the climate brief Accurate Reporting of Climate Science

How much would the average family save in energy bills if the government instituted a nationwide programme to insulate the UK's draughty homes? The front page of the Times claims today that the average household could knock £310 a year off its energy spend. A closer look indicates that it's getting the numbers confused.

The Times is reporting on a letter written by an "unprecedented" alliance of more than a hundred energy companies, charities and businesses to David Cameron about the need for the government to do more to tackle fuel poverty. The group, brought together under the campaign umbrella of Energy Revolution, are calling for the government to institute a nationwide programme to fit the UK's homes with insulation and prevent consumers having to pay for energy that is then wasted.

A saving of £310?

According to the Times article, the group argues that "stagnating wages and soaring bills" could mean as many as 9 million homes could be affected by fuel poverty - that is when a household has to spend more than ten per cent or more of its income on fuel to heat the home - by 2016. The only way to tackle the problem properly is to embark on a nationwide programme to fit insulation to the UK's draft homes - a move, the Times says that "would save the average families £310 a year on energy bills".

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Monday's Daily Express provided a helpful run-through of some rather tired climate skeptic memes, courtesy of columnist Leo McKinstry. It didn't deviate from the Express's editorial line on climate change, which appears to be broadly supportive of arguments that a)  It isn't happening and b) It's not our fault anyway.

Unfortunately, we're guessing the picture of 'climate science' presented in the article isn't one scientists would recognise. Here are five ways  the article gets it wrong:

1. Global warming is still happening

McKinstry begins with the  familiar skeptic argument that recent global temperature data show global warming "is not happening". He says:

"According to recent studies from the Meteorological Office there has been no significant increase at all in the world's temperatures since 1997"

Adding:

"Met Office admits that there will not be any global warming over the next four years."

This argument has done the rounds recently, following the release of the Met Office's analysis of   global temperature data, and its   latest decadal forecast projecting temperatures up to 2017.

We've gone over the detail of these arguments extensively in the past few days - see  here and  here if you want more. But seeing as this is all referencing Met Office data, what is the considered view of the Met Office on this issue? As it said  last week:

"Small year to year fluctuations such as those that we are seeing in the shorter term five year predictions are expected due to natural variability in the climate system, and have no sustained impact on the long term warming".

This reiterates the Met Office's expectation that global temperatures will  continue to rise in the 21st century. In response to a  specific claim last week that the Met Office had "admitted there is no evidence that global warming is happening", The Met Office clarified it has "not said this at any point."

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Government "blunders"  over contracts for offshore wind farms will drive up energy bills, ultimately costing consumers £17 billion, according to the front page of both the Daily Telegraph and Metro yesterday. The Daily Telegraph says this will cost households £35 a year over the next twenty years - a figure that it repeats today in two comment pieces. So does this mean new and expanded costs for wind power?

What's the criticism?

The stories source the £17bn figure to a report published yesterday by the House of Commons's Public Accounts Committee, which criticises the government for being "too generous" to companies contracted to build and maintain power cables for offshore wind turbines. In the Telegraph, committee chair Margaret Hodge describes the contracts as a "licence for the private sector to print money at the expense of hard-pressed consumers".

The contracts come from the Offshore Transmission Owner (OFTO) framework. The OFTO is a regulatory framework created by energy market regulator Ofgem and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), which guarantees an income over the next 20 years to companies delivering electricity infrastructure for offshore wind farms. Companies compete for contracts based on the price they can offer for the service - which Ofgem says will make the market more competitive and drive down how much consumers pay.

But the committee says the contracts are too complicated, and focus on benefiting investors rather than getting the best price for consumers. Ultimately, the report says,

"future payments to licensees … will amount to around £17 billion".

It argues this cost will be passed through the National Grid onto energy companies, who will raise consumer energy bills to cover the extra expense.

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Accusations of scientific misconduct flowed from skeptics and some news outlets last week after the Met Office revised downwards its  decadal prediction of global temperature rise up to 2017. Although the Met Office has explained why this change to their short-term forecast doesn't affect their view of the likely long-term warming trend, this didn't stop the Mail on Sunday resurrecting one of its  favourite arguments - that global warming has "stopped".

This is not a new claim. In the article on Sunday, climate skeptic journalist David Rose claimed the Met Office's new decadal forecast proves global warming "stopped" 16 years ago - contrary to the Met Office itself. This is a claim he's been making for well over a year - he dismissed the wave of rebuttals that followed initial claims about the Met Office's new data as the "Stalinist way the Green Establishment tries to stifle dissent".

Well, the argument that a slowdown in temperature rise in recent years shows global warming has "stopped" certainly isn't new - and has been extensively picked apart, discussed, rebutted and critiqued many, many times online. Here, for your amusement, are a selection of responses.

Natural climate fluctuations can slow temperature rise

Climate skeptics often claim that scientists ignore the effect of natural changes on the climate - this is the "The climate has always changed!" argument.

However, the scientific literature is full of discussion of natural fluctuations in the climate - and scientists believe it's such natural processes which are currently masking the full extent of human-induced warming - making global temperature rise slower. On Tuesday last week, the Met Office said in a  statement:

"Small year to year fluctuations such as those that we are seeing in the shorter term five year predictions are expected due to natural variability in the climate system, and have no sustained impact on the long term warming."

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The Met Office has today published an explanation of how it forecasts decadal temperature trends following news that it has revised downwards its decadal prediction of likely global temperature rise up to 2017. These measurements focus on short-term fluctuations in the climate system, not long-term climate trends. So why has a scientifically significant - though, in the scheme of things, relatively minor - adjustment to an experimental forecast ended up being heralded in the Daily Mail as evidence the Met Office has admitted climate change isn't happening?

