BBC’s Today programme criticised for inviting Nigel Lawson to come on and deny climate change

The BBC has been criticised for inviting a climate change denier to come on air and voice his belief that global warming isn’t happening.

Science broadcasters including Brian Cox and Jim al-Khalili criticised the decision to bring on famous denialist Nigel Lawson, apparently to make sure that there was a balanced debate. Both pointed out that there is very little debate about global warming – an established fact on which almost every mainstream scientist is agreed.

Lord Lawson was able to make a number of claims, which went mostly unchallenged. He said, for instance, that the world had actually become colder over the last 10 years – despite the fact that 2014, 2015 and 2016 have been the hottest years on record.

Environmental experts including Carbon Brief fact-checked each of the claims and found that none of them were true. But apparently because Lord Lawson had been invited on as an opposing voice in a debate – to follow an interview with Al Gore about his latest climate change film – he was mostly asked to disagree with the science on global warming and his opinions were little picked up on.

“For [the Today Programme] to bring on Lord Lawson ‘in the name of balance’ on climate change is both ignorant and irresponsible. Shame on you,” wrote Professor Khalili, a physicists and science broadcaster, who often makes programmes for the BBC.

Brian Cox, who has also worked for the corporation, agreed with Professor Khalili. “Irresponsible and highly misleading to give the impression that there is a meaningful debate about the science,” he wrote.

The invitation was extended to Lord Lawson despite a BBC report in 2011 which found the corporation had irresponsibly covered climate change, and that it needed to do more to avoid presenting opposition to environmental science as an equally valid part of debate. That report has been followed up numerous times by the BBC and it was found that it had made some progress.

Today discussed the BBC Trust’s findings on air at the time, debating the report’s claim that it “often gives undue prominence to ‘marginal opinions’”.

More recently, the BBC was forced to apologise for a documentary that criticised the Met Office and said that it shouldn’t be investigating climate change. “In giving voice to climate-change sceptics, it failed to make clear that they are a minority voice, out of step with the scientific consensus, which we would normally expect on the occasion when we include such viewpoints,” it said.