“But Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sondoro, who heads the Academy, told BBC News that Christians were obliged to be stewards of the Earth and protect the poor – which meant taking action to safeguard the climate. He said the oil industry was fomenting distrust of science in the US because it did not want society to change.”I went back to try to find the story again later but found that the quote above had gone, and this one had appeared:
Meanwhile, a small group funded by a US climate contrarian body in Chicago has been in Rome rallying against the Vatican's climate drive. One of the participants, Christopher Monckton, said the Pope "should listen to both sides of the scientific argument... not only people of one, narrow, poisonous political and scientific viewpoint".
So the claim that the oil industry is "fomenting distrust of science in the US because it [does] not want society to change" is replaced by one from a fossil fuel funded crank trying to foment distrust of science because he does not want society to change.
The original story disappeared but but was recorded here; the story was replaced without any indication that it had been edited here.
The BBC has been criticised before for false balance in its reporting of global warming by its own independent advisers, (see here) using crank conspiracy theory bloggers to comment of the latest IPCC report.
So who is the AGW "sceptic" at the BBC with the power to lean on Roger Harrabin?
Who is it who insists that uncertainty is mentioned whenever anybody states that there is enough evidence to make action necessary, whether it be the IPCC or the pope?
Who is it with the power to censor the truth that many of the claims that doubt and uncertainty in climate science mean there is not enough evidence to justify action come from fossil fuel funded sources and replace it with just such a claim from just such a source?
Edit 20/3/2023
Now we know:
Complaining, even overcomplaining, often works, as a small band of climate-denier activists have proved over the years with their incessant complaints to the BBC. These attacks through the editorial complaints unit devour editorial time, so some editors prefer to appease the complainant by altering an online story, perhaps, rather than standing firm and facing possible rebuke from the unit.
The BBC, in fact, is generally susceptible to bullying through attrition. In a 2011 report, I mentioned the vast carbon emissions caused by HS2. An editor told me to tone it down. I complied, but he insisted that my revised version was still not neutral enough. The firm responsible for HS2 (with its army of PRs) always complained, he said – and he simply didn’t have the time to deal with it.
Stop kicking the BBC on bias. A right turn was needed, but now it’s gone too far,Roger Harrabin writing in the Guardian.
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