From DAILY SKEPTIC
by Chris Morrison
No green activist organization makes it clearer why they must ban free speech and shut down scientific debate to achieve net zero hegemony than the Guardian newspaper. Last Saturday we learned from its environment editor Damian Carrington that activists had claimed that Britain’s television and radio regulator Ofcom was allowing GB News and others to “disregard” accuracy rules and spread “climate change denial,” whatever that last sentence means. Carrington, in response to frequent claims of inaccuracies in UN climate models, noted in 1979 that “UN climate models were in fact remarkably accurate.” As Carrington, one of three Journalists of the Year in 2023 at the Green Blob-funded Covering Climate Now, one can only assume you can write that with a straight face.
Net Zero is dead in the United States and there has been a welcome revival of the scientific process that has demolished the ridiculous notion that a scientific opinion can somehow be “clarified.” The US Department of Energy’s most recent official climate report noted that climate models are the most important tool for predicting future changes in response to higher levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. “What is concerning is the fact that after several decades of climate modeling… the range of future warming they produce in response to a hypothetical doubling of CO2 extends over a factor of three.” This range of disagreements has not diminished in decades, the five major science authors add.
The small-minded Reliable Media is behind the GB News campaign, and the anti-science desperation fueled by Guardian Central is clear to see. A GB News contributor described climate change as “rubbish”. Another called it a “fraud,” an opinion recently expressed by the president-elect of the U.S. government at the United Nations General Assembly. You’d think the scientific process could handle a few harsh words, but Reliable Media is outraged. She accuses Ofcom of “virtually overriding its rules of accuracy on this matter of life and death”.
Carrington finds reason to report on the centre-right television channel CNews about the £17,000 fine recently imposed by French state broadcasting regulator Arcom. In this case, an author dared to express the opinion that climate change was “a lie, a fraud.”
The French complaint was filed by activist Eva Morel of QuotaClimat. She stated the following:
When the media blurs the line between facts and opinions, it doesn’t lead people to trust alternative truths; it causes them to trust nothing at all. Sowing doubt about climate science serves to hinder climate action and endangers lives.
In an excellent article in Watts Up With That? Eric Worrall pointed out that the problem with forcing agreement on the “facts” is that in science “there is no fact that cannot be challenged.”
The Ofcom rules specifically state that an example of a question that they believe has been largely resolved is the “scientific principles behind the theory of anthropogenic global warming”. This is clearly anti-science. First of all, the extent of human-caused global warming is a scientific hypothesis (opinion), not a validated theory. Ofcom’s claim is a political idea invented by state bureaucrats who clearly have little understanding of the language of science and how it actually works. In fact, Ofcom seems vaguely aware of the stupidity behind its fashion pretensions. Carrington reports that since January 2020, 1,221 complaints related to the “climate crisis” have been received and none have resulted in a ruling that the Broadcasting Regulations have been breached.
Worrall’s final assessment of the machinations of activists seeking to suppress dissenting scientific voices in the public sphere is stunted.
My point is that claiming that some facts are indisputable, especially “facts” produced by such questionable artifacts as climate models, is tantamount to attacking the foundations of free speech and scientific research. Forcing broadcasters to accept a single, government-approved version of incontrovertible facts and then claiming that they somehow have freedom of expression is utter nonsense.
Reliable Media is a sleazy little left wing operation. There are few financial and funding details available as the company was set up as a limited company to drive the Just Stop Hate and Just Stop Heat campaigns. It claims it is making “climate change denial” unviable by attempting to destroy the ability of free-speech media companies like the increasingly successful GB News to attract advertisers. If that’s the goal, the company probably has good legal advice, although the latest invoices filed through June 2024 suggest money may be tight. An amount of £107,940 is to be held as cash in the bank, but an identical amount is set aside for creditors due within a year. Regardless of financial situation, his activities are similar to those of the class lurker who runs to the teacher to chat about the bigger boys who are more confident, more entrepreneurial, better at sports, and more successful with the girls. As the brilliant comedy songwriter Dominic Frisby sang in his composition, perhaps jokingly about ways to stop freaks like Ed Miliband: “We need to bring back school bullying.” Science, he adds, is only now discovering the value of this.
Chris Morrison is the environmental editor of the Daily Sceptic. Follow him on X.
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