A Place to Stand

Channel 4 Thursday 8 March at 9pm
This will be the first time British TV has ever seriously reported on the warming sceptic case.

The film argues that the earth's climate is always changing, and that rapid warmings and coolings took place long before the burning of fossil fuels. It argues that the present single-minded focus on reducing carbon emissions not only may have little impact on climate change, it may also have the unintended consequence of stifling development in the third world, prolonging endemic poverty and disease.

The film features an impressive roll-call of experts, including nine professors – experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, environmental science, biography and paleoclimatology – from such reputable institutions as MIT, NASA, the International Arctic Research Centre, the Institut Pasteur, the Danish National Space Center and the Universities of London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Winnipeg, Alabama and Virginia.

The film hears from scientists who dispute the link between carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures.............

Finally, the film argues that restricting CO2 emissions could actually be damaging for people in the developing world. A respected Kenyan development expert says: 'The rich countries can afford to engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy, but for us we are still at the stage of survival.

'I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar panel is going to power a railway network, it might work, maybe, to power a small transistor radio.

'The thing that emerges from the whole environmental debate is the point that there is somebody keen to kill the African dream, and the African dream is to develop. We are being told don't touch your resources, don't touch your oil, don't touch your coal; that is suicide.'

The programme's producer Martin Durkin is an intelligent Marxist (ie one who hasn't gone over to the Green side) of whom George Moonbat wrote

In October 1998 a television producer named Martin Durkin took a proposal to the BBC’s science series, Horizon. Silicone breast implants, he claimed, far from harming women, were in fact beneficial, reducing the risk of breast cancer. Horizon commissioned a researcher to find out whether or not his assertion was true. After a thorough review, the researcher reported that Mr Durkin had ignored a powerful body of evidence contradicting his claims. Martin Durkin withdrew his proposal. Instead of dropping it, however, he took it to Channel 4 and, astonishingly, sold it to their science series, Equinox.

Since then the entire breast implant scare has blown over & there is no serious doubt that they do no harm. Moonbat doesn't appear to have written on the subject since.

He has also produced another one on GM called "Against Nature", giving "environmentalists" a going over which again got criticised as being "far right" by Guardianistas & forced an apology from C4. Since then absolutely no sustainable evidence whatsoever of GM causing any physical harm has been found. The BBC, Guardian etc have therefore all been forced to apologise to Monsanto for their accusations - not.

I'm sure Mr Paxman will be watching this since it is clear from his sarcasm that he has great doubts about the warming scare but dare not quite come out & say that the BBC have given up reporting news for making up propaganda.

"I have neither the learning nor the experience to know whether the doomsayers are right about the human causes of climate change. But I am willing to acknowledge that people who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that it is the consequence of our own behaviour," Paxman said, writing in this week's edition of in-house BBC magazine Ariel.

"I assume that this is why the BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago. But it strikes me as very odd indeed that an organisation which affects such a high moral tone cannot be more environmentally responsible," he added.

The unconscious irony of this official BBC statement is even clearer

For years on Newsnight we've reported concerns about the effects of climate change with caution, due scepticism and balance.... I think we're past that point

I must admit I never saw any of the "balance" but it is certainly over.

Look forward to more complaints from Greenies saying that it is biased to criticise them & that all those who doubt them come "from Mars".