On Friday, the 4th of April, the BBC on-line published an article by environmental journalist Roger Harrabin entitled Global Warming 'dips this year'.

As seen in the picture above it included the sentences:

Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.

[...]

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.
But experts have also forecast a record high temperature within five years.

Still in the morning of that day activist and blogger Jo Abbess writes an e-mail to Harrabin with the subject Correction Demanded : "Global temperatures 'to decrease'". Abbess demands alterations to the article using the following argumentation:

You should not mislead people into thinking that the sum total of the Earth system is going to be cooler in 2008 than 2007. For example, the ocean systems of temperature do not change in yearly timescales, and are massive heat sinks that have shown gradual and continual warming. It is only near-surface air temperatures that will be affected by La Nina, plus a bit of the lower atmosphere.

Harrabin promptly answers negatively. After all every piece of data on global temperature is showing a decrease in temperature in 2008:

If the secy-gen of the WMO tells me that global temperatures will decrease, that's what we will report [...]

On the second iteration Abbess changes strategy:

I will forward your comments (unless you object) to some people who may wish to add to your knowledge.

But Harrabin is standing still, and shows he understands the risk he's taking:

Best to tackle this - and explain it, which is what we have done
Or people feel like debate is being censored which makes them v suspicious

On the third iteration Abbess makes it more clear on a long message that includes the following paragraph in the end:

I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.

Harrabin breaks:

Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier
We have changed headline and more

It all took just a bit over one hour.

But if all of this is bad, it gets worse, Abbess takes no time and promptly publishes this e-mail exchange in her blog for everyone to see.

The reactions

As would be expected this little story made the delights of the Climate Sceptic world. Undeniable proof of fact occultation by and manipulation of the mainstream media was there in the open for everyone to see. Some reactions are worth reading:

Andrew Orlowski at The Register :

La Niña is the cooling phase of what's called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which affects the sea surface in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific. Niña alternates with El Nino, which raises temperatures. We're entering the Niña phase. Global temperatures have been static from their 1998 peak, when El Nino peaked.

It's nicely illustrated by this graph:

The ENSO cycle

Which also shows how foolish it is to extrapolate anything from short-term trends.

The plateau in temperature this century was acknowledged by IPCC chief Dr Rajendra Pachauri back in January.

Marc Sheppard at American Thinker:

While the original's opened the door to reasoned debate, the opening paragraphs of the latest rendition purposely slam that door shut.  Not coincidentally, Abbess had demanded that certain things be made clear "in the first few paragraphs."  And now they were, morphing the article's tenor from dialogue to lecture with a minimum of extorted word processing.

I wonder if Mr. Harrabin appreciates the irony of what he has done.  Particularly that he did so partly in response to the suggestion that being "insufficiently educated to be able to know when [he has] been psychologically manipulated" might make him an "unreliable reporter."

Michael Ronayne at JunkScience:

Roger Harrabin is an old pro and I would have expected better of him. It is as if he wanted to be caught or had done this so many times before that he truly believed that no one would call him on it or both. Roger's undoing was that he evidently did not realize how incredibly stupid Jo Abbess was.

Jo Abbess is an absolute delight. In one BLOG posting she set the cause of AGW back thirty years. She confirmed everything which the Climate [Skeptics | Deniers | Nonbelievers | Nonconformists | Infidels | Atheists | Heretics] have been saying about the manipulation of the media for years. One has to wonder if Jo is not a double-agent working for Exxon-Mobil or the Bush Administration, so extensive is the damage she has committed. If she had none absolutely nothing the story would have disappeared in the 24 hour news cycle but not now.

If you can bare his antics, you can see a Glenn Beck interview to Noel Sheppard here.

Up to the moment there's no articulate reaction from the BCC or Harrabin.

What it means?

There is a potential positive aspect to all this: a major mainstream media institution was able to hear a blogger and show some sensitiveness to what she said. Abbess is not a scientist with a trail of peer reviewed papers in her CV, she is just a regular person, like most of the people constituting this tribune, trying to bring attention to the issues that she thinks are important.

But what made the journalist change his mind were not facts or data (which couldn't) but coercion, the impending foreclosure of his career. This changes the scene completely. How can someone apparently innocuous put the carer of a BBC journalist in check?

Was this a story on Oil production would it have been changed so easily? Being the Resource Cornucupians the Goliath of this debate, have they the same grip on mainstream media as activists like Abbess?

Explaining the unexplainable

But there is something unexplainable in this episode, why did Abbess published the e-mail exchange?

It had two effects: first it gave the meat to grind for the Climate Skeptic camp, but most important than that, it ruined Harrabin's carer. Harrabin will forever be the name of the journalist that was forced to change a story on Global Warming in total disregard for the journalism impartiality ethics. There are no news of it yet, but his resignation from the BBC is the most likely scenario at the moment.

Why did Abbess proceed this way? Why penalize someone that showed sensitive for your cause? Was Harrabin an example? A victim executed to show his peers that Global Warming should not be subject to questioning?

Or was this a message to the Skeptic camp? Showing that there's no use in going for the mainstream media, facts or data that can raise doubts on Global Warming will not see the light of day?

Only Abbess can explain such enigmatic behaviour.

Back to data

The temperature anomalies for the first quarter of this year are out from the four major monitoring institutes. While for January and February all agree on lower temperatures, March is another of those upsetting months were Satellite and Station data part ways. Nevertheless, this cold first quarter is already enough to conclude that 2008 won't be warmer than previous years (and will be considerably cooler than 1998).

Two or three months of cold don't say much about a possible secular warming trend. Even if the globe is going through a new decadal climatic shift, leading to a period of cooling (like the 1940s - 1970s) an underling warming trend could still be present.

Men fight and discuss, but Nature continues its eternal labour.