Ian Plimer, for those who are unaware, is a man who continually seeks to muddy the consensus on climate change. If polls are to be believed, he and a few others are doing a spectacularly good job. According to George Marshall, scarcely ten per cent of people in the UK regard climate change as a major challenge. Call Plimer what you will, however (skeptic, denier, idiot), the claims he makes have been repeatedly proven to be factually incorrect.
Given that he is completely mistaken, there is reason to question whether the BBC was wise to sanction his interview with Justin Webb on the Today Programme on November 12th. To draw a (perhaps marginally!) less emotionally-charged comparison, what if Plimer had been a supposed expert on cricket, yet had asserted that Australia won the Ashes in 2009? He would, of course, have been challenged instantly. His status as an expert would have been seriously damaged, and the BBC would have received justified criticism for touting him as one. Which is much the response that erupted when he was offered a platform for his views last Thursday.
George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian, fields the outrage that greeted Plimer’s appearance in this article. Monbiot reckons that stifling Plimer would only have added fuel to the denial fire, and that the right response would have been for Justin Webb to have done his research and exposed the inaccuracy of Plimer’s position live on air. It occurs to me, though, that maybe there’s another point to be made here. Simply by allowing him to be the centre of so much discussion, I think we may be granting Plimer a disproportionate amount of power and credibility. We are allowing him to dominate an agenda that could be much more usefully filled with genuine, creative approaches to climate change – and let anyone who doubts the veracity or magnitude of the challenge catch up when they are ready.
