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April/May VILLAGE
E
NVIRONMENTAL broadcaster, Duncan
Stewart is leaving RTÉ because of the
inadequacy of its coverage of climate
change. He will stand as an independent in the
South consituency at the forthcoming European
Parliament election.
There was a big kerfuffle in mid-March when
environmentalists boycotted a ‘Prime Time’ pro-
gramme which dealt with climate change,
The previous week, ‘Prime Time’ had invited
a number of ‘environmentalists’ into its audi-
ence for a debate between book-promoting Eddie
Hobbs and energy minister, Pat Rabbitte over
the nation’s possible oil and gas reserves, and
how to tax them. The point of course, is that if
we tap them and burn them, and other countries
do likewise, the planet will succumb to runaway
climate change, and calamity. But in the end the
tedious ‘climate change’ question was ignored,
to the chagrin of many present.
In this mood, at one stage the panel for the
full-scale climate debate was going to contain an
IFA spokesperson and Dr Benny Peiser of Lord
Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Foundation,
which downplays the significance of ‘global
warming’ and regularly publishes pieces from
sceptics of anthropogenic climate change. At
an early stage a note was sent to potential con-
tributors suggesting the discussion was going to
be primitively open-ended: “whether our recent
weather is a result of climate change? Is the cli-
mate change man made? Is it the world’s biggest
crises (sic)? Has Ireland’s climate changed?”.
Professor John Sweeney, Ireland’s leading cli-
mate scientist, withdrew, reluctant to dignify
Peiser, a sports psychologist, with a quasi-scien-
tific debate. As did An Taisce led by the chairman
of its climate committee, Professor Barry
McMullin, Dean of the Engineering Department
in DCU, Village contributor John Gibbons and
a number of others. Though not Friends of the
Earth. I even threw in a legal threat myself about
the requirements of the Broadcasting Act, RTÉ’s
code of fairness and its guidelines for journalists
in dealing with a matter that is not a question of
opinion but of science. The guidelines require
programmes that “are balanced, in accordance
with the evidence”. Since % of climate sci-
entists agree we face dangerous anthropogenic
climate change, panels should be : in favour
those who are alarmed. Or at least : .
But it’s not so long ago that Pat Kenny gave
a lot of time on a ‘Late Late Show’ to Professor
Philip Stott, who actually denied climate change
– on the basis that it was Kenny’s role to “chal-
lenge the dangerous consensus”. And Miriam
O’Callaghan finished a ‘Prime Time’ programme
in with the words. “this debate will run
and run”. No. Like evolution, tobacco-cancer
links and the rotundity of the earth, it is set-
tled and the debate should be about what to do
to minimise it and deal with it, not whether it
exists.
In the end RTÉ climbed down and the IFA’s
wisdom was delivered from the floor, not the
panel. Benny Peiser was taken out by a feisty per-
formance from Joe Curtin, a climate researcher
with the Institute of International and European
Affairs, and the programme was fairly balanced,
and a breakthrough in RTÉ’s coverage. The
‘Prime Time’ team were, apparently, extremely
unhappy, both with John Sweeney’s decision to
boycott their programme, and also press state-
ments by, among others, the Environmental
Pillar and An Taisce, with RTÉ believing that
such statements were premature and pre-judged
the matter.
RTÉ’s own Audience Council, composed of
members independent of the station with the
role of “providing a voice for viewers and listen-
ers of the broadcaster”. produced a report on
RTÉ’s performance on covering climate change,
finding that over a two-year period, just one in
of the news reports on RTÉ ‘Six One’ that
could have mentioned climate change actually
did. And when it was mentioned, it was usually
addressed as an ‘international’ story of remote
interest to Ireland.
Meanwhile RTE appointed its former eco-
nomics editor, George Lee, to the position of
Agricultural and Environmental Correspondent.
Apparently, in that order. The position of
environment correspondent has been vacant
since Paul Cunningham was made Europe
correspondent.
Professor Ray Bates of UCD, a bona fide mete-
orological scientist, with a tendency to minimise
the current impact of change, especially on
agriculture, appeared on the ‘Prime Time’
panel. John Gibbons alleges Yates has a long
track record in “‘low balling’ the risks and talk-
ing up the ‘benefits’ of climate change”. Gibbons
happily concedes that Yates’ views are at least
his own but considers they “would place him
in or adjacent to the % ‘sceptical’ view within
mainstream climate science”. Yates has feistily
written to Gibbons asking him to clarify what he
means by sceptical and asking for evidence he
has “low balled the risks and talked up the ben-
efits” of climate change.
Professor Richard Tol, formerly of the ESRI is
in trouble again.
An academic paper by Professor Tol which
was published in the ‘Journal of Economic
Perspectives’ last year drew together a number
of estimates of the aggregate economic impacts
of climate change and concluded that global
warming of up to .°C would have a net benefi-
cial impact for the world.
However, when Bob Ward of the Grantham
Research Institute examined Professor Tol’s
paper in detail, he discovered that he:
“had made a number of errors, wrongly
plotting studies which had found net negative
impacts as if they were positive benefits. Of the
14 data listed in Table 1 and plotted in Figure 1
of the paper, at least four were wrong.
Taking into account all of these mistakes,
there was only one study that showed significant
positive effects from global warming. That sin-
gle analysis had been published by Professor Tol
himself in 2002 in the journal ‘Environmental
and Resource Economics’ However, the paper
also pointed out, on pages 63-64, that many
impacts of climate change had been omitted
from the study, including shifts in extreme
weather and effects on amenity, recreation,
tourism, fisheries, construction, transport,
and energy supply.
I exchanged e-mail messages with Professor
Tol to confirm that his 2009 paper contained
mistakes, but he refused to give any undertaking
to write to the journal to correct them”.
Meanwhile Barry Long of the Irish Geological
Association has written another letter about
his damned sceptic talks. Unfortunately there
wasn’t space to publish it. This edition. •
Climate watch
CLIMATE ENVIRONMENT
The temperature rises. By Michael Smith
