Source: BBC Radio 4: Feedback
URL: N/A
Date: 11/01/2013
Event: Julia Slingo: Met Office forecasts show that "the Earth will continue to be at record warm levels"
Attribution: BBC Radio 4
Also see: Jan 08, 2013: BBC Radio 4: "The Met Office has revised downwards its projection for climate change through to 2017"
People:
Roger Bolton: ... and does the Today Programme understand the science of climate change? John Humphrys said that "The Met Office does not believe that global warming will be as severe as previously predicted." Feedback correspondents say that's "tosh". We'll find out if the Met Office agrees with them or him.
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Roger Bolton: Now for something much less controversial - climate change. On Tuesday's Today Programme, we heard this headline.
John Humphrys: And the Met Office says it does not believe global warming will be as severe as it had previously predicted. Today's newsreader is...
Roger Bolton: More detail was given in a report from the BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin, but a number of Feedback listeners were concerned that the message was confused, indeed that the headline had been plain wrong.
Ruth Jarman: My name is Ruth Jarman, I live in Hartley Wintney in Hampshire. Yeah, I think the headlines are so important, because some people that's all they listen to. This one is not only not clear, I think it's actually misleading. This is tosh - well, as near tosh as you can get to, on Radio 4. The research looks only up to 2017, and so may be useful for people who intend to be dead by then, but others of us may be interested in thinking a little longer-term. That slowdown in warming is just that - it's still a warming. and I don't think this was made very clear in the programme.
Hilary Gander: My name's Hilary Gander. I thought this was rather strange, since I hadn't heard it from other sources, so I listened to the actual news item. And what it turned out to be was that the Met Office was saying that natural cooling factors - such as ocean currents and things that happen naturally with the sun - were driving this cooling. And that after these changes had, kind of, run their course, temperatures would go up again. So, to preface it with that sort of introduction seems, well, confusing.
Roger Bolton: Just some of the listeners who contacted me or tweeted @BBCR4Feedback to raise their concerns. The Met Office, on whose figures the report was based, also had a lot of people getting in touch. Professor Julia Slingo is their chief scientist. I asked her if she thought that the Today headline "The Met Office says it does not believe that global warming will be as severe as it had previously predicted" was accurate.
Julia Slingo: Absolutely not. I mean, just to put the record straight, we had not put out, ourselves, a report. We have, over several years, on an annual basis, placed our decadal forecasts on our research pages. They are experimental, they are research in progress, and these were picked up by the sceptic blogs and the story was taken from there.
Roger Bolton: So what should the headline have said? If you were writing the headline, what would it have said?
Julia Slingo: Our headline would have said that our latest forecasts for the next five years show that the Earth will continue to be at record warm levels, similar to those we've seen over the last decade, and with a fair chance that new records will be made during that period.
Roger Bolton: Well, I have in front of me a statement from the Today Programme, and they say: "We accept that the headlines could have made it clearer that the new predictions announced by the Met Office regarding climate change only go up to 2017." Presumably you think that's an understatement.
Julia Slingo: Absolutely. I think it's the interpretation of the forecasts that we are very unhappy about and that totally misrepresent the integrity of the science that we undertake and the messaging that we would have given on these forecasts, if we had had an opportunity to comment.
Roger Bolton: However, the Today Programme also say to us: "Roger Harrabin's subsequent report, within the news, explained fully the time scale of the revised figures and the reasoning behind it." Do you think he did?
Julia Slingo: No he didn't, because he didn't - he still presented this as a projection of climate change, and these forecasts are not that. They are actually a forecast of how the natural variability of the climate system may affect the trajectory of warming, just in the next five years. And we are absolutely clear that this in no way changes our long-term projections of climate change and the seriousness of the situation.
Roger Bolton: This is an extraordinarily controversial area, of course. Were you inundated with - we were - were you inundated with calls?
Julia Slingo: Yes. Yes, I've spent the last two days on this.
Roger Bolton: Well, some will say of course this is clear example of bias in the BBC, but others will say this is because you put out information which is immensely complicated, and it's actually very difficult to understand. So do you bear responsibility for not putting clearly in the statement both what the science says and a note which says "This does not mean that we have changed our long-term view about the effects of climate change"? Don't you now have a responsibility to do that?
Julia Slingo: Yes, we do accept that responsibility, and of course, on the back of that, we have produced a lot of scientific briefing. If, of course, we'd had the chance to present the story ourselves, we would have of course put the appropriate messaging around it.
Roger Bolton: Professor Slingo, thank you very much.