Memo to media and deniers: If your “global cooling” piece revolves around Dr. Latif, you probably have the entire story backwards. But, at least for deniers, that is the goal.

In an interview today, Dr. Latif told me “we don’t trust our forecast beyond 2015″ and “it is just as likely you’ll see accelerated warming” after then. Indeed, in his published research, rapid warming is all-but-inevitable over the next two decades. He told me, “you can’t miss the long-term warming trend” in the temperature record, which is “driven by the evolution of greenhouse gases.”  Finally, he pointed out “Our work does not allow one to make any inferences about global warming.”

Latif’s work can be baffling, but I mostly deciphered it on this blog in 2008 (see “Nature article on ‘cooling’ confuses media, deniers: Next decade may see rapid warming“).   Latif’s Nature study is consistent with the following statements:

• The “coming decade” (2010 to 2020) is poised to be the warmest on record, globally.
• The coming decade is poised to see faster temperature rise than any decade since the authors’ calculations began in 1960.

Here is his Nature “forecast” in green (“Each point represents a ten-year centred mean” — more discussion at the end):

Now, with the caveat that Latif claims no “skill” in any forecast after 2015 — a caveat the media and deniers never print — as you can see, their model suggests we’ll see pretty damn rapid warming in the coming decade, just as the Hadley Center did in a 2007 Science piece and just as the US Naval Research Lab and NASA recently predicted (see “Another major study predicts rapid warming over next few years “” nearly 0.3°F by 2014“).

How badly have the media [and deniers] botched this reporting unintentionally [and intentionally]?  Let’s see:

World will ‘cool for the next decade’

Three mistakes in one New Scientist headline from last month — a record, I suspect.  The headline would have been more accurate if it said, “World poised to see accelerated warming in the coming decade.”

Then we have these multiply-misleading statements:

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Yesterday, Nike became the latest major company to abandon the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its opposition to global warming action. The Chamber has tried to stop the hemorrhaging by claiming that it has “never questioned the science behind global warming,” and that it “continues to support strong federal legislation and a binding international agreement to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change.”

The former claim is demonstrably false, and the latter claim is laughable. The Chamber’s “support” for federal legislation is “conditional on an international agreement that requires full international participation.” Since such an international treaty is profoundly unlikely unless the United States passes federal legislation, the Chamber’s “sensible” policy is a recipe for inaction. Paradoxically, the Chamber even opposes tariffs on imports from countries that don’t limit greenhouse gases, claiming that would “set off a trade war.”

Furthermore, the state-level chambers of commerce, affiliated with and supported financially by the U.S. Chamber, continue to promote extremist global warming denial, paying climate skeptics Roy Spencer, Glenn Beck, Steven Milloy, and Steven Hayward to speak before their members.

Kansas Chamber of Commerce, September 21:

Global warming? So what. That was the message Monday from research scientist and best-selling author Roy Spencer to legislative leaders, lobbyists and leading business officials at the Kansas Chamber of Commerce business and energy summit. Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and author of “Climate Confusion.” Spencer doesn’t deny that Earth is warming, but he attributes that to natural climate cycles and not to the increase in greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

Michigan Chamber of Commerce, September 15:

Although Glenn Beck’s race-baiting and McCarthyism have led a massive advertiser boycott of his Fox News program, the largest business lobby in the United States has chosen to embrace him as the “dinner keynote speaker” for the 2009 “Future Forum” at Michigan State University’s Kellog Forum on September 15th.

West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, September 4:

The Chamber announced last Wednesday that it was giving a major platform at the Business Summit to Steven J. Milloy, the founder of the Web site JunkScience.com. Milloy is expected to talk about his book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them,” as an introduction to the “save coal” session. Steve Roberts, the Chamber president, said: “Steve Milloy’s remarks will be timely and interesting, given the current controversies that are being driven by the debate over environmental issues such as global warming, energy use and the economic impacts of all of this. West Virginia is one of the states that could be affected significantly depending on how things go with the scientific and political debate over current environmental issues.”

Indiana Chamber of Commerce‘s Economic Club, April 29:

More recently, environmental experts such as April 29 Economic Club of Indiana speaker Steven Hayward, have publicly disagreed with Gore and company. Hayward, an environmental researcher holding numerous prestigious fellowships and an adjunct professorship at Georgetown University, starred in a film rebutting Gore’s claims of pending disaster as a result of climate change. Hayward is of the belief that the planet goes through natural periods of warming and cooling and is not tremendously influenced by the activity of human beings.

