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I work for the British Antarctic Survey as a climate modeller; see my bio there. The views expressed here are in a personal capacity, as usual. I also have a rather confused wikipedia user page...
Campaigning on climate change
4 Sep, 2007 02:15 pm
Interesting article Why the BBC should stand up to its climate campaign critics* about whether the BBC should be campaigning on climate change. They have a charter, so they can go all lawyerly and examine whether they are acting in accordance with it. But the same question applies to scientists.
I agree with all of that, except for "because it's not impartial", on the grounds that I'm not sure whether such campaigning would be impartial or not (I agree that skeptics would say it isn't, but they get their science badly wrong). OTOH... during WWII I'm pretty sure the BBC did its best to lead the war effort, and spent very little time presenting a "diversity of views" about whether Germany was right to invade Poland. No, climate change isn't WWII.
The BBC certainly should be doing its best to present the science involved. My brief experience with watching cl ch stuff on TV is that production values and audience figures count for far more than accuracy (either way). Radio has done better. So I suppose I would argue that rather than navel-gaze about "partiality" they should concentrate on trying to communicate the science better, which I fear would mean getting people who understood it involved in the programme making (and I mean in the writing, making and editing, not just in being interviewed).
Should scientists campaign on climate change? Probably not.
Originally posted on Stoat
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Why the BBC should stand up to its climate campaign critics
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Anyway, as the BBC is concerned, if press organisms were so interested in not taking sides and be impartial, it would be great if they would just inform people about what climate is. In this case, those theories and scientist being good-scientists and skeptics would dissapear, people would see what is up with the climate and what the real causes are.