Last week, on October 6th, The Guardian published a story under the headline "Sun's role in warming the planet may be overestimated, study finds.". A day later, tech website The Register published a climate story of its own, "Much of recent global warming actually caused by Sun," at a URL that ended "/solar_as_big_as_people/."

The two headlines are completely contradictory, yet bizarrely both stories report on the same Nature letter, a piece of research led by Professor Joanna Haigh at Imperial College London. So what on Earth is going on?

The research itself is fairly clear, albeit provisional. You would expect that when the sun is most active it would have a warming effect on temperatures, while at times of low activity it it ought to have a cooling influence. Instead, the data so far show that - for a three year period between 2004 and 2007 at least - the opposite happened.

While the Sun's activity declined, the amount of UV radiation reaching the Earth fell, but the output of energy reaching us as visible light actually increased. The effect of that shift in the type of energy reaching us on the atmosphere could mean that lower solar activity actually results in a slight warming effect, and vice versa. It might just be an anomaly, or it might mean we have to alter our understanding of solar forcing - we'll know for sure as we get more data from longer periods.

Either way, it has little effect on the reality of man made climate change. Since the sun's activity waxes and wanes over a fairly regular 11 year cycle, the changes even themselves out over time. And as Haigh points out, "the warming influence of rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, emitted by human activities, was at least 10 times greater than changes in the strength of the sun."

And yet The Register article puts a whole different spin on the story, one that seems to completely contradict The Guardian's reporting, the paper, and Haigh's own statements on the subject.

"New data indicates that changes in the Sun's output of energy were a major factor in the global temperature increases seen in recent years. The research will be unwelcome among hardcore green activists, as it downplays the influence of human-driven carbon emissions."

Eh? Compare and contrast with e.g. Imperial College's press release:

"Overall solar activity has been increasing over the past century, so the researchers believe it is possible that during this period, the Sun has been contributing a small cooling effect, rather than a small warming effect as had previously been thought."

That's basically the complete opposite then. The Register go on to state that:

"The prof considers that increased sun-powered warming probably had as much effect on global temperature as carbon during the period of her study."

And that's sort of true, but the period of study was only three years, and the impact evens out of the course of the 11 year cycle. To suggest then that "recent temperature rises may well have been down to the Sun as much as anything humanity has done" seems rather obtuse.

The article appears to me to seriously misrepresent the research, but don't take my word for it. I showed The Register's article to Professor Haigh herself, and here's her response:

"The title of the article in The Register entirely misrepresents the paper's conclusions. While our work showed over a 3 year period that declining solar activity might have caused a warming of the planet it made no claims on longer periods. Even if it were the case that solar activity is inversely related to warming then the ups and downs of the solar cycle would cancel out over time. And over the past century overall solar activity has risen which, on the same basis, would imply global cooling."

At a time when action to deal with climate change is needed more than ever, this sort of misleading reporting does nothing to help the public debate.

But it's not just the misrepresentation of science that grates. Through-out the article, the author, uses rather unfortunate language to describe scientists. The team of researchers are described as "boffins working at Imperial College," and the research is described as being published in "hefty boffinry mag Nature."

The use of 'boffin', common at the random-USE-of-CAPITALS end of tabloid journalism, is problematic to many scientists, as the word is increasingly loaded with negative connotations.

I find it quite a dehumanizing term, and it's fascinating to me that no names are mentioned until the second half of The Register's article, as if all scientists are replaced by interchangeable 'boffin' avatars in the consciousness of the writer. Whenever I see it, it reeks of a self-conscious desire to separate the reporter from the labeled group of people, to present clear space between the human writer, and those faceless, nameless 'boffins'.

Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it - your mileage may vary - but either way I feel it belittles researchers, and patronizes the reader.

I put Haigh's criticisms to The Register website this morning, and I'm waiting for a response - if I get one I'll post it on this blog. At a minimum it would be nice if they would consider issuing a correction. Personally I think they owe Professor Haigh an apology.

Update: The Register have just published an amusingly put-out 'response' to this piece.