A BBC presenter found herself in the middle of a Twitter storm after claiming a radio documentary on climate change was balanced because it did not feature any sceptic voice. (h/t Bishop Hill)
Climate Change: The Inconvenient Facts, which is due to be broadcast on Radio 4 this coming Tuesday, features presenter Tom Heap speaking to a panel of ‘experts’ on how to explain away anomalies in climate models, such as the growth in Antarctic sea ice and the slow down in global warming since 1998.
After climate scientist Michael Mann took to Twitter to complain that the BBC was “actively promot[ing] misinformation” about man-made climate change, one member of the panel, UCL physicist Helen Czerski, responded that the show is “v. balanced in sense that there is no “skeptic” voice.”
So @BBCNews continues to actively promote misinformation about human-caused #climatechange: http://t.co/Owa9behzKg
— Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) March 26, 2015
@SellaTheChemist @theresphysics @MichaelEMann @4589roger @guynewey And actually, it’s v. balanced in sense that there is no “skeptic” voice.
— Helen Czerski (@helenczerski) March 26, 2015
When challenged as to how this could make the show balanced, she remained unrepentant:
@tan123 @dangainor @ClimateDepot The balance of evidence is clear.Public now needs to decide what to do, not to repeat last century’s debate
— Helen Czerski (@helenczerski) March 28, 2015
@MsStockford @tan123 @dangainor @ClimateDepot The skeptic view is represented more often than is justified by the evidence for that view.
— Helen Czerski (@helenczerski) March 28, 2015
The radio show will be the second BBC programme in the space of a month on the subject of climate change after Climate Change By Numbers, a TV show on BBC4, which featured three mathematicians explaining why the phenomena is real. Again, the show did not feature any sceptic voice.
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