Chinese wispers disprove global warming.

It doesn't take much for most climate skeptics to un-skeptically accept some stories - apparently just telling them what they want to hear will do. It also doesn't help that the standard of most of the worlds reporting media is so, so awful. Most journos are happy to take the lazy way out and rehash others stories, spinning them for effective headlines without backtracking to confirm sources. And so the Chinese whispers start.

A recent and revealing example of this was reported on the RealClimate blog. An interview with a Polish climatologist about a hypothetical, but presently unlikely breakdown in gulf stream circulation, which would cause server winter in the northern hemisphere, results in a shoddy article entitled 'Scientists warn that awaits us, "Winter Millennium"'. This is re-reported, without any apparent checking of the source until it morphs in to claims of "Coldest winter in 1,000 years on its way". 

It is picked on by the 'skeptical' blogger  Anthony Watts on his blog 'Watts Up With That?, which will be known forthwith as 'Watts Wrong With That?' The premise of this is apparently that if this winter is really cold in the north, the coldest for 1,000 years even, then there can't be global warming.


Of course the real irony is that the climate 'skeptic' was not at all skeptical of this report and one of the main reasons that the gulf stream might alter would be due to fresh water melt caused by climate change.