Today’s guest reposting is by CAP’s Julian L. Wong author of “Peaking Duck: Beijing’s Growing Appetite for Climate Action.”  In the photo, Chinese workers prepare decorations ahead of the 60th National Day celebrations in Beijing, China.

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. The first 30-year phase was one of revolution, marked by one bloody internal purge after another, but the next 30-year phase was one of pragmatism, which underpinned economic and social reform leading to unrivaled rates of economic growth.

China now finds itself at a crossroads. As the country struggles to come to terms with its imminent status as a global superpower, it is staring in the face of vast, systemic resource challenges. China faces a triple threat to its energy, water, and food security, and there is one common thread: climate change.

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The reason why big league journalists have to try much harder than they have been to get the climate story right is that when they get it wrong, it opens the door for the deniers to quote them and glom on to their (supposed) higher credibility, dragging the journalists down to their level in the process.

The latest media version of the children’s game Telephone is uber-denier George Will quoting Andy Revkin.  I and others thoroughly debunked the latest piece of misanalysis from the one-time paper of record — NYT‘s Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!) and repeats outright misinformation.  In particular, I showed that Revkin’s primary source, the UK’s Met Office found “the past 10 years has seen only a 0.07°C increase in global average temperature” “” a 0.13°F increase “” more than 10 times the rate of warming Revkin asserted in the original version of his piece and around which he based almost his entire argument that temperatures had plateaued.

In fact, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which I have argued is a better temperature record, finds a 0.19°C (0.34°F) warming over the past decade (see Deep Climate for details).  Indeed, the GISS data shows that the 2000s, easily the hottest decade in recorded history by far, warmed much faster than the 1990s (which had been the hottest decade in recorded history).

That is not a plateau — and it certainly isn’t cooling.  Temperatures are, if anything, accelerating — but not in a monotonic fashion.  The facts, however, have never gotten in the way of George Will and the fact-checkers fib-approvers of the Washington Post (see “Memo to Post: If George Will quotes a lie, it’s still a lie” and “The Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages“), who published yet another mistake-riddled, disinformation-pushing piece, “Cooling Down the Cassandras,” which opens by quoting the erroneous NYT headline and lede:

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A Mad Dash for Smart-Grid Cash

By the time the late August application deadline had expired, a Department of Energy program to distribute $615 million to fund projects demonstrating smart-grid technology had attracted 140 proposals requesting a total of $2.3 billion.

“The response is very encouraging,” said Jen Stutsman, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department. “We expect some very competitive projects.”

With companies required to chip in 50 percent of the cost, the $615 million in grants will support at least $1.2 billion in smart-grid projects.

The term “smart grid” covers a number of approaches to modernizing the nation’s aging electrical infrastructure. Innovations run the gamut, from home thermostats that automatically adjust in response to overall demands on the grid, to advances in power transmission and energy storage, which will help integrate resources like wind and solar into the nation’s electrical mix.

The aim of the Energy Department program “” part of the $3.9 billion in stimulus funds targeting the nation’s electrical system “” is to take smart-grid technologies out of the laboratory and test their wide-scale viability and cost-effectiveness.

Toyota’s Two-Faced Stance on Climate Change

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Yesterday, EPA announced a new rule to require use of best technologies to reduce greenhouse gases from large facilities when “constructed or significantly modified.”

Today, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Senate Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations subcommittee, released a statement:

“The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that greenhouse gas emissions pose a real threat to public health and safety, and has proposed a carefully targeted plan to regulate large industrial and commercial facilities under the Clean Air Act.

I fully support EPA’s actions to require that the nation’s largest stationary emitters, responsible for roughly 70 percent of America’s carbon footprint, take appropriate steps to contain these harmful emissions and improve energy efficiency.

Those who recognize that the Earth is in jeopardy, that global warming is real and that the climate is warming more quickly than anticipated, understand the urgent need to take action. We cannot lose time.

Hopefully, this will encourage the Senate to pass a comprehensive climate change bill quickly. If it does not, the Obama Administration should be commended for having the courage to protect our environment and our Earth.”

Hear!  Hear!

Okay, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act ain’t Shakespeare — and it ain’t perfect.

Still, there is much confusion about its name.   I heard it straight from the primary sponsors themselves that it is “Kerry-Boxer” and not the other way around.  The House bill is Waxman-Markey, and it would be inappropriate (and confusing) to call it Markey-Waxman.

It may not seem like a big deal, but this minor brouhaha actually made it into E&E News PM (subs. req’d) last night with a Shakespearean sub-head:

What’s in a name?

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