BBC self-censors for benefit of climate change deniers

I read an article on the BBC News website yesterday morning that had some prominence on the front page. By the time I wanted to show it to my partner in the evening I had to resort to using the BBC search engine to locate the story. It had been buried. What’s more it had been edited to correct two mistakes and also, it would appear, to appease climate change deniers who are strongly motivated, no doubt, to phone in and cry foul.

The original story referenced sea lions. It’s not sea lions, we’ve now been told. It’s fur seals. The measurements of average sea temperatures were taken by the Peruvian Geophysics Institute but were wrongly attributed to The Organisation for Research and Conservation of Aquatic Animals (ORCA) in the earlier version. These are sloppy mistakes but that’s all they are, and it’s only right that the BBC corrected the article. The BBC however went on to add that “the earlier version had a reference to the temperature rise being caused by climate change. This has been removed as the relevant research is still in its early stages.”

You can read the edited article here.

ORCA says the fur seals have swum to northern Peru because of rising sea temperatures. It is the first time fur seals have ever set up a colony away from the Galapagos Islands. Average sea temperatures off northern Peru have risen, with measurements from the Peruvian Geophysics Institute indicating that the sea surface temperatures in the northern Peruvian provinces of Piura and Tumbes have consistently risen from an average of 17C to 23C over the last 10 years. The sea temperature around the Galapagos Islands averages around 25C. Now that the conditions of the sea around northern Peru are so similar to the Galapagos, even more fur seals and other new marine species could start arriving.

Let’s look at some of those facts again:

• The seals have never relocated before. Not ever.
• ORCA says the seals have swum to northern Peru because of rising sea temperatures.
• Sea surface temperatures in these areas have, in just 10 years, risen from 17C to 23C. That’s a six-degree hike in a decade.

We have long known that scientists predicted mass migrations of animal life on land and in the oceans as a consequence of global warming. The seals are, like the bees, acting as canaries in the coal mine. Their actions tell us something is happening to this world of ours, something so big it impacts on instinctual and migratory behaviours. And it is happening astonishingly fast.

The seals aren’t, of course, trying to escape an increasingly uncomfortable habitat. They are colonising areas previously inhospitable to them. The science has never said it’s all about fleeing disaster; for a while, temperature increases in some parts of the world will bring temporary benefits to animals and people. We can make wine in Scottish vineyards before the world burns, that kind of thing.

Scientists predict a rise in global temperatures by 2100 of at least three to four degrees. Humanity will be devastated along with most other life-forms but there is every chance our species will be able to survive with much reduced numbers. Whether we can maintain social order when facing mass migrations of people and animals, disruption to the entire web of life, food shortages and disaster on a scale we’ve never seen before, that’s the big question we won’t have an answer to until we get there. But if we get a six degree rise in temperatures there is no hope for life on Earth in its many present forms. The chances are that only microbial life, and not all of it, would survive. It would be the sixth planetary-wide extinction level event in Earth’s history.

When something has happened five times before, why is it so difficult to believe it might happen again? Especially when there’s so much data to strongly suggest that’s what really is happening.

If the rapid climate change we are experiencing is man-made, we have to act now. The climate change deniers want us to do nothing because they don’t believe there is any threat. Yet, whether we choose to believe the facts or deny them, surely it makes sense to prepare for the worst-case scenarios, to usher in a new era of clean renewable energy, to take greater care of the planet’s resources? Not to a climate change denier. If nothing bad happens (and that’s an arguable point because some of us would say the bad is already here for those with eyes to see and minds to accept what they see), then I for one could live with the likes of Sarah Palin banging tables and crying “We told you so!”–but if the climate change deniers are wrong, the rest of us won’t get much of a chance to say the same.

If we’re wrong and climate change isn’t happening, you get some more windmills and solar panels. You get to breathe cleaner air. You and your kids might survive.

If climate change is real, and scientists are right—the same scientists responsible for nearly all the advancements and knowledge we benefit from today—but we do nothing, that is, if the climate change deniers get their way and emissions continue to rise unabated, then Hell on Earth will be unleashed.

I’d rather take my chances with windmills and electric cars than side with the likes of Palin in the US and the ancient Tory Nigel Lawson in the UK, thank you very much. Who, in their right minds, gambles not only with their own lives but the lives of everyone?

The BBC seems to have acted as if the science is unproven. That is simply not true. What else could cause these temperature hikes if not global warming? Is someone boiling a fleet of kettles down there? It is climate change deniers who argue the science is unproven, who pick up on single errors in phone directory-sized scientific reports and ignore evidence that doesn’t fit their arguments. They aren’t even capable of giving straight answers in debate. And yet, they are gaining support because people don’t want to believe. It’s all too scary, too big. Frustrating as it is, it is perfectly understandable when people run away and bury their heads in the sand. We all do it from time to time. We might ignore the proof of a cheating partner or pretend our teenagers are good kids even when they’re caught committing crimes. We may smoke a cigarette and ignore the wheezing of our lungs.

The dodo lives within us all. And we all know what happened to the dodo. How we who believe science over superstition fight this instinct for denial over action, that’s a question that needs answering. And quickly.

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