The Telegraph’s Sensibly But Mysteriously Changed Climategate Story

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Now I am confused. Just by chance I noticed just now that a link in my post a couple of days ago is now broken.

I quoted the Telegraph as saying:

“In an interview for the BBC’s website, Professor Jones also conceded that global temperatures may have been higher during the medieval warm period [MWP] than they are now – suggesting that climate change may not be caused by human activity.

He admitted that there has been no ’statistically significant’ global warming since 1995, but said this was a blip in a general trend of rising temperatures.” [My abbreviation]

in a story at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7236406/Climategate-academic-Professor-Phil-Jones-admits-he-lost-track-of-vital-data.html

Clicking this link now results in the dreaded 404 page not found.

A bit of Googling, though, does find a story at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/7232733/Climategate-scientist-says-data-disorganised.html

“He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made.

But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warming. He also said that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.

The statements are likely to be welcomed by people sceptical of man-made climate change who have felt insulted to be labelled by government ministers as flat-earthers and deniers.”

“Insulted” now, are we? Diddums.

The change to the Telegraph story, if that’s what it is, is welcome, I suppose. Trouble is, the second story claims it was published online at 9:15am on Sunday 14th Feb which, if true, implies an impossible timeline. Since I was blogging on Monday 15th, it’s possible that one story has been deleted – maybe retracted – leaving another covering much the same material. (Or maybe they kept the time of the original story. Who knows? Who knows anything? /sigh). Anyway, I do wonder exactly what hundreds of thousands read over their Valentine’s Day breakfast in the print edition. If the story I found originally did appear in print, I wonder if the Telegraph has published a retraction. Maybe I’ll try to find out!