Or to put it another way, we really, really don’t want you to debate it. BBC newsreader Peter Sissons has revealed that the BBC, in common with many other news media, is complicit in keeping quiet about any challenge to “orthodox” climate change propaganda.
It was one of several factors that persuaded him to leave his prestigious job. He describes how, after “what was billed as a climate change rally in London last December, the leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, went into the Westminster studio to be interviewed by me on the BBC News channel. She clearly expected what I call a ‘free hit’ – to be allowed to voice her views without being challenged on them.
“I pointed out to her that the climate didn’t seem to be playing ball at the moment. We were having a particularly cold winter, even though carbon emissions were increasing. Indeed, there had been no warming for ten years, contradicting all the alarming computer predictions.
“Well, she was outraged. I don’t have the actual transcript, but Miss Lucas told me angrily that it was disgraceful that the BBC should be giving any kind of publicity to those sort of views.”
Mr Sissons is one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change. He says: “The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t.
“But it is effectively BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard.
“Politically the argument may be settled, but any inquisitive journalist can find ample evidence it is not. I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”