Thought for the day

Is a "consensus" stronger than a "weight of opinion"? I think it is. A 53% majority carries with it the weight of opinion, but is not large enough to be called a consensus.

The BBC makes no attempt to report the subject of climate change fairly. They admit this. Jeremy Paxman said:

... the BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago.

BBC head of television news Peter Horrocks went further (emphasis added):

"We have heard sceptic's voices very regularly on our programmes, but I think having this range of voices has made people think there is more doubt about climate change than there actually is," he said.

"The fact there is consensus about climate change means that it has become a political consensus.

"We still need to have the voices of sceptics but in terms of what matters to the viewers most, now as a scientific consensus has emerged the policy choices that will effect people's taxes are more relevant to their concerns."

It's quite plain that their policy now extends to issuing articles critical of scientists whose work fails to conform with their editorial policy without any response from the criticised scientists, or swamping such responses in rebuttals.

By way of contrast, here's how they describe the "debate" between evolution and creationism on their site h2g2, a sort of encyclopedia:

... the weight of scientific evidence has been overwhelmingly in favour of evolution

And they are much happier allowing creationists airtime than they are climate sceptics, or even agnostic scientists whose work happens to fall outside the "consensus" of "settled science".

So in the worldview of the BBC, climate alarmism is "settled science", but evolutionary theory is not - it is simply supported by the "weight" of evidence.