'BBC's biased climate science reporting isn't biased enough' claims report

Telegraph
James Delingpole

Before commenting on the BBC Trust’s report into the BBC’s science coverage, I thought I’d take the trouble of reading the actual document rather than the press previews. I’m very glad I waited because the finished product is an absolute corker. Let me take you through some of my favourite moments.

The report, as you may be aware, was written by my fellow Telegraph columnist Steve Jones. Besides being a fine and engaging writer, Dr Jones is a geneticist of  distinction and I would certainly never dream of questioning his judgement in his fields of expertise (notably Drosophila and snails). Fortunately, as becomes quite clear reading the report, climate science isn’t one of them.

Dr Jones sets out his ideological position fairly early on when he strives to bracket global warming “denialism” with a range of other syndromes: believing that “AIDS has nothing to do with viruses, the MMR vaccine is unsafe, complex organs could never evolve, or even that the 9/11 disaster was a US government plot.” I’d love to see his evidence for this casual slur-by-association.

The distinction he tries to make between “scepticism” (good, up to a point, he thinks) and “denialism” (bad, obviously) is in any case a straw man argument. Of all the sceptics I’ve ever met or read, not a single one has ever striven to deny that climate changes nor that modest global warming has been taking place since 1850 (when we began emerging from the Little Ice Age).

What many of these sceptics – or deniers, if you must – do question is

a) whether – and if so by how much – this warming is anthropogenic (ie human-caused)

b) whether the warming constitutes a threat – or whether its benefits might in fact far outweigh its drawbacks

c) whether this warming likely to continue or whether – as happened without human influence at the end of the Roman warm period and the Medieval warm period – it will be followed by a period of natural cooling

d) whether the drastic policy measures (tax, regulation, “decarbonisation”, the drive for renewables) being enacted to ‘combat climate change’ will not end up doing far more harm than good.

Jones concedes at one point that “A debate remains, and it deserves to be reported with as much objectivity as would any other unresolved issue.” But the apparent reasonableness here is certainly not borne out by the rest of his screed against sceptics, whom he caricatures as “proponents of the idea that global warming is a myth” – while neglecting to engage with the subtleties of the arguments mentioned above.

Sometimes, in his enthusiasm to put all these evil “deniers” in their place, Dr Jones appears to forget the basic rules of science altogether. For example, he describes how measured levels of atmospheric C02 have increased since 1959, and how “basic physics show that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas” and how “three independent sets of records of global temperature agree that 2010 was one of the three hottest years since figures were first collected.” Dr Jones might be surprised to learn the “deniers” agree with him on this. Where they differ is over a fundamental scientific concept: “Correlation is not causation.” We are, remember, emerging from the Little Ice Age. So the rise in global temperatures is perfectly explicable in terms of natural climatic cycles. Furthermore, you could reasonably argue that the theory of anthropogenic CO2 as a driver of catastrophic global warming has already been “falsified” (or, as I prefer to think of it, torpedoed below the waterline, hit in the magazine and blown out of the sea). That’s because, as even the great Dr Phil Jones of the CRU has acknowledged, “global warming” stopped in 1998 (even as anthropogenic CO2 levels, notably in China) continued to rise.

Another category error Dr Jones falls into is in his use of the Argumentum ad Verecundiam, the appeal to authority. He tells us:

The IPCC concluded that it is beyond doubt that the climate is warming and more than 90% likely that this has been driven by human activity.

And he cites an open letter to the journal Science by two hundred and fifty members of the US National Academy of Sciences:

“(T)here is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.”

But as both Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn could have explained to Dr Jones, science does not advance through “consensus”; and as Einstein could have told him, science is not a numbers game. When Hitler commissioned the book 100 Authors Against Einstein, Einstein coolly replied that if he were wrong, one author would have been enough.

UPROAR AS BBC MUZZLES CLIMATE CHANGE SCEPTICS

Express

Nathan Rio

The BBC has been criticised by climate change skeptics

THE BBC was criticised by climate change sceptics yesterday after it emerged that their views will get less coverage because they differ from mainline scientific opinion.

In a report by its governing body, the BBC Trust, the corporation was urged to focus less on opponents of the “majority consensus” in its programmes.

It said coverage should not be tailored to represent a “false balance” of opinion if one side came from a minority group.

The report was partly based on an independent review of coverage by Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London.

Although he found no evidence of bias in BBC output, he suggested where there is a “scientific consensus” it should not hunt out opponents purely to balance the story.

He highlighted climate change as an example along with the controversy over the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine potentially leading to autism.

On climate change, Professor Jones said there had been a “drizzle of criticism of BBC coverage” arising from “a handful of journalists who have taken it upon themselves to keep disbelief alive”.

A sceptic is not a denier, all good scientists should be sceptics

Dr David Whitehouse

The report says: “In its early days, two decades ago, there was a genuine scientific debate about the reality of climate change. Now, there is general agreement that warming is a fact even if there remain uncertainties about how fast, and how much, the temperature might rise.”

But critics accused Professor Jones of using the report as a cover to “push the BBC’s green agenda”.

Among them are former Tory Chancellor Lord Lawson, who was accused by the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington, of making “incorrect” claims in An Appeal To Reason, the peer’s book on climate change.