GL OBAL WARMING
The processes through which greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the Earth are now well established. That it is human activity which carries the blame is also well established by an almost unique scientific consensus that has probably never been seen in living memory.
Former US vice president Al Gore, in his Nobel Peace Prize-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, spelt out the extent of that consensus – published scientific papers that establish human responsibility for the problem: almost 1,000. Scientific papers showing it’s got nothing to do with humanity: zero. US media reports on the same issue show a very different slant: 68 per cent in favour of global warming being a natural phenomenon and 32 per cent supporting the scientific consensus.
The ratio may not be quite so wide in the UK but there is still nothing like balance in the debate. Climate change denial, or at least humans’ responsibility for it, has become editorial policy in the Daily Mail, including its science editor. Some other papers and the BBC adopt an ‘even-handed’ approach, providing equal space for denial and therefore presenting the debate as one which is evenly divided in terms of scientific opinion.
Incredibly, when the UN FAO published its report in 2006, establishing that livestock are not only the second largest source of greenhouse gases but central to every other environmental catastrophe, it was virtually ignored in Britain. What should have been an Earth-shattering report was carried by three titles, two of them agricultural papers.
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