THE CARBON WAR

The men behind the wire 17
millennium, ultimately adding 7 metres to sea level. The equivalent figures
from Antarctica are equally scary. Our descendants would lose the coastal
plains. Most of the current global economy is on the coastal plains.
As the day goes on, Twitter feeds show sceptics featuring more and more
in media reports and interviews. Thousands of scientists worked for many
months on distilling their consensus report on climate change for the world.
Yet a diehard few contrarians – almost all of them non-scientific ideologues,
many openly funded by fossil fuel interests – are able to insert into much of
the mainstream media, in multiple countries, the mantras of their concrete-encased
belief systems, as though these are opinions rooted in science, and of
equal standing to the IPCC’s assessment of risk. The situation is completely
dysfunctional.
Why does the media allow such distortion? Some outlets, like those of the
Murdoch empire, are owned by deniers who insist on a sceptical editorial line
on climate. Others, like the BBC it seems, simply take the view that a debate
is better than a documentary, even if the grounds for debate are the stuff of
black-arts propaganda, often funded by vested interests.
I feel a deep sympathy for the climate scientists who have to deal with
this, day-in day out. I used to be an academic myself. I can well imagine their
frustration.
Today, I have to soak up my own small share of it. The BBC invites me back
to their studio in Tunbridge Wells, this time to do a live TV debate. I have an
opponent this time, a denier who calmly recites the mantra about a complete
lack of global warming being evident over the last 15 years. He will have been
told, many times, by qualified people, that this is a misrepresentation. He also
knows that if he keeps calm and looks sensible, he will confuse hundreds of
thousands of people around the world, maybe more. His label will help him:
he represents an organisation with the kind of neutral name favoured by most
sceptic organisations and their backers: The Global Warming Policy Foundation.
For my part, I know I have at best two minutes in total both to counter
the toxicity of his argument, and to paint a credible picture of what thousands
of climate scientists are saying, and its implications. And all the media coaches
say the same thing: this must be done calmly, in a manner that will make a
listener generally only half aware of the actual words being spoken simply like
you more than him.
This is not an experience conducive to low blood pressure.