In the  Daily Mail, skeptic blogger James Delingpole claims that the Met Office "quietly readjusted its temperature projections" on Christmas Eve, conceding  that "'global warming' isn't happening" after it produced a new decadal forecast. The Met Office has been responding to claims that warming has stopped all week, explaining that the forecast in question only relates to short term fluctuations in the climate - and certainly doesn't mean warming has stopped. We take a look at what decadal forecasts are, and what they really mean.

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Natural and human influences are affecting the world's climate. As a new video shows, if you subtract natural influences on global temperature over the last 30 years - leaving only the human influence - there's a steady warming trend. In other words, human-caused global warming hasn't slowed or stopped.

When thinking about climate change, it's important to differentiate between natural and human influences. Natural fluctuations, like small changes in solar radiation, volcanic eruptions and ocean circulation patterns, can affect global temperatures from one year to the next by producing a short-lived warming or a cooling effect. 

At the moment, natural fluctuations in the climate are combining to produce a strong cooling effect that is partially offsetting the full extent of warming caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But human activity is still causing global warming - that hasn't gone away.

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There have been claims in the papers today and yesterday that new figures from the Met Office show global warming is "at a standstill" - and that this is set to continue for the next few years. But while the new figures do suggest the recent slower rate of temperature rise may continue for a few years, this doesn't mean that global warming has stopped - as a statement released by the Met Office underlines.

The  Telegraph's article is based on the Met Office's  latest temperature forecast, issued at the end of last year. The new forecast says that by the period 2013 to 2017, global temperatures will have risen to about 0.43 degrees above the long term average.

This is 0.11 degrees lower than the Met Office's last round of predictions for temperature rise over roughly the same period, released in 2007.

It appears the Telegraph story was prompted by a blog post on climate skeptic campaign group the  Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)'s website, which claimed:
"[T]his is a forecast of no increase in global temperatures above current levels".

The BBC covered the revised forecast on yesterday's Today programme. Both the  Timesand the  Daily Mail swiftly took up the story, taking a similar line to the Telegraph piece.

All the attention prompted the Met Office to issue a  statement pointing out that a slowdown in temperature rise does not mean global warming has stopped - a misconception that we've  written about before.

What does the new forecast say?

The Met Office predicts global temperature between 2013 and 2017 is most likely to be about 0.43 degrees Celsius higher than the long term average, measured between 1971 and 2000. The prediction includes some room for variation - temperatures could be as much as 0.59 degrees above average, or as little as 0.28 degrees above the average.

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This week's Mail on Sunday claims the UK's coming energy bill could cost the country £110 billion and cause the UK years of chronic impoverishment. The article's headline asks:

"Why is Britain about to pay £110 billion to enter a new Dark Age? A damning indictment of the new 'Green-friendly' energy bill"

The energy bill currently making its way through Parliament aims to reform the energy market, and enable a switch to a low-carbon energy system.

The Mail on Sunday article combines criticism of the bill with criticisms of the government's energy policy more generally. It is authored by climate skeptic journalist David Rose, who recently argued that ' global warming has stopped' in the Mail on Sunday, prompting a critical response from scientists and climate blogs. As you might expect, someone who believes global warming has stopped isn't too keen on the government's planned decarbonisation of the energy sector.

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As part of its recent investigation into consumer energy markets, the ECC committee wrote to newspaper editors about the issue of accuracy in media coverage of energy bills. The committee received quite an extensive response from the Mail group, particularly responding to comments that we made about its coverage. We take a look at it.

In our submission to the Energy and Climate Change (ECC) Committee's investigation, we made the case that a series of newspaper articles:

"....overstate the current impact of green policies (or 'environmental and social costs') on energy bills. Some appear to be the result of simple errors (for example, confusing electricity prices with energy bills, or ignoring the impact of gas prices on bills), others are the result of research being reported in a what seems to us a highly partial or selective way."

The ECC Committee raised the issue with newspaper editors in a letter. It particularly invited the Chair of the Mail group to respond to our suggestion that it had reused inaccurate figures, even after those figures had been corrected following a PCC complaint.

The Mail has responded with a detailed submission addressing all the examples that we had raised. It concludes by saying that its explanations show that "Carbon Brief's complaints are unfounded". We think this is worth responding to - partially because this is the first time we've heard from the Mail on how many of these articles were sourced or written. The only previous contact we have had is when the Mail has been asked to substantiate a figure via the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

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Is the UK on track for a 'dash for gas' - and has its approach to the UK climate change act changed? When the UK's gas strategy was released a couple of weeks ago, it looked like a new enthusiasm for gas power could be driving the government lower its carbon cutting ambitions. But yesterday, energy and climate change minister Ed Davey told a committee of MPs that the government's policy hasn't changed at all and it is on track to deliver on the targets in its carbon plan.

The government's gas strategy - busting UK carbon cutting plans?

When George Osborne launched the government's new gas strategy with the Autumn statement a couple of weeks ago, it included three different scenarios for the future development of the UK power sector. One of these proposed that 37 gigawatts of gas - or about forty new power stations - might be constructed by 2030, attracting a fair bit of media attention.

The government says this level of build, combined with a policy to expand production of power from renewables and nuclear, would reduce the emissions intensity of the power sector to 200 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of electricity by 2030.

This is four times the level that government advisor the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) recommends is necessary if the government is going to hit its emissions reductions targets under the climate change act. The CCC says that the UK should set a 'decarbonisation target' for the power sector that is much lower - just 50 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of electricity by 2030. When Osborne announced the strategy the chief executive of the CCC denounced the 37GW scenario as "completely incompatible" with the government's plans to cut carbon.

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