More misleading reporting from the BBC

[Or was it the editing...?] 

At first glance it appears that this recent news article on the BBC is going to be a complete hatchet job on Professor Jem Bendell, author of the Deep Adaptation paper.  The paper is an honest, if uncomfortable appraisal of the likelihood of civilisational collapse caused by the climate crisis, and a blueprint for how we can work together to survive it as best we can.

The first indication it's going to be hatchet job is the title:

"The 'climate doomers' preparing for society to fall apart"

Clearly, calling someone a "doomer" is a way of dismissing their point of view without actually challenging it.  Of course the BBC have taken the approach of distancing themselves from any responsibility by putting 'climate doomers' in quotes.  That's a standard trick for when you want to say what you think without having to justify it.

The first paragraph of the article is in bold, and is highly dismissive of Bendell's position:

"An article by a British professor that predicts the imminent collapse of society, as a result of climate change, has been downloaded over half a million times. Many mainstream climate scientists totally reject his claims, but his followers are already preparing for the worst."

It's interesting that they used the word "many" and not "most" in the text "many mainstream climate scientists totally reject his claims".  Clearly if most did "totally reject" his claims it would still be correct, and much more powerful, to say "most mainstream climate scientists totally reject his claims".  So either: 

1. They are poor wordsmiths and missed a trick
2. Most mainstream climate scientists actually accept at least part of his claims
3. They don't know either way but wanted to be dismissive

What's interesting is that the rest of the article is actually fairly balanced and quotes both mainstream climate scientists for and against Bendell's paper.  It looks to me like what has happened here is that the Journalist Jack Hunter originally wrote a fairly reasonable article, but when it was presented to the editor the response was something like: you can't publish that!  I suspect - and this is only a suspicion - that the title and/or the first paragraph was added by an editor who was worried that an article such as this would run counter to Auntie's remit of Keeping Britain Calm And Carrying On!

The fact is that an enormous number of climate scientists see Bendell's projections as entirely reasonable.  I've heard of similar predictions of civilisational collapse being made in Cambridge to lecture rooms full of climate scientists without a single one saying they thought it was alarmist.  The IPCC itself says that uncontrollable runaway climate change becomes a 50% likelihood at 1.5C - which is only 0.4C from where we are today.  They also say that, ignoring the chain reactions and assuming all nations meet their Paris commitments, we are heading for 3C by 2100.  If we continue to act as we are - i.e. failing to meet our Paris commitments - this august body of mainstream climate scientists say we are heading for around 4.8C.  Now, many geologists consider the end-Permian mass extinction event, in which over 90% of terrestrial species were wiped out, to have been caused by sudden warming of a similar scale.  Given this, it's hardly surprising that so many mainstream climate scientists do in fact think Bendell's predictions are reasonable.

I don't think that BBC editors are poor wordsmiths.  I think that they said "many mainstream climate scientists totally reject his claims" because they couldn't say "most mainstream climate scientists totally reject his claims" because that isn't true.  I think it's likely that most mainstream climate scientists largely accept his claims.  It's amazing how you can tell the truth, but phrase it in such a way as to convey the opposite meaning.  Well, maybe you can't.  Nor can I.  But the BBC can, because they're great wordsmiths.

If there's one silver lining to the current coronavirus crisis it's that it has punctured the sense of immortality that most people living in the western world have.  As the supermarket shelves empty, and businesses go bust after just a few days of restrictions, we can begin to see just how little resilience there is in our economic system.  In this new mindset, perhaps Professor Bendell's predictions will no longer be dismissed as prophesies of a climate doomer just because they are too difficult to imagine.