The Mail Makes Modest Amends

Here’s the text of a comment I just left on The Telegraph web site underneath an article written by Christopher Booker entitled “The ice is not melting, yet still the scaremongers blunder on”:

In case anyone in here is vaguely interested, I just received an email from the Managing Editor of the Mail on Sunday, part of which reads as follows:

“You are correct in pointing out that the main figure in that article was wrong. The increase was 533,000 square miles and 29 per cent, as you say.

We are reporting this in the paper tonight and will correct the online article also.”

I trust I will receive a similar response to my recent email to the Managing Editor of the Telegraph about the same issue. Then perhaps we can start discussing all the other inaccuracies concerning sea ice in the Arctic that both papers have published recently?

Here’s a screenshot of my comment:

Christopher Booker learns that in fact the Arctic sea ice IS still melting.
Christopher Booker learns that in fact the Arctic sea ice IS still melting.

 

Here’s what the revised version of David Rose’s article of September 8th now looks like:

The Mail's modifed message about Arctic sea ice
The Mail’s modifed message about Arctic sea ice

Along with this “explanation” in a sidebar:

2013-09-28_2341_Mail_NSIDCFor Bob Ward’s version of events please see our recent article entitled “Humiliating Mistakes by David Rose“. As I put it in that article:

So… David Rose and the thousands who have republished his assertions across the planet never cottoned on to the physical implausibilty of their headline “statistic”, and never bothered to contact the NSIDC to check?

What do you suppose is the probability that the rest of “the climate science” in Rose’s recent articles is similarly flawed?

2 thoughts on “The Mail Makes Modest Amends

  1. Excellent news, and well done! Although I see the Daily Mail has “fixed” it in its usual manner, just a small headline change. I guess if they really wanted to inform the public about the state of the Arctic they would show the past 30 years or so and the trend. The mis-information campaign is so plain obvious as you state, they should have at least checked the numbers or look it up themselves at NSIDC before printing anything. It never ceases to amaze that so many of these use blogs as sources for their data.

  2. Thanks John. Despite the modest “retraction” printed by the Mail the evidently erroneous “60 %” and “a million more sq miles” numbers have now been spread around the planet. How should one go about correcting all the “reprints” too?

    I emailed The Telegraph at the same time as The Mail last week. They tell me they never received that email, but have now confirmed that they have read my own “reprint”. Do you suppose they will be able to come up with a more fulsome apology than The Mail for repeating those “inaccuracies”?

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