David Whitehouse

David (Robert) Whitehouse

Credentials

Ph.D., Astrophysics, Victoria University of Manchester (1983).¹ ² ³

Background

David Robert Whitehouse is a scientist, writer, and broadcaster. He was BBC‘s Science correspondent from 1988 until 2006, and also served as the Science Editor for BBC News Online.⁴ Whitehouse has since criticized the BBC‘s climate change reporting as “evangelical” and “inconsistent,” and claimed their reporting on scientific issues was “shallow and sparse.”⁵

Whitehouse serves on the Academic Advisory Council for the UK’s primary climate denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).⁶ He is also the Science Editor for the GWPF’s campaign arm, Net Zero Watch (formerly the Global Warming Policy Forum).⁷

He has written for many publications, including the Huffington Post. His connection to the skeptical GWPF is not mentioned on his Huffington Post profile.⁸

Stance on Climate Change

2016

“[T]here has been a 15-year hiatus in global warming. To those of us who have been following the debate, this is no surprise.”⁹

2007

“Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.”¹⁰

Key Quotes

October 2014

“Both sides are really fed up with the outrageous alarmists who are not representing science properly. Both don’t like those who shout about it and call people names and take a polarised point of view.”¹¹

July 2014

“You can make a strong case that all this ‘denial’ has been good for climate science. Some of these ‘deniers’ actually found that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s supreme icon – the ‘hockey stick’ graph showing a recent alarming rise in global temperature – was wrong. Then they pointed out that the global annual average surface temperature was not rising as predicted.”¹²

April 2014

“If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change. If the standstill (lower temperatures) continues for a few more years, it will mean that no one who has just reached adulthood, or younger, will have witnessed the Earth get warmer during their lifetime.”¹³

January 2013

“The bottom line is that the recent global temperature standstill is a real event. It is explained in a hand-waving way as due to natural climatic variations masking the long-term trend, even if we do not understand those natural variations.”¹⁴

November 2010

“We are reaching the point where the temperature standstill is becoming the major feature of the recent global warm period that began in 1980. In brief, the global temperature has remained constant for longer than it has increased.”¹⁵

May 2010

“It does seem that the sea ice is returning to ‘average’ after the record lows of 2007 and 2008. There has been a definite recovery trend since then, so far from being a progression towards ice free summers it seems that it was a temporary dip. The recent observations do make the 2007 projections that the region would be ice free by 2013 look very unrealistic. Given what is happening only the foolish would look many years into the future and predict ice free summers now.”¹⁶

November 2011

Referring to professor Muller’s Berkely Earth Surface Temperature Project, “The Best project’s treatment of science and of the public has been shoddy. That so many so-called reporters in the mainstream media should have been so uncritical and accepting of what was clearly misrepresentation is shocking. Once again they have been found to be supporters and advocates for a particular point of view when they should have been critical commentators and journalists. Climate science is important. It deserves better.”¹⁷

May 2009

“Reporting the consensus about climate change … is not synonymous with good science reporting. The BBC is at an important point. It has been narrow minded about climate change for many years and they have become at the very least a cliché and at worst lampooned as being predictable and biased by a public that doesn’t believe them anymore.”¹⁸

Key Actions

May 27, 2021

Whitehouse wrote an article for the Global Warming Policy Forum criticising a report by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), which documented rising global temperatures and argued that they could lead to “more melting ice, higher sea levels, more heatwaves and other extreme weather, and greater impacts on food security, health, the environment and sustainable development”.¹⁹

In response, Whitehouse described these claims as “the habitual alarmist propaganda,” adding: “It is noteworthy that any annual rise in global temperature is blamed on climate change while any fall in temperature is regarded as natural variability.” Whitehouse also cited a report written for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by former Physics Professor Ralph B. Alexander, which stated: “Hysteria over extreme weather, and the attempt to link it to global warming, are simply unwarranted.”²⁰

May 13, 2021

Whitehouse wrote an article for the Global Warming Policy Foundation disputing the findings of a report by the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, which had discovered that the stratosphere had undergone a “substantial contraction” due to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions since measurements began in 1980.²¹

In response, Whitehouse wrote: “I suspect that given that the size of the stratosphere has declined slightly and greenhouse gasses are increasing a computer model could assign causation though given the data inputted into the model I am unconvinced.”

