If there was any doubt about the mainstream media’s agenda, this piece from the BBC should lay them to rest. It cites ten global warming skeptic arguments, and provides counter-arguments. Note the image caption: Unravelling the skeptics, which links to an article by the BBC’s environment correspondent who claims he’s not entirely sure what the arguments against the political consensus on global warming actually are.
This is not reporting. This is nothing less than partisan advocacy.
For its rebuttals, it relies on information supplied by Gavin Schmidt, who calls a significant correction of the most relied-upon temperature data — maintained by the organisation that employs him — “another ado about nothing“, who is a co-contributor at RealClimate.org with Michael Mann (he of the broken hockey-stick), and who claims to welcome openness in the debate but refuses to admit Steve McIntyre to the same debate.
The arguments are notable only for their vagueness, and for the patchy nature (at best) of the rebuttals. Worse, it omits the biggest and best of the skeptics’ arguments: that the direct and indirect costs of government programmes to curb global warming will exceed any claimed benefits even if they were to accrue, alternatively that the cost-benefit of spending resources on climate change is considerably worse than the cost-benefit of directing those same resources towards any number of other global problems.
I’ve considered most of the specific arguments in previous posts on the subject. Check under the climate change category for a selection. One day, should I find myself casting about for some productive procrastination, I may fisk the “news” in this article in particular.
But whatever you do, whether or not the BBC is right, and whether or not you believe them, do not mistake it for “news”. It’s BBC News, which is a different animal altogether.
When I first heard that Cyclone Sidr was shaping up to be a category four or five monster, these lyrics came to mind:
