"PATRONISING AND WRONG"

If you're fundamentally selfish, and don't want to accept any responsibility - individual or communal - for the harm we have all done to the environment and the measures we must all adopt to limit the effects of our recklessness, then sooner or later you have to pretend that climate change isn't happening. Or, if it is, then it isn't our fault. No, sirree. So we don't have to do anything about it, right?

Ha! If only ...

It's just that sort of shifty thinking that mad groups like Nigel Lawson's "Global Warming Policy Foundation" are trying to encourage.

The BBC's highly-acclaimed Frozen Planet series came to an end with an episode in which Sir David Attenborough examined various kinds of proof that the Arctic ice is melting. He carefully avoided mentioning man-made climate change. All the same, the nutters attacked.

In its infinite wisdom, the BBC's Radio Times magazine invited Lawson to stick his oar in. This in the name of "balance" which, in all cases concerning climate change, means pretending that a few brainless statements have as much weight as a mass of detailed scientific evidence and data. It's oh so similar to the "debate" about wind energy and renewables in general. Lots of proper science completely drowned out by a few opinions falsely presented as "fact" and then foisted on anybody who'll listen.

Anyway, the Guardian has discovered that the BBC prepared a rebuttal to Lawson's stupid remarks. They had to be on their guard, because the loonies of the climate "sceptic" camp want everybody to believe that the BBC is guilty of "bias". Naughtily, you see, the BBC occasionally reports on the science. And that always infuriates the deniers. They're just like anti-wind nimbies, you see. Their opinion matters more than the evidence. If they had their way, the BBC (and all other media outlets) would be banned from covering hugely important issues like climate change and we'd all be none the wiser. As it is, any attempt by the BBC to report and explain the science leads to vociferous demands for "balance" and the "alternative" point-of-view. It's rather as if any programme about the Holocaust would have to be "balanced" by a noisy rant from the nutters who deny that the Holocaust ever happened.

Although the BBC haven't bothered publishing it, the response to Lawson's idiotic denialism they commissioned from Mark Brandon, an Open University polar oceanographer and scientific script consultant to the Frozen Planet series, was unequivocal. Lawson's attempts at undermining Sir David Attenborough, the BBC and the science of climate change were just plain wrong, "patronising in tone" and "the usual tired obfuscation and generalisation".

The BBC haven't dared to confront Lawson with the facts but the Open University has published a piece calmly explaining - using science - why Nigel Lawson was so stupefyingly wrong. It's here:

http://www8.open.ac.uk/platform/news-and-features/the-science-behind-climate-change-explained

The sad thing is that, for as long as wealthy but delusional twerps like Lawson and his climate change denying mates keep pumping out their inaccurate nonsense - like the "Renewable Energy Foundation" with its constant misleading attacks on windpower - the longer those few selfish types who don't fancy glimpsing a wind turbine from time to time can continue to convince themselves that nothing needs to be done. If there's no such thing as man-made climate change, then we don't need renewables, so we don't need a windfarm a couple of miles away from the gazebo. What Lawson and his drones are preaching is a great big dangerous lie, which helps to fuel all those other lies about windpower, recycling, sustainability, etc., etc.

We've said it before: the problem with one lie (climate change isn't happening) is that it leads to so many others (we don't need windfarms/windfarms don't work/it's all just a subsidy scam ...)

So here's an idea. Let's stop telling lies. Shall we, nimbies everywhere? For the good of everybody, and most of all our children?

Wouldn't it be lovely? - if the climate change sceptics and the anti-wind loonies and all the others who think they're more important than anybody else all just stopped telling fibs.

Then we might start getting somewhere.

In the meantime, here's Tony Juniper's response to the poorly-researched BBC Panorama programme from the other week about green energy. Makes you wonder in which direction the BBC really might be "biased".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28jjWyaeNUI&feature=youtu.be