April 6, 2021

Whitehouse wrote an article for the Global Warming Policy Forum commenting on a study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a scientific research centre, which concluded that five estimates of the end of a solar cycle between 1960 and 2011 coincided with cooler oceanic temperatures. According to Whitehouse, this implied that solar variability had a more significant impact on the Earth’s climate than predicted. He wrote: “It seems that solar variability can drive climate variability on Earth on decadal timescales (the decadal climatic variability that Michael Mann recently ‘proved’ doesn’t exist).”²²

March 11, 2021

Whitehouse wrote an article for the Global Warming Policy Foundation criticising a report by climate scientist Michael Mann, which claimed that recent cycles of warming in the Atlantic had been caused by greenhouse gas emissions and aerosols from volcanoes, rather than natural internal variability. Whitehouse cited a blog post by climate science denier Judith Curry, who disputed Mann’s claims, writing that: “Mann’s quest to cancel the Medieval Warm Period and now the AMO, in the interests of showing that recent warming is 100% anthropogenic, is not at all convincing to scientists who understand anything about climate dynamics and global climate models.”²³

Whitehouse also quoted climate science policy writer Roger Pielke Jr. as saying: “Maybe it’s just me, but it would seem that it should be much bigger news that 15,000+ peer-reviewed climate research papers published since 2000 are based on a non-existent phenomenon and are thus now discredited.”

January 15, 2021

Whitehouse wrote an article for the Global Warming Policy Forum which disputed that the five years since 2016 had seen rising global temperatures. Whitehouse criticised the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) which had stated that 2020 had seen the highest temperatures since 2016. He wrote: “The overall conclusion to be drawn however is the misunderstanding of statistics used to support a predetermined opinion.” Whitehouse also argued that “the warming that was recorded in 2020 was not global but regional, primarily in parts of the Arctic around Siberia.”²⁴

January 6, 2017

Writing in The Spectator, David Whitehouse promotes the idea that the debunked global warming “pause” continues to be real. “The headlines say there is fresh doubt over the so-called global warming ‘hiatus’,” Whitehouse writes, claiming “This is because a new study suggests that the temperature of the oceans was being underestimated in the past 20 years or so […].”²⁵

“[M]ost climate scientists think the ‘hiatus’ exists and is a fascinating phenomenon that deserves study,” Whitehouse writes.

Scientific American addressed such claims in a January 4 article where independent scientists weighed in and confirmed there has been no pause in ocean warming.²⁶

“The bottom line,” Berkely Earth’s Zeke Hausfather says, “is that NOAA got it right. They were not manipulating the data for any political purpose. Warming has continued.”

December 12, 2016

David Whitehouse spoke with David Rose on ”GWPF TV” about “the hostile and irrational reactions to his article on the drop in global temperatures since the El Nino ‘spike’ in early 2016.” Video below.²⁷

February 26, 2016

David Whitehouse writes in The Spectator that ”[T]here has been a 15-year hiatus in global warming,” citing an article in Nature.²⁸

According to James Delingpole at Breitbart, the article vindicates Whitehouse’s previous claim in 2007 that global warming had “stopped.”²⁹

Delingpole goes on to describe those who believe the global warming pause to be inaccurate as “morally bankrupt, intellectually tainted, mendacious, ignorant useful idiot shills.”³⁰

October 2014

David Whitehouse was one of twelve scientists and sceptics who met to discuss “how to suck the venom out of the climate change debate,” reports The Guardian. The event included some well-known names like Anthony Watts, journalist David Rose, and Met Office scientist Richard Betts.³¹

“Both sides are really fed up with the outrageous alarmists who are not representing science properly,” Whitehouse said. “Both don’t like those who shout about it and call people names and take a polarised point of view.”

“I don’t know anybody who doesn’t agree that the world is warming and CO2 is a greenhouse gas,” said Whitehouse.

January 17, 2013

David Whitehouse wrote an article at the Global Warming Policy Foundation claiming that climate scientist James Hansen’s recent report admits that a “Global temperature standstill is real,” and that this was evidence that “The GWPF has been right all along.”³²

Hansen’s actual report can be viewed here (PDF). Whitehouse goes on to criticize the remaining sections of Hansen’s report which reports on how climate variations will continue to “cause a substantial increase in the frequency of extreme warm anomalies.”³³

Much of Hansen’s report also contradicts Whitehouse’s assertion that the GWPF was “right all along” if he is referring to the group’s essential stance on climate change. For example, note these paragraphs in Hansen’s original document (emphasis added):³⁴

“These short-term global fluctuations are associated principally with natural oscillations of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures summarized in the Nino index in the lower part of the figure. 2012 is nominally the 9th warmest year, but it is indistinguishable in rank with several other years, as shown by the error estimate for comparing nearby years. Note that the 10 warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998.

