The BBC has acknowledged that climate science denier Nigel Lawson โshould have been challengedโ over incorrect scientific statements made on its flagship news and current affairs programme earlier thisย year.
Lawson appeared on the Today programme in August and incorrectly claimed thatย Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change โhas confirmed that there has been no increase in extreme weather eventsโ and โaccording to the official figures, during this past 10 years, if anything, mean global temperature, average world temperature, has slightlyย declinedโ.
The BBC‘s complaints unit today said the interview breached editorial guidelines, and that the organisation accepts that the statements โwere, at the least, contestable and should have been challengedโ, the Guardian reports.
Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics, told the Guardian: โThere needs to be a shift in BBC policy so that these news programmes value due accuracy as much as dueย impartiality.
โAs well as taking account of the rights of marginal voices like Lord Lawson to be heard, the BBC should also take account of the harm that its audiences can experience from the broadcast of inaccurateย information.โ
The climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Forumย (GWPF), of which Lawson is founder and chairman, apologised for the errors on twitter three days after the interview after scientists pointed out the mistakes.
The GWPF has a long history of campaigning against climate change policy in the UK and at the international level. It supported President Trump’s promised withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, saying the deal was โpushed through against the declared will of Americaโs electedย representativesโ.
It most recently courted controversy by inviting former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott to deliver the group’s annual lecture. In the speech, Abbott repeated a number of familiar climate science denial tropes, including that global warming was โprobably doing goodโ for theย planet.
Climate scientists criticised the speech for being โfull of falsehoods, miscomprehension, andย basicย untruths.โ
