MEP Hits Out at Media over Climate Change Doubt

Green MEP Caroline Lucas has hit out at the media after a poll revealed that a majority of people in the UK believe that scientists aren’t agreed about the facts of climate change – or that it is being caused by human activity.
According to latest figures by pollsters Ipsos-MORI, some 56 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “Many leading experts still question if human activity is contributing to climate change”. Just 22 per cent disagreed.
Dr Lucas, who is a member of the European Parliament’s Environment and Climate Change committees, said: “This is very worrying. Politicians will never take the steps necessary to cut emissions unless voters demand that they do so, and they won’t demand it if they remain sceptical about their role in changing the climate in the first place.
“The media are, at least in part, to blame: their obsession with appearing to be balanced means discussions of climate change tend to have a naysayer arguing either that climate change isn’t happening, or that it isn’t manmade, as though there is a serious ongoing scientific debate about this.
“But the fact is that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change: almost every scientist in the world agrees that climate change is happening, that it is being fuelled by human activity, and that our best chance of ameliorating its worst impacts lies in dramatically cutting global greenhouse gas emissions.
“By suggesting otherwise the media is, albeit inadvertently, promoting dangerous scepticism about climate change – and undermining our chances of doing anything about it.”
Dr Lucas, who was named Politician of the Year in the recent Observer Ethical Awards 2007, likened climate change scepticism to holocaust denial.
“The media’s attempt to seem balanced is in fact distorting the public’s understanding of perhaps the most pressing issue facing us all today – and it’s tragic. It doesn’t make any sense: would the media insist on having a holocaust-denier to balance any report about the second word war? Of course not - but by insisting on giving so much airtime to climate change deniers, it is doing exactly the same thing.”
July 5th, 2007

And it's definately nothing to do with the Sun! Temperatures have been rising of late, while the Sun's output's been falling. See the Guardian reports at http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2119695,00.html
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2123448,00.html