(UK) Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change - The Observer

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Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change


Our science editor condemns television's latest foray into
the debate on global warming

Robin McKie
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer

We live in an era of conspiracies. Princess Diana was killed
by Nazis; 9/11 was the work of the US government, while the
manned lunar landings were hoaxes filmed in TV studios. To
this list of internet-fuelled daftness, we can now add a new
plot: that the world's scientific community is not just wrong
about global warming, but is collectively lying when it says
industrial carbon dioxide emissions are heating up the planet.

Michael Crichton started the ball rolling with his novel State
of Fear and the idea has bubbled along nicely in online
chatrooms ever since. But now the idea is to get the full
terrestrial TV treatment when Channel 4 screens Thursday's
The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary which
says claims that carbon emissions are causing global
warming are 'lies' and that attempts to debate the subject
are being suppressed.

Given that the world's climatologists have just published a
careful, sober report showing global warming is real and
worrying, the programme is an astonishing foray into the
debate. Certainly, there many reasons to deride it. Its
contents are largely untrue, for a start. That is Channel 4's
problem. Yet a couple of important points do emerge from this
nonsense and we should not make the mistake of ignoring
them. To back his case, director Martin Durkin interviews
climate-change deniers including Phillip Stott, Piers Corbyn,
Nigel Calder and Nigel Lawson who reveal their antipathy to
the idea we are altering Earth's weather systems.

-snip-

The problem is that denial - in all its ludicrous glory - makes
it easy for us to gloss over genuine concerns about society's
right reaction to global warming and carbon emissions. And
that is what is wrong with Durkin's programme. It opts for
dishonest rhetoric when a little effort could have produced
an important contribution to a critical social problem.

-snip-

Full article: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2026091,00.html