Wednesday, July 20, 2011

BBC gives too much weight to fringe views on issues like climate change | Science | guardian.co.uk
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, said it was crucial for the BBC to "challenge inaccurate and misleading claims made by bloggers, campaigners and politicians who 'reject and deny the findings of mainstream science for ideological reasons.'

"The BBC is required by law not to sacrifice accuracy for impartiality in the coverage of controversial scientific issues such as climate change. Yet it is well known that there are particular BBC presenters and editors who allow self-proclaimed climate change 'sceptics' to mislead the public with unsubstantiated and inaccurate statements," he said.
BBC News - Climate: Fractures in the lobby?
...He was forwarding a message from Venezuela's chief climate negotiator Claudia Salerno, a glamorous diplomat whose most theatrical moment came on the last morning of the Copenhagen summit when she held up what appeared to be a bloody hand, saying she had cut it in protest against the Copenhagen Accord, which she called a "coup d'etat against the United Nations".
...
Dr Salerno does not in this exchange elucidate Venezuelan concerns, but they are on public display; to keep the Earth's average temperature rise since pre-industrial terms below 1C, while continuing to export all the oil it can.

Bolivia, which regularly laments the problems climate change is bringing to poor indigenous communities, is also an oil producer; one observer wryly describes both as "petro-states of Mother Earth".

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