Via Climate Progress:

Daily Mail Slammed for Ignoring Scientific Truth We’re Still Warming and Human Emissions Will Dwarf Any Solar Changes

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 09:32 AM PST

Human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases have risen so rapidly that they now overwhelm any plausible decrease in solar activity.  Indeed, a paper from last June found that even if the Sun goes into “Hibernation” it won’t stop catastrophic global warming.

But that doesn’t stop serial disinformer David Rose of the UK’s Daily Mail from misleading the public — even after being slammed by top scientists in 2010 for falsely asserting “no global warming since 1995″ — see “Error-riddled articles and false statements destroy Daily Mail’s credibility.“  Rose has another willfully misleading piece, “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again): Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years.”

I saw “willfully misleading” because the UK’s Met[eorological] Office, part of its Defence Ministry, has taken the unusual step of releasing a statement utterly debunking Rose’s assertions as “entirely misleading” — and pointing out that they spoke to Rose before the piece came out but he chose to ignore what they had to say.

Climate Progress has debunked the “we’re not warming” myth umpteen times, most recently yesterday when 16 know-nothings with scientific degrees pushed a particularly laughable version of it in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal of Lies.

Even so, I’m reposting the Met Office debunking because they do a good job, have a great new chart people might like (above), and they repeat a low-ball estimate of warming this century that merits a response:

Today the Mail on Sunday published a story written by David Rose entitled “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about”.
This article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.
Despite the Met Office having spoken to David Rose ahead of the publication of the story, he has chosen to not fully include the answers we gave him to questions around decadal projections produced by the Met Office or his belief that we have seen no warming since 1997.
For clarity I have included our full response to David Rose below:
A spokesman for the Met Office said: “The ten year projection remains groundbreaking science. The complete period for the original projection is not over yet and these projections are regularly updated to take account of the most recent data.

“The projections are probabilistic in nature, and no individual forecast should be taken in isolation. Instead, several decades of data will be needed to assess the robustness of the projections.

“However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850. Depending on which temperature records you use, 2010 was the warmest year on record  for NOAA NCDC and NASA GISS, and the second warmest on record in HadCRUT3.”
Furthermore despite criticism of a paper published by the Met Office he chose not to ask us to respond to his misconceptions. The study in question, supported by many others, provides an insight into the sensitivity of our climate to changes in the output of the sun.
It confirmed that although solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years this will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases. The study found that the expected decrease in solar activity would only most likely cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08 °C. This compares to an expected warming of about 2.5 °C over the same period due to greenhouse gases (according to the IPCC’s B2 scenario for greenhouse gas emissions that does not involve efforts to mitigate emissions). In addition the study also showed that if solar output reduced below that seen in the Maunder Minimum – a period between 1645 and 1715 when solar activity was at its lowest observed level – the global temperature reduction would be 0.13C.

Well, yes, technically, the IPCC’s B2 scenario does not include any efforts to mitigate emissions — but then technically none of their scenarios do.  In any case, B2 models a “more ecologically friendly” and “environmentally sustainable” world than many of the other scenarios (or current reality).
In B2, CO2 concentrations in the air don’t even hit 600 ppm.  In fact, we are headed to 1000 ppm.  Indeed, even the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment warns that “Based on current understanding of climate carbon cycle feedback” the level of cumulative CO2 emissions that had been projected to lead to 600 ppm in 2100 would in fact get us to near 1000 ppm — see “Hidden Bombshell in the IPCC Fourth Assessment.”

And the Met Office knows this (see Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path). Dr. Vicky Pope, head of climate change predictions at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, wrote in the UK Times in late 2008:

In a worst-case scenario, where no action is taken to check the rise in Greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures would most likely rise by more than 5°C [9°F] by the end of the century.

And they put together this amazing figure:

We’re headed to 5.5°C [10°F] warming by 2100 on our current emissions path — and so even a new Maunder Minimum would have virtually no noticeable impact.