Why won’t Chris Packham have a real debate on climate?

By Paul Homewood

 

 

On Sunday, the BBC did something unusual. It invited Luke Johnson, a climate contrarian, to join a panel with Laura Kuenssberg to discuss net zero. As followers of this debate will know, the BBC’s editorial policy unit issued guidance to staff in 2018 saying: ‘As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a “denier” to balance the debate.’ Although it did allow for exceptions to this rule: ‘There are occasions where contrarians and sceptics should be included within climate change and sustainability debates.’ Presumably this was one such occasion.

The other two people on the panel – Chris Packham and Layla Moran – are members of the climate emergency camp, so there was no pretence of ‘balance’. At one point, the exchange between Johnson and Packham became heated and when the latter invoked the recent downpour in Dubai as well as extensive wildfires in the ‘global south’, as evidence of the effect of anthropogenic global warming, Johnson challenged him to come up with evidence that extreme weather was caused by carbon emissions.

‘It doesn’t come from Toby Young’s Daily Septic [sic], which is basically put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliations to the fossil fuel industry,’ replied Packham. ‘It comes from something called science.’ This was hailed by Packham’s side as a slam-dunk rebuttal of Johnson’s argument. The Canary wrote up the exchange under the following headline: ‘Chris Packham just humiliated Kuenssberg’s preposterous climate-denying guest.’ The London Economic, which describes itself as ‘a digital newspaper with a metropolitan mindset’, summarised it as follows: ‘With science on his side, Chris Packham was able to deliver a devastating put-down when challenged on the evidence of climate change.’

I can’t help thinking Packham’s ‘devastating put-down’ would have been more effective if it had been true. The people who put together the Daily Sceptic, a news publishing site I’ve edited since 2020, have no connections to the fossil fuel industry. If Packham and his allies are so convinced of the rightness of their cause, why invent reasons to discredit their opponents? A clip from the show including this claim was posted on Twitter by BBC Politics and retweeted by Laura Kuenssberg, getting, at last count, 845,000 views. And to think the BBC launched a multi-million-pound department last year to ‘address the growing threat of disinformation’.

What about Packham’s claim that ‘something called science’ provides all the evidence we need that extreme weather events are caused by burning fossil fuels? There’s really no such thing as ‘the science’, as in a consensus viewpoint among scientists that’s so incontrovertible no serious debate is possible. All scientific theories are just hypotheses and, as such, subject to challenge. Indeed, if it were illegitimate to challenge these theories, progress in science wouldn’t be possible. To pretend that the science of what causes extreme weather is ‘settled’ when it’s the subject of ongoing dispute suggests that Packham and his pals aren’t capable of having a proper grown-up discussion.

Full story here.

Toby Young actually understates his complaint, as there is no evidence that weather is actually becoming more extreme- something the IPCC admit.

It is very easy for these conmen to claim it is, and simply justify it with a statement that “scientists say”. But as Toby points out, they are unable to back it up with actual data and evidence.

The idea, fraudulently circulated by grant funded climate scientists, that global warming means extreme weather has always been by definition absurd. After all, does this mean that the Earth’s climate was ideal during the Ice Age, which would be the logical conclusion?

The simple fact is that there has always been unpleasant weather, storms, floods, droughts, and glaciation. If Chris Packham can provide evidence that these have all gotten worse in recent times, then let him present it.

If he can’t, the BBC should apologise for broadcasting false statements, exclude him from all future debates on climate change, and ban him from making any further such political comments if he wishes to remain as an employee.