“The long-term warming trend, including continual warming since the mid-1970s, has been conclusively associated with the predominant global climate forcing, human-made greenhouse gases, which began to grow substantially early in the 20th century. The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution […]”

December 1, 2011

In a Huffington Post article, David Whitehouse criticizes the currents state of science journalism, stating that “There has never been a golden age of science journalism, but certainly there were more characters, better writers, more newsgathering zeal, and more originality in the recent past.”³⁵

He says that “science, and communicating science, is too important to be left to the scientists. An essential component of the scientific enterprise is the science journalist, and there as the saying goes, we have a problem.”

Whitehouse goes on to explain the nature of the suggested problem, concluding that “Climate science in particular is reported far too narrowly with much important peer-reviewed research ignored, and with environmental reporters far too concerned with doing down those they define as sceptics. Forget the sceptics, just report the science properly. It will all come out in the wash.”

Additionally, he suggests that “Journalists […] should not look to scientists for guidance anymore than an artist asks a bowl of cherries for advice about how to draw them! They should criticise, highlight errors, make a counterbalancing case if it will stand up, but don’t censor, even by elimination, don’t be complacent and say the science is settled in areas that are still contentious.”

Paul Raeburn posted a rebuttal at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, stating that “The only example that Whitehouse uses to make his case is that of climate-change coverage. Environmental reporters, he writes, are ‘far too concerned with doing down those they define as sceptics.’ On the contrary, I would argue that skeptics have received far too much coverage.”³⁶

Whitehouse’s critique and Paul Raeburn’s response is also covered here.³⁷

February 2, 2011

One of Whitehouse’s blog posts at the GWPF was debunked by London School of Economics Communications Director Bob Ward. Ward described Whitehouse’s GWPF publication, saying “I do not know of any other web page about global warming that is so error-ridden.”³⁸ ³⁹

November 9, 2010

One of Whitehouse’s articles at the GWPF was republished by Watts Up With That. In the article Whitehouse suggests that “2010 will be in terms of global annual average temperature statistically identical to the annual temperatures of the past decade.” His claim was debunked by numerous other sources.⁴⁰ ⁴¹

April 2010

Whitehouse claimed that Artic sea ice levels were returning to average. However, according to the Carbon Brief, Whitehouse’s prediction had been “soon after the height of the Arctic winter when the Arctic sea ice reaches its greatest extent.”⁴² Carbon Brief examined Whitehouse’s claim and concluded that the “overall trend is downwards, particularly in the summer.”⁴³

December 3, 2010

Whitehouse predicted that “2010 will be remembered for just two warm months [March and June], attributable to the El Nino effect, with the rest of the year being nothing but average, or less than average temperature.”⁴⁴

Whitehouse’s claim was in turn quoted by British Journalist David Rose who, according to SourceWatch, is known for repeatedly misquoting scientists on climate change.⁴⁵

According to the NASA and NOAA datasets, 2010 tied with 2005 for the hottest year on record; and NASA‘s GISS data showed November 2010 as the hottest November on record.⁴⁶ ⁴⁷

According to SourceWatch, the use of the term “average” in Whitehouse’s statement was also misleading, as the dataset referenced (CRU, through Oct 2010)shows every month in 2010 to be considerably warmer than the corresponding historic (1850+) average. The pattern appearing in NASA‘s GISS data.⁴⁸ ⁴⁹

Whitehouse later explained that he meant the “average” for just one decade – a timeframe statisticians consider too short to be meaningful in seeing the underlying trend.⁵⁰

December 2007

David Whitehouse published an article in the New Statesman claiming that global warming had stopped in 2007.⁵¹

“The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001,” Whitehouse writes. “Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.”

The New Statesman’s environmental correspondent Mark Lynas responded, writing that he was “deluged with queries asking if this [article by Whitehouse] represents a change of heart by the magazine” regarding climate change.⁵²

Before answering this question, Lynas poses another: “First let’s ask whether Whitehouse is wholly or partially correct in his analysis,” Lynas writes. “I’ll be blunt. Whitehouse got it wrong – completely wrong. The article is based on a very elementary error: a confusion between year-on-year variability and the long-term average.”⁵³