Contrary to what the makers of the Channel 4 programme questioning Climate Change would have us believe, most of us like having our existing views intelligently challenged. What we don’t like is the kind of misleading and dishonest guff we were served up last night. I’d love to have an excuse to drive more, feel less guilty about flying and consume as much as I’d like. This wasn’t it.
The programme felt very similar in its tone and its superficiality to earlier Channel 4 documentaries on inconvenient issues, most notably HIV/AIDS. In 1987, Channel 4’s Dispatches broadcast “AIDS: The Unheard Voices” which challenged “the theory that AIDS is caused by the H.I.V. virus.” In 1993, it broadcast another programme, “AIDS AND AFRICA”, arguing that the “predictions of an African AIDS epidemic are unfounded and that the reported escalation of the disease may be the result of the funds the disease attracts.”
These found a few supposedly reputable scientists to challenge the overwhelming consensus that HIV did cause AIDS and was wreaking havoc across the developing world. They provided little or no space for those representing that consensus to challenge the views put forward in the programme. They argued that an “AIDS industry” was stifling open debate and that whole AIDS epidemic was some kind of giant job creation scheme. Such perspectives were reinforced by a long running Sunday Times campaign arguing that HIV did not cause AIDS. These programmes created immense difficulties for organisations trying to galvanise political and public action at the time. They used almost identifical techniques to those used in last nights programme.
More recent programmes in the Dispatches series, such as by Sorious Samura, have documented extraordinarily powerfully the devastating human impact of HIV/AIDS on Africa and elsewhere, but to my knowledge there has never been an apology by Channel 4, and as last night’s programme demonstrated, it continues to feel that one sided, poorly researched and largely specious portrayals of issues of fundamental concern to humanity remain a stock in trade for the channel.
We deserve and need better than this. There are legitimate questions to be asked over the causes of climate change, and even the most convinced scientists and commentators would like to be able to continue to debate these issues intelligently. The science of climate change cannot be a static monolith, but needs to evolve in response to new evidence and ideas. The one sided, manipulative rubbish served up last night stifles, rather than stimulates such an intelligent debate just as it did with HIV/AIDS more than a decade ago. When will Channel 4 ever learn?
You may have a point but are you disimissing the whole programme. We have been spoon fed information mostly by the goverment regarding our species being 80% responsible for global warming. I am no scientist but long before this programme I knew that CO2 was only 4% of the gas volume in the atmosphere 97% Of C02 is produced naturally 3% by human activity 2% of the 3% is produced by the UK. A proper debate is required maybe this programme will be the catalist.
My concern is that the argument has been policitised and will be abused by this government who lets face it do not have an impressive record for being truthful
