Bog Standard Error Undermines Good Law Project’s Campaign Against Talk’s Climate ‘Misinformation’

The lawfare operation Good Law Project has demanded the UK broadcast regulator Ofcom stop the Murdoch-owned Talk station broadcasting “climate misinformation”. In campaign literature it claims that “toxic channel” Talk, “regularly spouts misinformation about the climate crisis”, using a headline claim that a guest recently said climate science “doesn’t add up to a row of beans”. Alas, this is wholly incorrect. Your correspondent should know, I am supposed to have said it. What in fact I observed last November to presenter Ian Collins (here, at one hour 15 minutes) was that Net Zero promoters “were backing it up with science that doesn’t add up to a row of beans”.

As an independent journalist covering climate and Net Zero for a number of years, I would never dismiss the entirety of climate science in this childish way. A check via Grok confirms this statement. There is some good science around climate and there is a great deal of bad, at times fraudulent, work. Misrepresenting my words could be considered highly damaging, libellous even, although on this occasion I am inclined to discount malevolence in favour of incompetence. I could demand a correction, but on the other hand, who gives a toss.

The Good Law Project is an activist operation promoting what are described as progressive causes. It receives funding from individual donations, but also collects cash from foundations such as Joseph Rowntree, the hard-Left money tree. Also listed as a donor is Dale Vince, owner of the state-subsidy dependent Ecotricity. This latest attack on science and political free speech also involves an outfit called Stop Funding Heat (SFH). This is a small band of activists that recently persuaded Damian Carrington of the Guardian to take up its cause. He quoted campaigners who claimed Ofcom was allowing GB News and others to “flout” accuracy rules and broadcast “climate change denial”. Just two broadcast media in the UK offer any critical perspective on climate change. The rest hide behind the preposterous notion that the science is ‘settled’ and use this convenient bias to promote the Net Zero fantasy.

In a letter dated January 26th on behalf of SFH to Ofcom, the Good Law Project says its client has submitted 71 complaints since April 2024 about “climate misinformation and bias broadcasting” by GB News and Talk. Except for two still under review, all are noted to have been dismissed. It further states that information from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Guardian reveals 1,221 complaints about the alleged misinformation were submitted to Ofcom over the last five years. Each of these complaints was rejected.

Five specific Talk broadcasts are singled out for attack. Many of the comments complained about are simply political opinions protected, one might still hope, under freedom of expression laws. For instance, on November 27th last year, presenter Mark Dolan said that “if we didn’t have this insane, self-destructive, zealous approach to Net Zero, the crazy, unsustainable target – then many of those tax rises, if not all of them yesterday would simply not have been necessary”. Here we have robust commentary on a Labour Government driving the country’s finances off a cliff – last time anyone looked, it was allowed. On the same broadcast, Daily Sceptic contributor Ben Pile commented that electric vehicles were ”an attempt to make people obedient, not an attempt to offer a climate solution”. Those who know Ben are aware that he is perfectly capable of making an intellectual argument that forcing people to buy EVs is making them obey a political  command.

In addition to the “row of beans” quote, I was also accused of stating that people had been “crying wolf” about climate change. Forty years of constant climate scares that never occur is the unanswerable proof that backs up this claim. I am also said to have “misrepresented facts” and cited false claims. Needless to say, I am obliged for the lecture on misrepresentation from this particular source.

The political writer Brendan O’Neill offered the opinion that Labour’s energy policies were “suicidal”, “driven by pseudoscience in many cases” and “a kind of cultish behaviour”. For Exhibit A in consideration of unfalsifiable pseudoscience, we need look no further than the media and lawfare friendly field of weather attribution. Author Rupert Darwall referred to claims of climate breakdown and said it was “absolutely outrageous that they are scaring children about something that is not going to happen”. Exhibit B might be the numerous reports of children and young adults needing therapy for so-called climate anxiety.

Green activists and lawfare merchants are encouraged to tittle tattle to Ofcom because the state regulator still holds that the scientific principles behind what it falsely claims is a ‘theory’ of anthropogenic global warming are broadly settled. The legal case is advanced that alternative explanations and opinions must be inaccurate, and are therefore in breach of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code. But as Eric Worrall recently pointed out, the problem with enforced agreement on the facts is that in science, “there is no such thing as a fact which cannot be challenged”. Perhaps these wise words could influence any ‘sod off’ reply that Ofcom makes to the complaining letter.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.