beliefs"</font></a> and "undermine the standard climate computer models". Monday's <a title="Daily Mail" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242202/Could-30-years-global-COOLING.html"><font color="#005689">Daily Mail</font></a> and <a title="Daily Telegraph" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6965342/Big-freeze-could-signal-global-warming-pause.html"><font color="#005689">Daily Telegraph</font></a> repeated the claims.</p>
<p>The reports attempted to link the Arctic weather that has enveloped the UK with research published by <a title="Latifs team in the journal Nature in 2008" href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html"><font color="#005689">Latif's team in the journal Nature in 2008</font></a>. The research said that natural fluctuations in ocean temperature could have a bigger impact on global temperature than expected. In particular, the study concluded that cooling in the oceans could offset global warming, with the average temperature over the decades 2000-2010 and 2005-2015 predicted to be no higher than the average for 1994-2004. Despite clarifications from the scientists at the time, who stressed that the research did not challenge the predicted long-term warming trend, the study was widely misreported as signalling a switch from global warming to global cooling.</p>
<p>The Mail on Sunday article said that Latif's research showed that the current cold weather heralds such "a global trend towards cooler weather".</p>
<p>It said: "The BBC assured viewers that the big chill was was merely short-term 'weather' that had nothing to do with 'climate', which was still warming. The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view."</p>
<p>Not according to Latif. "They are not related at all," he said. "What we are experiencing now is a weather phenomenon, while we talked about the mean temperature over the next 10 years. You can't compare the two."</p>
<p>He said the ocean temperature effect was similar to other natural influences on global temperature, such as volcanos, which cool the planet temporarily as ash spewed into the atmosphere reflects sunlight.</p>
<p>"The natural variation occurs side by side with the manmade warming. Sometimes it has a cooling effect and can offset this warming and other times it can accelerate it." Other scientists have questioned the strength of the ocean effect on overall temperature and disagree that global warming will show the predicted pause.</p>
<p>Latif said his research suggested that up to half the warming seen over the 20th century was down to this natural ocean effect, but said that was consistent with the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "No climate specialist would ever say that 100% of the warming we have seen is down to greenhouse gas emissions."</p>
<p>The recent articles are not the first to misrepresent his research, Latif said. "There are numerous newspapers, radio stations and television channels all trying to get our attention. Some overstate and some want to downplay the problem as a way to get that attention," he said. "We are trying to discuss in the media a highly complex issue. Nobody would discuss the problem of [Einstein's theory of] relativity in the media. But because we all experience the weather, we all believe that we can assess the global warming problem."</p>
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<p>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</p></div>